Dining with Senators

Not everyone gets to do this too often - if ever. But I had some interesting experience this weekend that is, in some ways, a truly Canadian story.

By a fortunate accident of fate, I acquired a nephew via marriage on my late husband’s side of the family. Though our lives have changed, we keep in touch for family events and these recent events were pleasant ones - watching his daughter conduct a master class with the Toronto Symphony and later conduct a world premiere of a new opera with triple affiliations to Tapestry, Soundstreams, and Luminato - all long part of the Toronto contemporary music scene. We were able to have dinner together in advance of the second event. The nephew is a Canadian senator - and he had invited one of his retired colleagues and his wife to join us for dinner. We met still another recently senator and his wife at the performance.

There was a bond shared by all three. They were all appointed in 2016 as independent senators and I was privileged then to also have an invitation to their initial seating, though I knew only one of them at the time. Working together through the years has created bonds of friendship for the three men that extends well beyond their official duties. But it is their individual histories that make their stories even more interesting.

One has served in all three branches of parliamentary democracy - executive, judicial and legislative. He also worked as a senior public servant in both the Ontario provincial and federal governments and as a federal court judge. His family fled Poland and came to Canada after spending time in Uzbekistan and relocated to a displaced person’s camp in Germany where he was born. They were eventually able to settle in Sydney, Nova Scotia when he was two years old.

Another earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Calcutta, a Masters in economics from University of Delhi and MBA (Finance) from UCLA Los Angeles. He has had a distinguished career in banking and prior to his senate appointment was Vice Chairman and Chief Operating Office of Scotiabank. He has made a contribution to the cultural life of Canada serving on the boards of major hospitals and arts organizations as well as being a founding member of the Sikh Foundation of Canada.

The third has worked on public policy issues related to Canada’s relations with Asian countries for more than 30 years. He is a former President and CEO of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada and currently a joint chair of the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations and a member of the following Senate Standing Committees: Foreign Affairs and International Trade; Banking, Trade and Commerce; and Rules, Procedures and the Rights of Parliament. On June 23 he will be present for the unveiling of a plaque commemorating the Chinese Exclusion Act. something most of us know nothing about and could learn more here.

He was born in Malaysia and his family moved to Singapore shortly afterwards. After early education in and Anglo-Chinese school, he attended the Canadian United World College, Lester B. Pearson, in Victoria, which provided the Canadian connection before further studies at Cambridge and the University of London and later settlement in Newfoundland.

Three interesting Canadians - serving the country and enjoying personal friendships beyond their careers from such diverse starting positions. How grateful we all need to be for our own country and all those who settle here and work hard - both to heal our past and contribute to our future.

News - Bad and Good

The morning paper contains news of a tragic accident in Manitoba killing several seniors and wounding others. Their small community is grieving and we must join them. Hidden behind the main outline, though is another tragedy. The seniors were travelling two hundred kilometers to visit a casino - ‘for fun’.

As a senior myself, I would never suggest that seniors don’t deserve travel or pleasure. My guess is that the casino in question probably pays for the cost of the bus as they do in Ontario to lure seniors to casinos here. Sitting around a group some years ago, all of us confessed we had never been to a Casino and decided as a group to go one summer afternoon. We had agreed that our spending limit was $30 each. Among the six of us, we paid $180. One of us lucked out by winning $75. She noted that this gave a rush of pleasure, which made her feel guilty - but it didn’t occur to her to share the proceeds with the rest of us. Most of us were losers. We could, in fact, afford to lose the money on one afternoon of experiment. But what we learned was what a joyless place it was - subdued lighting, no sense of time or place, and too many vacant senior faces with no sense of joy or fun whatsoever - and less money than they came with, which most of them, unlike us, could ill afford. They had been brought in by a bus that probably cost the Casino about $300. Significantly the date was one day after old age pension cheques arrrived. To question it takes less than an ounce of moral courage to question this as a system on my part - but I do and more today than usual.

Better news came in a story about seven-year-olds learning about climate change in a school in New Jersey. The teacher had told the kids about penguins in Antarctica ; the warming of their environment meant that the penguins had to charge accordingly. What might they do?

Seven-year-olds are nothing if not inventive. Solutions ranged from penguins migrating to the US in winter to their building igloos. One thought she could keep a few in her fridge. It is the wife of the state governor who encouraged the school system to have children start to think seriously about the climate emergency, because they are the ones who will have to deal with it. Unlike others, who want to protect children from realities, this program encourages them to enter it now - not to scare them, but to become aware and to consider local solutions. While there were naturally dissenters, 70% voter in favour and the subject penetrates several curricular areas.

They are learning close to home:

“Outside, in a corner of the playground, there’s a fenced-in butterfly garden, a compost bin, and a soil bed where kids have tested which type of fertilizer, a chemical commercial variety or a natural blend, best helped plants (the natural one came out ahead).”

They are starting local and exploring a much larger framework. Would that we all did the same.

Other changes

I’ve been acting as scribe to a group that started with a move toward a strategic plan and is now changing its perspective to go in the direction of small changes rather than big aspirations.  It looks for guidance primarily through its own traditional documents and I join them in that. But I also follow some of the literature that is sometimes termed ‘self-help’, though it may also have implications for a broader community like an organization or a charity. Reading both at the same time may create a sense of disconnect – but sometimes the two converge.

We’re still trying to overcome the challenges of the pandemic – not helped by the news that several friends have just tested positive for the virus, albeit with symptoms rather than full blown illness; but we are not fully safe from it yet. Someone recently observed that he has never been more fearful in the face of government corruption, war, forest fires, collapse of institutions and respect for their role in civil society. We know that change throughout history has often come from the margins, but how do we implement worthwhile changes when we have so little power to participate in either the market economy or the governments that are supposed to counter them.

There is always a gap to what we aspire to and the reality we face. We also live in an era of individual and group self-interests. We may have better angels in our natures, but it is interesting to see how quickly these collapse when our individual or group interests come into conflict with those of others. We’re also in the era of wicked problems with multiple strains that overlap – climate crisis versus employment, for instance – or agricultural practice and its effect on climate, capitalist economies that exploit nature, indigenous cultures destroyed because we wanted their land. Sorting these out is huge and beyond our individual capabilities – but we have to start from the edge – with commective groups like SCAN that I recently described.  I’ll pay my membership.

The old wineskins don’t work. But starting with ourselves is hard.  I recently picked up a copy of the book, Atomic Habits again.  There are several suggestions of ways to start helping ourselves to revisit our better angels – without thinking that personal motivation is the way to go.

The author, James Clear, thinks we have it backwards.  We go about making personal changes by focusing on the outcome we want by setting goals. New Year’s Resolutions and starting back to school in September are times we typically do this – and usually fail within about a month.  If we want to lose weight or obtain straight A’s these are worthwhile priorities, but we don’t get there by wanting them or willing them to happen.  The second stage is the system or process we set up to make them happen and ensure that it is followed with precision.  If we were machines, we could set a timer to repeat the process automatically but we are not. We are people driven by emotions even though we have reason, as author Jonathan Haigt describes so well. What Clear prescribes as a way to get around this is to focus on identity – good advice to the young who follow influencers.  Who do we wish to become? It means setting up really small steps to get there over time. Such small steps apply to individuals but also to communities. And we have to look at both the systems that are outside of our immediate control – but also at the ones that are inside it. The latter is the place to start first.

Third Act

I recently became aware of Bill McKibben’s organization, Third Act in the United States. This icon of the environmental movement encouraged American seniors to act on behalf of future generations. Such people have the time and experience to become good advocates.

Was there a similar organization in Canada? There is -  it is Seniors for Action Now (SCAN). https://seniorsforclimateactionnow.org/#.

Here are some of its principles:

·       To build an Ontario based action group that is democratic, accountable, equitable and participatory in which we value each others’ knowledge, experience and views.

·       To inform and mobilize others to become informed and active.

·       To support the young people calling on government for action.

·       To engage with indigenous people from whom we can learn.

·       To draw on available time and experience of seniors.

They note the need for systemic change:

·       Our economic system is built for growth. We have to rebuild it for sustainability

·       Our economic system is built for accumulation. We have to rebuild it for sharing.

·       Our economic system is built for extraction. We have to rebuild it for stewardship.

·       Our economic system is built for exploitation. We have to rebuild it for fairness.

·       Our economic system is built for inequality. We have to rebuild it for equality.

The impetus came out of the pandemic which laid bare so many disaparties when we had time to reflect upon them. Regional chapters are already active but there is not one mentioned to date for Toronto – even though some of their activities are aimed at the current provincial government’s climate crimes. The participants are obviously doing their homework and keeping up to date.  It is also noteworthy that only two of Toronto’s 103 candidates for mayor have announced a climate policy. The fee for membership is perhaps the only thing to criticize.  It is much too low!

Misinformation

Misinformation

I enjoyed the article in this week’s Saturday Globe & Mail in which the author, a journalist, asked GPT-4 to write his biography in 1,500 words which it did in a few seconds. If I didn’t know anything about him I would think it was quite impressive and credible. But he has annotated it, and these are the things it got wrong from the beginning:

• Place and date of birth – both wrong.

• Beginning of writing career – wrong year.

• University from which he graduated – wrong one – there were actually two correct ones replacing the wrong one.

• Graduating degree: wrong one.

That was just the first paragraph.  The second went better.  It was correct in naming him as a journalist, but starting with his first job at a publication that went out of business 11 years before his writing career began. Then we are told he was offered a job at a rival paper – which he was never offered and would never accepted, he says.

Paragraph three states he is the author of 20 books. He wished that were true. The description of his first book actually describes another one written by someone else in 1939. He wishes he had written one on the Canadian wilderness – but never did. He notes that by now the bot is struggling to find 1500 words with fill like “The book was a critical success and helped establish  . . . . as a rising star in the world of Canadian literature”. – worthy of the kind of fill any keen grade nine student might produce.

In further paragraphs, GPT-4 expands his output to several books on noted Canadians - substituting books for a review and an article and it got a year wrong again. It went on to describe his teaching career at two universities – he never taught at either of them - and only one year as a lecturer at another one. But it ended with another nice filler platitude. “His courses were popular with his students and many went on to have successful careers as writers.” None of them were named.

Honours - and the lack of them, came next – a Governor General’s medal for writing – but the reality was a nomination for one book and the topic in its description was wrong. Awards supposedly for column writing also do not exist. Alas, he is also waiting for the Order of Canada mentioned in the GPT- Biography.  To make it worse, he is reported to have died in 2016 – though he is still here to write the article. With a bit more commendation the bio finally reaches its 1500 words – “as his legacy as one of Canada’s most beloved authors and journalists lives on.” He does say amen to that.

We don’t need to fear GPT-4 for accuracy any time soon. But if I had read the bio without the annotations, I could well have believed at least some of it. That’s the danger. In the meantime, I’ll request my own 1500 word biography and see what happens. I just hope I am still alive.