A hardy bunch of Canadians will gather this Sunday for the 107th time in a city with a football stadium to--at the very least--partake in some darn good parties and, yes, watch a football game.

This year it's between the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

It's Grey Cup time in Canada, everybody!

This year it's in Calgary, Alberta.

Game time: 4 p.m.

Hamilton Tiger Cats wide receiver Brandon Banks (16) celebrates his highlight reel touchdown catch from quarterback Dane Evans (9) in the East Division final against Edmonton, won by the Cats 33-16. (Peter Power/Canadian Press )

This year's game is being billed as "The Drought Bowl," since the Bombers and the Cats carry the longest active streaks without having won the Canadian title.

Winnipeg last won in 1990, Hamilton in 1999.

For the record Hamilton is favoured by 3.5 points.

The two teams have a Grey Cup history--most famously in the 1962 game, known forever as "The Fog Bowl."

If it wasn't the most memorable Grey Cup ever, it certainly was the most bizarre, taking two days to play after fog rolling in from Lake Ontario covered Toronto's Exhibition Stadium.

The Winnipeg Blue Bombers celebrate after defeating the Saskatchewan Roughriders 20-13 in last Sunday's CFL West Final. (Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press)

Nobody--neither players nor fans--could see a damn thing.

The game was halted with nine minutes and 29 seconds to go on Dec. 1, a Saturday, with the Bombers leading 28-27.

That's how it ended the next day when the teams returned to complete the proceedings.

There will be no repeat of THAT on Sunday; we've got what passes for a balmy Canadian November day.

The forecast calls for a mix of sun and clouds with a high of three Celsius--no rain, no snow, no fog, no mud.

Bruce Dowbiggin. (cbc.ca)

In the eye of the Grey Cup storm is Calgary resident Bruce Dowbiggin, author, sportswriter, broadcaster and host of the Not the Public Broadcaster website.

I spoke to him Friday about Grey Cups and what they mean.

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Cardiovascular disease is a leading cause of death worldwide with heart attacks as a major concern, This is when blood flow to the heart itself is restricted which can lead in some cases to heart failure. In Canada there are approximately 600,000 patients living with advanced heart disease.

In what is being hailed as a “world first”, researchers in Canada have developed a new treatment that can easily help restore a percentage of heart function, preventing or greatly delaying heart failure

Emilio Alarcon (PhD, MRSC) was a co-lead supervisor. He is a Principal Investigator and Laboratory Director, University of Ottawa Heart Institute, and an assistant professor in the university’s  Faculty of Medicine.

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The university scientists research led by Professors Alarcon and Erik Suuronen, was published in the journal Nature Communications, under the title Injectable human recombinant collagen matrices limit adverse remodeling and improve cardiac function after myocardial infarction, (open source access HERE)

Professor Emilio Alarcon, University of Ottawa Heart Institute UOHI (Christopher McTiernan, BEaTS lab)

Normally in a heart attack, the area of the heart affected is damaged as the cells, deprived of oxygen and nutrients, cease to function and die.

The damaged area ends up akin to scar tissue thickened and without elasticity limiting its ability to pump blood.

The research team has developed a “gel” of recombinant human collagen which can be injected directly into the heart, and which can improve elasticity and create an environment for new cells to help restore function while also limiting the spread of the damage.

Dr. Emilio Alarcon (8th from left) poses with members of his research team. He has travelled the world, he says, to assemble this talented group. From left to right: Antony El-Khoury (NSERC summer fellow), Madison Bak (MSc student), Brook Biniam (Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP)), Ashley Baldwin (lab manager), Dr Veronika Sedlakova (postdoctoral fellow), Justina Pupkaite (PhD student), Sarah Mclaughlin (PhD student), Dr. Christopher McTiernan (postdoctoral fellow), Dr. Erik Suuronen (director, BEaTS), Maxime Comtois-Bona (co-op student), Dr. Marcelo Muñoz (postdoctoral fellow) and Alex Ross (MSc Student). Missing from photo: Dr. Marc Ruel, Zohra Khatoon, Erik Jacques, David Cortes, Michel Grenier, Keshav Goel – photo credit: uOttawa Faculty of Medicine

Developed in conjunction with fellow scientist Erik Suuronen  and the BioEngineering and Therapeutic Solutions (BEaTS) laboratory of the UOHI

the gel helps restore elasticity to the damaged area in addition to other beneficial action. Alarcon says, “The treatment works, in part, by increasing the number of cardiac muscle cells and blood capillaries in the tissue surrounding the damaged area. The gel also promotes the recruitment of more wound healing cells to the site of injury.”

Schematic representation for the human recombinant collagen-based therapy for cardiac tissue repair (Credit Image: Ella Maru Studio)

While bypass surgery and drugs are the common treatment and work very well, a certain percentage of patients will nevertheless go on to have an enlarged heart and then heart failure.

In animal model trials using the human protein gel the damage can be contained, or the potential failure delayed significantly while a donor heart can be obtained.

(Sarah McLaughlin et al.,  Injectable human recombinant collagen matrices limit adverse remodeling and improve cardiac function after myocardial infarction- Nature Communications)

Quoted in a Heart Institute press release, Dr. Marc Ruel, Division Head of Cardiac Surgery at the UOHI, and co-author of the paper said,

The fact is that most people give very little thought to where their food comes from, or who’s producing it.

Filmmaker Kelsey van Moorsel is from a farming background in Alberta and found that many people in the urban centres where she spent time had a misconception about farming: what’s actually involved and who farmers were.

With her own knowledge, she contacted three women who were farmers to talk about their roles as the leaders on the farm and they they are not just the wives and daughters of farmers, but farmers themselves

Filmmaker Kelsey van Moorsel talks about her documentary on women farmersEN_Interview_1-20191120-WIE10

Maybe you have an image of a farmer as an adult male of a certain age wearing a beat up baseball cap or straw hat sitting atop an old tractor while ploughing a field.

Picture a Farmer Trailer (full film on YouTube)



Nowadays that old tractor might easily be an eight-wheeled high tech computer controlled vehicle operated by a woman. While women have always played a vital role on farms, few urbanites or even the farm community considered the women as “farmers”. Often not even the women themselves.

Lynn Dargis took over the large family farm after the sudden loss of her parents in an accident.She's been operating the farm for several years, She is "the farmer" ( Picture a Farmer)

That has been changing, as women themselves assume the title for the work they’ve always done, including taking on the leading role on farms often as owners and operators of the farm.

Susan Holme Manyluk has been operating a cow and calf farm in central Alberta for 40 years. (Picture a Farmer)

Van Moorsel says the point of the film was not to portray women as superwomen but rather just to point out that women can and are doing everything any other “farmer” does in a farming operation and to give urban dwellers a small taste of what farmers and farming is like and who are the people producing the food they consume.

Additional information

Storyhive: website “Picture a Farmer” video

Alberta Farmer:A. Kienlen: Aug 12/19; Film about farm women shows how times have changed

Lindisfarne Productions;

November carries a lot of baggage in Canada--mostly a mix of shivering and foreboding.

This year we get to throw in shovelling, as winter--not officially, mind you--has come early to way too many places across the country.

So what happens next?

We all wonder, though we have a pretty good idea.

The Weather Network issued its winter forecast Monday.

There are those who say the best way to cope with winter is to just stop fighting it. (Conservation Officer Service of British Columbia)

"The upcoming winter across the country looks to be more frozen than thawed, and we've already seen an early entrance of winter weather this fall," chief meteorologist Chris Scott told Canadian Press.

"The signs that we're seeing this year do suggest we're in for a winter that's more on than off across the country — and that it's going to be fairly long for many Canadians."

Optimists (aka sublimators and deniers) will not be encouraged by the Old Farmer's Almanac prediction, which is tossing around phrases like "polar coaster" and "bitterly cold."

"Our long-range forecast is calling for yet another freezing, frigid, and frosty winter for two-thirds of the country," editor Peter Geiger writes.

"If you remember last winter's freezing temperatures, you're going to want to be prepared."

Canadian Gothic: A snowplow at work in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador (CBC)

AccuWeather?

Pretty much the same, though just a tad tempered.

Since I had already set things up to talk with David Phillips, Environment and Climate Change Canada's senior climatologist, about the winter ahead, I reached for the phone today with more than a touch of trepidation.

I began by asking him how he sees the next five months playing out.

And guess what!

Well, here is our conversation.

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Many of the several hundred students barricaded at Hong Kong University have surrendered to police early this morning. However, it seems unlikely that the protests, now several months old, will abate anytime soon.

Colin Robertson, is Vice-President at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, an independent, non-partisan research institute related to foreign policy a former diplomat, as Canadian Consul in Hong Kong,

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Reports this morning say only a handful of student protesters remain in the university, but without food or water so that situation is likely over.

As Robertson says however, with about 2 million supporters of the movement, the overall protest situation will likely continue. He also suggests that with such strong support the legitimacy of the Beijing supported Carrie Lam government is in serious doubt.

Police hold a student protester on the ground as clouds of tear gas spread around the university this week (via CBC)

While there has been some suggestion that China could send in the military, Robertson thinks that unlikely at this point, if for no other reason than the international optics that would represent.

It also appears unlikely that neither the Hong Kong government or China will relax their positions, in light of protesters demands for democratic guarantees or reforms.

Police have been accused of excessive use of force, including use of rubber bullets. (Tyrone Siu-Reuters July 2019)

Fears of a mass exodus of ex-pats with Canadian, British, U.S. and other citizenship seems not on the immediate horizon.

Nonetheless, Hong Kong’s status as entry point into the vast Chinese and wider Asian market, and an exit point for those same countries is weakening, as Robertson says, due to the uncertainties and disruptions of the protest movement, and in the shadow of the U.S-China trade dispute. This is says is not good for Hong Kong, for China, for Canada-because of a long trade relationship, as well as for other countries with similar trade and business ties with Hong Kong.

Additional information-sources

CBC News report Nov 18/19

Canadian Press (via CP24) Nov 18/19: Canadian universities encourage exchange students in Hong Kong to head home

Imagine the millions of stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way, and the millions more planets orbiting those stars, Now imagine a cluster of galaxies, perhaps thousands of them.

Toby Brown (PhD) is a post-doctoral fellow at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario. He is also leading an international team of some 30 astronomers studying the process that kills galaxy clusters far far out in deep space.

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The universe is a “star factory” converting gas into stars which form galaxies and as Brown says, they all have life cycles. But the team of astronomers is trying to determine the phenomena that changes galaxies from creating stars,  to what stops them from creating stars thereby resulting in their death so to speak.

Toby Brown (PhD) Of Mc Master University in Hamilton Ontario, leads a team studying the process of the death of galaxy clusters (supplied-McMaster U )

The answer seems to lie in the extreme forces created by this unimaginable mass of thousands of galaxies in a cluster: extreme gravity, extreme speed, and extreme heating of plasma  around the cluster.

Four of the 66 radio telescope antennas of the ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) project, in the Chajnantor plateau, Atacama desert, some 1500 km north of Santiago Chile Canada is a partner in this telescope, which is part of the Event Horizon telescope system. Toby Brown is currently leading an international team of astronomers styding a distant galaxy cluster (MARTIN BERNETTI/AFP/Getty Images

As for Earth, we’re part of the Milky Way galaxy in a galaxy group, which is a smaller number of galaxies than a cluster and where the forces of gravity and superheated plasma are not nearly as great.

A time lapse image of ALMA, a state-of-the-art telescope system and is the largest ground-based astronomical project in existence. It aims to study some of the furthest galaxies in the universe. (C Malin-ALMA)

So Brown says the Milky Way and our own Earth and Sun will not suffer the relatively quick death of a cluster death.

Brown points out that our neighbouring galaxy is Andromeda and the two galaxies are moving toward each other. He says they will collide or “merge” in something like four to five billion years. But unfortunately it seems no one will be left to witness the event. Our own sun will be burning out around that time and as it does, it will expand outward, absorbing Mercury and Venus and frying the Earth.

An illustration showing the predicted merger of our Milky Way galaxy with the neighboring Andromeda galaxy. In this image, representing Earth's night sky in 3.75 billion years, Andromeda, left, fills the field of view and begins to distort the Milky Way with tidal pull. (NASA/ESA/Z. Levay R. van der Marel, STScI/T. Hallas/A. Mellinger)

So potentially for Earth, not a happy ending either way.

Additional information

Live Science: T Brown: Sep 19/19: Something Is Killing the Universe's Most Extreme Galaxies

Camille Labchuk took a vow of silence over the weekend.

Bound for no ashram to meditate, the silence was simply another step in her relentless pursuit to protect animals, who--she is always quick to note--lack the power to advocate for themselves.

Labchuk is the executive director of the animal rights group Animal Justice and making life better for animals requires money to fight court battles in pursuit of, well, animal justice.

Lawyer and Animal Justice executive director Camille Labchuk is a relentless advocate for the rights of animals in Canada. (Courtesy: Animal Justice)

Hence, the silence Labchuk and her fellow animal rights activists lived on Saturday.

Labchuk, her supporters and her co-activists, raised more money that they had originally hoped, marking another victory in a year that has produced many, including the ones making the most news--a new law to ban keeping whales, dolphins and porpoises in captivity, passed by Parliament in June, and new legislation introduced last month in Ontario, strengthening the province's animal cruelty laws.

I spoke with Labchuk by phone at her Ottawa office on Thursday.

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A dire report from Canadian medical, veterinary and economic experts begins with the words, ”Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is now recognized as a global threat that if not addressed will have a devastating impact on the health and welfare of the planet that may be difficult to reverse.”

It suggests that increasing incidence of anti-biotic resistance could result in the deaths of almost 400,000 Canadians, and a hit to the Canadian economy in the hundreds of billions of dollars just within the next couple of decades

Gerry Wright (PhD) is the director of the Michael DeGroote Institute of Infectious Disease Research, Faculty of Health Sciences, McMaster University in Hamilton Ontario.

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Funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada, The Council of Canadian Academies recently brought together experts in a wide variety of fields from microbiology, epidemiology, veterinary medicine, public policy, economics and others, all to discuss the growing number of anti-biotic resistant bacteria, the so-called “superbugs”.

Professor Gerry Wright (PhD) of McMaster University, Faculty of Health Sciences, Hamilton, Ontario. (supplied)

Their report is called “When Antibiotics Fail:The Expert Panel on the Potential Socio-Economic Impacts of Antimicrobial Resistance in Canada”

The numbers are staggering.

The report says that within a mere 30 years, if the rate of resistant bacteria increases to 40 percent, the untreatable infections could kill almost 400,000 Canadians, and cost Canada about $500 billion. This would be through some $120 billion in hospital costs coupled with a decline of some $388 in gross domestic product over those three decades

Currently about 26 % of bacterial infections are resistant, and as bacteria evolve, scientists estimate that could increase to 40%, with severe consequence for society. (iStock)

Even if resistance to first line drugs remains constant at the current rate of about 26 per cent, the Canadian economy would still shrink.

Beyond the economics however is the direct effect on health care and the ability to safely carry out almost all kinds of surgeries from heart surgery, to joint replacement, to childbirth and everything in between, where the risk of untreatable infection will increase, sadly often leading to deaths.

One of many bacteria types from soil samples growing in the McMaster lab is search of creating new anti-biotics. (Nicholas-Waglechner-McMaster U)

Professor Wright says the report now puts actual numbers to the state of the problem and with that the purpose of the report is a wake up call to citizens and to policy makers backed by these hard figures.

Additional Information

The Conversation: G Wright;  Antibiotic resistance could destroy our way of life

CBC: L. Kane: Nov 12/19: Drug resistance likely to kill 400,000 Canadians

Canadian Press (via Health): L. Kane: Nov 12/19: Report predicts drug resistance likely to kill 400,000 by 2050

PostMedia:S. Kirkey: Nov 12/19: More deaths, fewer joint replacements, huge costs: The superbug crisis

CCA report: When Anti-biotics fail

As we reported yesterday, Canada's own very own version of Archie Bunker has exited, and it sure didn't go unnoticed across Canada--making front page news across the country.

Don Cherry finally rolled snake eyes Saturday night, going after newcomers to Canada for not buying poppies.

After pushing his luck for years, it was one giant, clumsy step too many.

Don Cherry and his sidekick, Ron MacLean, pose for a photo during the unveiling of their joint star on Canada's Walk of Fame in Toronto on Monday, July 25, 2016. (Aaron Vincent Elkaim/Canadian Press)

It cost him his job and he says he's not about to apologize.

So what the heck just happened here?

Everyone has an opinion.

For what it's worth, I figure there's no better person to ask than author, sportswriter and broadcast personality Bruce Dowbiggin, who currently hosts the Not the Public Broadcaster website.

Bruce Dowbiggin (cbc.ca)

Dowbiggin and Cherry once worked together and have had their share of dust-ups over the years.

But I, too, have worked with Dowbiggin and he didn't win a bunch of awards for being dishonest.

I called him today at his home in Calgary.

Here is our conversation.

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Over 104 years ago, as the First World War raged around him, a Canadian surgeon sat in an ambulance in a part of Belgium that had already seen more than its fair share of carnage and fighting and would see a whole lot more through the rest of the 20th Century.

Poppies surround a newly unveiled statue of Lt.-Col. John McCrae to commemorate the Second Battle of Ypres and his poem 'In Flanders Fields,' during a ceremony in Ottawa on Sunday, May 3, 2015, 100 years to the day that he wrote his famous poem.(Fred Chartrand/Canadian Press)

Taking a brief respite from the horror he had just witnessed, the surgeon, a Canadian named John McCrae, wrote a poem that lives to this day--in elementary schools where young Canadians recite it, to the poppies that people around the world wear to commemorate those who died in the so-called Great War.

Born out of heartache, written in the midst of insanity in the spring of 1915, In Flanders Fields may be the most famous poem ever written by a Canadian.

David Calderisi (courtesy of David Calderisi)

For Remembrance Day, I asked a friend, noted Canadian actor David Calderisi, to share both the poem and the history of its origins.

Be forewarned: like the war from which is sprang, it is not a pretty history.

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