The weather though tolerable today was nonetheless evocative of coming wintry conditions. Primarily for the exercise – but also as an undaunted way to distance myself from defeat at the hands of looming disruption – I tricycled 6.89 Km about the neighbourhood. The roads were clear except for remnants of snow plowed onto the side adjacent the sidewalk. As I passed along the river I easily saw to the other side. The obstructions of summer and autumn have vanished. A not unpleasant starkness has overtaken the landscape. It is a verancular to which I must readjust.  Though as I am wont to advance whenever asked, I am not in the least dispairing about the predictions. It has inspired collateral moments of reflection regarding the extent and necessity of isolation from one’s Northern sphere.

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Yesterday a large flock of Canada geese piloted their way onto the Mississippi River. What made their congregation noticeable was the icy surface of the river upon which they landed. While I cannot say for certain that the river – or part of it – was indeed covered by ice it came across from my withdrawing room window to be the case. I kept searching to see whether the geese were skating. Today as I look upon the river it is buried in a soft grey fog. How soon the clarity of yesterday dissolves into a mist.

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I’ll be frank, I don’t read a lot of news. I accept it is a small compliment. I’d prefer to say I am well-informed. But the burdensome truth is whenever I begin reading BBC, CBC, CNN, MSNBC or Fox News invariably I find myself pursing my lips, shaking my head and muttering inadequacies about retail vulgarity. As quickly as possible I return to whatever I was doing previously. Very often this is reading the similarly disturbing – though more illuminating – “History of England from the Accession of James II” by Thomas Babington Macaulay which registers dismally like an account of current affairs. We appear to have improved very little in the past 500 years as far as human relationships are concerned; specifically, regarding capital, power and religion.

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It has been an acrid day today.  I am reeling from a repeat of government inordinate inutility. While I do not habitually equate government (or what is disparagingly called “bureaucracy”) with pointlessness, in this instance – as for the past three months – we are sadly no further ahead than when we started.

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Today is Sunday, observed by Christians as a day of rest and religious worship. Whatever I may think or believe about religion (what usefully for purposes of this monologue I might distinguish as “organized” in order to avoid eclipsing the purely metaphysical nature and possible intellectual digestibility of the subject), the inescapable truth is that, whether by lineage, habit, education, culture, indoctrination or divine mystery, I am addicted to sacramental music.

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Religion and racism are fabrications born of the same cloth. Nor should the observation cause the slightest doubt for it is but an assimilation of every human characteristic united with power and wealth; namely, control and cupidity. Certainly there those kind-hearted and well-intentioned clergy and parishioners who are conspicuously driven by the more digestible features of religion bearing upon benevolence and some dissolving view of eternity. Likewise there are those politicians and electors whose legislative objectives are spirited by equality. But for the most part religion and racism – like any other sustainable corporate undertaking or successful candidacy – are dependent upon business acumen not mystical entertainment or vaporous allusions to unsubstantiated and unproductive egalitarianism.

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It shouldn’t of course astonish me – though naturally it does – that my morning habits here in Canada or there in the United States of America are identical. For example within minutes of having arisen from the lair this morning and after having completed my ritual ablutions and trifling breakfast of sliced apple and cheddar morsels I yearned as always – wherever – to get onto my tricycle and pedal my way to Eternity. The air was clear and bright; a regular prospect for perpetuity and the perfect day for cycling about the neighbourhood.  Nor was I disappointed in the shadowing of either my athletic or spiritual endeavours.

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It is a palpable deceit to submit to or overtake the authority of another without proof of entitlement to do so. The thesis is fundamental to democracy; namely, the consensual definition to be governed by the rule of law.  In Canada, the recognizable legal authority and root of competency derives from the British North America Act, 1867. This is the stuff that kept Sir John A. Macdonald our first prime minister awake at night and likely occasionally intoxicated.

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Today was Car Church.  I had an appointment (booked weeks ago, delayed by the winter tyre frenzy) with Reid Bros GM Canada dealership in Arnprior. I’m guessing as well it doesn’t help that this is hunting season in Renfrew County. Public school teachers are not the only ones who enjoy statutory holidays!

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My late father Cecil George William Chapman DSO was born in Hillsborough, NB in 1918. He attended University of New Brunswick (“Up the Hill”) in Fredericton, NB for undergraduate studies (electrical engineering) from which he graduated at the end of the Great Depression when he was 21 years of age. Having lived through that entire era naturally explains a great deal about my father whatever its reverberations may have been.

The Great Depression (1929–1939) was an economic shock that affected most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagion began around September 1929 and led to the Wall Street stock market crash of October 24 (Black Thursday). It was the longest, deepest, and most widespread depression of the 20th century.

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