Author name: Townships Weekend

Where have all the farmers gone?

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

By Mary-Ellen Kirby

Local Journalism Initiative

     Have you ever – literally or figuratively – painted yourself into a corner? I will never forget the first time that happened to me. As a very young and much too-cool-for-the-country adolescent, I made the mistake of complaining to my mother about how tragically bored I was, stuck on our stinky farm with nothing to do. With a sympathetic pat on the shoulder and a big smile, she assured me she could solve my problem. She left me sulking in my corner and disappeared. I was sure she would come back in clean clothes, ready to take me shopping in Sherbrooke. I could almost hear the exciting, new Carrefour de L’Estrie mall calling my name! When she returned a scant few minutes later, not only was she still wearing her chore clothes, but she was also carrying a broom and dustpan, a pail of hot, soapy water and a rag. Still beaming her big smile, she confessed that she was glad to hear that I had so much free time on my hands. She explained that because Dad needed her help outside so often, she had gotten behind in the housework and the living room floor was in desperate need of a good scrubbing.

   “Move the furniture and give the floor a good sweep, then wash it and when it dries, you can wax it, too. The floor wax and cloth are under the kitchen sink.” Stunned into silence, all I could do was nod. In those days, children simply did not talk back to their parents. That floor got the best sweeping of its life: the more I swept, the madder I got. I sloshed that hot, soapy water around and scrubbed till the pattern nearly came off the old linoleum, my sense of injustice building by the second. By the time the floor dried, I had worked myself into a fine lather of martyred indignation. In high dudgeon, I grabbed the can of floor wax from under the kitchen sink and, mumbling and muttering under my breath about the unfairness of it all, proceeded to power wax the living room floor. On my hands and knees, oblivious in all my righteous fury, I laid down a goodly coat of paste wax in warp speed – from the kitchen door right into the proverbial corner. So, there I sat: seething – or “stewing in my own juice” as my father would have said – waiting for the wax to dry enough for me to escape my self-imposed prison. It was a formative moment.

    I have been pondering painted-in corners and self-imposed prisons frequently of late. When I contemplate the subtle but alarming changes to the pastoral landscape of my beloved Eastern Townships, I get that same sinking feeling of rueful recognition. It appears obvious to me that we have been painting ourselves into a corner – agriculturally speaking – for quite some time now. Many of the picturesque villages and quaint hamlets set in gently rolling hills that make the Townships so attractive seem to have fallen on hard times; they are mere ghosts of their former bustling selves. In the village where I attended elementary school, there were two schools, two grocery stores, two hotel/bars, two banks, two gas stations, four churches, a post office, a grist mill, a lumber mill, a doctor’s office and several other small enterprises. Today, the only things still standing are one school, one gas station, one hotel/bar and the post office. We have added a depanneur and a restaurant and while three of the four churches remain open, their congregations have shrunk considerably.

   The decline is obvious, but what is not so obvious is the underlying reason for that decline. To grasp the root cause, a trip into the surrounding countryside is in order. In a five-mile radius around that village were 30-40 small dairy farms. The farm children went to school in the village, the farmers bought fuel and rubber boots and nails and baler twine and fencing wire and animal feed and groceries in the village; they went to dances on Saturday night and church on Sunday morning. The farmers sat on town council, volunteered at church, school, charitable and civic organizations, contributed to fund-raisers and organized events: they were the backbone of that community. In that same five-mile radius today, I can count the dairy farms on the fingers of my two hands…and still have fingers left over. So, where did all the farmers go? Like many simple questions, this one has a complex answer. I think one factor was the burden of increasing government interference: many farmers simply quit because they got tired of jumping through ever more onerous regulatory hoops. The rise of the Parti Québécois also played a role: some farmers just packed up and headed for more Anglo-friendly jurisdictions. Then there is the sad fact that fewer farm kids wanted to take over from their parents so that retirement-aged farmers had no option but to sell off the family farm. The pressures – both natural and man-made – exerted on farmers are formidable, no wonder there are so few applicants for the job.

   In our current agricultural landscape, small family-friendly farms have largely passed away and with them, our once vibrant village life. The farmland itself hasn’t disappeared; it has merely been swallowed up by increasingly larger farms who practice the ‘bigger is better’ business model. But the economic spin-offs from one large farm/farmer simply can’t make up for the loss of numerous small farm families: not in our schools, not in our churches, not in our villages. When numbered companies and foreign investor groups with deep pockets can swoop in and buy up large swaths of agricultural land, it prices our own real farmers out of the market.   Not so long ago, buying a farm – becoming a farmer – was an attainable goal in the Townships. A young farmer could be reasonably certain, that with good management, the farm would pay for itself and could be passed down to the next generation. Alas, this is increasingly rare.

   I was never very good at math, but it seems to me that when it is no longer feasible to buy a farm and pay for it by farming it, we have a huge problem. Land speculators produce nothing edible. When Townships farmland leaves the hands of real Townships farmers, our food sovereignty is diminished, our communities contract and ultimately, these beautiful Eastern Townships are tarnished by the losses. And so, dear reader, I think we have arrived at the corner of this conundrum.  We can see our predicament and we can even see how we got in this mess; what we can’t see is an easy way out of this uncomfortably tight corner. Whatever the answers are, I’m certain it won’t be as simple as waiting for the paint – or wax – to dry.

Mary-Ellen KIrby writes from her small farm in Bulwer, where she lives with her husband (a.k.a. the Shepherd), their dog, assorted barn cats, a motley collection of sheep, chickens, pigs and a donkey named Millie.

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Health for all

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

Total number of COVID-19 cases reported to WHO January 5, 2020 to May 19, 2024
World 775,522,000
Canada 4,800,000
Courtesy WHO Dashboard

By Dian Cohen

Local Journalism Initiative

We humans are hard-wired to react to immediate threats. So we’ll jump if a speeding car is coming at us or an angry T-Rex is about to pounce. It’s not that we can’t plan for other less immediate threats: we can take an umbrella in the morning if it looks like rain by the end of the day. We can open a savings account that automatically gets a percentage of our paycheque. Our problem is that we aren’t good at hanging onto ideas once the threat has passed.

When the pandemic had us all spooked in 2021, when four million people had already died and were dying at the rate of 100,000 a month, all 194 member countries of the World Health Organization agreed to negotiate a global treaty that would govern their behavior ‘next time’ to make the next health emergency less deadly and disruptive than COVID-19 was.

Cut to today. The pandemic has waned – the immediate threat is gone. The whole world reported only 1,867 deaths in the 28 days ended May 19, 2024. Canada was a hotspot, reporting 30 deaths, although in a country of 40 million, it didn’t make many headlines. So maybe it’s understandable that when the World Health Assembly opened its 77th meeting in Geneva last month, the first announcement was that there was no agreed upon global accord. The high- middle- and low-income countries of the world couldn’t agree on how to share relevant knowledge and technology nor how to produce and distribute vaccines, tests and treatments.

A look at how the market economy works provides the answer to why the global accord never happened. Pharmaceutical companies are in business to make money by developing products that solve medical problems. They can spend tens or even hundreds of millions doing so. Legislation gives them several years’ monopoly on their products so that when they’re successful, they can charge buyers enough to get their development money back and pay dividends to their shareholders and reward their executives.

When COVID was declared a pandemic, scientists all over the world shared their research, otherwise known as intellectual property, freely and urgently. That’s how safe, effective vaccines were developed so quickly. But in this case, the money to develop the vaccines came from governments around the world – estimates are that the US, UK, Germany and others publicly funded (read taxpayer-funded) tens of billions of dollars to help scientists do their work. Moderna, BioNTech and Pfizer turned out to be the winners. At the height of the pandemic, it was assumed that they would share the vaccine technology and know-how with the WHO so that vaccines could be manufactured around the world. That didn’t happen. No restrictions were put on their monopolies over pricing and distributing their vaccines.

Number of COVID-19 deaths reported to WHO 28 days to May 19, 2024
World 1,867
Canada 30
Courtesy WHO Dashboard

All three companies made billions by charging multiple times the cost of production and selling almost all their vaccines to rich countries. Kim Campbell was one of many former heads of state or Nobel Prize winners imploring western governments in 2021 to lift the monopoly protection on COVID vaccines. To no avail.

That’s pretty much the whole story. The sticking points that shot down the global accord were the high income countries’ refusal to share with the low-and middle-income countries their intellectual property and manufacturing rights. The WHO has given their members another year to come to an agreement. It’s not going to happen without some consideration of how a market economy, driven by profit and protected by legislation, works.

Meanwhile, the World Assembly and its 2,000+ delegates proceeded to the week-long meeting at hand, “All for Health, Health for All.” Canada is one of 17 countries championing a resolution entitled “Economics of health for all”. The vision is captured in a 90 second info-clip:  “What if we could design an economy that would prioritize the health of all people and the planet we live on? Where … health is seen not as an additional cost or potential budget cut, but as a necessary investment for our future. A world in which health innovations are shared for the common good, so that everyone can access the health care they need and where governments have the capacity and resources to drive these changes.” In other words, to infuse capitalism with more public interest than private gain.

This resolution has passed, and with it, a mandate to the Assembly to complete a ‘how-to’ manual to transform the world’s economies and report on it at the 79th World Health Assembly in 2026.

The info-clip ends with an inspirational, “the question is not why should we, but what’s holding us back?” The answer to that question is chronicled in our past behavior. Even with the COVID  pandemic raging, we couldn’t agree to share vaccines. Neither did we share 30 years ago when the HIV/AIDS pandemic was raging.

You be the judge of the likelihood of a pandemic accord within the year and/or agreement among all of the 194 member nations that their economy should be built around health and well-being rather than command and control, the market, or whatever else it’s built around now. Humans not only find it difficult to hang onto ideas, but we’re also fundamentally irrational — reasoning, choice, and problem solving are often overwhelmed by fallacies, illusions, biases, and other shortcomings. Vaccine hesitancy and conspiracy mentality are but two more recent illustrations. A more long-standing one related to the economy is ‘the backfire effect’. It describes how we continue to hold onto established beliefs even when faced with clear, contradictory evidence.

cohendian560@gmail.com

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Is there a doctor in the house?

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Family doctors have many demands on their time and often little flexibility. Courtesy StockCake

By David Winch

Local Journalism Initiative

It used to be so simple!

After we moved in the 1960s, my mother found us a new family doctor, as I recall, by looking one up in the phone book. She likely asked: when can you see us?  — “How about next Tuesday?”

It was often that easy to book a GP.

This has all changed in recent decades, as everyone sees. Finding and keeping a family doctor today is a real worry.

Somewhere between 15 and 20 per cent of Canadians have no family doctor. In B.C., roughly one million people have no GP, while a McGill survey concludes two million people in Quebec have none. In Ontario, the figure is officially 2.2 million; the Ontario College of Family Physicians said that by 2026 that shortfall may rise to as high as 4.4 million.

Alarm bells were ringing throughout the early 2000s, as hospital emergency wards became clogged with people seeking basic care.

Now we face a Boomers’ Crunch: boomer-age doctors are retiring in large numbers, just as their cohort seeks more medical care as seniors.

In my Townships village, two doctors retired in the last decade, with no replacements in sight. We joined a cooperative clinic 20 km away for nursing services and referrals, as needed, to an MD. That works, but nobody thinks it is ideal.

Overall, the doctor shortage risks getting worse before it gets better.

Canadian Medical Association data show government recruitment websites advertised full-time positions for 2,571 family doctors in late 2022. But only 1,461 completed the postgraduate training required to become licensed family doctors that year.

How did this crisis come about in a rich, developed country?

Specialization an issue

Many analysts point to budget cuts. In the early 1990s, during a deep recession, Canadian governments agreed to reduce medical admissions.

As the Toronto Globe and Mail reported in 2022, “Much of the decline in the share of younger doctors can be traced to 1992, when provincial health ministers agreed to cut medical school admissions as part of a plan to curtail mounting health care costs. A Canada-wide 10-per-cent reduction in admissions in the 1993 academic year left the country with fewer doctors entering postgraduate training for the first time, beginning with the graduating class of 1997.”

These cuts, concludes the paper, “resulted in Canada losing part of a generation of doctors”.

Another point of view is put forward by Dr. Anthony Sanfilippo, professor of medicine at Queen’s University. He wrote a 2023 op-ed titled, aptly, “This is why you don’t have a family doctor” and he is author of a new book, The Doctors We Need (Sutherland House Experts).

Dr. Sanfilippo stresses that medical education has changed, with more specialist training. This downplays general practice. When Sanfilippo graduated from medical school in the early 1980s, he was fully trained to start a practice after one year of internship. Today’s graduates are not, given the number of specialties that crowd medical training.

“Canadian medical schools graduate approximately 3,000 new doctors each year … but only about 45 per cent are choosing to engage in family medicine as a career, and just 50 per cent of those are opting to provide the continuing and comprehensive care that would address the needs of unattached patients”, he writes.

Sanfilippo spoke with Townships Weekend recently, and noted that, while each institution in the doctor-certification process does its job well, there is “no consolidated oversight”. We are left, for example, with family doctors working at a piecework rate, while a team approach and single fees might serve patients better.

A career full of obstacles

Some medical students avoid a career path that seems full of headaches.

Most family doctors, after all, must run a small business whose expenses —from office rental and computer service to staff —are entirely dependent on them. Patients suffer from multiple, complex issues. Time is short with many demands in doctors’ workdays. Paperwork stifles any extra time with sick people.

Macleans magazinein 2021 published the personal account of a youngish doctor, a female with four children, whose life in small-town B.C. might resemble the rural Townships.

In “A doctor’s dilemma”, Dr. Kristi Herrling recounted her daily life, starting with 6 a.m. wakeups, managing her children through school prep, then opening her medical office. After a workday often disrupted with emergencies, she helps her husband to make the family supper. She is finally free at 8 p.m. for a further 2-3 hours of paperwork and clinical data.

This includes all manner of tasks: “charting patient visits, checking labs, reviewing imaging, requesting consults, reading specialist reports, filling out forms, researching unusual presentations, advocating for patients, answering pharmacist queries, speaking to home care nurses, and discussing cases that can’t wait with specialists”. Such administration often takes up 25 per cent of a doctor’s time.

As for time off, Dr. Herrling despairs that a “locum”, or replacement doctor, is often elusive to cover her small-town practice.

Before we can graduate more doctors, governments across Canada must act to get the most patient hours from the existing pool of doctors. To this end, several provinces have expanded the responsibilities of nurse practitioners. Pharmacists in Alberta have been granted more initiative in issuing prescriptions.

Quebec has taken welcome steps to reduce paperwork: signing notes to certify student or employee sick leaves have traditionally made doctors “the police arm of human-resource departments”, said observers. Bill 68 has made this optional. Doctors will also be exempted from approving insurance and workers’ compensation claims. Quebec estimates these reforms will cut unnecessary appointments —up to 750,000 annually.

More practical action is needed, and more general-practitioner grads must be graduated for a growing country. Otherwise, regular appointments with the family doctor could become a thing of the past.

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The Lionel Groulx School of History

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

Courtesy

By Guy Rex Rodgers

Local Journalism Initiative

Lionel Groulx – priest, historian, public intellectual and nationalist – understood the power of history to shape a national identity and make youth proud of their nation. Other countries had real and mythical heroes. Groulx wanted to make the descendants of Nouvelle France proud of heroes like Champlain, Radisson and Dollard des Ormeaux. Groulx’s idea of a good hero was based on the triple criteria of religion (Catholic), language (French) and race (European French). These criteria have exposed Groulx to accusations of xenophobia, and worse.

The CAQ government has resurrected the Lionel Groulx school of history. Francois Legault wants the new National History Museum in Quebec City to celebrate Quebec’s heroes and make young visitors proud to be Québécois. Legault belatedly conceded that the museum would need to find room for some non-Francophones.

I have been accused of ethnic bias in my documentary film What We Choose To Remember, although I have always made it clear that my film is an eyewitness account of contemporary Quebec history from the perspective of Anglos, Allophones and immigrants. One of the reasons I felt the need to make a film about Quebec history from this perspective is that the Lionel Groulx school dominates Quebec’s textbooks.

Last January I was speaking to a group of McGill students studying to become history teachers. I asked how many of them saw their family’s story reflected in the history they had been taught in high school. One student raised her hand, looked around and saw she was alone, and then offered an explanation. “My mother is French…”

I first realized how deeply Quebec history biased while working for the Pointe-à-Callière history of Montreal museum. In 1999 I was hired to write the large multimedia show because the version written for the opening of the museum had been accused of being too Franco-centric. I was hired to diversify the history and make it more inclusive of all Montrealers. 

The group of content experts overseeing my work was happy with a scene in which recent immigrants wrote postcards to relatives back home in Italian, Greek, Yiddish and Mandarin. 

The content experts were not happy with my proposed opening scene that presented several indigenous groups conversing in different languages, negotiating and arguing, and then falling silent as the first French explorers arrived. The museum’s content experts vetoed the scene because, “That would make it look like we stole the land!” The museum wanted the new history show to be inclusive, but the politics of land rights were incendiary in the wake of the Oka Crisis. The official story had to be that Indigenous peoples were nomadic and therefore had no specific land claims.

The rigidity of the official history became clear when I wanted to present a working-class Irish Montrealer. Using the city’s flag as a large visual image, I associated the fleur de lys with Montreal’s French history (the wife of mayor Viger), the rose with British immigrants (John Molson), the thistle with Scottish immigrants (John Young, chairman of the Montreal Harbour Commission), and the shamrock with an Irish immigrant who was digging the city’s sewers and had risked his life labouring on the Victoria Bridge.  

The oversight committee said ‘No!’ and was intractable. They would only agree to present a bourgeois boarding-house keeper whose fancy Victorian gown made a much louder statement than the words she spoke to an invisible audience of Irish labourers. It took quite awhile for me to figure out why the subject matter experts refused to show a labourer. During the next ten years, the multimedia history of Montreal I wrote for Pointe-à- Callière would be seen by two million visitors, mostly school students with impressionable young minds. A working-class English-speaking character would have undermined the popular myth that all Anglos are part of a powerful, wealthy elite. 

Pointe-à-Callière’s management and staff were sincerely trying to make the history of Montreal more inclusive, yet some myths were too sacred to challenge. The CAQ government has given this new museum a mandate to present the Lionel-Groulx version of history. Non-Francophones will feel their stories are excluded.  Some nationalists will celebrate the victory of reclaiming Quebec’s history for its rightful owners – the descendants of Nouvelle France.  The museum will stir up divisive identity politics but will not convince young Quebecers to reject global (English) culture. It will also fail to persuade bilingual youth to share the Groulx-CAQ dream of restoring the unilingual world of pre-Conquest Nouvelle France.

Guy Rex Rodgers was founding Executive Director of the English Language Arts Network (ELAN) until returning to filmmaking. You can reach Guy at: GRR.Montrealer@gmail.com

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The tiny town of Weedon yielded supplies of copper, zinc, silver, and gold

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

Weedon, c1950s. Courtesy BANQ

By Shawn MacWha

Local Journalism Initiative

Following the end of the War of 1812 in North America and the Napoleonic Wars in Europe the British government decided to set aside large swaths of Lower Canada to provide the soldiers who had fought in those conflicts with farms. Weedon Township, located 50 kilometres northeast of Sherbrooke, was one such tract and although it was surveyed in the spring of 1818 no veterans came to the area until Major Toussaint Hubert Goddu was granted 202 acres on May 4, 1835. Goddu, accompanied by two friends, moved from his farm at Sainte-Marie-de-Mannoir outside of Montreal to his new home that summer, but seeing the loneliness of the place promptly turned around and returned home.

The township remained empty until 1841 when Germain Biron arrived at the site of what would later become the town of Weedon. His family lived there, alone in the wilderness, until 1847 when they were finally joined by several other French-Canadian families who were seeking opportunities away from the crowded seigneuries along the St. Lawrence River. These new arrivals included the Brière, Fortin, Fontaine and Gauthier families and together they formed the basis of a new community.

Courtesy The Montreal Gazette, March 26, 1858

In August, 1848 Pierre Founier constructed the first saw mill in the area and later, in 1854, the town’s first chapel was erected. It was also around this time that the government began to offer over 12,000 acres of Crown Land for sale along the First, Second, Third, fourth and Fifth ranges of Weedon Township for the astounding price of 60 cents an acre. Fuelled by the new families coming in to open farms on these lands a growing settlement was established around the church and saw mill and on June 21, 1886 the village of Weedon was officially incorporated.   

By the turn of the century Weedon was a thriving commercial hub of almost 400 people which included two sawmills, a hotel, a creamery, a small carriage factory, and a bustling station on the Quebec Central Railway. As with so many other towns in the Eastern Townships it was the railway which formed that backbone of the community, connecting it and its products to the wider world. When James Miller, the local station agent, discovered rich copper and sulphur containing pyrite deposits about six kilometres east of Weedon in 1908 it was the proximity of the railway that permitted the development of a profitable mine. 

Hunting in Weedon, late 1940s. Courtesy BANQ

As it so happened these deposits were the largest ones in Canada east of the Great Lakes and mining operations began at this site in 1913 under the direction of the East Canada Smelting Company, which leased the project to the Weedon Mining Company the following year. Over the next eight years the mine produced almost 585,000 tons of ore containing an average of 3.5 per cent copper and 40 per cent sulphur. After a failed experience with trucks, the ore was shipped from the mine to Weedon Station by means of an ingenious aerial tramway. From there it was shipped directly to markets in the United States where it was used primarily in the production of copper and sulphuric acid, a key industrial chemical. The mine closed in May, 1921 following the discovery of larger and more economical pyrite deposits in Texas and Louisiana and two years later the pumps were turned off, allowing the shafts to flood.

This was not, however, the end. As 1930 the provincial government had recognized that the mine appeared to contain sufficient copper reserves to warrant a salvage operation to reopen the pit. Unfortunately, this did not happen until the 1950s when, as the Montreal Gazette noted, a “boomlet” of mining activity occurred in the Eastern Townships that saw several decommissioned mines brought back into production in order to meet the post-war demand for minerals. One of these facilities was the old Weedon Mine and in February, 1951 the Weedon Pyrite and Copper Company began the process of bringing the old mine back into production in order to access the estimated 500,000 tons of viable ore that still remained in the ground. Tests showed that this ore averaged 1.5 per cent zinc, 2.5 per cent copper and 35 per cent sulphur content, more than enough to make the effort to recover it worthwhile.

Weedon Ferry circa 1920s. Courtesy BANQ

The reopening of the mine was facilitated by the fact that the original operations had seen the construction of three inclined shafts that accessed 13 subterranean levels. It was the existence of this infrastructure that made reopening the mine economically viable as the most significant work required to access the ore was to de-water the old mine. This took place throughout the summer of 1951 and the flooded shafts were pumped out at a rate of about 70 feet per week. Once reopened in 1952 the mine remained in service again until 1960 when a series of cave-ins halted production. By this time the original deposits discovered by Miller had yielded over 19 million pounds of copper, five million pounds of zinc, 113,500 ounces of silver, 11,000 ounces of gold and 200,000 tons of sulphur bearing pyrite. The mine was briefly reopened again in 1969, this time by the Sullivan Mining Group before finally closing for good in 1973.

With the mine closed the focus of the area’s economy returned, once again, to the agriculture and forestry that it has relied upon 100 years earlier. For the most part, that remains the case even today, although over the past few decades tourism has become an increasingly important economic driver. Today Weedon is a thriving town of about 3,000 people living within Le Haut-Saint-Francois Regional County Municipality. An overwhelmingly francophone community its historical path has taken it a long way from its intended destination as a home for retired British soldiers. But such is the nature of the Eastern Townships, and the manner in which First Nations, English, French and more recent arrivals have all come together to form the rich cultural tapestry that runs so deeply through these hills.

Weedon c1900. Courtesy BANQ

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Chaga – The medicinal mushroom

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

Photo courtesy

By Pooja Sainarayan

Local Journalism Initiative

Chaga, Inonotus obliquus is a fungus that grows on tree trunks, mainly on yellow and white birch trees found in Quebec as well as other parts of Canada. Chaga flourishes in extreme cold environments making Canadian chaga highly valued. The fungi exists as an encrusted black growth on the trunks called a conk, which absorbs nutrients from the wood. Chaga mushrooms can be found on wounded trees where the conk grows out of the broken branches or trunks. The fungus shields the tree’s wounds and protects it from invasive microbes. Although loggers referred to this fungus as “tree cancer”, it has recently exploded in popularity in the west due to its many natural medicinal properties. The host tree and chaga can co-exist in symbiosis for several years, and the mushroom can be collected up to three times over the course of its lifetime. The chaga actually extends the life of the host tree so that the fungi can survive.

Trees that look similar to birch such as aspen may sometimes be infected with the chaga mushroom, however chaga taken from these species of trees is thought to contain less medicinal properties than the birch chaga does. To harvest the mushroom, it is important to leave enough behind so that the fungus is still touching the exterior of the tree. This ensures that the tree remains protected against any further environmental damage or future infections. Chaga usually grows high up on the tree, so in order to harvest the fungi, one would need to climb the tree. In addition, chaga that is found higher up is speculated to be more potent. Harvesting chaga from fallen or dead trees, or chaga that has fallen to the ground is not advised as it may be contaminated with mycotoxins. This is known as “dead chaga” and is black from the inside and out. Trees containing chaga growing on or close to contaminated lands, mills and industrial areas is also not recommended to harvest. When harvesting the fungi, it should be the size of a large soft ball at minimum and using the proper tools such as an axe, machete, or battery-operated saw is required as it is difficult to separate from the trunk. Proper harvesting and handling methods are key to reaping the most benefits.

Once the chaga has been harvested, it can be processed for consumption. The black outer crust should not be discarded. An air compressor can be used to blast away any dirt and bark. Chaga must be dried immediately following harvest in a well-ventilated area, or kept in a deep freezer if processed at a later time. Placing the chaga to dry quickly in a hot oven is speculated to remove most of its biologically active nutrients, however a commercial food dehydrator can be used. The fresh chaga must be cut into approximately 2-inch pieces to dry until the pieces are stiff and crumbly. The dried chaga can then be storied in an air-tight sealed container for several years.

The history of the chaga mushrooms dates back to centuries, where it was used in ayurvedic and traditional Chinese medicine. Chaga tea has also been used in Russia since the 16th century, as well as in Poland and other Baltic countries. The fungus is believed to have several health benefits such as antioxidant and anti-cancer properties. In addition, it was also used to treat gastric problems, tuberculosis, diabetes, arthritis, and cardiovascular disease. Chaga was also used for centuries by Canadian aboriginal First Nations people. So, let us look at any possible scientific evidence to support the medicinal properties of chaga.

According to a 2021 article published in the Polymers journal, the extract from chaga mushrooms, known as Inonotus obliquus polysaccharide (IOPS), which is a major bioactive component present in the mushrooms, exhibited significant hypoglycemic, hypolipidemic, antioxidant, anti-fatigue properties, as well as cytotoxicity towards several cancer cells such as hepatic carcinoma, lung cancer, ovarian and cervical cancers. In addition, the low toxicity of the chaga mushrooms makes it more attractive for further investigations. However, the polysaccharide composition and content variations between the natural habitat environment and extraction methods are not the same. Therefore, the standardization of planting and extraction is of high importance. Other studies have shown that the various bioactive compounds, including polysaccharides, triterpenoids, polyphenols, and lignin metabolites are responsible for the many health-benefiting properties of the fungus.  Further investigations in the precise mechanisms of the compounds found in chaga and its interactions with enzymes or proteins of the relevant pathways are required to establish more concrete scientific evidence in its health benefits.

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Danny Perkins moves to St. Andrew’s

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

Danny Perkins. Photo courtesy

By Nick Fonda

Local Journalism Initiative

The official opening won’t be until mid-May, so right now the interior of the new Perkins Art Gallery is a vast, near-empty, well-lit space with newly sanded floors and white walls.  The renovation work, including the entire electrical re-wiring of the building, was started the first week of January and is now down to the final details. 

The only change to the exterior of the building, aside from signage, is visible only at night, when coloured lights illuminate the spire of the new gallery, a building that for almost two centuries served as St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church.

“We had been looking for a new space for the gallery for about a year,” says Danny Perkins.

“We’ve been in the gallery on the Danville Square since 2020,” adds Rebecca Taylor, the gallery director.  “We only had 500 square feet on the ground floor.  The basement, which was much larger, was useable space but access to it was difficult.  Here, 95 per cent of the building is wheelchair accessible.”

“And here, we have 8,000 square feet of space,” Danny continues.  “The basement is only a little smaller than what was the church sanctuary and the church hall.”

Built between 1841 and 1842, St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church had some unusual features, including box pews.

“We had requests for some of those pews,” says Rebecca.  “The Richmond County Historical Society next door kept a couple and a few other organizations kept some as well.”

“We recuperated all the wood from the pews,” Danny adds.  “A lot of it is stored in the basement, and we’ve been using it in our renovations for door and window frames, for molding and baseboards.  We’ve even cut some of it into thin strips to fill the cracks between the pine floorboards.  The wood they used for the pews was butternut and some of the boards are as much as 20 inches wide.  In the long run, it’s all going to be used.  An artisan in Victoriaville is using some to make pens.  Another artisan will be using some to make jewelry.”

The cracks between the floorboards were the inevitable result of the wood shrinking. 

“Two coins were found when the pews were removed,” says Rebecca.  “One with the date 1829 and the other dated 1781.”

The coins, American halfpennies, are about the diameter and heft of a loonie.  They are, understandably, quite worn.  The older coin would have been in circulation for over 60 years if it went lost when the church was first built. 

“The coins will be on display with several other artefacts,” Danny explains.  “We want to acknowledge the history of St. Andrew’s and we’re planning to have an area set aside for a permanent exhibit dedicated to the church.  It will certainly include one of the box pews, some of the organ pipes, and a much-used roll-top desk.”

In addition to a history space, the Perkins Gallery will also have classroom space.

“We are setting up a multi-purpose studio,” Rebecca says.  “We want to host open workshops.  Visual artists who work in anything from ceramic to watercolours would have space to accommodate a workshop of a dozen or more participants.  It could be used for a Saturday morning art class, for example.  It could also be used by an artist from someplace distant who comes here to give a multi-day workshop.”

“Our aim,” she continues, “is to bring people in.  Some people might feel intimidated by the name, art gallery.  We want to be just the opposite.  We want people to feel welcome to come in and look.  We will be displaying the work of 30 artists who span all the spectrums, from emerging to established, from young to old, from local to international.  Similarly, the artwork we sell will go from very affordable—like cards that cost no more that $5—to quite expensive artworks that cost as much as $75,000.”

The Perkins Gallery wouldn’t be the Perkins Gallery if it didn’t include Danny’s artwork, which is now also being exhibited and sold across North America.  As well, his work has found its way to Japan, the Bahamas, and Australia. 

Only seven years ago, Danny was bringing his metalwork to the Richmond Craft Fair and attracting local notice with the three sets of metal gates at the Richmond fair grounds—work he did pro bono.

Since then, he has shown his artwork well beyond Cleveland Township.

“In 2018,” he recalls, “I brought some of my work to the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in Toronto, which lasts 10 days.  I’ve been back every year since.  This year, I was asked to prepare an entrance piece—something that will be seen by visitors as they arrive.  I’ve also been asked to prolong my stay.”

In 2022, Danny’s work was exhibited in Miami and in Los Angeles the following year.

“Often,” says Rebecca, “an artist, or a gallery, can apply to attend a show.  Some only take artists, while others only accept galleries, and some are open to both.  If the show likes the samples that are submitted, the artist or gallery will be invited.”

“Other times,” she continues, “we’ve received an invitation to attend.  That was the case at the Hamptons Fine Art Show in New York in 2023.”

“That show was memorable for all the wrong reasons,” Danny adds.  “The area was hit by a violent rainstorm.  We were set up in tents and pavilions.  As the rain continued, we found ourselves standing in several inches of water.  Everybody was told to evacuate but all the artwork was left behind.  In my case, it didn’t really matter if my metalwork got wet, but other artists, those displaying watercolours for example, were not so lucky.”

“Another show we’ve attended is in Perth, Ontario,” he continues.  “It is also an outdoor art show.  In terms of the ratio between investment and return, it has been a great show for me.”

Artwork by Danny Perkins can now be found in widely disparate places including an outdoor sculpture garden in Los Angeles, a gallery in the small town of Ellaville, Georgia, the boutiques of the Royal Canadian Mint in Ottawa and in Winnipeg, and the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto.

“Something that’s become popular recently,” Danny explains, “is fingerprint art.  Imagine a small statue, about 12 inches high with all the ridges and whorls of a fingerprint.  I made Darryl Sitter’s fingerprint for the Hockey Hall of Fame.  Typically, I’ll make six copies of a fingerprint, of which one goes to the individual, three stay with me, and the two others are often auctioned off at a fundraising event.”

The first event that is going to be held at the new Perkins Art Gallery will be the Salon Empreinte d’Art.  Last year, the Perkins Gallery held the show in June at Parc Marie-Victorin in Kingsey Falls.  This year it will be held on May 18, 19 and 20 at the old St. Andrew’s church in Melbourne.

“We’ll be holding an official opening on the 17th as a VIP event,” says Rebecca Taylor.  “The following day the Salon will be open to the public.  After that, we’ll be open on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, and also by appointment.  We’re also planning a commemorative event in November for Remembrance Day.”

“The gallery opening is the first step,” Danny Perkins adds.  “Possibly as early as next year we will be installing an artistic garden on the five-acre plot of land around the gallery.”

St. Andrew’s transition from place of worship to art gallery will not be an easy adjustment for everybody.  Just a few years ago the Conseil du patrimoine religeux invested considerable sums of money to preserve St. Andrew’s when it was a church.  There were restrictions on what could be done with the building, for example a prospective investor couldn’t subdivide it into housing units.  Its new vocation as an art gallery had the consent of the Conseil.

In its new incarnation, it will again draw people.  They won’t be coming to reflect on the spoken word, but, Danny Perkins and Rebecca Taylor hope, they’ll be prompted to reflection by the visual art.

Danny Perkins moves to St. Andrew’s Read More »

Look closely: can you see steam coming out of my ears?

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

By Dian Cohen

Local Journalism Initiative

I’m also tearing my hair out trying to imagine how we have collectively elected such dunderheads to manage the part of the economy they are responsible for managing.

My rant today focuses on healthcare. The Quebec government has just announced yet another of its seemingly endless ‘innovative’ ideas that, if we’re lucky, will be forgotten before millions of our tax dollars are spent. If we’re unlucky, they’ll spend millions on “mini-hospitals to bridge the gap between family medicine groups (GMFs) and hospitals.”

Leaving aside a description of this profligate idea, remind yourself of our possibilities to access healthcare.

  • We can go to a GMF.
  • We can go to a hospital.
  • We can go to a doctor in private practice.
  • We can go to a health co-op.  

With regard to GMFs, last time I looked, most GMFs weren’t taking new clients. That’s one reason there are at least 834,000 people on the government’s Family Doctor Finder list. And why Quebec now allows primary care nurse practitioners to register patients.

Most emergency rooms are operating over 100 percent capacity and wait times range from 5 to 14 hours – something that hasn’t changed despite the many promises and numerous ‘reforms’ over the years aimed at reducing wait times.

There are about 600 Québec GPs working in private clinics, where patients pay for all services from their own pockets. The government has already gotten rid of family physicians who hung out a shingle and practiced on their own, and they have recently said they want to get rid of physicians who have opted out of the public sector.

Health cooperatives are our last, best hope. Quebec’s co-operative movement traces its history back to 1900, when Alphonse Desjardins opened the first Caisse Pop —  Desjardins is now the largest cooperative financial group in North America and fifth largest in the world. Agropur and La Co-op Federée are two of the biggest farm co-ops in the world. This is not an untested business arrangement.

There are 40 health co-ops in the province managing the medical files of 300,000 Quebecers. They have been created by their communities – ordinary people who got together to fill a need. They voted in a board of directors, raised money for the building, furniture and fixtures, hired the doctors, nurses and staff. Start-up costs range up to $500,000 – money raised in the community, unlike the ‘mini-hospitals’ now being touted.

These co-ops are non-profit organizations that for years have been meeting healthcare needs not met by the public network or the private clinics. Most of them most of them are located in rural areas far from the main hubs of integrated health and social services. Their mission is more than helping sick people get well – they are strong proponents of preventative care and wellness. Funding to operate a co-op comes mainly from an annual membership fee by regular users and extends benefits beyond access to a doctor. Non-members also have access to a doctor, as prescribed by the Canada Health Act.

Yet the Quebec government is not benignly oblivious to health co-ops, it is actively discriminating against them. Here’s how:

Family medicine groups (GMFs), which are mostly profit-making corporations, are heavily subsidized by the government. Health co-ops, which are non-profit organizations, have been excluded from any financial subsidies. On March 29, 2022 the CAQ signalled a major shift in the organization of healthcare – it wanted to “think and do differently”. That was Bill 15, creating Santé Québec. What a perfect opportunity to right the wrong of excluding health coops from financial subsidies. Asked specifically by the Federation of Health Co-ops (FQCS) whether health coops were included as eligible organizations, the minister confirmed that they were. Yet nothing has changed.

Health co-ops are specifically excluded from financial subsidy because they’re not designated Non-Profit Organizations (even though they are). They aren’t designated non-profit organizations because they’re incorporated under the Cooperatives Act rather than the Corporations Act. Talk about convoluted! Because of this, co-op fees have been deemed to be “extra billing”, which is a no-no under the Canada Health Act.

The CAQ knows better. Extra-billing is the difference between the provider’s charge and the allowed amount. For example, if the government rate for a procedure is $100 and the doctor wants to charge $150, the doctor would have to bill you for the remaining $50. That’s the no-no. Co-op fees cover the operating costs to run the health facility – offices equipped with examination tables and diagnostic aids, nurses who triage patients, receptionists who make appointments, everything except the doctors’ fees, which are paid by RAMQ, the government’s Health Insurance Agency. These are the same expenses that the government subsidizes in larger, for-profit GMFs.

The Federation of Health Coops delivered a pre-budget paper asking the CAQ to create a funding program to put health coops on an equal footing with everyone else in the public network. Their ask was $2 million/year — not $2 million for each of the 40 co-ops, $2 million/year to be split between all the co-ops. The 2024 Quebec budget documents spending $62 billion on health and social services this year with nary a word about bringing health co-ops — the one group that’s in place and ready to meet the  needs of regular citizens – into the fold. Meanwhile, Health Minister Dubé’s office has confirmed that the government will allocate $35 million in public funds (borrowed or taxpayer) annually for each non-existent, start-from-scratch mini-hospital.

cohendian560@gmail.com

Look closely: can you see steam coming out of my ears? Read More »

Downtown? What downtown?

Local Journalism Initiative / / /

Wellington North at Frontenac should be bustling, but downtown often lacks oomph. Photo by David Winch

Sherbrooke struggles to establish an attractive, walkable central city

By David Winch

Local Journalism Initiative

The pop tune “Downtown” was a perky 1965 hit by Brit singer Petula Clark (ask your parents) that captured the allure of nighttime streets:

Just listen to the music of the traffic in the city

Linger on the sidewalk where the neon signs are pretty

How can you lose?

The lights are much brighter there

You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares

So go downtown, things’ll be great when you’re

Downtown, no finer place for sure …

Clark evokes the fun of “movie shows” and “little places to go to” to forget all your troubles.

Sadly, that kind of city sparkle is missing in Sherbrooke — and has been for decades. Sure, there is some downtown life on Wellington St. North and King West, a good cineplex here or a nice Thai restaurant there, but overall, the area comes off as shabby and undistinguished. Red-brick industrial buildings and 1920s-vintage banks sit listlessly waiting for some purpose — anything.

“It’s just ugly”, said one dinner companion bluntly, speaking of central Sherbrooke.

To be fair to Wellington North, the main downtown street, walking around there on a sunny Saturday recently I noted the many restaurants, Asian-fusion, Lebanese, Iranian and Italian, the clothing boutiques, the excellent book and magazine outlets, and the Granada concert hall with its full slate of concerts. But somehow, this didn’t make for a bustling street scene. There was barely any bustle.

Longtime Townships residents recall nostalgically being drawn to the big Woolworth store on Wellington or to nearby Tony’s Pizzeria. But retailing has mostly moved to suburban outlets. The food court at the Carrefour de l’Estrie mall today matches the fast-food variety available in downtown Sherbrooke.

City of Sherbrooke’s revitalization plan for downtown focuses on six ‘quartiers’. Courtesy Ville de Sherbrooke

Plans to revitalize

As in cities throughout North America, Sherbrooke became progressively more suburbanized from the 1970s onward, with malls and autoroute-accessible restaurants, cinemas and shops dominating the retail trade.

Across Canada, a range of mid-sized cities resembling Sherbrooke – from Thunder Bay and Sudbury to Moncton and, in Quebec, Trois Rivières – also suffered the impact of declining industries: pulp and paper, forestry, mining, railroads and shipping and, in the Townships, the textile industry. This affected these cities’ dynamism.

A year ago, I wrote about my pleasant experience in Vermont’s capital (“Sherbrooke and Burlington: Twin cities?”, June 3, 2023). I enjoyed Burlington’s picturesque and walkable urban setting. A broad pedestrian mall straddles the downtown, the result of a push by key town councillors to follow examples in Europe, notably the Stroget in Copenhagen.

Can downtown Sherbrooke ever compete with that? Planners are aware of the stagnation issue. The “Mon Centro” revitalization plan posted on the city’s website “is the result of an initiative that began approximately 10 years ago, and culminated in 2015, with the adoption of the Downtown Sherbrooke Sustainable Development Master Plan (also known as Centre-ville 2020)”.

Its goal is ambitious: “The master plan aims to double the population living in the city’s downtown within the next 20 years, while greatly increasing availability of retail and office space” (for English summary, see www.sherbrooke.ca/en/major-projects/mon-centro ).

Pursuant to this plan, downtown Sherbrooke is now seeing “many large-scale projects materialize at the same time: construction of the Espace Centro project, redevelopment of a section of Galt Street West, moving the Grandes-Fourches Bridge … And that’s only the beginning!”

Sherbrooke planning chief Yves Tremblay is a believer; he lives downtown by the river on King. He says he can walk to everything, from the local Maxi to his work at city hall. He agrees there is “no magic formula” for downtown revitalization, especially when Internet is changing shopping habits so fast.

The rugged topography of Sherbrooke also affects its downtown. “Its geography is not linear; there are about six different ‘plateaux’,” which affect neighbourhood character. “Some streets such as rue Alexandre, stand out for their distinct local feel”, notes Tremblay.

Upgrades coming

Other experts in urban planning, however, stress that mid-sized cities don’t often have the downtown population or the geography to maintain a lively scene. The success of Burlington is a special case.

Planning specialist Pierre Filion of the University of Waterloo, for one, has studied dozens of mid-sized cities, ranging from 100,000 to 500,000 residents. He concludes they have to be “very lucky” to bring together all the plusses needed to revive a downtown. Filion also chronicled the “Eaton’s effect” that killed other Canadian downtowns – one department-store closing greatly reduces pedestrian traffic.

Among the successful mid-sized cities that Filion cites — standouts include Madison, Wisconsin, and Kingston, Ontario — there is often a built-in downtown population around a university campus, a major public employer such as a state or provincial capital, and geography that discourages sprawl. Madison’s centre, for example, is built on an isthmus squeezed between two lakes.

Sherbrooke has none of these advantages. And it never even had a downtown Eaton’s.

Today, you can see upgrades on Wellington St. South (until recently a headache for drivers): the broken pavement was replaced with brick and concrete squares, sidewalks have been widened, with planters installed for small trees, and parking made more convenient. Two new office towers of 6 and 10 stories anchor a young working population. Software developer Ubisoft and the school of digital arts (NAD) of the Université du Québec have already moved in. Trendy coffee outlets have followed.

In coming months, the city will adopt “intervention plans” for five more neighbourhoods, denoted as Galt; Alexandre; Marquette, Dufferin and, crucially for downtown life, Well Nord.

But, will these earnest revitalization efforts work?

Filion cautions: “All the elements have to be present for a downtown to be revitalized; above all, there have to be people living and working in the area”.

A tall order, for sure. But well worth it if locals can, some evening soon, like Petula, cheerfully head downtown.

Downtown? What downtown? Read More »

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