For our veterans

I hear the guns I feel the fire,with my last breath my spirit fliesAnd I see the faces of my friends,fighting till the endSo many fearless hearts.

I feel their courage and their pain,their lives should never be in vain.From heavens gate a perfect viewa plain and simple truth -Is lighting up the dark
Love one another that stranger is your brotherLeave a footprint, everywhere you goKeep yesterday for giving, today just for livingSay a prayer every night for tomorrow
I pray the past can teach us all,before another hero fallsBefore another mother cries, forever asking why(Why oh why)
Can't we love one another that stranger is your brotherLeave a footprint everywhere you go(everywhere you go)Keep yesterday for giving, today just for livingSay a prayer every night for tomorrow
Standing strong and true, on guard for me and youStanding strong and true, on guard for me and you
So we can love one another that stranger is your brotherLeave a footprint everywhere you goKeep yesterday for givingToday just for livingSay a prayer every night for tomorrow
Bless the true believersWho stand and fight for freedomSo we can live in peace right here at homeLive in peace at home
Keep yesterday for giving, today just for livingSay a prayer every night for tomorrow
Say a prayer every night for tomorrow

Copied from MetroLyrics.com 

from the op/ed pages of today's paper

Well said Ms. Snyder, we could all take a lesson from you.

No matter the roadblocks, you will find a way

 
Editor’s note: Philanthropist Joan Snyder will receive an honorary degree Thursday from the University of Calgary. The following is an edited version of the speech she’ll deliver to graduates.


Although I never went to university myself, I hold education in the highest regard. So today is doubly special for me. I never imagined being given such an honour. Thank you all.
I grew up in a small Prairie town in Saskatchewan during the Depression and the war, and then moved to Calgary.
The lessons I learned from my family and my community have been a foundation for me throughout my life. Lessons like caring for others, being a go-getter and a can-doer, going where life takes you, and not forgetting to have fun along the way.
Sharing what you had and caring for others was something that everyone did as a matter of course back then. Whether it was helping an elderly person with dementia find their way home, or caring for my cousin Roy, who had polio, we all pitched in to help one another.
These early lessons in kindness and acceptance, and keeping my feet on the ground, have been guiding principles for my life. They also helped me develop a lifelong understanding of the importance of medical care and research. Polio was a debilitating disease back then, but thanks to research, there is now a vaccine to prevent it, and I know research is the key to breakthroughs like this in the future.
My parents also instilled in me the importance of sports, work, play and humour. My mother, Phoebe, was a great sportswoman. She used to borrow her brother’s hockey stick and play street hockey using a frozen road apple for a puck.
Through sports, you learn about self-discipline, collaboration, team play and camaraderie that lasts a lifetime.
I think my parents were probably wishing I’d learned self-discipline a little bit earlier than I did, because when I was about 13, my family and I were driving to a cousin’s wedding in Edmonton when the road ran out — a complete washout.
My father took a detour across the hard, open prairie, hoping the ground would be frozen enough to hold the car.
When even that became dubious, my father stopped the car and both he and my mother got out and walked ahead to see if our route was passable — and then shook their heads.
In the back seat, I said, “Gram, I think I can do it.”
“Sure you can, Joan!” she replied, always the booster.
So I scrambled over the front seat, took the wheel and went full speed ahead. I can still see the startled look on my parents’ faces as I came barrelling down on them, and then thinking, “Oh my gosh, I’m in trouble now.”
But then they started yelling, “Keep ‘er going, don’t stop now,” and motioned me to keep going.
Well, we made it to the wedding on time, and I believe that can-do spirit they encouraged in me has been a key to any successes I may have had along the way. No matter the roadblocks in your life, you will find a way.
When I was your age, there wasn’t a road map as to where my life would take me. My father passed away suddenly of cancer in 1961, leaving my mother and me to run the family affairs. I hadn’t attended university, but little did I know they had been preparing me for the responsibilities to come.
I can remember being up on a rig when I was only four or five, watching them pull pipe, and my mother’s dismay at the mud on my dress.
Around the dinner table, my family would discuss business plans and world events. These dinner-table discussions taught me how to debate and be an independent thinker. They were always conducted with respect and trust, which is how I hope I still operate today.
I’m so glad I’m now in a position to give back to the community. You can always give back and share, in good times and in bad, in ways both big and small. Every gift or act of kindness makes a difference.
I know that your generation is already doing this, and I encourage you to make this your way of life — it will reward you tremendously.
Whenever I’ve taken on a project, it’s because I see a need and thoroughly believe in it, and it is done from my heart. I’m excited by the wonderful things that are being accomplished at the Calvin, Phoebe & Joan Snyder Institute for Infection, Immunity and Inflammation — a U of C medical research body close to my heart.
It was because of my mother’s passion for sports that I set up the Program of Excellence in Women’s Hockey at U of C.
I’m also pleased that I’ve been able to help assure the future of women’s hockey at Canada Olympic Park under president Dan O’Neill at WinSport Canada.
I am choosing to support these projects now because of the great pleasure it gives me to see the results of my gifts. In conclusion, I’d like to say this to the graduating class of 2011, who have worked so hard to accomplish their goals and be here today:
* Never stop learning and exploring new ideas. If one door closes, another one will open, and you never know what new and exciting things will emerge.
* Don’t be afraid to be different and don’t let the roadblocks or naysayers hold you back.
* Remember, sharing your successes with others and giving back to the community will give you great pleasure.
* Finally, and most importantly, live a well-rounded life with your feet on the ground and with a sense of humour and fun.

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from today's paper

Here's a question: What doesn't cause cancer?

 

Latest studies linking moderate drinking to breast cancer frustrating

 

By Les MacPherson, The StarPhoenix

I grow weary of the grim parade of studies linking something or other to cancer. They just keep coming. Eventually it will be impossible to do anything without increasing the risk of cancer.
The latest is a study, widely reported, linking very moderate alcohol consumption with a slightly increased risk of breast cancer. Researchers say the increased risk is just a per cent or two and not enough to justify a general advisory for women to quit drinking.
So why mention it? So women can fret over a beer on bowling night? Thanks so much, brainiacs at Harvard Medical School, for heaping on the guilt. Call us when you can do something my Aunt Mildred can't do better:
"You're having another drink?"
At least Aunt Mildred is unequivocal with respect to drinking. Medical science could not be more equivocal. While this study links cancer with moderate alcohol consumption, other studies, no less reliable, have shown that moderate alcohol consumption reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease. So we can abstain and have a heart attack, or we can imbibe and get cancer. Or we can ignore the dismal tidings from Lab Coat Land and live as we please. We might not live as long, but we will enjoy ourselves more than we would as slaves to statistical risk factors.
We don't need to hear about any more risk factors. We don't need any more studies linking cancer with the pleasures in life. Instead of telling us how to live, medical science should concentrate instead on finding a cure or at least a vaccine for cancer so we can live as we like for a change, and without any guff from the nanny chorus.
Of course, it is relatively easy for scientists to identify risk factors. It really is just a matter of grunt counting and running the numbers. No original thinking is required, unless you include as original thinking such as, "Let's see if ham sandwiches cause cancer."
They do, by the way. Consumption of processed meats such as ham has been linked to an increased risk of bowel cancer. So we can't even enjoy a ham sandwich anymore without first weighing the deadly risk.
The list of things that supposedly cause cancer just keeps getting longer. Among those keeping track is John Bignall, a professor of engineering sciences at City University in London and a foe of statistical nonsense. On his Number Watch website is an updated catalogue of things identified by epidemiologists as carcinogenic. Among the 300-odd items are such staples as toast, dairy products and hot tea. It was a British study, apparently, that found the risk of esophageal cancer is doubled by drinking tea hotter than 65 C. So we can still drink tea, but only if it is tepid. And not with cream. Or with toast.
Yet another study came out just this week, this one exploring the outer realms of uselessness by finding a link between cancer and organ transplants. Organ recipients apparently are twice as likely as the general population to be diagnosed with cancer. But is anyone going to forego a heart transplant, say, because of an elevated cancer risk later on? Of course not. So who, exactly, is helped by a study like this?
Who was helped by the study that implicated kissing? Mouth-to-mouth contact apparently can transmit a virus known to cause cancer. So why not go after the virus instead of making people feel guilty about kissing?
We also got news this week that cancer now is the leading cause of death in all Canadian provinces and territories. The leading cause in this case seems to be age. The longer we live, the more likely we are to get cancer, and we're living longer now than ever before.
I fear we won't live long enough, however, to see a cure for cancer. Not when the preoccupation of medical research is to relentlessly attack our lifestyle, as if lifestyle, and not cancer itself, is the enemy.

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The equestrian world has lost a great one

Superstar stallion Hickstead dies suddenly

 

This handout picture released on November 6, 2011 by the 2011 Jumping Verona International Horse Show of horse Hickstead and his Canadian rider Eric Lamaze performing during the competition in Verona. Hickstead, Beijing 2008 Olympic gold winner, suddenly collapsed on November 6 at 15.25, as he was leaving the arena after his successful jumping round. The veterinary services were immediately in attendance, but unfortunately the horse was already dead.

Photograph by: BRUNO DE LORENZO, AFP/Getty Images

Hickstead, the "superstar" stallion that carried Canadian equestrian champion Eric Lamaze to Olympic gold-medal glory in Beijing in 2008, died suddenly during a competition in Italy on Sunday, tragically ending a partnership that helped push the country to the top of the sport of show jumping.
Montreal-born Lamaze, the world's current No. 1 rider, had just taken Hickstead through a nearly faultless 13-fence course at the Rolex FEI World Cup in Verona, Italy, when the 15yearold horse abruptly collapsed and died.
"We finished our round, I circled and was leaving the ring, and he collapsed and died of an apparent heart attack," Lamaze said in a news release.
"It is the most tragic thing that has ever happened. We had him until he was 15, and we had a great time together. He was the best horse in the world. We are all devastated."
The Federation Equestre International, the sport's global governing body, said the competition was stopped at the request of the competing riders, and "Lamaze's fellow competitors gathered in the Verona arena to pay their respects to one of the greatest horses of all time, and to support their colleague in his moment of loss with a minute's silence."
Spruce Meadows, the Calgary equestrian facility which has been a playpen for Lamaze and Hickstead through the years and where the tandem recently showed throughout a very successful summer, released this statement:
"All of us at Spruce Meadows, and in the horse sport community, are stunned and saddened by the passing of Hickstead. Our thoughts and condolences go out to Eric, the Fleischhacker family and Eric's entire team.
"As fans, we can be thankful that some of their greatest moments together took place at Spruce Meadows, including their incredible 2011 season, where they firmly established themselves as No. 1 in the world in the Rolex Rankings.
"Hickstead and Eric Lamaze are truly one of the greatest combinations in the history of our sport.''
The 43-year-old Lamaze bolstered his top ranking after a first-place finish with Hickstead in September at the $1-million International Grand Prix during the Masters tournament at Spruce Meadows.
"Everybody dreams of winning this," Lamaze, who lives in Schomberg, Ont., said at the time.
"For me, it's just as exciting as it was the first time," added Lamaze, who had won the same competition with Hickstead in 2007. "When you have a great horse that tries so hard, you want this title attached to his name as many times as possible. Sure, the money is great. But there's more to it than that. It's the best horse in the world."
American rider Beezie Madden, a frequent competitor at the Meadows, expressed her shock on Sunday.
"It's obviously very sad,'' the Cazenovia, N.Y., rider told the Calgary Herald. "He's not only lost his best horse, it's like losing a part of your family. (The way it happened) it's such a rare occurrence.''
FEI president Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein of Jordan, an equestrian competitor at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, said Hickstead "really was a horse in a million, and my heart goes out to Eric and everyone connected with this wonderful horse. This is a terrible loss, but Hickstead truly will never be forgotten. We were very lucky to have known him."
FEI jumping director John Roche said the official cause of death hasn't been determined.
Canada's equestrian community had sounded its own note of grief within hours.
"Hickstead and Eric have been one of equestrianism's most legendary partnerships," said Akaash Maharaj, CEO of Ottawa-based Equine Canada.
"We will always be grateful for the time and triumphs we all shared with Hickstead," Maharaj added. "We know that generations of future equestrians will draw inspiration from his life."
Hickstead, born in the Netherlands, was named for a famous equestrian showground in Britain. Lamaze purchased Hickstead in 2004.
Lamaze, who also led Canada to a silver finish in the team jumping event at the 2008 Olympics, said after the victory in Calgary he expected Hickstead to be healthy enough to travel to London to defend their individual title at the 2012 Summer Games.
"He's going to have the winter off - no jumping at all - and come (to Spruce Meadows) next year," Lamaze in September. He said he saw the horse doing "exactly what he's been doing every single year, not changing anything, and go to the Olympics . . . He's healthy at the moment and jumping better than ever."

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from today's paper

Hankie alert, but says it all

We lost our seven-yearold girl this week. She fought every indignity that cancer threw at her with such bravery that at times she hardly seemed ill.
The cancer was so aggressive that she lasted only a month from diagnosis. I held her in my arms when she died, gazing into her big brown eyes, which were like melted chocolate, and stroking her red hair. It was peaceful and, in its own way, beautiful.
Yesterday, I passed her toy box and broke into tears, looking at the ball that will never be fetched, the rope that will never be tugged.
If you are not a dog person and think this is terribly maudlin, I understand.
People suffer human losses every day, as I know so well, because 2011 has been a horrible year for our family.
Yet, there is something about the loss of a companion animal that is difficult to explain to those who have never experienced it.
With a dog, you never argue over whose turn it is to do the dishes, or take out the garbage, or underwear left on the floor. There is no baggage. There are no bad memories.
Pet bereavement therapists say that losing a companion animal can be more devastating than a human loss for some people. That might seem absurd, but I totally get it.
"Grief is a broken heart. The amount we grieve is related to the amount we loved," says Straja Linder King, a Calgary therapist who uses registered therapy dogs for her work in hospices and long-term care facilities. Grief doesn't check itself at the door just because of a four-legged loss.
There is a social stigma about mourning the death of a pet that forces people to become closet grievers, and that's not healthy, says Linder King. The connection we have with pets is deep and profound, and that's how it was for me.
Piper gave me a hero's welcome whenever I came home, even though I did not deserve it. There was no complaining if I was late, grumpy, profane or inebriated. All foibles and flaws, a dog accepts.
Losing a dog is like losing a part of yourself. Research in the International Journal of Applied Research in Veterinary Medicine confirms the long-held belief that dogs reflect the personality of their keepers. By that measure, we must have been fairly good humans.
Physical discipline was never dispensed, only praise for good behaviour. In return, Piper never snarled, growled or cowered. She loved children, greeted strangers with insane joy and never chewed a sock.
I suspect most of the 122,000 dogs in Calgary are similarly good souls, because we spoil them rotten.
On Piper's first night with us, I curled up and slept with her at the back door so she wouldn't be scared and whimper. We were determined that she would sleep on her own bed, not ours, but that didn't last long. As much as we tried, she refused to be kennelled, insisting to be with her human pack. Perhaps I should have been more strict from the start, but if the result was a dog that craved human contact every waking minute, well, call me stupid.
We expected longevity. Her grandmother was 14. When Piper was diagnosed as terminal, there were tears, denial and rage at the injustice for one so young, just as with people.

When she became sick, I vowed that I would not let her make her last journey alone. When her time was at hand, I carried her to the car and laid her in the back. We prayed that she would not sit up, for that would have made it much more difficult. She did not. She was telling us it was OK.
The room they prepared for her at the vet had a couch, like a living room, and a white quilt spread on the floor. The caring Sylvia explained the process. She would inject Piper with an overdose of the same anesthesia used for surgery.
Piper would go into a deep unconscious state and her organs would quickly shut down.
It took perhaps 30 seconds. She did not struggle, or soil herself, or protrude her tongue, or convulse. She died gently in my arms as if asleep, just like that first night in her strange new house at the back door with some big doofus at her side.
About 200 dogs die every month in Calgary. If you've lost yours, don't let anyone tell you that it's silly to grieve. You lost a constant companion and source of comfort. Go ahead and cry.

Robert Remington is a Herald editorial writer.

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from the op/ed pages of today's paper

One way to get rid of the occutards

Here’s a surreptitious solution to the Occupy squatters

Cosy in their high-tech microfibre, lofted sleeping bags atop self-inflating sleeping pads, the Occupy Calgary squatters at Olympic Plaza only seem to be missing some Sherpa guides as they prepare to settle in for winter.
Better equipped than an Everest base camp, and only a few steps from the convenience of hot coffee and shawarma, they crawled from their sewn-in-China tents of ripstop nylon on Wednesday and trekked over to nearby St. Patrick’s Island to berate a group of chronically homeless into not co-operating with The Man.
As social assistance advocates attempted to convince the homeless camp at St. Patrick’s Island to move into shelters, the occupiers intervened, convincing them to stay. It was appalling. Recruiting the vulnerable into their anti-capitalist crusade was the last straw.
As Tim Richter, the smart, passionate head of the Calgary Homeless Foundation noted: “I think it’s pretty easy for people who have a couple of hundred dollars worth of Mountain Equipment Co-op gear to say they’re going to stay out all winter. To me, it’s pretty rich for someone (like that) to tell a guy who’s been homeless for 10 years, or a woman who is homeless while she has medical problems, or a woman who is homeless and has kids in foster care, that sleeping outside in the winter is OK because we gotta stay with a global cause.”
The problem now is what to do with the Olympic Plaza squatters. Sending in police vans is exactly what they want — a made-for-TV media spectacle that will prove they are being subjugated by the system. The strong-arm approach hasn’t worked in the three cities where it has been tried. In Oakland, Chicago and Melbourne, the occupiers simply came back in greater numbers.
Instead, here’s what the City of Calgary should do — go into Olympic Plaza at 3 a.m. with an infrared camera and confiscate any tent that is not occupied. It would be a justifiable enforcement of the bylaw that prohibits camping in city parks without a permit. In 20 minutes, you could probably clear out 80 per cent of the tents. In London, the always-clever corporate British media used infrared cameras and found that most occupiers went home to a warm bed at night.
The Occupy movement is becoming an embarrassment. In Vancouver, rats have moved in among the occupiers on the lawn in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery. Occupy Calgary should be thankful that in Alberta, The Man has a program that keeps rats out of this province.
The Vancouver group is not even ashamed that they’ve derailed Santa Claus. The annual Santa parade has been rerouted because Occupy Vancouver has co-opted the space where a local bank sets up bleachers and collects donations for the food bank.
Berating the homeless. Taking food from the poor. Opposing Santa Claus. That’s some legacy. The occupiers might consider voting. Or volunteering. Or changing the system from within.
In the meantime, we are a society that believes in the rule of law. It’s part of “the system” that provides our freedoms and rights — the very system that the squatters are now abusing. The city is arguing that it may violate the Charter to remove the squatters. What nonsense. Nowhere in the Charter does it give people the right to pitch a tent wherever they want.
However officials do it, the city should uphold the law. It’s what we pay our taxes for.

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From the op/ed pages of today's paper.

 With Remeberance Day (or Veteran's Day for my American friends) fast approaching I thought that the following would be appropriate.

Soldier discovers he’ll never be a warrior

The Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary does not appeal to all students. But some are more interested in war studies than peace studies. For them, the interest and focus they bring to class ensures an enormously fulfilling experience, particularly for us who teach them.
Ryan Flavelle is a student. Like several others, he is also a member of the military. Unlike his colleagues, he has written a riveting book. It deals with his service in the southern Panjwaii district, Kandahar province, Afghanistan.
Flavelle’s motives for writing The Patrol: Seven Days in the Life of a Canadian Soldier in Afghanistan were both universal and personal. Like every historian from Thucydides to the present, he wanted to ensure the memory of the immediacy of his experiences would not be lost in oblivion. But the personal side of his story is far more compelling.
Flavelle spent the best part of seven months attached at the hip, as he said, to the officer commanding Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. The Patricia’s have won battle honours unequalled in Canadian military history. They lived in a universe far different from what Flavelle had previously known as a self-described nerd in 746 Communication Squadron. This was his reserve outfit; he was chiefly concerned with repairing radios.
Many of his accounts echo those found in other modern war memoirs. The army can’t promise you food, water, or sleep, “but it can promise you someone by your side.” He explains why soldiers swear so much and crack jokes, and why the jokes are inseparable from the obscenities. Vulgarity strengthens “the pack” because “war is not, after all, an environment known for its refinement.” Masculinity, chauvinism and vanity are all part of the makeup and outlook of the average infantry soldier (male or female, but especially male). Such attitudes sustained the soldiers through the suffering and unpleasantness that constitutes most of infantry life and were reinforced by the adrenalin-fuelled joy of action. And then there is the absurdity of army regulations; when they are enforced in comparative safety by rear-echelon martinets, they “become tantamount to insanity.”
Flavelle’s most searing recollections emphasized a novel reality. Nothing, he said, “can prepare you for the reality of bloody, concussive warfare.” Some excel at it and love it, and they are warriors. Others, Flavelle included, “are fated not to be warriors.”
But, he added, “I have the consolation that I have walked with them . . . . I will never be a warrior, but I have known war . . . . I am happy to say that on that hot, dusty day in Afghanistan, I stood among Canadian warriors, ready to do my job.” In the company of such people “everything was real.” This was new.
At the heart of a warrior’s love, Flavelle discovered the reality of “the patrolling spirit,” which he had once dismissed as an obsolete academic notion. Fundamentally, it is “a desire to be there.” Granted, it is a strange desire to want to walk “an IED-infested riverbed,” but soldiers know that, once there, they can either want to be there or not. If you choose the second, “it doesn’t change where you are or reduce your stress. It only makes the road much longer.”

Near the end of his weeklong patrol, Flavelle discovered that he did not want to be there. “It was a sobering experience and gave rise to a long process of self-reflection.” But it was not his last patrol. Rather, it was an occasion to understand how fatigue, exhaustion and danger can struggle with pride, strength and courage.
Flavelle came to understand that we live in a society that has been baby-proofed for adults. We think we deserve to be secure. His experience in Afghanistan exploded that delusion and several others. In reality, “there is no way to know which choice will end in safety. There is nothing to prevent you from walking down the wrong road; in fact, you may be ordered to.”
Flavelle wondered more than once about how to integrate his life as a student and his life as a soldier. He made a start by writing a brilliant book.
Barry Cooper is a University of Calgary political science professor. His column appears every second Wednesday

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