Mary-Ellen Kirby

By Mary Ellen Kirby

Local Journalism Initiative

Well, there they go again. Those big yellow buses are back, prowling the highways and byways of the Townships. Rumbling along their routes twice a day, they’re a clear and colourful signal that the season has irrevocably shifted from carefree summer to back-to-business autumn. I have long thought that Labour Day feels more like a New Year’s Day than January 1^st ever did. I mean, what’s so new about one more day in a long string of cold, wintry days? It should take more than flipping a calendar page to herald a new season. A brand-new school year brings a palpable change in the atmosphere; one can almost taste the anticipation, the excitement of embarking on fresh adventures armed with new wardrobes and school supplies, the thrilling promise of unsullied notebooks and sharpened pencils.

   It is unfortunate that the beginning of this bright, shiny new school year is marred by government mismanagement. The swirl of controversy and public outcry over recent miserly budget compressions may have muted somewhat during the summer vacation period. But as classes gear up and the real-time effects of slashed funding become apparent, I think the government’s disapproval rating will climb once more. Our education ministry’s stated goal and insistence on improving the province’s graduation and certification rates is not well served by forcing schools to cut various enrichment programs. Sports, arts, clubs and other extra-curricular activities all serve as a sort of sticky glue that adheres students to boring government-imposed curricula long enough to gain their diplomas. Without the fun frosting extras on the bland reading, writing and  arithmetic cake, students have less motivation to stay in school. Of course, this dampening effect will be felt far enough downstream that future governments can play the plausible deniability card and scold the schools for falling perseverance rates. The ministry’s response to the initial public backlash only added messaging insult to budgetary injury. They seemed to imply that funneling our tax dollars into the education system was a generous favour they were granting us rather than our due. They seemed to forget – or hoped that we would forget – that governments don’t earn their own money to splash around. What they spend is the money picked from our pockets. I guess we are just supposed to tug our forelocks in humble gratitude that they give us back a fraction of it in our so-called public services. As far as I’m concerned, both the CAQ’s education ministry and their public relations people get a big fat F on this report card. We taxpayers should insist they all be fitted for custom made dunce caps and enrolled in remedial fiscal responsibility lessons, ASAP.

   Speaking of school, I will confess that I was one of those weird children who couldn’t wait for the new school year to begin. By the end of July, I was crossing off the days on the little calendar I kept in my room. Not only that, but I always cried on the last day of school. I was heartbroken to leave friends, teachers and especially the library behind for the summer. By my high school graduation, the melancholy of leaving it all behind for good was tempered by the excitement of stepping fully into adult pursuits. That lasted for about a dozen years until my thirst for learning came roaring back. At the ripe old age of 33, I was accepted as a “mature” student at Bishop’s University. Which was kind of ironic because my first sight of the Bishop’s library had me feeling more than a little giddy and immature. My four young children were a bit perplexed that Mommy also had to do homework and found it weird that sometimes I had to go to school after supper, but not on the bus. I attended classes as a part time student for a few years but never did finish my degree. There are those who might suggest my post-secondary education was a failure, but I disagree. I carried several valuable lessons away from my brief foray into the halls of academia: Learning is never wasted, nor is it confined to a classroom. I think my education can be counted a success, not because I can paper my walls with diplomas and degrees, but because it engendered a perpetual, unquenchable yearning for knowledge and gave me the skills needed to satisfy that longing. I believe part of the issue with public education is because it is so arbitrary. Who decided that algebra and  grammar were more important and worthy of marks than painting a portrait or composing a musical score? But perhaps public perception is also part of the issue with public education. Rather than thinking of school as a passive knowledge delivery service, what if we reimagined it as an incubator? What if, instead of teaching to government-imposed curricula and standardized tests, we taught to uncover passions? I wonder what our schools – and indeed, our culture – would look like if we rewarded curiosity and self-directed learning with diplomas?

    While I may have graduated from high school several decades ago, I have never graduated from learning. I would need a minimum of three lifetimes to learn all I want to know. I have filled the years between my brief stint at Bishop’s and today with lots of learning about a myriad of subjects. I have delved into Permaculture techniques, picked up some folk-art painting skills, learned how to identify and protect native pollinators, taught myself a number of food preservation methods and learned to navigate the mysteries of ovine husbandry to name a just few among many. As every golden September rolls around, I get an unquenchable urge to learn something new. This fall I have decided to put an end to my shameful secret: I am a sheep farmer who does not know how to knit. A kind friend will be teaching me the magic art of using two sticks to transform long strands of yarn into something warm and useful. I am going to enjoy learning something practical while I scratch my learning itch for this year. When we were children, I think our ideas of school and learning were kind of backwards; many feel school to be a kind of punishment they could escape from when they got old enough. But the truth is that the quickest way to get old and stodgy is to stop learning. So, in spite of all the noise around education this fall, my hope for all the students on those big yellow buses is that they will vigorously explore whatever piques their curiosity and remember that their learning is better off in their own hands. As for the parents and guardians of those students, I hope they will choose to learn something new with their kiddos. Because the very best teachers are good learners, too.

By Mary Ellen Kirby

Local Journalism Initiative

   It seems mid-summer has finally hit its stride, throwing off extreme yo-yoing weather patterns and settling into mellow, sun-warmed, gold-dusted days that glide gently into refreshingly cool evenings. Farm fields and gardens across the Townships are fulsome, burgeoning with abundant crops. Our dusty gravel roads are bustling with the seasonal traffic of busy farm tractors rumbling to and fro towing wagons full of chubby, round hay bales, while the winter wheat fields are already yielding their nodding stalks to prowling combine harvesters.

  Gardens too are maturing, moving from early summer harvests of green onions, lettuce and peas to tomatoes, beans and baby beets. Rather than a date on a calendar, my mid-summer marker is the first cucumber harvest. I canned the first of many batches of pickles this week, so in my books that makes it official. Yesterday, in the cool of early morning, I picked a couple of litres of black currants, courtesy of a generous neighbour. I am transforming my gifted currants into a dessert syrup perfect for topping pancakes or vanilla ice cream. As I navigated the berry patch, I could hear the hens boastfully clucking of freshly laid eggs and the occasional thump of an apple falling to the ground in the orchard behind me. In a nearby pasture, contented cows munched on their breakfast greens, lowing bovine admonitions to wayward, frisky calves. It was a delightfully purposeful start to my day. But here’s the thing about berry picking: while the hands may be busy, the mind is free to wander down sometimes unexpected and twisting paths.

   As the wine dark currants plinked and plunked down into my bucket, it occurred to me that all my five senses were engaged by…food. Everything I was seeing, hearing, smelling, touching and – yes, I admit it – tasting, was food. I was surrounded by food, and I got to wondering how many folks could claim a similar experience. With a rapidly dwindling farm population, I’m willing to bet there aren’t many who would be so fortunate. I also started to wonder how it could be possible – in a land as fertile and bountiful as Canada – that food insecurity has risen so sharply in the last few years. It is a conundrum that I can’t quite grasp. And yet, the numbers don’t lie. According to Food Banks Canada, March of 2024 saw a record high of more than two million visits to food banks all across the country. That number represented a significant 6 per cent increase over the same month in 2023, but a staggering 90 per cent increase over March of 2019. Read that again: an increase of 90 per cent in only five years! That seems unimaginable to me, especially as I live in such a food-rich environment. Hidden in that unfathomable reality, lurks the ugly fact that in excess of 700,000 Canadian children are among those food bank clients. I cannot begin to express my sorrow at those numbers, my heart aches at the thought of even one hungry child. But beyond my sorrow lies a great pool of anger. In this generous and beautiful land of plenty, how has this happened? Who or what is to blame? And how do we fix it?

   As per usual, I have more questions than answers. I suspect there are a number of culprits beyond the most obvious ones. The easy scapegoats are the giant grocery chains; we are quick to accuse them of price gouging and profiteering. And while that certainly may be a huge factor, we consumers need to shoulder some of the responsibility for where we find ourselves. Five major chains account for more than 80 per cent of our grocery purchases in this country. Five big players can easily control pricing nation-wide, throwing us a revolving menu of so-called “specials” to make us think we are getting a bargain. But who made those chains giants in the first place? We did. We abandoned our local Mom & Pop independent grocers for the lure of Bigger! Better! Cheaper! Now we are literally paying the price for that defection. It is a basic precept of economics that competition lowers prices; mergers and buyouts have reduced the playing field to a paltry number of competitors for our food dollars. I suspect they find it ridiculously easy to rig the game. They are not competing against each other…they are playing against us. While young householders today think that a Costco run is the ‘normal’ way to feed themselves, I am old enough to remember a very different food landscape. In 1920s-1930s Lennoxville, for instance, there were two grocers on Queen St. On the corner of Queen and Belvedere, the elegant old structure that now hosts a Subway restaurant was once home to C.C. Chaddock, a purveyor of “Choice Fresh Groceries. Fruits in Season. Fancy Biscuits. Paints and Oils. Shelf Hardware.” Elsewhere along the main street was C.J. Lane & Sons, “Dealers in Groceries, Fruits, Crockery Etc.” Now, while I am not old enough to remember either of those establishments, by the time I was of an age to think about groceries and where to buy them, they had been replaced by a couple of other small grocers. Probably many Record readers will also remember Beaulieu’s store. It occupied the former C.C. Chaddock building, while Nichol’s store was further down Queen St. and was famous for its meat counter. Like their predecessors, Beaulieu’s and Nichol’s are only lines in Lennoxville’s history book now. Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t help feeling the shiny new Maxi with its self-checkout is a poor substitute.  

   I am in no way making excuses for the big grocery chains. They have a long list of transgressions against the average shopper. At the very least, they are guilty of disingenuous marketing practices, perhaps even price fixing or price gouging, although I can’t think of many instances of the federal ‘Competition Act’ being enforced. Perhaps the closest we’ve come lately is the infamous bread price fixing scandal involving Weston and its parent company Loblaws, which resulted in class action lawsuits and fines. That’s just dandy, but has anyone noticed the price of bread going down? That seems a mite odd to me, especially in light of grain prices. Statistics Canada numbers show that farm cash receipts for 2024 went down by 2.1 per cent in the first decline since 2010. That decline was primarily due to the much lower prices farmers received for their grain crops. So, if the price of the chief ingredient in bread dropped significantly for the manufacturers, why are our prices still ridiculously high? My guess is because the big boys are pocketing the difference. Isn’t it cute how they are so quick to pass along their increases but never feel obliged to share their savings?

  But the retailers are not solely to blame for astronomical grocery prices. Perhaps if the federal government hadn’t gone on a pandemic-induced spending spree, the inflation rate wouldn’t have sky-rocketed. And perhaps if average Canadians weren’t losing 45 per cent of their earnings to various levels of government taxation, there would be more left to cover food and shelter costs. Ever since 1993, according to the Fraser Institute, Canadians spend a larger portion of their income on taxes than they do on necessities. That might be justified if we were getting good value for our tax money but lately it feels as though we are paying much more and getting much less…just like the grocery stores. Since governments have contributed mightily to the problem, I think it is unreasonable to expect them to solve it. In fact, I prefer they keep their meddling fingers out of the pie. Government interventions usually cost far more than they are worth.

   So how do we ‘fix’ this? First, I suggest we adjust our lens. We have a national food security predicament, not a problem. Problems can be solved but predicaments can only be managed. So far, I am not inspired by the management of either corporations or governments. That means it is down to us, the consumers. There is no use in wringing our hands and plaintively demanding that ‘Someone do Something’ about the spiralling cost of groceries. Perhaps we could put our hands to better use by growing a garden and cooking from scratch. As a livestock producer, an avid gardener and our household’s food preparation ‘expert’, a goodly proportion of my waking hours are taken up with thoughts and tasks related to food. Through the many millennia of human history, that has been the norm: hunting, growing and preparing food has been our major preoccupation. This recent outsourcing of that responsibility to nameless, faceless corporations is but an infinitesimal blip on our collective human timeline. Will we eventually regain our natural agency over our own nourishment? That remains to be seen. Dealing with this predicament will require creativity, diligence and a willingness to change our habits and that might be too much to ask. Valuable coping strategies would include shopping closer to the source, eating in season, buying ingredients instead of prepared foods, transforming seasonal abundance into food storage for leaner times and creating small neighbourhood networks to share produce or buy staples in bulk. All of these things are possible, but they are not convenient. I think we have forgotten that convenience often carries a high price tag.

   It wasn’t exactly convenient to drive to my neighbour’s farm, spend a few hours picking and sorting black currants, juicing them, adding sugar and spices, reducing it all to a sweet syrup and then canning it in jars for the pantry shelf. My free berries cost me plenty of time and effort. If I paid myself minimum wage, each of those 250 ml. jars of syrup would cost about $20…high-end groceries indeed. Instead, I will be paying my neighbour’s generosity forward and giving some of the syrup away as gifts. I think that when the recipients open the jars this winter, they will be able to smell and taste the essence of mid-summer. The syrup will be infused with my delight in the picking, my neighbour’s kindness and the care that went into its making, and those ingredients can’t be bought at any price in any store. These are the intangible goods we have sacrificed on the altar of Cheap & Convenient. I hope we can reclaim them before it’s too late. And I hope that through small acts of defiance, we can collectively reshape our food landscape to one where we are not at the mercy of giant corporations, where not a single child ever again goes to bed hungry.

By Mary Ellen Kirby

Local Journalism Initiative

It is the morning after the night before and I have the mother of all hangovers. No, I haven’t been drinking. It’s just that I stayed up far too late, watching the federal election coverage. I hoped, prayed and voted for a different outcome, but alas – here we are with the results I dreaded but pretty much expected.

In the sober light of day, I see a number of ironies at play, not the least of which is the fact that in their fervour to “oppose” Donald Trump, Liberal voters just handed him exactly what he wanted, on a big red and white platter. Since his inauguration in January, Trump has on several occasions opined that he much preferred to deal with a Liberal government and complained that, “Stupidly, that conservative guy is no friend of mine…he’s not a MAGA guy…he doesn’t say nice things about me.” Translation: he was banking on more easily obtaining favourable trade concessions from the libs than the cons. ‘Annexing’ Canada would almost certainly guarantee a solid block of permanently Democratic voters, so I have a hard time believing a Republican president would ever float that as a serious proposal; I think we just got massively pranked by the mean boy next door.

For all the Liberal party braying about the evils of ‘American-style politics’ this is exactly what they have unleashed. Against all sense or logic, the central issue in this campaign was the Canadian approval rating of DJT, the leader of a foreign nation…as if it even mattered. It was a very cunning bait and switch con job executed with Machiavellian precision by the Liberals. If they had allowed voters’ attention to focus on their dismal decade-long record of runaway debt, waste and scandal, they undoubtedly would have joined the NDP on the sidelines. The NDP paid dearly last night for holding Canadians hostage to the dysfunctional Trudeau government: they have now lost official party status and shrunk to a measly seven seats. The Bloc Quebecois’ involuntary weight loss program cost them 10 of their 33 seats, so we now have a defacto two-party system in place…just like the Americans. We also have an increasingly polarized and divided electorate…just like the Americans. We saw an election campaign that fixated on leaders instead of examining party platforms. In other words, our election was based on the cult of personality…just like the Americans. Mark Carney chose to publicly announce his bid for the Liberal leadership on an American T.V. talk show, was endorsed more than once by Trump and hired a wealthy American actor to film a cringey hockey rink campaign ad. I think all the pseudo-patriotic railing against 51^st statehood is a day late and an American dollar short: it looks and feels to me like we are already there.

And then there is the très grande irony of the Quebec vote. If I was the leader of either the CAQ or the PQ, I would be thinking long and hard before advocating again for separation. Apparently, when the chips are down, a majority of Quebecers prefer the safety of the flawed federal system. Even the undeniable fact that Mark Carney’s French language skills are sub-par, to put it politely, did not deter the loss of a third of the Bloc’s seats. So much for Quebec’s insistence that a bilingual prime minister is non-negotiable. So much for the pipe dream of Quebec independence, too. The illusion that Quebec was ready, willing and able to stand alone as its own nation died last night. It now appears to me that fifty years of separatist threats have been nothing more than an elaborate ruse to extort money and privilege from Ottawa. How can anyone take Bloc voters – and by extension, Quebec – seriously when, at the first sign of rough waters, they abandon ship?

While the Eastern separatist tiger has been exposed as toothless, the Western one is awake and roaring in the aftermath of last night’s disastrous election results. In less than 24 hours, Alberta is well on its way to collecting the large number of signatures required to trigger a referendum on secession from Canada. Theirs is no empty threat. If Alberta leaves confederation, Saskatchewan may not take long to follow them. In the early days of the election campaign, both premiers warned eastern voters that electing another Liberal government would trigger dire consequences for Canada. Is it possible that we may have just voted in our final Canadian election? The distressing paradox here is that by conjuring up a bogus crisis and then selling himself as the only one competent enough to manage it, Mark Carney may have just set in motion the real existential threat to our country. Like it or not, the western oil & gas industry is the economic engine of this country and without it, Canada shudders to a standstill. If that happens, we will no longer be strong…or free. The 2040 dystopian hellscape posited in the Policy Horizons Report commissioned by the prime minister’s Privy Council Office may read like the script for a bad movie, but western separation could bring it to our doorsteps sooner than later. In order to invest and prosper, to create jobs, to build anything of lasting value, businesses need stability. A country in constitutional crisis cannot provide that stability. A weak, divided, destabilized country ultimately becomes vulnerable to predatory takeover. As revealed by the exhaustive work of Canadian investigative journalist, Sam Cooper, the Chinese Communist Party and its malevolent operatives are already fully functional inside our borders, and the new PM favours even closer ties with China. I can’t imagine a scenario where the US blithely ignores China setting up shop along its Northern frontier. I am fiercely Canadian always, even if not terribly proud at the moment. But if it comes down to choosing between becoming the 51^st American state or the 24^th Chinese province, I’ll take my chances with the Yanks, thanks.

I have been looking at Abacus polling data, trying to decipher what happened last night. I am ashamed to say that, according to those polls, my generation is responsible for this train wreck. For voters over 60, the central issue in this election was Donald Trump. Why? They voted to…do what exactly? Teach him a lesson? Express their personal distaste for him? While he insists that heads of state kowtow to gain his favour and show “respect”, the POTUS doesn’t care, not even a little bit, how the Canadian electorate feels about him. We are nothing more than a single mosquito trying to penetrate the iron-thick hide of a rhinoceros. Did we seriously think that our ‘elbows up’ nonsense would dissuade him from playing tariff whack-a-mole whenever he got the urge? The undeniable irony is that our election results have simply reinforced his enormously over-inflated ego. He is already strutting and preening, congratulating himself for being able to influence the outcome of a foreign election. Look, I get that Trump is boorish and bombastic; that he walks in hobnailed boots all over anything or anyone in his way. He baits people, using jibes and insults to score points in a game where he calls the plays, writes the rules and gets to decide the winners and losers; it’s just bonkers. But what is even more bonkers is that we allowed him to goad us into playing his stupid game. That was evidenced by a short interview I saw last evening: a journalist asked a sweet, little silver-haired granny about her voting preference as she left her polling station in Toronto. ”Oh Liberal, of course!” she replied with a big smile. “And why is that?” inquired the journalist. “Well, to stop Trump”, she exclaimed. “He is such an awful person…he shouldn’t even be the president of the United States!” I was left shaking my head in utter disbelief. Maybe we need to require more than proof of Canadian identity at the voting booth; maybe we also need to require proof of a reasonable understanding of international boundaries and how our parliamentary system functions.

So, I am in mourning today. I don’t grieve because my “guy” or my “side’ lost, that would be childish, and I am too old for that. I grieve because we allowed the loudmouth narcissist next door to steal our desperately needed chance for a reset. I grieve for my grandchildren’s generation who are watching the opportunities and living standards that my generation took for granted move further and further beyond their reach. I grieve because I don’t believe that the crew who caused the problems are capable of fixing them. And as late as December of 2024, an overwhelming majority of Canadians agreed with that assessment. How did just a few short weeks and some off-hand insults cause such a massive attack of collective amnesia? I grieve because we have recklessly exchanged our grandchildren’s future for a cheap and hollow ‘victory’ against orange-man-bad. I grieve because we were persuaded to vote with our elbows instead of our heads.

Does anyone remember the old-fashioned childhood game of shadow puppets? You know, the one where a favourite uncle or your dad or grandpa turned out the lights; then using just their hands in different positions in front of a flashlight‘s beam, they projected big scary shadow creatures onto a white wall or sheet while the littlest kids squealed and cowered in delicious fear. Fun times! I feel as though this is where we are as a country. The lights were turned off in January. All our attention was directed to the big threatening monster projected onto the screens of our imaginations. I don’t know how long it will take for the lights to come back on. And I don’t know when it will begin to dawn on us that the monster we should be afraid of is not the shadow, but the hands. What I do know is, that by then it will be too late.

By Mary Ellen Kirby

Local Journalism Initiative

As soon as our last two slowpoke ewes deliver, our lambing season will be over again for another year. There are dozens of bouncy wee lambs scrambling through the pens, playing tag and bleating their silly little heads off. Their mothers are stoic and unconcerned, calmly eating hay or chewing their cuds and pretty much ignoring their babies. There is no helicopter parenting going on here. The ram struts around, the undisputed king of all he surveys. I suppose he is allowed to be a bit smug: his offspring are vigorous and plentiful. As any farmer will tell you, things don’t always go according to plan when dealing with livestock. We had some difficult births in the wee small hours; there were a couple of weeks of mixing up bottles of milk replacer to supplement several sets of triplets; we managed to get an orphan lamb grafted onto a foster mother after we lost his own mother and twin brother to an impossibly difficult birth, and we managed to keep everyone fed and watered through a couple of snowstorms and power outages. While we are fond of our sheep, we are always glad to put the intensity of lambing season behind us.                      

   As always, the sleep deprivation and stress leave me feeling discombobulated and out of sorts, but this year it’s worse than usual. I feel a little bit like Rip Van Winkle these days. I haven’t been asleep for twenty years, as he was but I have been sort of sleepwalking through the last six weeks. Emerging from my lamb-induced stupor, I find myself in a country I barely recognize. Crass political opportunism is running rampant, otherwise sensible Canadians are earnestly buying the ‘Elbows Up’ hogwash and critical domestic issues are being buried or flat out ignored by the press whose job it is to hold governments to account on our behalf. Instead, it appears the media prefers the drama: they have been complicit in stoking the Trump fire, probably a desperate attempt to bolster waning viewership. So here we are, in the middle of a snap election called on the pretext of defending our country from the bogey man of American imperialism.    According to an Abacus poll taken last week, 54% of Canadians think the primary issue in our federal election is Donald Trump. I fail to see the logic in that. He is not our president. He is not our problem. However, Canada does indeed have an enemy; one that imposes crippling tariffs, undermines our democratic processes, infiltrates our Parliament and imprisons and executes our citizens. But that enemy is not the USA. Why on God’s green earth is China given a free pass in this election that purports to be about Canadian sovereignty? They have just levied punishing tariffs on Canadian ag exports as a retaliatory measure against our imposition of 100% tariffs on Chinese manufactured EVs. I thought mass adoption of electric vehicles was supposed to get us to net-zero nirvana. Why would the very eco-conscious, carbon-taxing Liberal government choose to limit Canadians’ access to more affordable electric vehicles? I am truly baffled. In any case, the resulting Chinese counter tariffs on canola, peas, pork and seafood leave our farmers and fishermen in troubled financial waters. Canola alone is worth $43.7 billion dollars to Canada’s economy and supports 206,000 Canadian jobs. While the threatened auto industry gets immediate pledges of $2 billion in support from Mark Carney, our farmers and fishers get silence. In fact, when worried NFLD fishermen tried to ask Mr. Carney about the Chinese tariff effects on their businesses at a recent campaign stop in St. John’s, they were denied entry and subsequently locked out of the venue. Disgraceful. It smacks of overt partisan pandering, in my opinion. Could this be because auto sector jobs are mostly in the Liberal party base of Ontario, while canola mainly affects the prairie provinces where the vote is decidedly blue? I dunno…I’m just asking for a friend.

   While I am perturbed by our government’s machinations, I am much more perplexed by the response of ordinary Canadians. If Trump’s 25% tariff threats send us into such a paroxysm of patriotism and boycotts of everything American, why do the 100% Chinese tariffs not engender four times the outrage? Are we so blinded by the ‘orange man bad’ rhetoric that we can’t or won’t recognize the bigger threat to our country? I suppose if we boycotted all the Chinese imports, our collective virtue signalling would be much more difficult: we wouldn’t be able to run to the nearest dollar store for those cheap, made-in-China Canadian flags that have suddenly sprouted up like mushrooms after heavy rain. We need to do better than knee-jerk reactions to dog-whistle politics if we are serious about defending our sovereignty. And so does anyone who aspires to the Prime Minister’s office. While there seems to be a variety of choices on the ballot, we have a de facto two-party system at the moment. So far in this election campaign, the only party leader I have heard address these looming agricultural issues is Yves-Francois Blanchet, and we all know the Bloc Quebecois will never form a national government. Neither the Greens nor the NDP have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning, so either the Liberals or the Conservatives will form the next government. As far as I can tell, neither party has made any attempt to formulate or promote policy around food and agriculture. Which leaves me in a quandary: where do I park my vote?

If anyone thinks that agriculture is irrelevant in this election, that the only “existential threat” to Canada comes from the big, bad orange man south of the border…well, I have a lovely little citrus plantation in Yellowknife that I can sell you.

   In theinterest of full disclosure, I want to declare that I identify as politically non-binary. I don’t vote according to party lines; I pay attention to platforms, track records, promises kept – and broken – and then I mark my ballot according to what seems to make the most sense to me at that time. Shortly after my 18^th birthday I cast my first vote and I have voted in every municipal, provincial and federal election since then. I have voted across the political spectrum over the last four decades with no allegiance to any party or leader. I have even voted Rhino once or twice when I was thoroughly disgusted by all the other options. There are about three weeks left in this campaign, and I am going to be watching for some substantive agricultural policy from both the red team and the blue team. I hope they ante up. Otherwise, I will be tempted to draw heavy black pencil lines through all the choices on offer in my riding and write in my preferred candidate: Pinocchio. At the very least, it would be obvious when the puppet Prime Minister was lying; it would be as plain as the nose on his face.

By Mary-Ellen Kirby

Quite Contrary

Local Journalism Initiative

   We are less than 40 days into the new year and North America’s political players have somersaulted back and forth so many times already that trying to keep up with developments has given me a severe case of whiplash. The overheated rhetoric, snarled threats and fist-shaking are reminiscent of the orchestrated hype leading up to a WWE wrestling match, except that the only folks likely to end up knocked out flat on the mat at this event are the spectators. The ‘War of the Tariffs’ would be a great show if it weren’t so stupidly dangerous for the rest of us.     

   The personal fortunes of both Horrible Orange-Man and Captain Sparkle-Socks guarantee they are well insulated from any financial repercussions of their little grudge match. And I can’t help but think that grudge is part of the motivation here. Only the saintliest among us could resist the urge to retaliate against someone who has quite publicly mocked and maligned us and it is probably safe to say that ‘saintly’ is a highly unlikely descriptor of the POTUS. Even a blind shark can smell blood in the water, and #47 can see that our lame duck leader is about to get his trust-fund keister handed to him on a silver platter so, naturally, the Great Orange shark circles for the kill. Hard to fault him for that, obviously a shark’s gotta do what a shark’s gotta do.

   I have a harder time understanding our PM’s response to the tariff threats, though. At a time when extremely high grocery costs have caused escalating food insecurity and more than 2 million Canadians are relying on the strained resources of food banks,

Jr. thinks it’s a good idea to impose counter tariffs on the American-grown fruits and vegetables we import into the great white North. I find it unconscionable that the PM would choose to weaponize food; the disregard for struggling Canadians is shameful. But then again, I suppose we can’t really expect him to relate: he has never had to worry about where his next extravagant meal is coming from, has he? In fact, he seems quite comfortable expecting taxpayers to pick up his grocery tab.

 Trump & Trudeau…has a nice alliterative ring to it, doesn’t it? Almost like an old-time comedy duo. Except there is nothing at all funny about these two posturing playboys and the harms they are willing to inflict on their citizens in the service of their respective egos. However, there may be some not so obvious up-sides to the great tariff war. First, it seems more than three-quarters of Canadians have agreed on something: a recent poll shows that a vast majority of Canadians want an immediate federal election so that we can deal with the U.S. from a position of a strong four-year mandate.

This is an astounding number, especially when you factor in Quebec’s customary anti-federal stance. Evidently, Trump is good for Canadian unity. Whodda thunk it?    Secondly, a nascent ‘Buy Canadian’ ‘Buy Local’ trend has surfaced in the last few weeks and my social media feeds are clogged with earnest calls for Canadians to boycott products of the U.S.A. accompanied by long lists of various ‘Made in Canada’ goods as substitutes. Even The Globe & Mail and the CBC have happily hopped onto that bandwagon. 

   As a local agricultural producer, I truly appreciate the sentiment and intent of this movement. However, I have a couple of caveats: First, I distrust bandwagons. I have seen far too many of them abandoned in ditches when the wheels fall off. A case in point: the gardening bandwagon of the recent Covid years, when seeds were in short supply. Any small seed supplier that planned to invest and increase their catalogue based on that hyper demand is probably now sitting on an excess of inventory, one that is subject to decay and loss. Bandwagon passengers are notoriously fickle; it is best not to factor them into any business plan. This is especially dangerous ground for farmers because agriculture moves at Nature’s pace, not at the speed of the internet. By the time farmers could gear up for increased local demand, most of the demanders would have cooled off and gone back to Costco because, in the end, buying cheaper is more important to them than buying Canadian. We are among the blessed few to have a good, steady, appreciative client base for our farm products, but we won’t be expanding in response to this latest trend: it is too risky and unreliable for us to bank on.

   My second concern is this: why aren’t we already buying local and buying Canadian, in that order? It is quite demoralizing to be taken for granted and this farmer is here to tell you that the rule of “Use it or Lose it” very much applies to farms and farmers. If buying Canadian is truly important, then do it regardless of trade wars, bombastic rulers or social media trends. It is the only way to ensure that ‘Buy Canadian’ remains a viable option in the future. Please don’t misunderstand me: I am very much in favour of a grassroots ‘Buy Local/Buy Canadian’ movement. I just wish it came from a more generous and sustainable motive than flipping our collective middle finger to the big, bad Horrible Orange -Man.  

   If Trump & Trudeau were pugnacious little banty roosters, riling up the citizens of the barnyard and upsetting the production of the hens, then I would know exactly how to deal with them. We have a down-home, made-on-the-farm solution: it’s called Mean Rooster Soup, and I wouldn’t waste any time sharpening my axe, either. Since that is not an option here, I will have to satisfy myself with a heartfelt “BAH!! A pox on both their houses!”

Photo: courtesy

By Mary Ellen Kirby

Local Journalism Initiative

   Could we have a moment of silence, please? I think a brief acknowledgement of the passing of giants is in order. It is a melancholy thing to wander the back roads of the Eastern Townships this summer and count the increasing number of stalwart old barns falling to wrack and ruin or simply disappearing altogether. Time and gravity have ravaged many; they have succumbed to vicious winds or punishing snow loads. Others have been scavenged, the bones picked apart, reduced to pricey plunder taken away to be repurposed as décor in city homes. Truly, I mourn their loss. It seems to me more than the simple loss of a building; it is also the loss of history and culture those grand old barns represent.

Some barns sit derelict, surrounded by cropland, like ghost ships adrift in a sea of waving corn tassels. Some are still attended by dilapidated farmhouses and decaying outbuildings, so at least they aren’t dying alone. Some have lost various parts of their anatomy, have listed sideways off their moorings or bear the indignity of trees growing through their roofs. They remind me of nothing so much as wounded soldiers, shamefully abandoned on the battlefield. And make no mistake: scraping a living from the land was indeed a battle back when those barns were built. A good, sturdy barn – or the lack thereof – could make or break the farm and the farmer.

   In those days, erecting a good barn was not farmed out (yes, pun intended) to various experts, engineers, architects and contractors. Farmers were both the brawn and the brains behind barn construction, relying on the life experience of older farmers and the willing hands of neighbouring farmers to get a barn raised. At least one winter would have been spent cutting and hauling out the logs to mill into the lumber needed, and a barn of any size at all needed a lot of lumber: no steel trusses or beams in those days. Many barns would have been roofed with cedar shakes, only replaced with sheets of tin as the farmer could afford it. Here in the Townships, many a barn foundation was built of field stones, painstakingly picked by hand, hauled by a team of horses and a dray or stone boat to the rock pile, where they waited patiently for future repurposing. A starkly different proposition than calling the closest cement plant for delivery of already mixed, ready to pour cement, I wager to say.

   Barn design was different in those days, as well. Cavernous hay mows were needed to store a winter’s worth of loose hay, pulled up into the mow with big rope and pulley operated hay forks. Far above our heads in the old barn that houses our sheep, the rusted steel track for the hay rig is still affixed to the cobwebbed ridge beam; it bears mute witness to a way of life that no longer exists. Hay mows are dim, dusty places, redolent of summer sun-warmed grasses; they are full of mysterious shadows, secretive, skittering noises and dust motes dancing in sunbeams slanting through cracks in the wall boards. For generations, hay mows have been beloved by farm kids looking for a dry place to play hide & seek on rainy days, barn cats hiding a litter of kittens, nesting barn swallows and the occasional farm boy intent on stealing a kiss from his sweetheart. Today’s modern barns have dispensed with hay mows as the hay is stored chopped and blown into a silo, stacked in a separate hay shed or left outside wrapped in plastic against our weather. Modern barns are long and low-slung, clad in shiny metal and they sport multiple enormous fans to circulate the air; new barns slouch and sprawl, while the old-timers stand tall and proud: beaten but not bowed. Old barns have tall wooden chimneys at either end. The chimneys were equipped with doors that could be opened or closed at floor level inside the barn and this simple system allowed the farmer to regulate the flow of hot and cold air manually, providing good air flow for the comfort and health of the winter-stabled livestock. Old barns have unique shapes and characters, and no wonder: each one was conceived according to the individual needs, tastes and budget of the farmer. Juxtapose the quirky individuality of ancient barns with the cookie-cutter models that seem to be popping up all over farm country these days; the new ones seem to be much of a muchness in their blandly boring uniformity. Yes, yes…I know: ‘efficiency’, blah, blah blah…’progress’, blah, blah, blah. But have we chosen to trade efficiency and progress for the very soul of the farm? If that is the case, I can’t help feeling it was a very poor trade indeed.

   I realize my prejudice is showing, but I won’t apologize for that. I prefer grizzled old veteran barns with stories to tell, stouthearted barns whose hand-hewn beams are infused with a century’s worth of memories, generous barns that offer shelter and succour to both man and beast. New barns don’t have time for any of that fanciful nonsense: they are much too busy proudly proclaiming their efficiency. I think their bright and shiny, new and improved allure is a poor substitute for the comforting countenance of an old barn. New barns are brisk, business-like structures; they more closely identify with an industrial setting than an agrarian one. They unapologetically make no provision for mama cats and kittens, fledgling barn swallows, courting farm boys or, most sadly, children at play. If small children can’t exercise their imaginations in the safe embrace of an old barn, how can we expect them to imagine themselves as the farmer? I have been accused of harbouring overly romantic notions about farming and perhaps that is true. Again, I make no apologies. But it is very difficult to fall in love with sprawling industrial facilities, no matter how efficient they are. And, at the root of it all, it is love that makes a farm – and a farmer.

   I am grateful that the old barn I grew up in is still standing resolute; that it still hears the lowing of cattle, the rustle of barn swallows, the mewling of kittens and the laughter of children. Does it still provide the romantic setting for a stolen kiss or two? I’m not telling. The dying barns dotting our countryside haven’t been occupied in decades; they are unequivocal proof that the adage of ‘use it or lose it’ still applies. Most old barns still in use have been modernized: electric lights in lieu of lanterns, mechanical barn cleaning systems replacing pitch forks and wheelbarrows, automated water bowls instead of lugging endless pails of water. I am not opposed to bringing 21^st century function to 19^th century structures; I just wish the iconic character of old barns could remain intact. I wish the solid legacy of those barns, and their builders could be honoured by continued purposeful use. Those tough old barns and the resourceful, determined farmers who built them, are the rock-solid foundation this country was built on. With the neglect and destruction of every old barn, goes a piece of our history, a piece of our culture. It is a very sad day when another giant topples.

   I wish I could launch an old barn rescue mission. I wish I could save them all, give them the respect they are due. I wish it was contagious, this passion of mine for the weary old warriors still standing; maybe then we could reverse the distressing modern trend of abandoning these monumental old heroes. Oh well…if wishes were horses, then beggars could ride, as the old saying goes. And if my wishes came true, the horses would have beautiful old barns to live in.      

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.