Readers Digest (Can) 1404

THE LION WHISPERER

An RD ORIGINAL ... 64

12 HOURS OVERBOARD From THE NEW YORK

TIMES MAGAZINE

96

MANAGING TEcH AND TODDlERS

From TODAY’S

PARENT

82

TRaNSPLaNT daISy

cHaIN: a SON’S STORy An RD ORIGINAL ... 90

MaRgaRET aTWOOd’S

bRuSH WITH dEaTH From ELLE CANADA ... 76

QUOTES fROM fAMOUS cANADIANS ............ 144

14 WAyS TO GREEN yOUR HOME ...................... 29

HOW TO GET BETTER cUSTOMER SERVIcE ..... 135

JOkES: AS kIDS SEE IT .....................................109

APRIL 2014

MOST READ MOST TRUSTED

EVEN AFTER

EATING & DRINKING

†Germs that cause plaque & gingivitis when used after brushing.Fights cavities. Always read and follow the label.

Colgate-Palmolive Canada Inc. *TM Reg’d/M.D.

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� $" THE LION WHISPERER

Kevin Richardson uses his bond with Africa’s big

cats to help save them. @716/@2�>=>:/9

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� %$ A CLOSE SHAVE

Margaret Atwood recounts a near-death

childhood experience. 4@=;�3::3�1/</2/

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� & SCREEN CAPTURED

Do tablets inhibit children’s creativity?

/B63</�BA/D:7@7A�4@=;�B=2/G¸A�>/@3<B

6SOZbV

� '� CHAIN REACTIONS

One kidney donation can change many lives—

including your father’s. 8/A=<�/<23@A=<

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A lobster fisherman’s fight to survive. >/C:�B=C56�4@=;�B63�<3E�G=@9�B7;3A�;/5/H7<3

<ObW]\OZ�/TTOWà

� �� QUITTING TIME?

E-cigarettes’ doubtful effectiveness as a cessation

tool. /:3F/<2@/�97;0/::�4@=;�3::3�1/</2/

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� ��$ TO PARIS, WITH TOT

A young family’s first trip abroad dredges up

parental insecurities. 6/<</6�AC<5�4@=;�3<@=CB3�

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� � PAST LIVES

After the death of her mother, a daughter attempts

to make sense of family history. >:C;�8=6<A=<�

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� �$ Change Agent Ricken Patel has proven online

activism can have real-world

results. Next up, climate

change. 1=C@B<3G�A63/

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� � The Anti–Tiger MomVancouver psychiatrist and

mother of three Shimi K. Kang

on her book The Dolphin Way

and why balanced kids are best. ABp>6/<73�D3@53

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privileges. ;793�A>@G

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eco-oasis—and save money—

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careful financial planning. 53=@53�;C@@/G ;

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�$ Strange SymptomsCharting the rise of lupus in

Canada. A/;/<B6/�@723=CB

P. | 37

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��!# 13 Things You Should Know About Customer Service >/C:�5/::/<B

�!&� Rd.caApril highlights from our

website, including workout tips

from a celebrity trainer.

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iconic appetizer. B63�327B=@A�

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�"! The Mourning After Miriam Toews’s All My Puny

Sorrows. 3;7:G�:/<2/C

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the spotlight. A/@/6�:7AA

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returns for Season 2.

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cure-all? E3<2G�5:/CA3@

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and nutritionist weigh in with

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AT MY GRANDMOTHER’S TABLE there was an unspoken three-serving minimum. If you ate less than that or paused too long mid-meal to converse, you were met by Grandma Ritter’s penetrating look of

worry followed by a “What’s wrong?” The lesson was clear: dodging a serv-ing of dumplings was tantamount to rejecting a hug.

This food-as-love ethos has crossed generations—and species. I was not the only creature subjected to heartfelt feedings. My grandparents lived in Que-bec’s Eastern Townships and took it upon themselves to provide sustenance for the local fauna. There were cardinals, blue jays and woodpeckers. There

were also raccoons, deer, skunks and the occasional fox. Every evening, my grandparents would prepare

platters of food to set outside their picture windows. As a girl, I delighted in watching the nightly banquet. I now know that feeding wild animals can be harm-ful to them, but I understand what motivated my grandparents: a desire to nurture nature.

Grandma Ritter would have loved this month’s profile of Kevin Richardson (“The Lion Whis-perer,” page 64), who is working to protect Afri-ca’s big cats. Richardson’s relationship with these animals is unique—they accept him as part of the pride. He is on a remarkable mission.

Our own Robert Goyette is on a different mis-sion, exploring Australia and its outback. He

returns next month.

Dominique Ritter, Managing Editor

Editor’s Letter

Animal Instincts

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INTERACTWITH THE PAGES

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FO

OD SAFETY TIP

Food poisoning can be avoided by handling food safely. Still, many older adults go about their daily food preparation routines, inadvertently putting themselves and others at risk. For adults 60+, food poisoning can go beyond just that. As you age, your body is less able to fight off harmful bacteria. This puts you at greater risk of food poisoning and developing serious health complications. A few easy changes to the way you handle your food at home can go a long way in protecting your health.

Learn more and get your free Safe Food Handling guide at

HealthyCanadians.gc.ca/FoodSafetyGuide or call 1 800 O-Canada

Steve’s home cooked meal came with

a side dish he wasn’t expecting.

Thaw food in the fridge,

especially raw meat,

poultry, fish or seafood.

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(“14 Ways to Green

Your Home,” page 29)

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U`SS\�Wa that it requires huge life-style sacrifices. Incremental changes can have an impact. 7�U`Se�c^�W\�/T`WQO� and there’s a proverb there: “If you think one small thing can’t make a difference, you’ve never spent a night with a mosquito.”

;793�A>@G�

(“Te Uncle Michael

Show,” page 23)

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eOa overwhelmed with an emotion I can’t explain—part pride, part joy and part affection for birth control.

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(“Past Lives,” page 122)

6][S�POaS( Dundas, Ont. >`SdW�]caZg�^cPZWaVSR�

W\ Time and The New York Times. 4]`�µ>Oab�:WdSa�¶ I combined earth tones and a palette of warm, satur-ated colours on a dark background to represent the parental history be-ing uncovered. EVS\�[g�ROR�¿àb�QO[S�b]�1O\ORO� my mom stayed in Italy. Maybe I’ll find letters they exchanged one day, but I’m doubtful. They tend to get rid of old things.

@716/@2�>=>:/9��

(“Te Lion Whisperer,”

page 64)

6][S�POaS( Johannesburg, South

Africa. >`SdW]caZg�^cPZWaVSR�W\ Toronto Life and The Walrus. <]bV�W\U�^`SÔ`Sa�g]c�T]` the sight of lions tackling Kevin Richardson. Their love for him is astonishing. EWbV�^S]^ZS��VS¸a very socialized and savvy. The pride has taught him a lot about how gregarious creatures interact, and it seems to hold him in good stead across the food chain.

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Contributors�

REDESIGN REACTIONS

The February edition of Reader’s

Digest was a great improvement.

I was impressed by the interesting

articles and appreciated the new pa-

per stock for its lack of glare. Keep

up the good work.

D7=:/�30G��C a rd s t o n , A l t a .

Wow! What a necessary change to

your reputable magazine. Now

there’s some fire to it. Congratula-

tions. D/:�E7::7A��O t t a w a

I enjoyed the February issue for its

good mix of stories and the nicer pa-

per stock, which feels more like book

paper than the glossy magazine pa-

per you were previously using. The

new finish is much easier on the eyes.

9:/CA�/��A16;72A@/CB3@��Ha m i l t o n

I hate the new format. The paper

feels dry, rough and gross to flip

through. Plus, the number of car-

toons, my favourite feature, has

been reduced. 07::�=@@�=<�4/130==9

TRIED-AND-TRUE

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Letters@3/23@�1=;;3<BA�=<�=C@�@313<B�7AAC3A

A LOVING POSTSCRIPT

After reading about other couples’ romantic stories in “Love, Actually” (Feb. 2014), I wanted to share my own. Originally from Brazil, I was in Italy in 2006 having dinner by myself when a man came over and

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asked if he could sit at my table. At first sight, I thought he was Ameri-can and, just to be polite, said yes. He told me that he was Canadian, and I soon found myself happily sharing stories about my life. I was leaving very early the next morning,

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so we exchanged email addresses, and when we said goodbye, I gave him a kiss. He was a bit surprised, but began writing, then visiting me in Brazil. We dated for three years until we decided it was time to be together forever. I’ve been living in Canada since April 2009, married to my best friend.

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P o r t E l g i n , O n t .

VALUABLE INFORMATION

I grew up with Reader’s Digest in my home as a child and feel it’s the best little magazine out there. I’ll be sending “Coming Into Focus” (Feb. 2014) to my daughter, as she has a 22-year-old son with ADHD. He is now engaged and has a great job, but his doctors are still trying to find the right dosage for his medications. The article offered many insights into this troublesome ailment.

:=C7A3�63/@2��P o r t C o l b o r n e , O n t .

A REGRETTABLE CHOICE

February’s Olympic-themed Word Power asked readers to guess the definition of the term “Kreisel.” The provided answer includes a sentence about a luger named Nodar who was well aware of the finesse needed to negotiate the course’s long, circu-lar turn (the Kreisel). During the 2010 Winter Olympics, Nodar Kumaritashvili was the 21-year-old luge athlete from Georgia who was

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killed during a training run after los-ing control of his sled. How you could use the name Nodar in this ex-ample is beyond me—it’s completely inappropriate.

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DIVISIONS OF LABOUR

It would be wonderful to read more articles like “Power Moms and Their Househusbands” (Jan. 2014), about stay-at-home parents, whether moms or dads. The point made by one of the fathers, that “your kid doesn’t want a nanny. Your kid wants you. Your kid needs you,” is one I agree with. I thoroughly en-joyed being a stay-at-home mom and could not imagine raising a family any other way. How refresh-ing to read that some women may be the bigger breadwinners and that some men may have more suitable temperaments for child rearing.

0/@0/@/�>C@2G��Ux b r i d g e , O n t .

ANIMAL RESCUE

“The Adoption Option” (Jan. 2014) mentions the possibility of having to pass on a purebred when choosing a rescue dog. As someone who volun-teers her time helping shelter pets find a home, I can tell you that this isn’t usually the case and could de-ter people from adopting. Purebred rescue dogs are often taken from shelters and brought to private res-cue groups specialized in particular

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breeds. Using a site like petfinder.com, you can easily search reputa-ble rescues in your area to find a specific type of dog, or even cat, to adopt. :=@7�1/;>03::��To r o n t o

ANOTHER LIFE SAVED

Thank you for publishing Elechia Barry-Sproule’s letter, “A Life Saved” (Nov. 2013), about how “Minutes From Death” (Aug. 2013) alerted her to the symptoms and dangers of blood clots. I came across her letter while waiting for an appointment with my general practitioner. At the time, I’d been experiencing calf pain for about two weeks, to the point where I couldn’t walk on my leg. I wasn’t planning to discuss the issue with my GP, but after reading the letter, I reconsidered. An ultrasound was scheduled for the following day, during which a blood clot was found. The imaging centre sent me directly to the ER, where they also found a clot in my lungs. I spent over a week in the hospital and will be on blood thinners for the rest of my life, but I’m also grateful be-cause it could have turned out so

much worse. Keep up the great pub-lishing—I love Reader’s Digest from cover to cover.

B/<7/�5��13@;/9��C a l g a r y

YOUTH AT RISK

“The Itch Factor” (Nov. 2013), about the rise of shingles, fails to mention that children can also be infected. My daughter was only nine months old when she caught a bad case of the chicken pox and nine years old when she suffered through an itchy and painful episode of the shingles. Two other young children I know have also had shingles. Your readers should be aware of the possibility. <7B/�4/7@��C h a r l i e L a k e , B . C .

ERRATUM

During the editing of February’s

issue, an error was introduced into

reader Kim Ellsworth’s letter, when

Calgary was incorrectly identified

as Alberta’s provincial capital. We

apologize for the mistake.

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Going green matters to me because…

Visit the Reader’s Digest Canada Facebook page for your chance to finish the next sentence.

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It also benefits us right now.

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�! ON THE SECOND day of his

hunger strike, Yeb Saño realized he

needed to ratchet up the pressure. As

the climate negotiator for the Philip-

pines, Saño blamed global warming

for Typhoon Haiyan, which had rav-

aged his country days earlier. On Nov-

ember 11, 2013, he had announced he

would fast until the delegates at the

UN Climate Change Conference in

Warsaw, Poland, reached a “meaning-

ful outcome” about carbon emissions.

Saño had a plan but lacked a plat-

form. So he posted a petition with

Avaaz, an online activism organiza-

tion that allows its over 33 million

members to register support for an

issue by doing nothing more than

entering an email address and hitting

send. Almost immediately, hundreds

took up Saño’s cause. They donated

money, spread the word on social

media, even joined the strike. One

week later, the petition had drawn

600,000-plus signatures.

“The Internet is a force multiplier,”

says Ricken Patel, Avaaz’s 36-year-old

founder. “It can make any process

faster and more efficient.” The plan-

et’s largest activism network, with

members across 138 countries, Avaaz

can mobilize public opinion on any

international issue in any part of the

globe. Founded in 2007, it has worked

to stop sex trafficking in Hilton Hotels

& Resorts and defended Masai

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“Avaaz has helped

prove that we are

citizens of the

world first, and of

our countries

second.”

land rights in Tanzania. It has raised

over $55 million—funding democ-

racy groups in Zimbabwe as well as

anti-homophobia initiatives in Costa

Rica—and helped marshal more than

10,000 rallies, flash mobs and vigils.

“Imagine a mom who’s just gotten

in from work and has a few minutes

to check her inbox before making

dinner,” says Patel. “She’s heard

about an issue on the radio—Syria,

say—that upsets her. Our petitions

offer an effective strat-

egy for taking action.

Having done that, she

might start donating to

that cause or talk to

friends and family

about it.”

It’s called an engage-

ment ladder—where

small acts lead to bigger

ones—and, according to Sidneyeve

Matrix, a media professor at Queen’s

University in Kingston, Ont., Patel is

one of the few to have perfected it.

“He has made it easy to give, easy to

get involved,” Matrix says. Storybook

endings are rare in activism, so

Avaaz’s victories are a matter of im-

proving upon a desperate situation.

It was the first NGO, within days of

Burma’s 2008 cyclone, to bring relief

funds—$2 million—into the country.

Raised on a farm outside of Ed-

monton, Patel remembers his older

brother drilling political ideas into

him as a toddler. By Grade 2, he was

reading a history book a week. That

upbringing bred an idealistic curios-

ity about the world that eventually

triggered his decision, at 28, to spend

four years as a conflict analyst in war

zones like Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Non-profit think tanks sent him to

meet cabinet ministers and warlords.

Then, from the conversations, he

would draft proposals on how the in-

ternational community could better

serve that country.

It was challenging

work—“I came up

against the open sores

of our planet”—but it

led to an insight that,

when Patel returned to

New York in 2005, pro-

vided the seed for the

company that today

employs 100 people

across 18 countries. “What I had wit-

nessed were failures of collective ac-

tion,” he says. “Governments knew

the right thing to do. They didn’t do

it because citizens didn’t demand it.”

In Saño’s case, Avaaz helped sway

delegates to commit to modestly re-

ducing fossil emissions targets. With

climate change a priority for 2014,

preparations have begun for a mas-

sive march to coincide with the UN’s

Climate Summit in New York this

September. “I used to think saving

the world was all about having pas-

sion,” he says. “Motivating others is

just as important, if not as sexy.”

For Avaaz,

small acts

lead to

bigger ones.

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more than a few keystrokes away

when Facebook users share typo-

laden updates:

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@3A>=<A3( Yes, weekends.

>=AB( I swear 2012, if you bring

me a year of happiness and no

stress, I won’t take it for granite.

@3A>=<A3( Yes, I want 2012 to

bring something beautiful. Some-

thing I can really marble at.

>=AB( Is it just me or does

nobody have manors these days?

@3A>=<A3( I just have a

normal house.

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don’t know the difference between

your and you’re. There so dumb.

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Today’s date is xi.xii.xiii, which is

significant because it looks like a

child doing jumping jacks so well

that a crowd starts to form.

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Your book could be seen as a response

to Amy Chua’s pro-authoritarian

memoir The Battle Hymn of the Tiger

Mother. What did you think of it?

The ethnic undertones hit a nerve:

I was offended because the entire

Eastern and Western worlds were

painted with a broad brush. Fellow

psychiatrists reacted strongly to the

idea of pushing kids so hard. I saw

parents justifying their behaviour

with this book, which has no scien-

tific evidence behind it.

How did you land on your book’s

dolphin metaphor?

I’m the youngest of five children,

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so I grew up with a pod mentality.

I’ve long used the term “dolphin

parenting” in my practice when I

want to recommend things like play,

community building and altruism.

Dolphins are clear authority figures

for their young, joyful, helpful, and

they sleep eight hours a day.

You place a great deal of import-

ance on play. What’s an easy way

to integrate more of it into our lives?

The simplest thing is to free up time

from scheduled activities. If you un-

plug the TV and open the door, kids

will play—even if they complain at

first. Playing is in our nature.

What is one of the most common

challenges facing kids today?

Again, it’s time. We don’t realize the

importance of sleep or the difference

between social bonding and socializ-

ing. Even siblings aren’t bonding any-

more; the house has become a pit

stop on the way to activities. Dinner

together is increasingly difficult, de-

spite there being overwhelming evi-

dence that eating as a family is vital.

What’s the biggest change in parent-

ing in the 21st century?

Fear. How’s my kid going to get into

university? Get a job? Thrive in

this globally connected world?

These worries have caused a lot

of well-intentioned parents to

tip their families off balance.

Chua’s book prompted a dialogue

about our fixation with Ivy League

schools. You went to Harvard, but

your parents weren’t Tigers.

So many innovators—and I met

many of them at Harvard—will tell

you stories of having free childhoods.

There are two ways to become ex-

ceptional in a discipline: you can do

it through balance or imbalance.

A Tiger Parent might argue that a

Dolphin Parent has lower expecta-

tions for their children. How would

you respond?

At the risk of using more animals, I’d

bring up the fable of the tortoise and

the hare. The hare bolts out of the

gate and gets tired and falls asleep,

and the tortoise is slow and steady

and wins the race. The Tiger Parent

is misguided in thinking that the end

goal is performance. The end goal

is the ability to adapt to the ever-

changing world. A Dolphin Parent’s

expectations are far greater than

academics or sports or leadership.

What’s important is a sense of joy,

health of body and mind, and mak-

ing a clear contribution to the world.

Finish this thought: Parenting is…

A privilege.

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Carrot Cake

Makes: 12 servings

• 2 eggs

• 1 1/2 cups (375 mL) shredded carrots

• 1/2 cup (125 mL) plain yogurt

• 1/2 cup (125 mL) unsweetened applesauce

• 1/4 cup (125 mL) vegetable oil

• 1 tsp (5 mL) vanilla extract

• 3/4 cup (180 mL) all-purpose fl our

• 3/4 cup (180 mL) whole wheat fl our

• 3/4 cup (180 mL) SPLENDA®

No Calorie Sweetener, Granulated

• 1 1/2 tsp (7 mL) cinnamon

• 1 tsp (5 mL) baking powder

• 1/2 tsp (2 mL) baking soda

• 1/2 tsp (2 mL) salt

• 1/4 tsp (1 mL) nutmeg

• 1/4 tsp (1 mL) ginger

• 1/2 cup (125 mL) raisins

icing sugar (if desired)

Directions

Lightly beat eggs; stir in carrots, yogurt, applesauce, vegetable oil and vanilla.

In a large bowl, combine remaining ingredients, except icing sugar. Stir in carrot mixture, mixing until well blended. Spread evenly in greased 9-inch (23 cm) square baking pan.

Bake at 325°F (160°C) for 35 to 40 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in centre comes out clean. Cool on rack. Dust with icing sugar if desired.

for more recipes, join the

SPLENDA® recipe club at splenda.ca

a classicwith less added sugarENJOY

Nutritional Information: Serving Size 1 piece (1/12th of cake). Calories 153, Protein 4 g, Fat 6 g, Carbohydrates 22 g

© McNeil Consumer Healthcare, division of Johnson & Johnson Inc. 2013

�! I DON’T LIKE KIDS. I find

them irrational, inconsiderate, irre-

sponsible and far from self-suffi-

cient. Their taste in music is

derivative, clap-heavy. Urine often

ends up where it shouldn’t. Don’t

get me wrong: I respect the propaga-

tion of the species. And I enjoy the

act of reproduction, if not the result.

But I don’t want kids, which has

been an issue both in romantic rela-

tionships and with my parents. I do,

however, have children in my life.

Children I love.

That last sentence would contra-

dict my opening sentiment, if not for

the fact that being an uncle is rife

with contradiction. My sister has two

kids, Finn and Piper, seven and five

respectively. I think. I mix up their

ages. But they’re important to me,

maybe as important as anything in

my life.

I have no illusions about my role

as an uncle. I am to provide know-

ledge that my sister, brother-in-law

and parents won’t: appreciation of

David Berman and The Muppets,

how cheering for the Toronto Maple

Leafs is a sin, why a degree in fine

arts is a bad idea. I’m in their lives

to explain the tangible result of mis-

takes. The curse of regret. The intri-

cacies of the broken heart. You

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know, stuff a single 30-something writer with commitment issues and insurmountable debt is an expert in.

They, on occasion, teach me (which is humbling). Piper espe-cially. Her intuition is beyond her years, and at times frightening. One day, she asked me why I didn’t have any children, and I launched into a diatribe about love; about error; about a girl who was there and then wasn’t. Piper took a moment to con-sider this and replied, “Uncle Mi-chael, you have no children because you are alone.”

That kind of honesty is refreshing, born of innocence and limited vo-cabulary. It reduces life to its es-sence. When once asked what Uncle

Michael’s job was, Piper responded, “Hmm. Watching baseball?” Close enough. After I made Finn a soup he really liked, he asked, “Uncle Mi-chael, have you ever considered working in a restaurant?” Unbe-knownst to him, I did, for 15 years, before leaving for the riches of Can-adian literature. For a second, he made me wistful for that time.

But my favourite responses are triggered when I warn them that Uncle Michael’s remarkable run of less-than-moderate success means I’m going to live with them when we’re all older. I share these visions of dependency, of asking them for money, of having these children—who have yet to discover the won-ders of caffeine, unexpected victory or happy hour—bail me out. To these playful notions rooted in adult truths, they laugh, “Uncle Michael, you’re silly,” as if the reality of my fears is humour itself.

My parents think I’ll eventually have kids—when I get older, when I find success, when I meet the woman who makes me. But I remain steadfast in my uncledom. This is the closest to having progeny I’ll ever get, and I worry about them growing up, listening to One Direction, morphing into Yankees fans, becoming experi-mental poets. But for the time being, I will treat them to banana smooth-ies, scatological humour and too much TV. What’s not to love?

23>/@B;3<B �= 4 �E 7 B � �

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Clara’sBig Ride

Going the distance for mental health.

As the spokesperson for Bell

Let’s Talk, Clara Hughes will kick

off her Big Ride across Canada on

March 14 in an effort to help end the

stigma around mental illness. She’ll

be pedalling through every province

and territory in the country, stopping

in 95 communities and covering

more than 12,000 km over 110 days.

Help Clara keep the conversation

rolling. Share the ride. Join the

conversation. Raise funds.

bell.ca/clarasbigride

#ClarasBigRide

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Food and music, for me, they’re all the creative process. It’s artistic ex-pression. They start with a seed of an idea, development of an idea, re-finement of that developed idea and then presenting it for the public to consume, whether orally or aurally.

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I suppose I could say that I am look-ing for a different kind of inner quiet, and I have a few ways to get there. Own less stuff, try to meditate and maybe even find a non-nurtur-ing yoga class. But really, I just want to say yes more often than I say no and be open to whatever comes with love and gratitude (and listen to more Slayer).

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Mental health is the weakest link in our health-care system, but more important, it is still the issue that hides away from much conversa-tion. There are still too few places outside a health-care setting where the issue is addressed, as if mental health and addiction are still taboos not to be mentioned in polite company.

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All the government scientists I know tell me that it’s never been worse. It’s like an Iron Curtain has been drawn across the communication of science in this country. And I think there’s reason for all of us to be worried about that.

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We all have our bumps and bruises,

the things that we’re hiding. I’m

here to tell you that asking for help,

being more open with your experi-

ences, seeking support, is worth it.

The quality of my life today, the

quality of my relationships, the peace

that I have within myself, is all a

direct result of that hard work of

unravelling the past.

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Maybe the “trivial” is just a failed

version of the “everyday.” The every-

day, or the commonplace, is the

most basic and the richest artistic

category.

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If it means my death at the end, so

be it. I’m going to die anyway, and

it’ll be a more interesting way to

go—that’s for sure.

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I figured if you were hired to work

for the PMO, you didn’t need a psy-

chotherapy session every afternoon

to figure out how you were feeling.

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There are 68 countries in the world

where straight people and gay peo-

ple in a group would all be arrested

simply for being together. In 10 of

those countries, I would be executed

simply for being gay. So there’s a lot

of work still to be done.

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In today’s fragmented digital world,

where everyone is constantly sharing

bits of themselves with the public,

including celebrities who perform

roles for a living, the line between

true and fabricated has disinte-

grated, and what’s really interesting

is the space in between. Right?

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Curate Your Kitchen

Change #1: Toss those chemical cleaners (responsibly—take them to your local hazardous-waste drop-off centre) and make your own general-purpose cleaner. Mix ½ cup white vinegar, ¼ cup baking soda and 2 litres water. Pour into a spray bottle and tackle household grime.

Change #2: Animal agriculture accounts for up to 18 per cent of global warming. Adding a single meatless meal to your weekly plan-ner will help you save money—and the planet.

Change #3: Grow your own sprouts in a Mason jar. Pop a few holes

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in the lid, rinse ¼ cup organic lentil sprouts and soak them overnight. Drain the water through the holes and rinse twice a day. Leave the jar in a warm, sunny spot, and you’ll have healthy salad fixings in a couple of days.

Add Life to the Living RoomChange #1: Did you know your ap-pliances consume electricity even when shut down? Five to 10 per cent of the energy used in your home is siphoned for standby power. Unplug TVs, chargers, com-puters, coffee makers and stereos, or use power bars with built-in tim-ers to turn off electronics you don’t mind being reset.

Change #2: That “new carpet smell” is actually an airborne cock-tail of nasty chemicals. Talk to your installer about how to properly vent your home in the first 72 hours af-ter installation and give the carpet a good vacuuming. To be seriously green, consider fire-resistant, bio-degradable and non-toxic natural-fibre carpets like wool, sisal, coir and seagrass.

Green Your Garage Change #1: Your daily car com-mute contributes to climate change, so get the family walking

or biking at least once a week. If self-powered travel isn’t possible, use public transit (it can save a Canadian family a monthly average of $586, according to the David Su-zuki Foundation) or consider ride sharing. High-occupancy vehicle lanes help speed up your commute; check online to find carpooling sites that offer rides to your local transit station.

Change #2: Create word art with-out having to inhale noxious paint fumes. Combine a handful of moss, 2 cups yogourt, 2 cups water and ½ teaspoon sugar in a blender, and mix until smooth. Dip a paintbrush in the mixture and paint words onto any rough surface (a garage’s outdoor wall is ideal). Spray with water regularly, and you’ll soon have inspirational moss graffiti.

Garden SmartChange #1: Every year your old gas mower produces as many

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greenhouse gas emissions as a car driven 3,300 kilometres. Unless you’re the proud owner of a family of sheep, there’s no need for all that grass. For a complete revamp, con-sider lawn alternatives like micro-clover, verbena, sweet woodruff, cotoneaster, thyme and camomile; perennial ground covers take work to install but don’t require much water, and you won’t have to spend weekends cutting the grass.

Change #2: To keep pesky pests at bay, use natural pesticides such as marigold flowers, coffee grounds or an easy-to-make all-purpose spray consisting of 1½ tablespoons liquid soap, 1 litre water and 5 drops lemon essential oil.

Change #3: Reduce water usage by installing downspout extensions from your eavestroughs to direct rain to your flower beds.

Love Your LookChange #1: Ditch your mercury-, formaldehyde- and lead-laden cosmetics for homemade mascara and eyeliner. Mix 1 teaspoon coco-nut oil, 1 teaspoon shea butter, 1½ teaspoons beeswax, 4 teaspoons aloe vera gel and 2 capsules acti-vated charcoal (available at health-food stores). Use a brush to apply as eyeliner or a comb for mascara.

Change #2: Concerned about harmful substances in your tooth-paste? Pop 2 tablespoons dried lemon rind, ¼ cup baking soda and 2 teaspoons sea salt in your blender, and mix until it forms a fine powder. Dip your wet tooth-brush in and brush as usual.

Beautify the BedroomChange #1: Textiles and clothing account for four per cent of materi-als in Canadian landfills. Repair old clothes, organize a clothing swap with friends or donate to a local charity.

Change #2: Make a calming laven-der air freshener to encourage relax-ation and restfulness. Mix 8 drops lavender oil, 4 drops clove oil, ½ cup vodka (a natural deodorizer) and ½ cup water, and place in a spray bottle. The vodka will kill germs, while the soothing lavender sends you to sleep soundly.

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Marrying With Children0G�53=@53�;C@@/G

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�! EVERYONE KNOWS divorce

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Disclose all assets and debts in a

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But not to worry if you’re short a yellowed recipe card with handwrit-ten instructions for the absolute best proportion of mustard to mayon-naise. Just combine a dozen yolks with a cup of mayo (250 mL) and a quarter cup (50 mL) of your favou-rite mustard, then add salt, pepper and paprika to taste—you’ll have a preparation worth handing down.

For creamier eggs, stir in a bit of butter. For spicier eggs, a few dashes of Tabasco or grated horseradish will do the trick. And there are those who won’t declare a devilled-egg filling ready until they’ve added a teaspoon (5 mL) of lemon juice and a tablespoon (15 mL) of pickle rel-ish. But by then, you’re just tinker-ing with perfection.

�! IF THERE’S ONE DISH you’ll fnd doubled or tripled up on in a Southern-style party spread, it’s devilled eggs. And even then, the folks who brought them aren’t likely to go home with leftovers. Te “devil” part? It’s not because they’re a source of temptation (though they are); it refers to the spices that add a piquant kick.

Southern cooks have lately taken to dressing up their eggs with vari-ous accoutrements—country ham, chilled shrimp, poached tomatoes. But connoisseurs will rightly tell you that what matters most is the spring-iness of the white and the tang of the yolk. To please the fussiest of guests, start with eggs a few days removed from the nest, since fresher eggs are frustratingly difficult come peeling time. Put the eggs into a pot, cover with a few centimetres or so of cool water, and bring to a boil. Once the water is sputtering, reduce the heat to a low simmer, and cook for eight minutes. To avoid overcooking the yolk, shock the eggs in an ice-water bath for 30 seconds be-fore peeling. Slice the eggs lengthwise, and remove the yolks.

If the boil-ing process is a science, doctoring the yolks is an art.

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Gay Lea Butter is made by farmers who bring every-thing to their craft. Because they don’t just own the farm, they own the dairy. GAY LEA. BORN ON THE FARM.

The Hilborn Family Farm,New Dundee, Ontario

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Miriam Toews knows tragedy. In

1998, her father stepped in front

of a train in Steinbach, Man.

Twelve years later, her older sister

committed suicide the same way.

Toews has always been a cathartic

writer—A Complicated Kindness

and Irma Voth plumb her knotty

relationship with her Mennonite

upbringing—and her latest is no

exception. It orbits around two sis-

ters: Yolanda, a divorcee seeking

true love, and Elfrieda, a pianist

with a death wish, whose latest sui-

cide attempt coincides with an im-

portant concert tour. Cutting and

compassionate,

the novel is

tinged with

poignantly

comic

insights

into love,

grief and

mental

illness.

April 15.

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The modern-day Louella Parsons

behind laineygossip.com has devoted

a book to the teachings of her mother,

an old-world mah-jong addict known

as the “Chinese Squawking Chicken.”

April 1.

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An examination of the

busyness epidemic be-

sieging North American

women that offers solu-

tions to mitigate the

madness. March 11.

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This captivating debut takes place in

an Arabian country where flying car-

pets, a despot who can hear citizens’

private thoughts and reality TV that

makes the Hunger Games seem tame

are the norm. March 11.

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Shakira is a force of nature. How else to explain that the Colombian superstar’s song “Hips Don’t Lie” surpassed all 21st-century smashes (sorry, Psy) to become the in-ternational top-selling single of the millennium? Currently one of the most powerful women in the world according to Forbes magazine, the singer took a break from her judging duties on The

Voice to focus on fine-tuning her self-titled 10th album, which features contributions from reli-able hitmakers like R&B singer Akon. March 25.

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The Man in Black may have died in 2003, but he was so prolific that

music from his golden years, long buried in the vaults, is just now seeing the light

of day. These early-’80s tracks are es-sential listen-ing for Cash completists. March 25.

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In the spring of 2011, “Pumped Up Kicks,” a deceptively mellow pop jam about fancy sneak-ers and school vio-lence, was everywhere. Three years later, Los Angeles trio Foster the People returns with a guitar-heavy collection inspired by a deep-seated disillusionment with consumer culture. March 18.

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Toronto’s Taylor Kirk has a creepy, cobwebby voice, which he uses to fantastic effect in his haunting tunes. On his fifth full-length album as Timber Timbre, he adds a technicolour jolt to his atmospheric soundscapes, which feature murky string ar-rangements and hyp-notic baritone sax riffs. April 1. �

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FOSTER THE PEOPLE’S

“COMING OF AGE” WITH LAYAR

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I WANT

MY ROUTINECrest® Pro-Health™ Multi Protection rinse helps prevent and reduce plaque and gingivitis. Crest® Pro-Health™ toothpaste fi ghts

cavities, plaque, tartar, gingivitis and tooth sensitivity. To ensure this product is right for you, always read and follow the label. ©2014 P&G

My smile is something I want to share

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SO I LOOK AS GOOD

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A HEALTHY-LOOKING

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Like all good sci-fi, Orphan Black grapples with serious stuff like bioethics and the na-ture of human identity, but the heart of this Toronto-shot series is Tatiana Maslany. The Saskatchewan actor has been rightly lauded for her turn as British con artist Sarah Manning and a half-dozen other clones (including soccer mom Alison and Ukrainian assassin Helena) caught up in an experiment gone pear-shaped. The taut first season landed the show at the top of critics’ lists; Season 2 promises even more twists, wigs and accents. Premieres April 19 on Space.

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Footage of early explorers, stories by present-day settlers and voice -overs from the likes of Cate Blanchett are intertwined in this inventive true-crime doc about a 1930s Galapagos murder mystery. In theatres April 4.

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This early effort by Hollywood legend Don Siegel (Dirty Harry) explores the inner workings of a prison overtaken by inmates protesting brutal living conditions. On DVD and Blu-ray

April 22.

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Johnny Depp stars as an artificial-intelligence researcher who be-comes obsessed with his program to develop sentient computers. This thriller is a nightmare come true for

anyone who be-lieves in the

technological singularity and its cor-responding doomsday

scenarios. In theatres

April 17.

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SPECIAL FEATURE SECTION IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

HEALTHYSMILES

A healthy smile can make you feel confident about yourself and your appearance. But did you know that oral health is also linked to overall health?

The Link Between Oral Health & Overall Health

DENTAL CARE FOR CHILDRENA lifetime of good oral health begins by preventing cavities in childhood. Children need their parents' help to keep their teeth healthy and clean

and to establish good eating habits.

Before Teeth

You should clean your child's mouth even

before they have teeth. Use a soft baby

brush or wrap your finger in a clean,

damp washcloth. Brush or wipe all parts

of the gums and teeth. Don't use tooth-

paste until your child has teeth.

Under 3 Years

For children under 3 years old, an

adult should brush and floss their

teeth. Talk to your dentist about whether

to use fluoridated toothpaste. If your

child is at risk of tooth decay and you

decide to use fluoridated toothpaste,

use only a grain of rice-sized amount

(making sure your child spits out the

toothpaste). Otherwise use a toothbrush

moistened only with water.

From 3 to 6 Years

For children between 3 and 6 years

old, an adult should help them brush

and floss. Use a pea-sized amount

of fluoridated toothpaste.

Baby's 1stDentist Visit

The Canadian Dental Association recommends

infants see a dentist within 6 months of the

eruption of the first tooth or by 1 year old.

SPECIAL FEATURE

The Dental Exam First, the dentist will review your medical history to find out about any health conditions that may affect dental treatments or procedures or that may be associated with oral health problems. Tell your dentist if anything has changed since your last visit.

Your dentist will inspect your mouth for:

Q�Damaged, missing or decayed teeth

Q�Signs of cavities or gum disease

Q�The condition of previous dental work

Q�Signs of mouth or throat cancer, and suspicious growths or cysts

Q�Teeth positioning

Q�Signs of clenching or grinding

Q�Signs of bleeding or inflammation

Your exam may also include dental X-rays

and an examination of the neck.

What do dental X-rays show?

X-rays show cavities under existing fillings,

decay under the gum line and between the

teeth, fractures, impacted wisdom teeth,

and bone loss caused by gum disease.

They also show if children’s teeth are

erupting properly.

SPECIAL FEATURE

Dental Care for Seniors Your oral health and dental needs change as you age. You may have dentures or dental implants. You may take a medication that causes dry mouth or makes gums grow. A dentist will assess your unique situation and help you maintain healthy teeth and gums.

Dentures

Dentures (artificial or false teeth) should

be tended to as carefully as natural teeth

to keep germs and infections away.

Dental Implants

Dental implants act as tooth root substitutes,

providing a foundation for artificial teeth.

A metal anchor is surgically inserted into

the jawbone and gradually bonds with the

bone. An artificial tooth is then attached

to the implant. To support implants, you

must have healthy gums and bone under

the teeth.

Natural Teeth

Great news: older adults are keeping their

teeth longer than ever before. Not-so-good

news: seniors are more likely to have cavi-

ties develop around the root of the tooth.

It’s important to take good care of your

natural teeth and gums with daily brushing

and flossing and regular dentist visits.

Taking proper care of your teeth and gums is a lifelong commitment. Follow these simple steps to keep your oral health good for life.

SPECIAL FEATURE

ORALHEALTH

Goodfor Life™

4. Visit your dentist regularly.48% of Canadians who haven’t seen a dentist in the past year have

gum disease. Regular dental exams and professional cleanings are

the best way to prevent and detect problems before they get worse.

1. Keep your mouth clean • Brush your teeth and tongue twice a day.

• Use a soft-bristle toothbrush and fluoride toothpaste.

• Wait at least 20–30 minutes after eating before brushing your teeth.

• Floss every day.

• Look for oral care products with the

Canadian Dental Association (CDA) Seal.

• Eat a well-balanced diet.

• Limit foods and beverages containing sugar or carbohydrates.

• Ideal snack foods: cheese, nuts, vegetables, and non-acidic fruits.

3. Don’t smoke or chew tobacco.Besides ruining your smile, smoking and chewing smokeless tobacco

can cause oral cancer, heart disease, and a variety of other cancers.

Look for signs of gum disease:

• Red, shiny, puffy, sore

or sensitive gums

• Bleeding when you brush

or floss

• Bad breath that won’t go away

Look for signs of oral cancer:

• Bleeding or open sores that don’t heal

• White or red patches

• Numbness or tingling

• Small lumps and thickening on the

sides or bottom of your tongue, the

floor or roof of your mouth, the inside

of your cheeks, or on your gums

2. Check your mouth regularly

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�! JUST A DECADE ago, the word

“gluten” was foreign to many Canad-

ians. Now it’s become nearly as

ubiquitous as “low fat” on food la-

bels, and eliminating the sub-

stance—a mix of two proteins,

gliadin and glutenin, found in

wheat, barley and rye—from daily

diets is a runaway trend. But is going

gluten-free really the healthiest

course for everyone?

Before gluten-free diets became

the rage, it was mostly people diag-

nosed with celiac disease, a dietary

sensitivity first linked to gluten in

the 1950s, who were advised to stay

away from wheat. Celiac disease af-

fects only one in every 100 to 200

Canadians and is diagnosed

through a combination of a blood

test that detects antibodies and an

intestinal biopsy that looks for Ã

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damage to the small in-testine. In the 1980s, doctors began to notice that some of their pa-tients who didn’t meet the criteria for celiac disease nonetheless thrived without wheat. In 2011, doctors with expertise in celiac disease from seven countries met in Oslo, Nor-way, to define standards for diag-nosing and treating gluten-related disorders, and formalized the term “non-celiac gluten sensitivity.” That same year, a small, randomized study by Monash University in Aus-tralia of 34 patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) found those who ate bread that contained gluten were more likely to report

digestive pain, bloating, constipation, diarrhea and fatigue. And the trend began to grow.

With so few studies investigating how gluten affects us, we still don’t have enough informa-tion to determine

whether it’s truly a digestive irritant in people who don’t have celiac dis-ease. However, last August, the same Monash University researchers pub-lished a study in Gastroenterology in which they amended their original methodology and discovered gluten may be the wrong target. In the study, 37 participants with IBS who thought they had a gluten sensitivity thrived on a low-FODMAP diet. FODMAP stands for “fermentable

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DON’T LET LIFE SLOW YOU DOWN! The good news about getting older is that you know your body better than you ever did before. Taking care of your own health might feel like a change of pace af er years of looking af er everyone else,

but it is never too late to take charge!

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oligo-, di- and mono-saccharides and poly-ols,” all of which are short-chain sugars that are poorly absorbed by the body, including fructose, lactose, fruc-tans, galactans (found in beans) and polyols (found in artificial sweeteners and pitted fruits). And when the researchers secretly added gluten (but not wheat) to the low-FODMAP diet, participants didn’t have a problem. The study hypothe-sized that fructan, a short-chain sugar found in wheat, could be the culprit, not gluten. And it’s possible those who do well without wheat might need to eliminate other foods, such as ones that contain polyols, or artificial sweeteners, for example.

Regardless of what science sug-gests, books like Wheat Belly have captured the public’s imagination and encouraged an overwhelming perception that gluten consump-tion leads to a slew of health prob-lems. With society’s fascination with food fads, especially quick fixes, the gluten-free industry is booming. A 2013 report by market research firm Packaged Facts esti-mates the gluten-free market in Canada exceeds $450 million; and the Gluten-Free Expo, where around 100 vendors hawk their cookies and crackers, will hit five

major Canadian cities this year. But there’s a danger to seeing glu-ten as the culprit for all of one’s health woes. “I think people far too quickly ascribe their medical prob-lems to gluten,” says Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, an

obesity expert and medical director of the Bariatric Medical Institute in Ottawa. Symptoms could be related to stress, a problem with the digest-ive tract like IBS or another food trigger, such as lactose. Before making the switch to a gluten-free life, keep a food diary and record the timing of your symptoms. Then make an appointment with a doc-tor or nutritionist.

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BLOATI

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ARE IBS SYMPTOMS MAKING YOU FEEL A LITTLE OFF?

AlignTM can help. Backed by 10 years of research, only Align hasB. infantis 35624, a patented probiotic strain that

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©Procter & Gamble, Inc., 2013 PHC-12634

To ensure this product is right for you, always read and follow the label.

2014

HURRY!

Nomination

Deadline

June 13,

2014

NOMINATEA NURSE TODAY!Now’s your chance to make your nomination for the Best Health 2014 Nurse Excellence Awards!

Johnson is proud to once again present these important awards that recognize the dedication of Canada’s great nurses.

Three nurses from across Canada will be chosen to receive an award in the form of

a $1500 cheque donated, in their name, to a healthcare charity of their choice. We’ll

announce the award recipients in the September 2014 issue of Best Health magazine.

Visit besthealthnursingexcellence.ca to make your nomination today!

I’ve been training for my first half-marathon, and my right knee is killing me. Turns out I have runner’s knee. What can I do to ensure a safe and speedy recovery?

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Runner’s knee, sometimes referred

to as patellofemoral pain syndrome,

is a loose term associated with pain

behind and around the knee, partic-

ularly where the thigh bone and the

kneecap meet. It can be caused by

overuse, trauma, weak thigh mus-

cles, misalignment of the joints or

foot problems. Once the knee is

strained, kneeling, running or

squatting can trigger pain.

After getting X-rays and an MRI,

rest your knee, use ice packs, com-

press it with elastic bandages, ele-

vate it on a pillow, do stretching and

muscle-strengthening exercises at

least once a day and consider using

foot orthotics.

Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory

drugs are often recommended to

treat runner’s knee, but these can

cause serious and sometimes fatal

damage to the stomach over the

long term. A safe and effective alter-

native is to use such supplements as

curcumin, Boswellia and methylsul-

fonylmethane. Omega-3 from fish

oil and vitamin D supplements will

calm the inflammation. Physiother-

apy and massage can also help.

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First off, ensure you’re not eating

foods you’re allergic or sensitive

to, as gut inflammation can cause

swelling and pain in your joints.

Allergies trigger mast cells to release

histamine, causing the redness and

swelling that accompany knee

pain. Common allergens include

wheat, dairy and peanuts. Focus

on flax, chia and hemp seeds, and

wild salmon or smaller cold-water

fish such as herring, sardines and

mackerel, as these are your best

choices for high-powered, anti-

inflammatory foods and can help

speed up recovery.

Tart cherries may reduce joint

pain, thanks to pigments called an-

thocyanins, which have been shown

to lessen pain by reducing inflam-

matory markers in the blood. Kale

and Swiss chard are natural anti-

inflammatory foods containing

vitamin K, which has, in studies on

mice, lowered the chemicals the

body releases when it’s inflamed.

Ginger root can beat pain by inhibit-

ing the effects of arachidonic acid,

which is the fatty acid that’s respon-

sible for triggering the inflammation

you’re experiencing.

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Runner’s knee can occur for a num-ber of reasons, but one culprit might be this double whammy: tight, weak quadriceps (the group of muscles in the front of your thighs) and tight hamstrings (the opposing muscle group to the quads, found in the back of your thighs). This injury can occur when your kneecap tracks out of its normal alignment, causing irri-tation on its underside. Avoid ramp-ing up your running mileage or frequency too quickly, and scale back if you feel pain. Make sure your shoes are the best fit for your foot

type—staff at a running store can help. Do strengthening exercises for your quads on both legs, like ball squats—place a stability ball between your lower back and a wall as you squat—or step-ups on a low, sturdy bench. Loosen up leg muscles with stretching and a foam roller.

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�! One of the most mysterious

diseases around has television to

thank for upping its visibility.

House, the popular medical drama

that ran from 2004 to 2012, featured

the long-running joke “It’s not lu-

pus.” A go-to response for the

cranky Dr. House, it was trotted out

every time another diagnostician

posited that the chronic autoim-

mune disease was behind a pa-

tient’s bafing symptoms. Tere was

good reason for constantly suggest-

ing lupus, though: known as “the

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great imitator,” it can masquerade as a variety of other conditions. Because lupus occurs when the body attacks its own cells and tissues, the swath of possible symptoms ranges from hair loss to fatigue, from chest pain to arthritis. It all depends on which parts the overzealous im-mune system targets.

Making a lupus diagnosis even trickier is the fact that there’s no sin-gle test for it. Doctors must look at a battery of lab results, plus a patient’s current symptoms and medical hist-ory, before coming to a conclusion. Those eventually diagnosed with lu-pus are statistically more likely to be female (a staggering 90 per cent), between the ages of 15 and 45, and of African, Asian, Hispanic or First Nations descent.

An estimated 15,000 Canadians are affected by lupus, and the number of cases is increasing. Whether this means there are actu-ally more sufferers or that we’re just getting better at identifying them is unclear. Lupus can be trig-gered by certain medications used to treat seizures, high blood pres-sure or rheumatoid arthritis, so one might think that increased pre-scriptions are contributing to its rise. However, the ratio of lupus cases induced by drugs is around five per cent—too low to have a noticeable impact on the condition’s overall incidence.

One of the other unsolved issues of lupus is how to make it go away. We currently know only how to slow the damage and control the symptoms. But devising a cure is not out of the question, according to Dr. Robert La-hita, Lupus International’s chairman. “The progress made in treatment and diagnosis during the last decade has been greater than that made over the past 100 years,” he says on the founda-tion’s website. “It’s therefore a sensible idea to maintain control of a disease that tomorrow may be curable.”

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THE

LION WHISPERER

WATCH THE

LION WHISPERER IN

ACTION WITH LAYAR

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WHEN KEVIN RICHARDSON

steps through the gate

onto a stretch of pristine

South African grassland, time ap-

pears to ripple. The disturbance

causes a momentary abatement

in the roar of the cicadas; the only

sound is the crunch of dry grass un-

der his boots. Then the air shivers,

and half a metric ton of flesh and

muscle bursts from the veld: an adult

lion and lioness, their movements

so fluid they seem poured from the

bush. Before Richardson can prepare

himself, the cats paw his head and

bring him down.

“Bobcat! Gabby!” he coos. “Come

here, my babies!”

The lions flop on top of him like

kittens at play. Over the past 17

years, millions have watched similar

encounters on news segments and

nature channel shows: Richardson,

wearing shorts and a T-shirt, attacked

by several of the planet’s most fear-

some predators. Just as viewers brace

themselves for a bloodbath, a love-in

ensues. No number of YouTube clips,

however, can rival a live perform-

ance. The animals smell like dust

and death. They are not tame; they

are untameable. Somehow, because

of a skill or intuition he cannot name,

Richardson appeals to the softer ele-

ments of their nature.

We have seen the likes of this be-

fore, and we know how it ends. Croc-

odile Hunter, Grizzly Man, Siegfried

and Roy—all killed or injured by ani-

mals they claimed kinship with. Rich-

ardson, who has known these lions

since they were babies, insists he’s

different, but is aware of the risks.

“If I told you there are no issues as-

sociated with what I do, I’d either be

a liar or mentally unstable,” he says,

as Bobcat nuzzles his neck.

No animal behaviourist has ever

endorsed Richardson’s activities—

the prevailing theory is that lions

are too unpredictable to be trusted,

no matter how docile they may ap-

pear. The more persistent criticisms

come from park rangers who often

face considerable danger from large

carnivores while on patrol. Two years

ago, a ranger at Kgalagadi Trans-

frontier Park, a preserve bordering

Botswana, barely survived an attack

where he was dragged off an open

truck by a lion that grabbed his leg

between its teeth. It’s the kind of

threat 27-year-old Mosa Masupe

faces every day. Masupe is a ranger in

Botswana’s Mashatu Game Reserve,

home to several prides. He has fol-

lowed Richardson’s career ever since

he first surfaced in the media in 2000

as the “Lion Whisperer,” and like

many rangers who hear about Rich-

ardson, Masupe believes a gruesome

mauling is inevitable. “Those lions

will kill him,” he says.

In 2001, a lion called Tsavo busted

Richardson’s nose with a blow from

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mapped with scars. Even a gentle love

bite could nick a jugular, leaving Rich-

ardson to bleed out in the grass, alone.

“I’m not really worried, because it’s all I

know,” says Richardson’s wife, Mandy,

who has been with him for over 13

years and helps raise their two young

kids. “It’s what he’s done since I met

him. He’s so passionate about his work

that it’s contagious.” So contagious that

for years Mandy also worked as Rich-

ardson’s public relations point guard,

helping build his rough-and-tumble

reputation. “Have you seen any unto-

ward movements from these lions?” he

asks. “There’s no reason for me to hit

them or subdue them. They’re lovable,

social cats, man.”

Perhaps. But does a word like “lov-

able” apply to wild creatures whose

consciousnesses we cannot fathom?

Or is it a case, as the South African

writer J.M. Coetzee once put it, of

there being “no limit to the extent to

which we can think ourselves into

the being of another”? Clearly, Rich-

ardson believes that such empathy,

at least when it comes to lions, knows

no bounds.

RICHARDSON HAS DESCRIBED

himself as a self-taught zo-

ologist, but he is something

deeper—a medium between the

world of wild predators and those

who present a terminal threat to

their survival. In the wild, lions are

menaced from three main sectors:

the relentless spread of agricultural

land, in which 75 per cent of the

Richardson sprawls with adult brothers Tau and Napoleon in their enclosure.

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animals’ natural habitat has been converted into grazing fields for cat-tle; wildlife clashes, where farmers kill hundreds of lions a year in re-taliation for attacks on livestock; and endemic poaching by locals, who can make the equivalent of their annual incomes—about $6,000—by shoot-ing a single lion and selling the meat and bones on the black market. (Lion bones are an acceptable substitute in Asian tiger bone wine, said to boost virility. A status symbol for an ex-ploding Chinese middle class, a case of the potion can fetch as much as US$25,000 at auction.)

As a result, lion populations are be-ing decimated. In 1950, over 200,000 roamed Africa’s vast savannahs. The most recent estimates put the figure at 35,000. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature currently classifies the species as “vulnerable.” Stuart Pimm, a conservation biologist at Duke University in North Carolina who has spent his career studying present-day extinctions, calls it “a full-fledged crisis.” In addition to the ecological costs of knocking off an

apex predator, Pimm describes the loss of lions as an ethical defeat. “It’s a measure of the fact that we aren’t being good stewards. What sort of planet do we want to hand to our children and grandchildren?”

But as bad as things are for wild lions, notes Richardson, life is just as tenuous for the 5,000-plus in captivity in South Africa, raised to be slaughtered like chickens. (With the country’s wild lion popula-tion averaging 3,000, that means the majority of South Africa’s lions are in cages.) Most captive lions begin their careers as cubs on

breeding farms, enjoying the atten-tion of countless visitors. The cats will keep generating money until they’re six months old, at which point tourists will pay as much as $800 for an experience called “walking with,” in which a handler and his guests stroll through a patch of veld with a lion. Twelve months later, no longer adorable, they be-come fodder for tourists in a prac-tice known as “canned hunting.” In 2007 alone, 16,394 foreign hunters

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Richardson often

spends afternoons

in his sanctuary,

lying against the

cats while sending

emails from his

phone or tablet.

They like the

closeness, he says,

and it helps keep

their bond strong.

arrived to kill an estimated 46,000

animals, an industry the government

considers “a sustainable utilization

of natural resources.” According to

one report, 5,892 dead lions were

exported from the country between

2001 and 2011. The majority were

slaughtered in canned hunts.

In his videos, Richardson’s rough-

housing showcases these “natural

resources” as warm-blooded crea-

tures to an international audience.

As his YouTube views rack up, so,

too, does his ability to publicize the

plight of captive lions and, more

broadly, the perils facing a shrink-

ing wild population. Wrestling lions,

however, is the easy part. Saving

them is the real challenge.

WHILE RICHARDSON’S rug-

gedness suggests he was

born in the bush, his clan

hails from the lower-middle-class Jo-

hannesburg suburb of Orange Grove,

where citrus orchards long ago gave

way to family homes with postage-

stamp–size lawns.

When Richardson was three or

four, his dad helped him rear a baby

bird that had fallen out of its nest.

Dazzled by the experience, Richard-

son began to nurse other birds, un-

til, by the age of seven, he acquired

his first moniker: “The Bird Boy of

Orange Grove.” Weavers, pigeons,

mourning doves—broken birds by

the dozen were brought by neigh-

bours to the family’s home, and

Richardson would add them to his

growing aviary.

When Richardson was in his early

teens, his father died. He acted out,

drank heavily, stole cars, even rolled

his sister’s vehicle in a crash. He be-

gan to lose interest in his birds and

one day set the flock free. While he

once hoped to study veterinary sci-

ence, he was lucky to make it into

university at all, and even luckier to

escape with two years of zoology and

a bachelor’s degree in physiology

and anatomy. His work as a physical

trainer eventually landed him a job

at a Johannesburg facility called Lion

Captive-bred kin to these lions are sold

to hunting clubs for as much as $12,000.

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Park. But Richardson was barely in-

terested in his duties. He had fallen

in love with two lion cubs named Tau

and Napoleon.

He doesn’t properly understand

why, on his first visit, he stepped

inside the pen with the youngsters.

Richardson had ridden superbikes,

flown planes—so youthful machismo

may have played a part. Still grieving

his father, Richardson suspects he

was driven by the need to master his

fear of death. Regardless, the impulse

was foolhardy. “At six months a lion

cub is big,” he explains. “Check out

his claws, his teeth—the thing can

make a mess of you.”

No sane, unarmed wrangler will

stay in an enclosure with a lion older

than two and certainly no older than

four. Richardson ignored that policy

and spent as much time with the

brood as possible, bonding as they

grew into ornery adolescents and

then matured into strapping adults.

He discovered—as everyone else

at the park soon did—that he had a

sixth sense when it came to the cats.

He could ask them to stroll alongside

him, to roll on their backs to accept a

tummy rub. He used no coercion—

no sticks, no pepper spray. Lions, he

learned, are hugely social, and if wel-

comed into the pride, he wasn’t just

safe, but loved.

And so a brand was born. At 22,

Richardson became a star wrangler

at Lion Park—a glorified zoo where

his antics wowed guests eager to get

a taste of the bush in a contained

setting. But he realized that, by em-

phasizing Tau and Napoleon’s cute-

ness, he was contributing to a trend

that meant more cubs doing “cub

duty” in competing parks, and thus

more lions disappearing when they

became too old to manage. “You

could say I was part of the problem,”

says Richardson.

If he was to do right by the animals

he loved, he needed to both stoke his

celebrity and eliminate the need for

it to exist. Richardson began thinking

about moving away from Lion Park

and acquiring a facility large enough

to let his captive lions roam free for

the rest of their lives.

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RICHARDSON PILOTS a four-by-

four through the dirt tracks of

Welgedacht Game Reserve, 50

kilometres north of the South African

capital of Pretoria. A year ago, with

the help of donors, the Kevin Rich-

ardson Wildlife Sanctuary was estab-

lished here, on a privately owned plot

comprising 1,200 hectares of rolling

grassland. The sanctuary, which also

includes hyenas and black leopards,

is Richardson’s first opportunity to

run a park entirely how he sees fit.

Thirteen electrified enclosures,

each about a hectare in size, shel-

ter Richardson’s 26 lions of various

ages, many of which previously lived

at Lion Park.

Richardson parks his four-by-four

and makes for one of the enclosures.

Two lionesses, Meg and Amy, lope

up, and he’s on the ground in sec-

onds. Richardson has known the

sisters for 11 years, but after he left

Lion Park, they were sold to a breeder

and joined a pride that was too large.

Scared they were headed to a hunt-

ing shop, Richardson purchased the

animals back.

Retrieving Meg and Amy brought

home the importance of being in

control of his own facility. Outside

the sanctuary, the pair would likely be

pawns in a lucrative industry where

hunters pay as much as $58,000 to

gun down a full-grown male and up

to $10,000 for a female. The experi-

ence also inspired him to redouble

his efforts at curtailing the canned

hunt—joining conservation groups

in directly lobbying the South Afri-

can government; raising awareness

through fundraising and social media

campaigns; giving seminars across

the country and abroad about the

more repugnant aspects of the kill-

ings; and working with wildlife NGOs,

most notably Protecting African Wild-

life Conservation Trust, that have out-

reach programs with landowners.

The fear is that the industry is

simply too profitable to stop locally.

Richardson’s hopes—and the hopes

Like a reluctant superhero, Richardson

believes he needs to stay in character as

the Lion Whisperer or no one will pay

heed to threats facing Africa’s big cats.

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of environmentalists around the world—rest with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s recent decision to look into whether the African lion requires protection under its Endan-gered Species Act, which would pre-vent hunters without permits from bringing lion trophies into the coun-try. The one-year review of the clas-sification would also likely influence whether the Convention on Interna-tional Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) de-cides to lift African lions to a CITES 1 categor ization—also under review.

“Lions are currently CITES 2,” ex-plains Richardson, “which means it’s totally legal with permits to hunt them and export the trophies.” CITES 1 categorization would ban

the exportation of heads, pelts, meat and bones to the United States, as well as the other 178 countries that implement CITES. Considering that the U.S. is by far the canned hunt’s largest customer base, “it would stop the industry in an in-stant,” says Richardson.

The last thing Richardson wants, however, is to end up with more li-ons in his sanctuary, a big reason his females are on contraception. His aim is for the captive population to plummet, and that means placing a nationwide moratorium on lion breeding—something advocated by many conservation groups, including Four Paws, an international animal-welfare organization that runs a lion sanctuary in South Africa.

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Richardson leans back against a

now supine Meg, ruffling her ears. “If

only tourists did the math and said,

‘Hey, where do all these cubs end

up?’” he says. “Would you come and

pet a cub knowing that, as an adult,

he’s going to get slaughtered? Would

you be happy?”

A WEEK OR SO BEFORE Christ-

mas in 2013, during one of the

violent storms that announce

the arrival of South Africa’s rainy sea-

son, a lion called Thor was felled by a

lightning strike. Thor was a white lion

in Richardson’s sanctuary, named for

the Norse god of war and thunder.

The lion had starred in many videos

and documentaries, most notably

the epic White Lion, which turned

him into a matinee idol. The circum-

stances of his death seemed like a

resounding tribute from above.

Richardson’s relationship with

Thor was not without its troubles.

On a film set five years ago, feeling

the pressure of all that money spool-

ing through the camera, Richardson

prompted Thor to attack an anima-

tronic lion one time too many. With

staggering speed, the 300-kilogram

animal lunged and grabbed Richard-

son’s forearm in his jaws, employing

just enough pressure to make his in-

tentions plain.

In the only way he was able, Thor

reminded Richardson that lions are

not circus performers and that the

intersection between friendship and

exploitation had been crossed. Rich-

ardson was ashamed. It took three

years for Thor to forgive him and in-

vite the Lion Whisperer back into his

social circle with a guttural grumble.

“When he died, I don’t think I’ve

ever cried more,” says Richardson.

The essential aspects of Thor’s char-

acter—his solitariness, but also his

independence and pride—are why

Richardson’s mission is to run Wel-

gedacht as a game park without a

captive lion population once his

own brood dies off. “I want no lions

in enclosures,” he says. “If that hap-

pens, then I know we’re doing some-

thing right.”

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My family was in the car on a return trip from Nova Scotia, where we had gone to visit our many rela-tives. Because of gasoline rationing, it had been very difficult to visit these relatives during the war, so they now had to be visited on a yearly basis, especially since one of them—an important one, my maternal grand-father—had undergone something called a coronary. I had no clear picture of what this was, but it had something to do with his heart and meant he might die at any minute. I had no clear picture of dying either, except that it happened to tadpoles not properly tended to and caterpil-lars if you didn’t put enough holes in their jar lids. Death was sad, and also smelly, but it wasn’t anything that could conceivably happen to me. (The cousins who were shortly to die of diphtheria were still alive. Was this the last visit on which I saw them? There were more fatal child-hood diseases at that time.)

I t w a s t h e s u m m e r o f — I think—1948, so I was eight years old. Or it might have been 1947, and I was seven. It was soon after the war, in any case, and therefore the highways were empty.

By “highway,” I don’t mean what everyone now pictures: an eight-lane throughway, with few exits and no crossroads, along which trucks and cars hurtle at 110 kilometres an

hour. I mean two lanes, an intersec-tion at every county line and many level crossings for trains. Eighty kilo-metres an hour was considered fast.

Cars were different then. They were bigger, they were heavier, and they were not digitized. Our car was, I believe, a Studebaker. The seats were upholstered in a scratchy grey fabric with an odd smell that was worse in the heat, and this mattered because there was no air condition-ing. The front seat extended all the way across—no bucket seats—and there were no seat belts. There were none in the back seat, either, and there were no car seats for children. No one thought anything of this.

My father was driving. Fathers drove then: it was not usual for moth-ers to drive if fathers were in the car. My father was a man of many pro-jects and was usually in a hurry. His idea was to reach Nova Scotia, get the relative-visiting over with and drive back again as fast as possible, so he

My father’s idea was to reach Nova Scotia, get the relative-visiting over with and drive back again as

fast as possible.

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drove quickly and for long hours. My mother would aid this scheme by packing sandwiches, doling out Life Savers and massaging the back of my father’s neck while he drove.

When it got dark, we might stop at a motel. (Motels were clumps of tiny cottages with Christmas-tree lights strung along their fronts.) But there were not many of these, so we would simply pull over to the side of the road. My father would cut some tent poles with his axe, and we would set up our heavy canvas tent in a likely spot—which meant any place flat and not in a swamp. We cooked on a campfire or a pump stove, and we peed in the bushes. Needless to say, you would not be allowed to do any of this now. Nor would you wish to, as you would likely get run over or arrested.

A note on my mother. My father was not untypical for that time: there were still a lot of men around who, having migrated from remote locations to towns or cities, had that combination of backwoods and urban skills. But women along the lines of my mother were less usual. She was a self-declared tomboy: scorner of ladies’ hats and tea par-ties, rider of horses, speed skater and, in her youth, daredevil walker of barn ridgepoles. A year or so ear-lier, I had witnessed her chasing a bear away from our outdoor cooking

area with a broom. She did not read-ily lose her cool. Point being: if she later said we almost died, then we almost did die. She was not prone to exaggeration.

Back to the day in question. We were driving west. It was late after-noon. Insects were squishing on the windshield. My brother and I were bouncing around in the back seat, unbelted, on the loose. There was no Internet, there were no iPads or Game Boys or other forms of in-car entertainment, and there was no car radio. So, after cows had been counted in passing fields, games of “I Spy” had ground to a halt and we’d run out of steam on the serial story we took turns narrating, we would fall back on the mischievous. We might even do something delib-erately annoying, such as imitating bagpipes or singing songs we knew my father despised. Or—a new thing, since bananas had just reappeared, having been unobtainable during the war—causing chewed-up banana to extrude from our mouths while say-ing “toothpaste.” Then there would be giggling and snorting, and when our father had had too much of this, he would say “Pipe down, kids.”

In the midst of silliness, we are in death.

We were almost at the “Pipe down, kids” stage. The sunlight was golden.

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The car was descending a long, steep

hill at its usual rapid pace. At the

bottom of it, a tractor pulling a huge

load of hay drew out of a side road

and began to cross in front of us. The

car brakes failed. My mother’s hand,

which was massaging the back of my

father’s neck, froze in its motion.

Did I realize what was happen-

ing? I don’t think so. But I must have

realized something, because what-

ever my brother and I were do-

ing stopped short. There were no

screams, no expletives. Silently the

sun shone. Silently the hay wagon

inched across the road. Silently the

car descended the hill. Just before

the moment of impact, our lane was

cleared, and both we and the hay

wagon continued on our way.

My mother said afterwards that

she thought her last moment had

come. My father said, “That was a

close shave.” I feel obliged to note

that “a close shave” is an expression

that was used before the takeover of

safety razors and electric shavers. It

refers to the straight razor, lethal if

the hand slipped, and means that

the blade had come very close to

the jugular.

How many times have I almost died

since? Many; so have we all. But that

was the first time of which I was

aware. Did I feel grateful then to have

been spared? No. I was too young for

such complex feelings as gratitude.

But I feel grateful now. My mother’s

general comment still applies: “We

hang by a thread.” The reference is to

the sword of Damocles, and now that

there is an Internet, there is no excuse

for not looking it up.

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Did I feel grateful then to

have been spared? I was

too young for such complex

feelings as gratitude. But

I feel grateful now.

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WATCH A VIDEO OF A

TWO-YEAR-OLD USING

AN IPAD WITH LAYAR

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Three years on, we’ve had a sec-ond child, purchased two iPads, gone through five iPhones (children love lobbing things) and accumulated enough battery-operated junk to fill a toy shop. It’s not that I’ve abandoned fresh air for free apps, or that my chil-dren, now two and four, get Netflix over paintbrushes, but reality some-times calls for the iNanny. It’s how a lot of parents use the iPad. Just in from the daycare dash, Dad is cooking din-ner while Mom is sorting socks and

unpacking lunches, and so the sprogs get 20 minutes of show time. Every-thing in moderation, right?

“Any time there is a massive shift in the tools of life, we don’t know what impact it will have,” says Michaela Wooldridge, a psychology PhD can-didate at the University of British Columbia who is researching how technology affects infant and toddler development. “Because these devices are so new and technology is chang-ing so fast, we haven’t had time to evaluate long-term outcomes.”

A3BB7<5�A1@33<�B7;3 limits, whether it’s on a TV or tablet, is something al-most every parent of a school-age child

grapples with, but the debate is begin-ning at younger and younger ages. Many toddlers are what’s called “digit al natives”—they have never known a world without gadgets. The Canad-ian Paediatric Society’s most recent guidelines, updated in 2013, essentially discourage all “screen-based activi-ties” (including playing on tablets and smartphones) for children younger than two, and recommend two hours or less of “recreational” screen time a day for school-age kids.

Prying an iPad away from a child is familiar territory for many of us. Toronto mom Hayley Chiaramonte sees the creative value of a cult game like “Minecraft” but is concerned by her eight-year-old daughter’s fixation on it. “She’s totally unresponsive when she’s on the iPad. It’s as if she leaves us for another planet,” Chiaramonte says.

According to Wooldridge, experts don’t yet know whether children born three years ago, let’s say, are destined to be more tech-obsessed than an eight-year-old whose early years did not include multiple port-able devices. “Infants and toddlers have been completely unrepresented in the research because it wasn’t

A child’s character and interests play a part in how drawn they are to media, as do parental habits.

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until recently that they were even considered to be consumers,” she says. A child’s character and interests will play a part in how drawn they are to media, as will parental habits.

A 2013 study from Common Sense Media, an American non-profit that examines the effects of media and technology on young users, found that 38 per cent of U.S. kids younger than two are using tablets or smart-phones—possibly even before they can string a sentence together. (This is up from 10 per cent in 2011.) By the age of eight, 72 per cent of children have used a smartphone, tablet or similar mobile device.

Based on reports from families, Wooldridge hypothesizes that parents and caregiv-ers are citing “education” as the primary objective when granting screen time to babies and toddlers. “The reality is that when you ask parents how the devices are being used, it is mostly to occupy or distract the child,” she says.

Some families may limit tablet use to 20 minutes while stuck in the super-market cart or during a car trip, while others employ them as in-house babysit-ters for hours at a time. But plonking an iPad in a three-year-old’s lap—without a

person there to give the experience instructional value—probably won’t offer much that’s positive, she says. We can praise the latest and greatest apps, but kids still need to be guided.

“The way infants and toddlers de-velop and learn is through social in-teraction, and the device itself can’t provide that,” Wooldridge says.

:7A/�5C3@<A3G�AB@C55:32 with the topic of technology and what was appropriate for her two daugh-ters, now 11 and 10, so much that she wrote a book about it, titled Screen

Time. Guernsey, who works as a jour-nalist and directs an early-education policy program in Washington, D.C.,

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tells parents to look at the three Cs—content, context and child—when making choices. “Instead of simply saying, ‘Is screen media bad or good for our kids?’ we have to consider the content on the screen, the context in which media is used and your child’s own personal needs,” she says.

With the three Cs in mind, media can be a springboard for conversation, dis-covery and open-ended play. Guernsey

explains that some positive experiences come when you open up a device with your child, learn how it works and en-gage with it together. This could simply mean asking your child questions about the animals in the virtual zoo he’s creat-ing while you unload the dishwasher.

Then come the moments when you want (or need) to pour yourself a cup of tea or glass of wine and read the newspaper. Giving your child the iPad makes that possible. But there’s no reason a tablet cannot be an oc-cupier at one point in the day and a conversation starter at another, says Guernsey. “As long as we’re maintain-ing a healthy ratio between moments of non-interaction and interaction, then I think we’re doing just fine.”

But, as with any other tool, there is a time and place for it to be in-troduced, based on a child’s devel-opmental capacity. “These devices are not benign,” says Wooldridge. What niggles is the idea that the iPad is replacing a richer experience for our children, like playing chess or climbing a tree. Is children’s creativity being sapped by video games and vir-tual worlds?

7B¸A�<=B�/<�either-or situation, says Jason Krogh, CEO of Sago Sago, a Canadian company that designs apps for kids. “It’s as if the point of com-parison is that you’re going to have a conversation with your child as the alternative to them playing with the iPad,” he says. “But we live in a world where that’s not always possible.”

Krogh curates apps for his daugh-ter in the same way he might vet the shows she watches and the books she reads. “A children’s book can be good or bad, a children’s toy can be good or bad, and the same applies for any technology-based experience.” He ad-vises parents to be wary of apps with grand educational claims, and to focus more on what’s fun and imaginative.

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“We need to model to our kids that it’s okay to do nothing sometimes,” says Judy Arnall.

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“I’m very much of the belief that what kids need more of is play.” Krogh cites one of his daughter’s favourite games, “Toca Tea Party” (from Swedish app de-veloper Toca Boca), as a good example of the app as a toy. “It’s not trying to control the whole experience, but in-stead acts as a prop for creative play.”

Guernsey agrees with Krogh’s take but would also like to see different types of games and innovative ways of using our devices. “We need to demand media that promotes social interaction and promotes looking up, and not being so zoomed in,” she says.

That zone of concentration is what makes the iPad a perfect device on long-haul flights, daunting car trips and rainy days at home. But relying on it, says Judy Arnall, a Calgary par-enting expert, deprives kids of any chance of boredom, and boredom is what inspires and enables creativity. “We need to model to our kids that it’s okay to do nothing sometimes.”

7B�2=3A�A33; to be a double-edged sword. When children are getting antsy in a long lineup or at a restau-rant, handing over the iPad is a quick way to pacify them before other pa-trons start judging us for their whin-

ing. Then again, parents also feel like slackers for using technology to solve an age-old parenting dilemma instead of turning it into a teachable moment about practising patience. Without the iPad, says Arnall, your kid might have invented a game for himself or engaged in conversation with grown-ups at the table.

I can’t be the only mother who of-ten falls into the “do as I say, not as I do” school of parenting, as I secretly send a text from the breakfast table. We need to teach our sons and daugh-ters to use the tools of our culture mindfully, and that begins with know-ing when to switch them off ourselves. How can I expect my kids to focus on one thing at a time if I rarely do? Tech-nology is part of children’s daily lives, but the way that it’s embedded in their lives is something that we, as parents, have some control over.

“Set some ground rules with your kids,” advises Arnall. “Block off per-iods in the day when there is no technology.” This applies as much to parents as it does to children. “Setting your own boundaries is what teaches kids to set their boundaries.”

“The tools only have the power we give them,” says Wooldridge.

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:=<5�E=@92/GA�can lead to thoughts both embarrassing and in-sightful. Chatter captured on Twitter’s #OverheardInTheOffice includes:

What was yesterday, the 17th? (Pause) What’s today, the 19th?

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Out of curiosity, is this Halloween candy? It’s January, but it doesn’t matter. I’ll still eat it.

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A colleague responded, “At this point, I think we’re going to need a blackboard.” 5/@G�A16<3723@

“I like work; it fascinates me. I can

sit and look at it for hours.”

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@ Work

The best of both bowls.

Introducing NEW Quaker® Harvest Warm & Crunchy Granola.

All the satisfying warmth of oatmeal, with the delicious crunch

of granola. Simply add milk, heat, and amazingly, it stays crunchy

all breakfast long.

© PepsiCo Canada ULC, 2014

NEW

WHATEVER I WAS ABOUT to go through, on this fall morning in 2013,

at least I wasn’t in it alone. From the clammy-palm moments before

the anaesthetic takes hold to the agonizing wake-up in the recovery

room, from choking down watery hospital soup to marvelling at my

new scar, I had an ally.

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Recovering from

a radical

nephrectomy

would be like

recovering from

a stab wound.

AS I PREPPED for surgery at an Ontario hospital, my father—thousands of kilo-metres away in western Canada—was awaiting his turn in the operating suite the next day. Over the next 24 hours or so, many more operations would take place, all part of a synchronized chain of transplants across Canada. For con-fidentiality reasons, I couldn’t be told how many people were involved in the chain or where they lived, but once it was all done, my father would have the kidney he desperately needed, and I would be one shy of a pair. As for the fate of my organ, it would be flown to a hospital out west and given to some-one I didn’t know and may never meet. I’m not used to this kind of intimacy with strangers.

THE DECISION I’D MADE three years earlier to volunteer as a donor didn’t impact just my life and my father’s; it connected us to other people queued for operations. When I wasn’t worry-ing about my own predicament (rare), I spent time imagining families a lot like ours: concerned, fearful, hope-ful. We’d all seen the effects of kidney disease. For my brothers, mother and me, it was a potential end to decades of uncertainty, of watching my dad deal with dropping energy levels and an array of medical problems.

I wanted to give my dad a healthier life, without harming my own. My parents also had a complex set of emotions about what I’d set out to do. “I love my children and wouldn’t want to see any of you go through the pro-cess,” my father told me. “But I know that’s my best chance of getting a kid-ney.” My mother was thankful, too, though she would have gladly taken my place if she’d been a viable donor.

Unlike Mom, I had made the cut—and was waiting to be cut open. I’d mostly quelled the worries that clouded the merry-go-round of blood workups, ultra-sounds, chest X-rays, urine analyses and re-nal scans. In 2012, we’d been part of a chain that collapsed, as some do because of tissue

incompatibilities, unrelated medical issues, life changes and other factors. My dad felt disappointed. I felt guilty. Small though it was, there was an un-mistakable sensation: relief. While I was committed to seeing the opera-tion through, I wasn’t necessarily in a hurry to go under the knife. I still had so many questions—then and now.

Was becoming a living donor the right decision, or would I need that spare kidney down the road? Would my dad get back to the kind of life he wanted? How long before I could lift

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my toddler? Why would I volunteer for pain by climbing onto an operat-ing table, like the blue one a nurse was now ushering me onto?

Pain. I’d shattered an elbow in a bike accident in 2006, and it was ex-cruciating. A doctor friend said that recovering from a radical nephrec-tomy—a kidney removal—wouldn’t be as bad. The only sensitive zone would be the incision site on my ab-domen. As he casually informed me, it would be like recovering from a stab wound. Oddly, I was reassured.

Thinking of it in stabbing terms made me feel like a tough guy—even if I did find it a bit chilly in the oper-ating suite. I soothed my nerves with thoughts of a day spent with my dad, doing what he liked best: golfing. So what if I hated golf? A minor detail in a much bigger picture.

I NEVER WOULD have been able to help my father if not for the growing popularity of “daisy chain” donations, more often known as living-donor paired exchanges. A kind of organ-ized swap meet, these chains feature donors who are incompatible with their loved ones (as I was with my dad due to our different blood types) and are instead matched with people in the same situation.

Though the idea of paired ex-changes has been around since the 1980s, it was only in the late 2000s that health-care systems and hospital

networks worldwide began widely in-stituting programs to come to the aid of hard-to-match patients. Canadian Blood Services has been facilitating exchanges with its partners in the provincial health-care systems since 2009. Paired exchanges accounted for 10 per cent of the 456 living-donor kid-ney transplants performed in Canada in 2011. Though some chains in the United States have included dozens of participants, examples here typically consist of eight to 10 people to keep matters manageable. More often than not, they also include an “altruistic donor,” someone who doesn’t have a specific recipient in mind but whose participation can greatly improve the odds of making a viable chain.

The Kidney Foundation of Canada estimates that 2.6 million Canadians either have kidney disease or are at risk due to conditions such as dia-betes and high blood pressure. Now

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66, my father had been coping with kidney problems since he was diag-nosed in his early 20s with glomer-ulonephritis, a disease that affects the kidneys’ ability to filter blood of waste and excess fluid and salt. He’d contracted it as a result of streptococ-cal infections that hadn’t been prop-erly treated while he was growing up on a farm in southern Saskatchewan.

As a kid, I didn’t really notice my dad’s health, but I do remember how his energy flagged through my teens: there were fewer family trips, more long naps. By the time he was 44—only two years older than I am now—his kidney function had declined to the point he needed dialysis. As it does for 1.5 million people world-wide (and more than 23,000 in Can-ada), that meant being hooked up, multiple times a week, to a machine that filters the blood—though not as efficiently as a kidney can, and with a host of side effects like hypotension

and anemia. My dad was on dialysis for less than a year before undergo-ing a first transplant with a kidney from a deceased donor. Equal parts optimist and pragmatist, he believes he’s lucky to have been ill at a time when dialysis and transplants were becoming widespread. “Had I been of a previous generation, I wouldn’t have lived past 45,” he says. “When they had kidney failure, they died.”

His replacement kidney lasted 15 years, very good for borrowed parts. In 2007, it was back to dialysis and the waiting list for a kidney. He was stable on dialysis, but years of medi-cation regimes and other physical strains were causing problems (his heart being just one area of concern). Could the solution be as simple as me supplying him with a fresh one?

Most of us have more renal func-tion than we will ever need: serious health problems occur only once function falls below 25 per cent, and you require only 10 per cent to stay off dialysis. According to Dr. Peter Nickerson—a transplant nephrolo-gist at the University of Manitoba who serves as the medical director of organ transplantation for Canad-ian Blood Services—just because a patient has only one kidney doesn’t mean they’ll max out at 50 per cent. “We’ve had patients who’ve had 70 or 80 per cent on one kidney,” he says.

It would seem life with one kidney isn’t necessarily different from life

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with two. So when all the tests con-firmed I was a prime candidate, my father and I entered the database of possible matches. My journey to the operating table had begun.

I THOUGHT I MIGHT be sad about my parting with Left Kidney—newly edu-cated, I’d only begun to appreciate its value. Instead, when I woke up in the recovery room, my first thought was, I want more drugs. Sensing I was not the stoic sort, a nurse offered me an epidural. I’d seen its euphoric effect on my wife after 23 hours of labour; I now understand the appeal.

The recuperation process wouldn’t always feel so fantastic. The incision took time to heal, as did the abdom-inal wall underneath, but by the six-week mark, I was moving without discomfort. As for my dad, his doctors were thrilled: unlike his first trans-plant, there were no rejection epi-sodes. I could hear the excitement in his voice every time we talked on the phone to trade post-op health de-tails and plan get-togethers. It would just be visits to each other’s homes at first, but now that he wasn’t tethered to a dialysis machine, maybe the trips could be more ambitious, like the

European holidays from my childhood. It would be somewhere with nice golf courses, but good beaches, too, so my daughter could impress her grandpa with her sandcastle-smashing skills.

ODD AS IT may seem, I don’t often wonder who’s walking around with my kidney. When Nickerson asks me about my experience, I tell him I’m surprised by my lack of curiosity. To me, it’s as if there’s no stranger be-tween me and my dad—he’s the one who received my kidney. This isn’t uncommon, apparently. Nickerson says many donors feel that way be-cause they can see the direct impact the chain had for their loved ones. In our case, it’s not just the health bene-fits. There’s a new closeness between my father and me, born out of shared experiences (distance be damned).

I’m only beginning to understand the importance of my role in my dad’s story and in the stories of those nameless recipients. On my end, I’m happy it didn’t take me long to fulfill a major post-surgery desire: being able to wrestle my daughter into her snowsuit. I can’t wait until she’s old enough to hear the story about how Dad got his cool scar.

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LOOKING BACK, John Aldridge knew

it was a stupid move. When you’re

alone on the deck of a lobster boat in

the middle of the night, 66 kilometres

off the tip of Long Island, N.Y., you

don’t take chances. But he needed to

start pumping water into the Anna

Mary’s holding tanks to chill so that

when he and his friend Anthony

Sosinski reached their first string

of traps a few kilometres away, the

water would be cold enough to keep

the lobsters alive for the return trip.

In order to get to the tanks, he had to

open a hatch on the deck. The hatch

was covered by two Coleman cool-

ers filled in Montauk Harbor seven

hours earlier. The coolers weighed

about 90 kilograms, and the only way

for Aldridge to move them alone was

to snag the handle of the bottom one

with a box hook and pull—hard.

Then the handle snapped.

Suddenly Aldridge was flying back-

ward, tumbling across the deck to-

ward the back of the boat, which was

wide open, just a slick ramp leading

straight into the black ocean. The

water hit him like a slap. He went

under, took in a mouthful of Atlantic

Ocean and then surfaced, sputtering.

He yelled as loud as he could, hop-

ing to wake Sosinski. But the diesel

engine was too loud, and the Anna

Mary, on autopilot, was already out of

reach. He was alone in the darkness.

Aldridge was 45, a fisherman for

almost two decades. The first thing

you’re supposed to do, if you’re a

fisherman and you fall in the ocean,

is to kick off your boots—they’re

dead weight. But as Aldridge treaded

water, he realized that, in fact, his

boots were elevating his feet and tip-

ping him backward. Aldridge’s green

monstrosities were an oddity among

the members of Montauk’s commer-

cial fishing fleet, but now he had an

idea of how they might save his life.

Aldridge reached down and pulled

off his left boot. Straining, he turned

it upside down, raised it up until

it cleared the waves, then plunged

it back into the water, trapping a

bubble of air inside. He tucked the

inverted boot under his left armpit.

Then he did the same thing with the

right boot. It worked; they were like

pontoons, and treading water with

his feet alone was now enough to

keep him stable and afloat.

The boots gave Aldridge a chance to

think. He was in a very bad situation.

It was about 3:30 a.m. on July 24. The

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North Atlantic water was chilly—22

degrees Celsius. Dawn was two hours

away. Aldridge set a goal: just stay

afloat till sunrise. Once the sun came

up, someone would start searching for

him. For now, though, there was noth-

ing to do but watch for predators.

IT WAS A LITTLE after 6 a.m. when

Anthony Sosinski awoke. The mate

he and Aldridge hired to work this

trip, Mike Migliaccio, got up first,

and when he saw Aldridge was mis-

sing, he yelled for Sosinski. Sosinski

tried to puzzle it out: before he went

to sleep at 9 p.m., he told Aldridge to

wake him at 11:30 p.m. Now it was

past dawn and they were more than

24 kilometres past their traps.

The Anna Mary is a 14-metre boat

without many places to search for a

missing person. Still, the men looked

everywhere before Sosinski ran to

the VHF radio. He switched to Chan-

nel 16, the distress channel, and at

6:22 a.m., he called for help: “Coast

Guard, this is the Anna Mary. We’ve

got a man overboard.”

The Coast Guard’s headquarters

for Long Island and coastal Connect-

icut is in New Haven. Sean Davis is

a petty officer there, and that mor-

ning he stood watch at the station’s

communications unit. Davis ra dioed

back, asking Sosinski for details.

He then turned to a member of the

team in the command centre: Pete

Winters, the Operations Unit watch

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bought the Anna Mary with his best friend since grade school, Anthony Sosinski.

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stander, who was working the Coast Guard’s search-and-rescue computer program, known as Sarops.

By 6:28, the command centre had notified the search mission coordina-tor in New Haven and the search co-ordinator at the district headquarters in Boston, who approved the use of two helicopters and a search plane. At 6:30, Davis issued a universal dis-tress call on Channel 16, asking mar-iners to keep a sharp lookout.

Davis kept working the radio. He contacted the Coast Guard station in Montauk with instructions to launch

all available boats and ra-dioed Air Station Cape Cod to tell them to get airborne as soon as possible.

Winters was busy man-ning Sarops. At its heart is a simulator that can gen-erate, in minutes, as many as 10,000 points to repre-sent how far and in what direction a “search ob-ject” might have drifted.

The challenge in Al-dridge’s case was that the search team had no clear idea when (and there-fore where) he had fallen overboard. That created a potential search area larger than Rhode Island, a sweep of ocean 48 kilo-metres wide and extend-ing 97 kilometres south—a

search area almost impossible to cover. The team in New Haven based

their initial calculations on Sosin-ski’s report that Aldridge was sup-posed to wake him up at 11:30 p.m. That suggested to them that Al-dridge had fallen overboard between 9:30 p.m. and 11:30 p.m., which would put him somewhere between eight and 32 kilometres south of the Long Island coast. Winters input those assumptions, and Sarops came back with an “Alpha Drift,” with the highest-probability locations clustered about 24 kilometres offshore.

A few weeks after his son’s rescue, John Aldridge Sr.

got a tattoo on his arm of big green fishing boots.

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�

The next step for Sarops was to de-

velop search patterns for each boat

and aircraft. A little before 8 a.m.,

New Haven started issuing patterns

to the first assets on the scene: the

plane, a helicopter and a patrol boat

from Montauk. The helicopter was

piloted by Air Station Cape Cod lieu-

tenants Mike Deal and Ray Jamros,

who were joined by a rescue swim-

mer named Bob Hovey and a flight

mechanic named Ethan Hill.

The Coast Guard search was off to

an excellent start. The only problem

was that everyone was looking in the

wrong place. Aldridge did not fall in

the water at 10:30 p.m.; he fell in at

3:30 a.m. Almost 50 kilometres south

of where the helicopter crew was care-

fully searching for him, Aldridge was

clinging to his boots in the cold water.

BACK ON THE Anna Mary, Sosinski

had been having second thoughts

about the search area. After his ini-

tial conversation with Davis, he in-

spected the boat more carefully. The

pumps were on, sluicing cool ocean

water through the lobster tanks. In

the summer, Aldridge and Sosinski

would start filling the tanks when

their boat reached the 40-fathom

curve, the line on maritime charts

that marks where the ocean’s depth

hits 73 metres, which is the point at

which the water temperature tends

to drop. The 40-fathom curve is only

about 24 kilometres north of the

Anna Mary’s first trawl. Then Sosin-

ski found the broken handle on the

ice chest and realized how Aldridge

had fallen overboard.

Together Sosinski and Winters in

New Haven came up with a theory:

Aldridge had gone overboard some-

where between the 40-fathom curve

and the Anna Mary’s first trawl. At

8:30 a.m., Winters passed this infor-

mation to Jason Rodocker, a petty of-

ficer and expert in Sarops. Rodocker

punched in the new variables, and

the program spit out a second set of

search patterns.

The news about Aldridge was also

spreading through Montauk’s fishing

community, and 21 boats volunteered

to help. Davis couldn’t communicate

with all 21 at once on top of the Coast

Guard craft he was directing, so Win-

ters hit on an idea: put Sosinski in

charge of sending out the search pat-

terns for the volunteer fishing fleet.

Sosinski focused his energy on the

commercial boats, but none of it felt

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like enough. Aldridge had left his

driver’s licence on the Anna Mary,

and every once in a while, Sosinski

would pick it up. He’d stare at it and

say out loud, “Where are you, John?”

THE SUN ROSE on John Aldridge at

about 5:30 on July 24. Now that it was

light, he gave himself a new assign-

ment: find a buoy. That way, he would

be more visible to the searchers, and it

would be easier to stay afloat.

For a couple of hours, Aldridge

drifted and looked. Finally, he spot-

ted a buoy—tethered by rope that

extended up from a string of lobster

traps at the bottom of the ocean—

and began swimming. It was painful

work, but he was eventually able to

angle himself directly into the buoy.

He grabbed the rope and held on.

By noon, Aldridge had been in the

water for almost nine hours. He was

starting to shiver uncontrollably. Sea

shrimp and sea lice were fastening

themselves to his T-shirt and shorts,

claiming him as part of the sea.

Aldridge could see aircraft over-

head running search patterns. Even if

they’d figured out more or less where

he had fallen in, they hadn’t taken

into account the possibility that he

had stopped drifting and snagged a

buoy. He had to get himself farther

east. He pulled his buck knife out of

his pocket and cut the rope that held

the buoy in place. He tied it around

his wrist and began swimming.

He willed himself to keep kicking

until he reached another buoy. He

recognized that it belonged to his

friend Pete Spong, who owned a lob-

ster boat called the Brooke C. He un-

tied the rope from his wrist and tied

it to the anchor rope underneath the

new buoy. Now he had two buoys

connected by a few metres of rope.

He straddled the rope, repositioned

the boots under his arms and waited.

He knew he couldn’t survive another

swim. If he was still in the water at

sundown, he would tie himself to the

Brooke C’s buoy. That way, his par-

ents would have something to bury.

UP IN THE helicopter, Deal, Jamros,

Hovey and Hill had been staring at

the water since about 7 a.m. They

were growing discouraged. The truth

of working as a search-and-rescue

pilot for the Coast Guard is that you

don’t do a lot of rescuing—almost ev-

ery time a person goes overboard in

the North Atlantic, he drowns.

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The helicopter crew finished

their search pattern—the third

of the day—and requested a

new one. From the command

centre, Davis radioed coordin-

ates, and at 2:46 p.m., the he-

licopter started moving again.

Twelve minutes later, Jam-

ros called out, “Mark! Mark!

Mark!”—protocol when an

object has been spotted. There

was Aldridge, between two

buoys, clutching his boots and

waving frantically.

IN THE WEEKS after the res-

cue, I talked to local fisher-

men about the search. Most

of them teared up as they

were telling me the story.

What seems to go mostly

unspoken in their lives is the risk of

their jobs, and the improbable fact

that Aldridge hadn’t drowned under-

scored that risk for them even more.

The person who seems least shaken

by the experience is Aldridge. He has

no nightmares, no flashbacks, no fear

when he goes out on the water. The

Coast Guard pilots and the men in

New Haven express pride when they

talk about their work that day, and

when Aldridge talks about it, he

sounds the same way. “I always felt

like I was conditioning myself for that

situation. I mean, thank God I was

saved, yes. There’s no better entity

than the U.S. Coast Guard to come

save your ass when you’re on the

water. But I felt I did my part.”

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1VWZR`S\�AcQQSSR�

Aldridge and Sosinski have a thriving business:

800 traps sitting on the bottom of the Atlantic.

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6=E�1/< you tell if someone’s

from New York?

Don’t worry, they’ll let you know.

</16=�A=B=��.</16=A=B=��=<�BE7BB3@

/4B3@�0CG7<5 a floral shirt, my

mom modelled it for our family,

worried that it made her look old.

At the time, we were teaching our

dog how to recognize people by

name, and it was decided that Mom

would be the test. When I asked our

dog to go find my grandmother, she

ran straight to Mom. The shirt was

quickly returned.

9/@=:7</�F7<��B=@=<B=

<=�AG;>/B6G

4`][�VO^^g^ZOQS�Q][

;G�6CA0/<2�/<2�7 couldn’t

decide which jacket to buy our

granddaughter, so we asked the

young salesman.

“If you were buying a coat for

your girlfriend,” I said, “what

would you get?”

“A bulletproof one,” he answered.

“I’m married.” 8=6<�1/<CB3A=<

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Life’s Like That

e a r t h d a y. c a

SPECIAL FEATURE SECTION IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

You know all about silver linings – those hopeful or positive aspects of otherwise diffi cult situations that inspire

us to persevere. But do you know about green linings? When we take on a new lifestyle challenge for our health, the “green lining” is the

bonus benefi t for the environment. Thinking about it can help you stay motivated

and optimistic, rather than overwhelmed, while pursuing a healthier lifestyle.

Following these seven easy tips will make you healthier, while creating a greener planet!

GREENLININGSSeven healthy lifestyle changes

with “green linings” for the environment

BY BREANNE ARMSTRONG,

EARTH DAY CANADA

SPECIAL FEATURE

GET ACTIVEHealth Canada recommends that adults

should accumulate at least two and a

half hours of physical activity each week,

while children and youth need at least

60 minutes per day. Getting more exercise

has countless benefits for our physical and

emotional health! Walking or biking to work

instead of driving reduces harmful pollution

and fossil fuel use in our professional lives

while allowing us to enjoy nature.

GO MEATLESSConsider eating meat less often, and

increasing your vegetable intake! By

going meatless one or two days per

week, you can reduce water and air

pollution from animal waste, stop

rainforests from being cut down (for

grazing or feed crops), and save

thousands of litres of water and

hundreds of kilograms of grain.

QUIT SMOKINGIt’s obvious that giving up cigarettes is

good for your health – but did you know

that it is also very beneficial for the

environment? According to the City of

Ottawa’s website, Canadians toss away

nearly 8,000 tonnes of cigarette butts

each year! Littered butts take 15 years to

decompose, contain toxic chemicals that

leach into the soil, and have even been

found in the stomachs of birds and animals.

CHOOSE NATURAL ALTERNATIVESCosmetics, personal care, and cleaning

products can be dangerous. By simply

using them, and without even knowing

it, many of us put toxins onto our skin,

our bodies, or throughout our homes

every day. Many products can even be

replaced by homemade recipes made

from a few basic ingredients, such

as baking soda, coconut oil, vinegar,

or lemon juice. Not only are these

inexpensive options toxin-free, they also

need less pollution-producing packaging

and transportation.

EAT LOCALAnother healthy step is increasing the

amount of local food you consume. Fresh

produce has none of the preservatives

and additives found in canned or

processed versions, and is richer in

vitamins. The green lining? By eating

locally, you reduce the pollution created,

and energy used, from shipping and

storing food from across the globe.

A NIGHTOUTWant to support a

healthier environment

while treating yourself

to a night out? Join Mill

Street Brewery for Earth

Hour on Saturday, March

29, 2014. Candlelit parties

will bring the community

together in a symbolic

environmental effort, and

50 cents from every pint

sold that day and evening

will be donated to Earth

Day Canada! The Lights Out

campaign will continue

during Earth Month: for

every six-pack of beer sold

in stores from March 30

to April 26, Mill Street will

make a 50 cent donation

to Earth Day Canada.

For more information

about the event, visit

www.earthday.ca.

SPECIAL FEATURE

EARTH DAY CANADA’S MOBILE APP TRAVELS WITH YOU

There is so much we can do to create a healthier environment. At Earth Day

Canada, we wanted to help you make this a part of your daily routine. That’s

why we created a brand new mobile app to make it easy and fun! Starting in

April, be one of the first to install the app. Complete eco-friendly challenges

to accumulate points, then share your achievements with friends. You can also

redeem the points for discounts and prizes at participating green-minded

Canadian retailers. Join the fun at www.earthday.ca.

DRINK WATERGetting enough water

maintains vital balance

in our bodies; it also

helps us concentrate,

supports the immune

system, removes toxins,

improves the appearance

of our skin, and can even

assist with weight loss

when you substitute it for

higher-calorie beverages.

Other good reasons to

choose water over soda or juice? Producing, storing,

and shipping drinks uses up resources and energy,

and creates packaging waste, much of which ends

up in the landfill.

SPEND MORE TIME OUTSIDEAccording to a report by the David Suzuki

Foundation based on the results of its 30x30

Nature Challenge, those who spent even as little as

30 minutes outside each day “reported significant

increases in their sense of well-being, feeling

more vitality and energy, while feelings of stress,

negativity, and sleep disturbances were all reduced.”

SPECIAL FEATURE

TOP 10 ACTIONSTO REDUCE YOUR IMPACT

ON THE ENVIRONMENTWe are all busy these days, but there are quick, easy, and affordable

ways to reduce your carbon footprint and lessen our impact on the earth. Let’s embrace our environmental responsibility!

1 SIMPLESAVERS

Replace incandescent light bulbs with LEDs, and use aerators on faucets and shower heads.

2 DON’TDISCARD

Donate, reuse, and recycle items before throwing them in the trash.

5 WASHING & DRYING

Wash full loads of clothes in cold water and hang to air dry.

6CAREFULCLEANING

Choose natural, non-toxic cleaning products and make simple, natural cleaners using vinegar, baking soda, and water.

9 HEATING & COOLING

For summer air conditioning, set your thermostat to 24°C or 25°C and for winter heating, 19°C or 20°C. Install ceiling fans and programmable thermostats.

IIIIII

IIIIIIIIIIIII

IIIIIII

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

25°C

4 FOOD CHOICES

Choose local and organic foods that are in season, and when possible try to eat less meat.

7SMARTSHOPPING

Buy what you need, not what you want. Also, consider renting and borrowing things you don’t often use.

10 CLOSETO HOME

Vacation, travel, and work as close to home as possible.

3 TRANSPORTATIONALTERNATIVES

Walk, cycle, car pool, and use public transportation, or consider car sharing programs or renting.

MAIN STREET

8 BATHROOMBASICS

Take short showers instead of baths and close water taps while brushing your teeth.

e a r t h d a y. c a

=>3<7<5�/�>@3A3<B from Santa

this past Christmas, my four-year-

old granddaughter, Savannah,

was having trouble getting past

the tied ribbon. Finally succeeding,

she flipped over a second gift and

eyed the ribbon tied around it,

which is when she asked, exasper-

ated, “Why did Santa put all these

traps on my presents?”

A/<273�0@=E<��C a l g a r y

BE=�>=:713�=44713@A recently

visited my four-year-old grand-

daughter Marrin’s daycare to give a

talk about the importance of telling

the truth. After, when the presenter

asked if there were any questions,

Marrin raised her hand. “I peed the

bed last night,” she confessed.

D/:/@73�/:23@A=<��S p r i n g h i l l , N. S .

AS\R�g]c`�Tc\\WSab�YWR�ab]`WSa�b]�`R�QO�

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acPaQ`W^bW]\��ASS�ÔUS��"�T]`�RSbOWZa�

“It’s worse than a sugar highÑI let them play with

my high-vibration cosmic energy crystals.”

/<2�=<3�4=@�B63�972A

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/(�/\�7�R]\¸b�bVW\Y�VS�aOc`�ca�

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As Kids See It

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b]�[g�b]Sa´Pcb�[]abZg�7�`S[S[PS`�TSSZW\U�T`SS��/a�7�

Z]]YSR�Ob�bVS�PO\OZ�aQS\S�bV`]cUV�bVS�PZc`�]T�a[]YS´

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Quitting Time?

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The same scene today would look a little different. Instead of a Player’s Light, a teenage girl might be “vap-ing” on a Blu, an NJOY or any of the other e-cigarette brands currently flooding the market. According to the National Youth Tobacco Survey from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the percent-age of American middle and high school students who have tried e-cigarettes doubled from 3.3 per cent in 2011 to 6.8 per cent in 2012. While research shows the majority of vapers are either former or current smokers, the survey found that 160,000 stu-dents who had tried e-cigarettes had never smoked traditional cigarettes.

Today it’s also a lot easier to pur-chase e-cigarettes than analogs, a term used for old-school cigarettes. While Health Canada hasn’t author-ized the sale or advertising of any e-cigarettes, minors can buy them from suppliers online, where no proof of age is required. (Nicotine-free brands, such as eRoll and Dune Cigs, are sold over the counter in Canada at convenience stores and are exempt from age restrictions.) There’s no real data yet, but medical authorities such as the CDC are concerned young non-smokers exposed to nicotine in e-cigarettes may be enticed to take up traditional smoking.

As more tobacco companies en-ter the e-cig market, the “gateway” risk rises, says David Hammond, an

associate professor at the School of Public Health and Health Systems at the University of Waterloo in Ontario.

“If I’m a CEO, there’s an incen-tive to grow the nicotine market, not shrink it by having people transition from cigarettes to e-cigarettes to ab-stinence,” Hammond says. “They want people to use both. Even the marketing of e-cigarettes is similar. They use superattractive models—images that say it’s fashionable. It doesn’t look like a health message, as in ‘Here’s a way to quit smoking.’ What it does look like is, ‘Wouldn’t you like to try these?’”

/11=@27<5�B=�B63 first consumer data by research group GfK, of Amer-ican smokers who are also e-cigarette users, 56 per cent are male and 44 per cent female. (The majority are millennials.) However, brands such as Vapor Couture and Vaping Vamps clearly target women, with their pink-and-purple packaging and curlicue fonts. “Women’s only” e-cigarettes are sleeker and more elegant, says Ma-ria Verven, CEO of Vaping Ventures, the company behind Vaping Vamps. “Vaping is a hip, healthy alternative to smoking,” she tells me. “I don’t see any problem with marketing to women.”

Last year, Blu, which holds 40 per cent of the e-cigarette market, signed Jenny McCarthy and Stephen Dorff as spokespeople and rolled out unprecedented web, TV and print

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campaigns. NJOY premiered a web ad starring Courtney Love, and tab-loids ran stories showing Kate Moss, Sienna Miller and Robert Pattinson holding e-cigarettes.

According to a report by Citibank, from 2011 to 2012, print-ad spending on e-cigarette marketing in the United States rose 71.9 per cent, while spending on TV ads rose 17.9 per cent—a sig-nificant new revenue source for media. But the fi-nancial windfall may be short-lived because the at-torneys gen-eral from 40 states are urg-ing the Food a n d D r u g Administra-tion (FDA) to restrict the ad-vertising and sale of e-cigarettes so that it doesn’t directly target youth (for example, by playing up e-cigs’ fruit and candy flavours).

In Canada, almost all advertising of tobacco products is banned, al-though there are exceptions—it’s per-mitted in publications with an adult readership of 85 per cent or more. In addition to advertising, “seeding” in-fluential cultural events has become a popular strategy in both the U.S. and Canada. At the spring/summer

2014 New York Fashion Week, NJOY distributed e-cigarettes after shows; samples of the nicotine-free brand Luli were handed out during the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival.

Sharon Anne Cook, a professor in the faculty of education at the Uni-versity of Ottawa and author of the 2012 book Sex, Lies and Cigarettes,

says the marketing strategy behind e-cigarettes may appeal to

women for the same reasons we flocked

to slimmer ciga-rettes in the

mid-20th cen-tury. “The so-called ‘light’ cigarettes in the women’s market were

d r i v e n b y the belief that

they were far safer than regular

cigarettes, and this belief was promoted by

tobacco manufacturers.”

/@3� 3�175/@3BB3A� A/43@- “If I look at the ingredient list of e-ciga-rettes, then, yes,” explains Peter Selby, chief of the Addictions Program at the Centre for Addiction and Men-tal Health in Toronto. The solution inhaled during vaping is typically a mix of vegetable glycerine, propyl-ene glycol and polyethylene glycol—

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chemicals similar to common food

additives—combined with varying

amounts of nicotine, depending on

the brand. It produces no carcino-

genic tar or smoke and delivers nico-

tine in less-saturated quantities than

cigarettes, which contain more than

4,000 toxic chemicals.

But the majority of e-cigarettes are

made in Chinese factories where a

lack of standardized manufactur-

ing poses a risk. A study by the FDA,

carried out in 2009, found cancer-

causing chemicals and toxins used

in antifreeze in several brands of e-

cigarettes. The study also discovered

traces of nicotine in products that

were being marketed as nicotine-free.

“E-cigarettes have great potential as

a harm-reduction tool but only after

they’ve been tested and regulated,”

adds Selby. “They’re not ready for

prime time, in part because they’ve

fallen into a ‘regulatory abyss.’”

>@7;3�B7;3�=@�<=B� Susan Willis

and her partner, N. Maxwell Lander,

started vaping in January 2013 as a

way to stop smoking with minimal

agony. The couple, who are in their

20s and run a photography business

in Toronto, are former pack-a-day

smokers. “I was sick and tired of feel-

ing sick and tired,” says Willis. “Since

I started vaping, my headaches and

fatigue are completely gone, and I

have more money in my pocket.”

E-cigarette kits, which come with

an atomizer, cartridge and plastic-tip

filter, cost between $40 and $80. The

nicotine refills average $10 a week for

the equivalent of a $70 analog pack-

a-day habit.

Elaine Lui, who runs the popu-

lar celebrity site laineygossip.com,

turned to e-cigs in 2012 to help wean

herself off a 25-year cigarette habit. “I

had a real love affair with smoking,”

she explains. “But I was turning 40,

and I just really needed to quit.”

E-cigarettes may turn out to be a

healthier option, but what is their po-

tential for helping smokers kick the

habit completely? In the U.S., they’re

currently the second most popular

method, after cold turkey, followed

by the nicotine patch and gum.

While long-term data isn’t avail-

able, a recent study from New

Zealand researchers shows that e-cig-

arettes are roughly as effective as the

patch. The World Health Organization �

��0G�/:3F/<2@/�97;0/::��3::3�1/</2/��2313;03@� ��!��3::31/</2/�1=;

IN THE U.S., E-CIGS ARE THE SECOND MOST POPULAR METHOD OF QUITTING SMOKING, FOLLOWED BY THE PATCH AND GUM.

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sees it differently. In July 2013, it re-

leased a statement saying that there’s

little proof e-cigarettes are an effective

method of quitting.

Health Canada hasn’t approved the

use of e-cigarettes as a cessation tool,

warning they “have not been fully eval-

uated for safety, quality and efficacy.”

And while the FDA has yet to weigh in

on the issue, several U.S. studies pub-

lished last year hint at their potential

to help people make the switch from

cigarettes. For its part, the American

Association of Public Health Phys-

icians has recommended e-cigarettes

for smokers struggling to quit.

E63B63@�>@=2C1BA�:793�Vaping

Vamps offer women a way out of ad-

diction or seduce them further into

it is an open question. Regardless,

their popularity indicates women are

a distinct subset of smokers. The gen-

der gap is closing, in part, because

women may have more difficulty

quitting and staying smoke-free.

According to Selby, the differ-

ence is both biological and social.

Female brain structure, hormones

and body composition may make us

more sensitive to nicotine addiction

and increase our cravings. “Women’s

smoking tends to be embedded in

their relationships—with partners or

friends,” he says. “Smoking comes to

mean socializing with others, so quit-

ting can lead to a disconnect, which

can be a struggle.” Unlike cold turkey

or the patch, e-cigarettes allow the

ex-smoker to maintain her social pat-

terns: joining the smokers huddling

in their designated zones.

Experts agree that the smoking rate

continues to decline overall due to

successful anti-smoking advertising,

less visibility in films, increasing tax-

ation and fewer places where smok-

ing is legal. But, according to Selby,

women don’t seem to respond as

well as men to nicotine-replacement

therapy, such as patches and gum.

“If one takes a look at how cessa-

tion occurs, the process is about set-

ting a date and getting it over with,”

says Selby. But these methods target

the physical component of addiction

instead of the psychological factors

unique to women. In other words, by

failing to take into account the spe-

cific reasons women smoke—how

our relationship with smoking is as

addictive as the cigarettes them-

selves—the cessation industry has

left female smokers behind.

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AS WE ARRIVE in Paris, the skyline

is cloaked in grey that matches the

city’s cool temperament. My family’s

look is less refined—dominated by a

red stroller festooned with toys.

Our plastic caravan arrives at

L’Ecritoire, a bistro on the Place de

la Sorbonne. There’s not another

child in sight. I unravel my son Tok-

ki’s travel high chair and unpack rice

cakes and organic vegetable purée. I

consider myself always prepared, but

according to Karen Le Billon’s rules,

I’ve already racked up two strikes.

In 2012, there was a mini-boom in

“momoirs” exalting a no-nonsense

French style of parenting: French

Kids Eat Everything, by Vancouver

academic Le Billon, and Bringing

Up Bébé: One American Mother Dis-

covers the Wisdom of French Parent-

ing, by Pamela Druckerman, focus

on how well Gallic children eat and

behave. Tokki was a serene baby at

birth, but he has since perfected a

shriek that’s between Mariah Carey’s

high C and a dog whistle. So when

my husband was invited to a film

festival in France, I decided to go full

immersion. Every first-time parent

is looking for answers. The French

seem to have them.

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B@/D3:

Lesson 1: Nobody Puts Baby in the CornerTokki is not used to being on a ter-

race at the decidedly adult hour of

9 p.m. From his perch, he cranes his

neck to make saucer eyes at a nearby

foursome: chic adults sipping wine,

oblivious to the Parisian rive gauche.

Laying out baby spoons in triplicate,

I feel a twinge of self-consciousness.

Never mind looking like tourists—

looking like nervous

parents is worse.

W h e n o u r p l a t e s

arrive, I crack open

Tokki’s purée tube, but

he shakes his head. He

only has eyes for the

steak. Since there’s no

way I’m feeding him

my husband’s medium-

rare meat, I break my

burger open to ex-

amine it for pinkness.

As I rack my brain for

the rules about babies

and blue cheese, Tokki’s fingers are

already in my food. I fashion a mor-

sel of hamburger meat running with

jus and offer it up. Still saucer-eyed,

he chomps furiously as I cool off a

small pile of fries, which he scarfs as

quickly as 10-month-old coordina-

tion allows.

At the end of the meal, the rice

cakes and purée sit untouched.

Across the pond, we tend to con-

centrate on nutrition, whereas the

French focus on pleasure. Watching

Tokki fill his chubby fists with my

meal, I have to admit I’ve never seen

him devour purée with such passion.

Lesson 2: Oh, Behave!The sun shines on the heads of chil-

dren riding ponies along the Jardin

du Luxembourg’s gravel paths. We

park Tokki’s stroller and step into

the Théâtre des Marionnettes to wait

for the puppet show to

begin. There’s a rus-

tling behind us, and

my son turns to stare

as a grandmother un-

wraps cookies for her

granddaughter’s snack.

Offering one to me, I

politely shake my head

no, but the little girl

protests. “Non. II n’a

pas le droit,” the grand-

mother says brusquely

to her charge. French

children either have le

droit—the right—to do something or

they don’t.

Evidence of this strictness is ev-

erywhere, including Annecy, in the

country’s southeast. One rainy after-

noon, Tokki and I take shelter in the

town library as a kindergarten class

files past us. I watch as they neatly

hang their purple pinafores on hooks.

Two guardians mix among the class,

neither shushing nor raising a voice.

No one fights over a book.

When I was

growing up, my

parents let me

know who was

in charge, and

it definitely

wasn’t me.

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We spend the next day sprawled on a lawn overlooking Lac d’Annecy. Families cluster around peacocks in the open-air aviary, while girls in Sunday dresses play badminton. When a toddler starts to scream, I observe the unflappable French mother in action. Marching the girl into a field in full view of everyone, the mother takes several paces before turning her back while her daughter wails. After what feels like an eternity, the child is tenderly collected and they walk away hand in hand. I’m in awe. Had the mother been too harsh? Or did I want to be more like her?

French parents do not panic in the face of meltdowns, but I am not French. On our last night in Annecy, in my desperation to feed the baby on schedule, we sit down at a café with no wait. As Tokki’s fussing turns to shrieking, I become so stressed that I tersely part ways with my husband and return to our hotel—forgetting he was about to find out whether he had won a festival prize. (He does.)

That night I’m filled with pride and then remorse. Why couldn’t I have finished eating and given my husband a kiss for good luck? Look-ing back on my own childhood in Toronto, I wonder if my Korean im-migrant parents were secretly French. When I was growing up, they let me know who was in charge, and it def-initely wasn’t me.

Lesson 3: Two’s Company, Three’s LoudThe French don’t understand the way North American children can eclipse the very thing that brought them into existence: the couple. The night I for-got to wish my husband good luck, I learned of his big prize alone. As Tokki slept spread-eagled on our ho-tel bed, my husband was partying in a ballroom at L’Impérial Palace.

In the crowd of filmmakers was a European duo who had decided their children weren’t going to keep them from enjoying the festivities. The French father pushed a snor-ing toddler in his stroller, while the Dutch mother had their sleeping nine-month-old strapped to her back. When my husband told me about them the next morning, I was full of admiration and bewilderment. Where did they get the nerve to keep their babies out past midnight?

Now that we’re home, I still priori-tize Tokki ahead of ourselves. Does this mean he will become a “child king,” as the French say with dis-dain? Is the idea of a well-mannered toddler a fantasy I should file along-side my dream French wardrobe and flawless accent? At the end of the day, my child is perfect to me just the way he is. He doesn’t need to be French, and I don’t think he minds that I’m not, either. Although I may keep trying.

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PAST LIVES

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/B�;G�5@/23� Christmas party, I

remember watching other mothers

being dropped off by car. It was snow-

ing heavily, but they stepped daintily

up the steps of the school, wearing

stylish tweed coats with mink collars,

calfskin gloves and thin rubber boots

buttoned over their pumps.

I hovered by the door, waiting for

Mum. Then, way down the side-

walk, I saw her. She was massively

pregnant, with two of my younger

brothers in tow. She had walked,

trudging through the deep snow,

wearing oversized galoshes and a

mammoth white coat that came

down to her ankles. Around her

middle she’d tied a long piece of

yellow rope, and my brothers clung

to the ends like little farmers at-

tached to a clothesline, trying not

to lose sight of a barn in the bliz-

zard. On her head, Mum was wear-

ing a brown leather Second World

War pilot’s helmet, earflaps down,

chinstrap dangling in the wind.

She had dressed for what she con-

sidered was the main occasion—the

cold. But why couldn’t she be nor-

mal? I could see she was popular—

others were captivated by her sense

of autonomy—but I felt shy and

hated being sucked into her orbit,

the centre of attention, where she in-

variably stood. If I complained, she’d

say, “You need to reach out to people!

Everyone feels shy, but shyness is a

form of selfishness!”

I like to think my relationships with

my own children are more breath-

able, more survivable. But are they?

When I was their age in the 1980s,

Mum gave me no freedom: the more

I pushed away, the more she in-

sinuated herself. She crossed every

boundary. Our relationship slid from

admiration to resentment until, as

she battled old age, I used to pray I’d

outlive her, if only for a few months,

so I could see what it felt like to not

be her daughter. So I could be me.

Yet, only four weeks after her

death—Dad had died three years

earlier—I’ve moved temporarily back

into their home in Oakville, Ont., to

sift through a half century of stuff,

looking for evidence of her… search-

ing for answers.

Friends warned me of this. They

said, “When your mother dies, you’ll

wish you’d asked her some ques-

tions.” I had more than 60 years to

ask, but now there are questions

I didn’t even know I had.

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;G� B6@33� 0@=B63@A—Robin,

Chris and Victor—and I are at our

childhood home, sitting on the steps

overlooking Lake Ontario, at the end

of an exhausting morning.

We’re about to tackle the space I’ve

been dreading: the trunk room. The

cedar rafters of the steeply pitched

ceiling give it the dry aroma of a

sauna, and a small window at the

back lets in a sliver of light. We have

to crawl to reach the corners. It’s go-

ing to be a lengthy dig.

The room is stacked with steamer

trunks and wooden crates. Scattered

around them is the usual debris of

a family—layered in circles, like the

growth rings of a tree. The top layer

reveals our most recent chapter:

Dad’s old metal walker and rubber-

tipped walking canes, bags of Mum’s

oxygen tubing, a metal bedpan.

But underneath, there are Hal-

loween masks, Christmas lights, old

paintings, plastic flowers, broken

chairs, unsorted toys, sets of luggage

and—deep in the farthest corner—

dozens of white plastic bags, bulging

and knotted.

Chris drags everything out into the

light and piles it in the upstairs hall.

He finds a shoebox of papers and

brings it down onto the veranda. He

sits on the top step in the sun, scans

the pile and then hands the whole

box back to me.

“Here,” he says. “You can trash all

of this.”

� �

Irritated that he seems to be mo-

toring through tasks in such a casual

manner while I’m drowning in detail,

I shake one of the envelopes. Out falls

a letter on Buckingham Palace sta-

tionery written by Princess Elizabeth

to Grandmother in 1947. She’s saying

thank you for a contribution to one of

her charities.

I wave it victoriously. “See? You al-

most threw it away!” Then I listen to

myself—it doesn’t take much for me

to revert back to our youth, the bossy

older sister.

B63� <3FB� /4B3@<==<� I hear

Robin yell from the playroom and I

run in to see what he’s unearthed.

For decades, sitting on top of Dad’s

filing cabinet in his library, there’s

been “the old tin trunk.” A black

metal sailor’s box, it has our great-

grandfather’s name stencilled in gold

paint on the front.

Robin holds out a brown notebook

from inside the trunk. Scrawled on

the cover are the words “Kolek Tom-

djoeng Sederhana Sasak 50.82 KM.

17.93T.”

“What is it?” I don’t even recognize

the language. Dutch?

“The original logbook of the fishing

boat Dad commandeered in Padang,

when he escaped from the Japanese!”

We flip through the pages in amaze-

ment. The first few are recorded in an

unknown hand of the ship’s original

native crew, documenting trips along

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the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, pick-ing up cargo. It’s all in Dutch, each page signed by a port master and of-ficially stamped. But 10 or so pages in, I recognize Dad’s handwriting.

On March 5, 1942, Dad—an officer in the Malayan Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve—commandeers the boat and begins to meticulously record their escape voyage, day by day. He lists the names of the men on board and records each one’s duties and what his intentions are (“to avoid capture by Japanese; to proceed up coast us-ing land breezes until latitude of N.E. Monsoon, with which we could cross Indian Ocean to Ceylon”). When Dad wrote these words, he was only 26 years old and had no way of know-ing what a harrowing 37 days at sea

he was about to endure—surviving Japanese strafing, high seas, limited rations and little water—nor that fate was guiding him across the Atlantic Ocean to New York City, where he would meet Mum.

Even more miraculously, there are photos of Dad and other officers on board the Sederhana. Dad has a beard and looks half-starved, more Errol Flynn than Cary Grant—but who thought to bring a camera, plus film, in the rush to escape?

D71B=@�/<2�7�dig further into the old tin trunk while Chris contin-ues to excavate the trunk room. At one point, he approaches us, his arms full of white plastic bags. As he dumps them on the wicker chair,

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fat beige envelopes and small blue

airmail letters sift out in the fading

afternoon light.

“What are they?”

“Letters Mum and Dad wrote to

each other—hundreds of them!”

The plastic bags are in the final

stages of decomposition; they frag-

ment into filmy confetti as we grab

for their contents. The tiny white

polka dots stick to our fingertips and

cling like ash to our clothes.

Robin flips open a letter post-

marked New York City, 1942. “Here’s

one that Mother wrote to Grand-

mother, telling how she met Father

when the war started.”

Dearest Mum, I know you probably

think I’ve lost my mind, but it’s only

my heart!

“She writes that she’d been out

dancing every night and was already

in her nightclothes, but this British

officer needed a blind date, so she

and her roommate flipped a coin and

Mother had to go.”

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Alec came to the door in his Navy

Lieutenant’s uniform and you know

what he did? He handed me his cap!

Can you beat that? So I threw it on

the floor and said, What do you think

I am, a hat rack?

We all burst out laughing—it

sounded so like Mum.

We spent the weekend together

and on Wednesday he asked me to

marry him!

“Whoa, wait a minute,” Victor says.

“Mum and Dad only knew each other

for one week before they decided to

get married?”

Chris laughs. “That explains a lot!”

Robin continues reading: These last

10 days have been worth anything

that may happen in the future…

“That’s a good thing,” I say, won-

dering if all war brides felt that way.

From 1942 to 1946, Mum and Dad

wrote to each other almost daily,

and Mum wrote to her mother every

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week. We’ve each got our laps full of

paper, trying to read and listen at the

same time, interrupting each other.

Chris says, “Here’s one when Mum

was stationed in Devon at Knight-

shayes Court, in the converted manor

house of Lord and Lady Amory. She’s

writing to Dad in Sumatra.”

I picture Mum in a grand hall with

a marble fireplace and gilt-edged

mirrors, now converted into a rest

home for convalescing American

air forces pilots. Mum was in charge

of entertainment.

“It’s typed on American Red Cross

letterhead.”

“She took her typewriter to war?”

I say.

“Along with her fur coat, high heels

and hot water bottle,” says Robin.

“I remember she told me that.”

“I thought they were supposed to

take only what they could carry!”

“Uh-huh, those were the rules, but

since when did Mother follow rules?

She figured a troopship would be full

of men tripping over themselves to

carry her luggage, and she was right!”

My darling Lackee: Lord & Lady

Amory were over last nite & I asked

them WHY the British have such a

custom of segregating the males &

females at dinner parties? Women

leave, while the men drink Port till

they’re wheeled off unconscious to

bed by their butlers. They’re known

as “1, 2, or 3-bottle men” depending

on their capacity…

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“Hold that sentence!” says Robin.

“I need more bourbon.” He heads

indoors with his empty glass.

“I’ll be the two-bottle man!” I say,

and follow him into the pantry.

When we return, Chris has flipped

his page over. “Here’s a loving ending.”

It is now late evening—peaceful

& still—with only the singing of the

birds & bleating of sheep to break the

silence—and of course my longing for

you which seems to reverberate from

every distant hilltop.

“They were married by then—

right?” asks Victor.

“Yep, but they didn’t really know

each other.”

Earlier, I’d resolved to clear out my

own mess so my children wouldn’t

have to face it, but now I’m having a

change of heart. Maybe it’s the only

way our children ever truly come to

know us, discovering things we never

wanted them to find.

B63�<3FB�2/G� back in the dining

room, I’ve finally finished sorting

Mum’s letters. They fill 23 bulging

binders. Her life is literally laid out

in front of me—but I can’t start read-

ing yet. There’s too much else to do.

Robin has found, among Dad’s

letters, a collection of small pocket

diaries. In one of them, 1946, I see

� � @ 3/23@ ¸ A � 2 7 5 3 AB

Dad has scrawled across

my birthdate, “Received

cable—eldest daugh-

ter born!” I thought he

wanted only sons, but

here is my first hint that

he expected more daugh-

ters. When he recorded

my birth, he was on a ship

in the South Pacific. Mum

was in the United States,

preparing to join him in

Hong Kong. I later turned

out to be his only daugh-

ter, but he called me “First

Daughter” for the rest of

his life. In the Far East,

this is a sign of respect.

And then suddenly, I find evidence

of my first amah, Ah Kan. Tucked in-

side Mum’s 1952 passport is a letter

and a photo from the woman who

cared for me during the early years of

my life in Hong Kong. It seems Ah Kan

was missing me after we moved away

and wanted my parents to sponsor

her to Canada. She must have been

29 years old when I was wrenched

from her arms at dockside and by now

would be almost 90, probably dead.

But I’m thrilled to find this.

Thank goodness people wrote let-

ters. When I recently taught a uni-

versity English course, I discovered

that none of my students under the

age of 25 had ever received one. Two

re m e m b e re d re c e i v-

ing a postcard, and one

thought he’d seen his

father’s handwriting—on

a cheque. What’s going to

happen to our histories if

computers crash? These

days I take more pho-

tos than ever before, but

they’re stored on my hard

drive. Who sees them? I’m

certain my great-grand-

children won’t. With com-

puters, the more we think

we’ve preserved, the more

we may have lost.

I decide to make a

photo album of the interior of the

house. I take, among other things, a

close-up of the dining room wallpa-

per, the hole in the upstairs window

screen, the latch on the back door,

the wicker mail basket, the crack

in the chimney plaster, the drawer

pulls in the pantry.

Who were our parents? They’re in

everything my brothers and I see

around us, but did we really know

them? Can we get to know them bet-

ter by sifting through what they left

behind, like forensic archaeologists?

What does it all mean? It feels like

we’re wading through puzzle pieces

with no finished picture guide on

the lid of the box. I still want to

know more.

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1Twelve per cent of Canadians

curse when frustrated by

customer service, making us one

of the most profane nationalities,

according to a 2012 Echo Research

study. Resist the urge. Elaine Allison,

a Vancouver customer service expert,

says keeping your cool, sticking to the

facts and being your most charming

self will bring better results.

2Know your contract. Most peo-

ple overlook the terms of service

and get angry when companies re-

fuse to waive rules.

13 Things You Should Know About

Customer

Service0G�>/C:�5/::/<B

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3If the problem can be solved

right away, vocalize your com-

plaint in the moment. It’s better to

have a free meal sitting in a restau-

rant than leave fuming after a sub-

standard dinner with a voucher you

might never use.

4If time isn’t a concern, put your

complaint in writing. A letter

creates a paper trail and saves you

from repeating the story, says con-

sumer advocate Christopher Elliott.

5Tell a company what it can do

to fix things, says Jeanne Bliss,

who has led customer service teams

for Mazda and Microsoft. Many

businesses want you to be satisfied,

and appreciate clarity.

6Don’t be a toxic customer.

Threatening to smear a com-

pany’s reputation if it doesn’t acqui-

esce is unethical and rarely works.

7Politely let the company know

how loyal you’ve been. Front-

line workers often can’t tell a long-

time customer from a crank. A free

night’s stay is a small gesture for 20

years of business.

8Trapped in a phone-menu

maze? While dialing zero can be

a shortcut to a real person, some

companies have made their short-

cuts more complicated. The website

gethuman.com lets consumers

share extensions and wait times. On

the site, Bell Canada and Rogers

Cable regularly get criticized for

having too many phone-menu steps.

9For the shortest hold time, con-

tact customer service between

9 and 11 a.m. Representatives will have

cleared the previous day’s backlog but

haven’t been hit by the lunch rush.

10If you’ve tried official chan-

nels to no avail, it might be

time to move up. Often, a web

search can unearth an executive’s

email address. Complain about the

system failure itself, not your efforts

to change cable bundles.

11Try a different route. The Can-

adian Transportation Agency

can deal with unresolved com-

plaints about flight disruptions,

unexpected charges and lost bag-

gage, but it doesn’t want to hear

about rude service or bad food.

12Facebook and Twitter can be

effective ways to jump the

queue. Airlines have been known to

respond to tweets within the hour,

when email queries can take days.

13Use one medium at a time.

Multiple channels are more

likely to create frustration for you

and the employees trying to help.

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Sunglasses? Check. Bathing suit?

Check. Pipe bomb? Check?

Last September, after for-

getting a homemade

explosive

in his bag,

Alberta resident

Skylar Murphy,

18, found air-

port security in

Edmonton to

be surprisingly forgiv-

ing: he was allowed to board his

Mexico-bound flight. Leniency,

however, had it limits. Murphy was

arrested upon his return home a

week later, following RCMP con-

firmation that the confiscated

item was indeed a bomb. He was

sentenced to a year’s probation

and $600 in penalties.

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Calgary writer Chris Turner took

to the court of public opinion in

December after Air Canada denied

a voucher transfer, pre-flight, to

his wife because she didn’t share

his last name. Unimpressed by the

airline’s explanation

of the policy as a fraud

deterrent, Turner

found support

on Twitter,

where he

blasted the

rule as antiquated.

#Surnamegate and

the subsequent barrage of media

coverage led Air Canada to allow

for a one-time exception, before

abandoning the policy altogether.

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Just under 200 vacationers were at

the mercy of Sunwing Airlines and

Cuban travel officials in January

after their return flight to Toronto

was repeatedly delayed. Irritation

at the dearth of forthcoming infor-

mation morphed into anger as

the airport’s potable water, food

and toilet paper supplies were all

exhausted. Expressions of regret

from the company were slow in

coming—when the passengers

arrived at Pearson International

Airport, nearly 20 hours late, no

one there apologized.>73@@3�:=@/<53@

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Rd.ca

Early DiagnosisKeeps Your Life

From Unravelling.Almost half of all Canadians afected by dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, are waiting too long to be diagnosed. Yet, early diagnosis can improve the journey for the person with dementia and prepare their family and friends for what lies ahead. Find out more at www.earlydiagnosis.ca and see your doctor.

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��POePSS—A: raucous laughter.

B: ornate costume jewellery. C: cop-

per coin of little value.

��VgbS—A: completely unhinged.

B: neat and well-organized. C: fes-

tive outing.

!��YS\—A: herd sheep using a dog.

B: catch in the act. C: have know-

ledge of.

"��POW`\—A: unit of measurement

for weight. B: infant. C: state of

drunkenness.

#��PÒe—A: impressive. B: lopsided

football victory. C: working-class

residential area.

$��\c[^bg—A: cold-storage room.

B: absent-minded person. C: hare-

brained scheme.

%��abOaVWS—A: commotion. B: sleep-

ing berth on a train. C: velvet-

trimmed dinner jacket.

&��aZSSYWb—A: mountainous land-

scape. B: penny-pinching business-

man. C: cunning.

'��eORaSb—A: term of endearment

for a clumsy friend. B: person who

binds sheaves in the harvest field.

C: mortgage.

��PSddg—A: alcoholic beverage.

B: flock of geese flying in a V-forma-

tion. C: root vegetable.

��YW`Y—A: elder statesman of the

community. B: church. C: large

meadow left unattended.

� ��aQc\\S`—A: irrational dislike.

B: aggressive fishmonger. C: unwel-

come surprise.

�!��UÒWbV—A: grazing plot for

calves. B: raging summertime thun-

derstorm. C: implements for work,

travel or war.

�"��TOW\—A: single-edged knife worn

with a kilt. B: eager. C: caretaker’s

cottage.

�#��P]UUW\¸—A: filthy. B: bump or

swelling after a blow. C: flat-bot-

tomed fishing vessel.

April 6 is when the clans converge and the Scottish diaspora dons its kilts. Marked by pipe-band parades

and highland dancers, Tartan Day celebrates the signing of Scotland’s declaration of independence in 1320.

Ready to fire up the bagpipes?

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Word Power

��POePSS—[C] copper coin of little value; as, After the wedding, Gillian stopped to toss the screaming chil-dren a few bawbees for chocolates and candy.

��VgbS—[A] completely unhinged; as, Fiona was a little unsteady leav-ing the bar. “Don’t drive in this fog, missy! That’s a downright hyte idea,” the old bartender admonished.

!��YS\—[C] have knowledge of; as, Ainsley was having second thoughts. “Do you ken the highland terrain well enough to go hiking at night?” she asked her husband.

"��POW`\—[B] infant; as, Kirsteen couldn’t take her eyes off the bairn

in her sister’s arms. “He really looks like Dad,” she said.

#��PÒe—[A] impressive; as, “Alistair, that’s a braw house you’ve got there, with so many rooms and outbuildings,” Abigail said.

$��\c[^bg—[B] absent-minded person; as, The villagers considered Craig a real numpty for constantly driving on the wrong side of the road.

%��abOaVWS—[A] commotion; as, The disputed last-minute goal at the football match caused a stashie on the field.

&��aZSSYWb—[C] cunning; as, Getting

Moynagh’s endorsement was a sleekit move to sway public opinion and influence the vote.

'��eORaSb—[C] mortgage; as, After the stock market crashed, we put a wadset on the old manor house.

��PSddg—[A] alcoholic beverage; as, “Let’s go round to the pub and grab ourselves a few bevvies after work,” James suggested.

��YW`Y—[B] church; as, The vicar took great pride in maintaining the kirk grounds and polished pews.

� ��aQc\\S`—[A] irrational dislike; as, The new boss bought doughnuts for us on her first day, but Edna took a scunner to her from the get-go.

�!��UÒWbV—[C] implements for work, travel or war; as, The soldiers readied their graith for the long march to battle.

�"��TOW\—[B] eager; as, The newly-weds were fain to stroll the beach hand in hand after dinner.

�#��P]UUW\¸—[A] filthy; as, Hugh complained the rug in his flatmate’s room was absolutely boggin’ and stank.

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A UNICORN IS JUST A HORSE WITH A POINT OF VIEW.

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Chop your own path. Get off the car track. /�G��8/19A=<

I will never forget my actions. They will haunt me for

the rest of my life. None of it will happen again.5/@B6�2@/07<A9G�

I don’t think that one is

impressed with one’s

own work. I can’t

imagine such a thing.

It’s a question of getting

it right; it’s not a

question of admiring it.

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Overnight success

just doesn’t happen.

You’ve got to put

your time in. You’re

up and down—all

of a sudden, it just

clicks./<B6=<G�1/:D7::=

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Quotes

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Readers Digest (Can) 1404