Life has gotten a lot smellier and messier lately for Toronto residents.

Not that we elicit any sympathy from the rest of the province or country, but you do have to feel a little bit for those of us who are suffering the ill effects of a city-wide garbage strike, and who are forced to haul stinking bags of waste to various temporary sites we would normally use for swimming and recreation.

Really, the sight of maggots squirming and oozing out of the food bins leaves nothing to be desired, but at this point I’d be willing to retrieve a few thousand dollars in taxes each year to dispose of the garbage myself, instead of paying someone nearly $30.00 an hour to take my garbage away and then toss my garbage bins mercilessly across the lawn.

My neighbour, who hand crushes his plastic water bottles into little flat disks, is already apoplectic at the waste and disorder.

Which brings me to the subject of plastic bags and the other reason some residents of Toronto are sorry for themselves.

(Believe me, there will be a link to transportation soon).

According to its official doctrine, the City of Toronto has a “goal of diverting 70% of waste from landfill”, and so, it plans to reduce the volume of plastic bags by making retailers charge customers five cents per plastic bag. This all began June 1.

On a normal day, I must carry at least four bags with me to the office: book bag, lunch bag, computer bag, and extra shoe bag.

But do you think I can remember to pack a couple of cloth carry out bags in my purse or jacket when heading to the store on an errand?

I often find myself stranded with at least $40 extra dollars of impulse or irresistible sale purchases, angry that I’m going to get gouged, (because that’s what this amounts to) for the cost of plastic bags.

I say that this is gouging because, while plastic bags are surely a large part of the problem, I think there are priority areas for “diverting waste from landfill” that municipalities like Toronto, or other businesses, could better concentrate on.

(First and foremost, get your staff back to work, so that piggish people don’t dump in rivers and ravines, and so that they are not forced to consolidate waste, because the temporary dumps are not accepting recyclables and organic waste.)

Packaging alone is a major area. I know that, to increase cube, it’s important to streamline and squeeze in as much as possible, but does toilet paper really need to be individually gift-wrapped?

And it’s a little insulting to listen to commercials for those triple-concentrated, overly perfumed, skin-stripping detergents that are in “smaller compact bottles” for the sake of the environment!

One of the most “tragic” outcomes of the bag debacle was when the LCBO stopped offering those super thick beige plastic bags at checkout.

This has led to some significant shrinkage, especially when clumsy people like myself, unused to the fragility of paper, leave a 12 year old bottle of Scotch (hostess gift) sitting precariously in its cheap brown paper bag, and it tips over and cracks, leaving a trail of booze and broken glass on the tiles.

Many Torontonians, like the obedient citizens they are, have already embraced those cute little designer cloth bags that state, quite unnecessarily I think, “This is not a plastic bag”, and that cost more than Samsonite luggage.

The cloth bags I own are a motley collection of now-grimy offerings from No Thrills, Wal-Mart, and various banks and charities. I own a few of those little mini bins too, only because they were offered free at one point, but they are pretty useless once you put more than two cartons of milk in them. They might stack nicely, and look good on Loblaws-poster-boy Galen Weston’s arm, stuffed with bunches of organic beets, but that’s about it.

If there’s one person happy using cloth bags, though, it’s definitely my mother. She’s been carrying cloth bags for years. You know the ones: with animal-patterned brocade and chintzy floral fabrics.

She quite fell in love with one of her cloth bags, which had a lively cat pattern and was lined in silk.

Fragile as it was, the lining soon ripped and my mom took it to the dry cleaners to have it repaired. She felt a bit odd getting a cloth bag all fixed up for the price of five new ones, so she shrugged her shoulders and told the cleaners “I’m a bit of a bag lady, I suppose.”

When she went to pick up the bag, the cleaners waved away payment and looked at her sympathetically.

“You BAG LADY, no charge!!”

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Trucking and editing have quite a few things in common.

They are both largely sedentary jobs where you find yourself sitting for hours in front of a windshield or computer screen, trying to stay focused, and tempted by all kinds of distractions in your periphery.

Being largely sedentary jobs, they can also wreak havoc on the metabolism, making one prone to gaining weight.

For an upcoming Truck News issue, I looked into opportunities that exist for truckers who are trying to stay fit. How do they eat? Where do they eat? Is regular exercise possible, and how do truckers do it?

One thing for sure is that if you rely on restaurant meals to eat, especially in the US and Canada, you will have very little control of what goes into your body, calorie and content-wise.

Not too long ago, one of my cousins, your typical office worker, found out his ‘bad’ cholesterol levels were much higher than they should be for his age, and he was facing some serious trouble if he didn’t alter his lifestyle and lower the numbers, not to mention take off about 50 pounds in the process.

Coming as he does from a family of diabetics and heart patients who were half-blinded, winded and missing limbs at early ages, he got a good scare.

Before long, he’d ordered in huge vats of what I call his “fertilizer”, these brown and grown powders meant to supplement this and that vitamin, and to act as appetite-suppressants.

He also bought various tonics that had words like “vitality” and “virility” emblazoned on the side of the bottle in bright, very masculine fonts.

He tried anything and everything, before he realized that the only way things were going to change was if he pounded some pavement.

A friend of his had certified as a personal trainer, and set up my cousin with a workout routine he could ‘ease’ up to and that would rival any fighter’s. So first time in, my cousin went whole hog on the exercises, and added in an extra few hours and reps for good measure.

Then he shuffled around the house for a week afterwards, half-crooked, having cleaned out his wife’s supply of Advil and Tylenol.

Now, several months in, he has incorporated a somewhat more sensible routine, that works with his schedule, doesn’t require him to starve, and gives him more energy, even without the tonics.

His weight has decreased somewhat because he is watching his food intake, doing simple things like not snacking on chips and cookies, drinking water, and not juice, pop or alcohol, and just eating smaller portions. More importantly, he says, is that he’s built muscle and endurance.

My cousin is unusual in that he has so far stuck it out in a challenging exercise routine.

There’s a whole industry now centered around losing weight, supposedly without too much effort, and it’s only too easy to get caught in the hype.

We recently acquired the Wii Fit. It was meant to be a gift for me but, like the I-pod I received last year, I have limited access to it because the rest of the family is hogging it.

If you haven’t seen the Wii Fit already, it’s exercise in a video-game-like format. Using a stand-on platform and joysticks, you set up a little video character of yourself, your “Mii”, and the Wii computer measures your current BMI (body mass index), and records your weight, age, and fitness level. From there, you can progress to certain exercise or weight loss ‘goals’.

Even if you’re not technically ‘overweight’, the Wii will kindly create your character with little rolls around the belly, like a miniature Homer Simpson. It’s a little motivational trick on their part, I guess.

You can put yourself through various test levels on different exercises, or engage your Mii character in different sports. The tennis is great, if you can avoid smacking each other out across the living room floor as you wave the sticks around during your virtual match.

But I find the Wii personal trainer somewhat irritating. He stands in a little ballet pose and talks using his animated hand. If he was real and hovering in front of me at the gym I’d have smacked him out by now.

I’m not an expert in yoga by any means, but it is one form of exercise I am motivated to do on my own and that feels good, if you can say that about exercise.

So when the Wii tells people they have limited balance because they can’t do a very complicated yoga manoeuvre, (that takes, by the way, years to perfect), they shouldn’t take it too hard, in my opinion.

I can understand the value of exercise programs like the Wii Fit when it’s mid-winter and –50 outside, and it’s a great deal better than walking a treadmill (the dreadmill!), which in my house is smack in front of the laundry room, reminding me as I walk uphill to nowhere that there’s a list of things I could or should be doing that would gain better results.

To me, there is nothing quite like walking outside in fresh (ish) air, getting a change of scenery, people watching, and best of all, not really noticing how much or how far you’ve walked.

It’s a chance to clear the mind, and hopefully, to kickstart the heart.

So next time you’re stuck driving down a highway or idling next to yet another strip mall, consider taking a little walking detour, at the nearest possible opportunity, past your immediate surroundings. Amazing what you might see, and healthier, I’m guessing, than coffee and a donut. I will be living vicariously through your travels!

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With the advent of spring, already, the ‘do-it-yourself’ renovation ads for Canadian Tire, Home Depot, Lowe’s and other big box stores are on TV, emphasizing, of course, how cheap and cheery it is to be working on bettering your surroundings.

It takes a certain kind of person to handle the ‘do it yourself’ approach to renovation work, and so if you’re anything like me, contractors are still a good bet, especially now that they’re hurting for jobs, and might actually show up on time.

I’m totally addicted to all the Home and Garden TV shows (you can send over the unsmiling but all-powerful Igor from Restaurant Makeover anytime) but I’ve only ever attempted a do-it-yourself renovation project once in my life.

It was a near disaster.

My parents were away and I thought I would surprise them with an updated paint job in their downstairs bathroom.

For some reason still unknown to me, I wanted to stencil a border around the top edge of the wall, and I chose what was supposed to be a palm-tree like stencil, but which really looked like a pineapple.

By the time I was done with it, however, having added three layers of viscous black paint, and a layer of spackle, to make it stand out, it looked like exploding hand grenades.

It was Che Guevara’s outhouse on meth.

My then-boyfriend, now-husband, took one look, left the house, came back with fresh supplies and starting furiously painting over it.

However, since we moved into our current house, ‘the Crumbalow’, a broad, squat, example of late 1950’s North York, Ontario bungalow architecture, (and requiring at least 20 years’ worth of upgrades), my husband has curiously shied away from any do-it-yourself projects.

I think his approach is all-or-nothing. No sense doing the stopgap or the band-aid, just rip it all up at once, when you can.

What this means is that unless something is dangling dangerously and threatening to fall on the kids’ heads, it stays as is, until even my 78-year old father has had enough, and comes over to fix it with a couple of parts from Dollarama.

But when the job can no longer be put off, my husband calls his friend Dom.

Last summer, we decided to put in a fence around the backyard perimeter. There’d been a break-in that spring, which was a good enough reason to set up more deterrents.

There were also raccoons coming in from the nearby ravine, and a neighbour’s unleashed dog taking poop and scoop liberties.

So the fence was going in.

Every weekend, trusty Dom and his team hauled over in his white Ford F150 pickup. There was Dom, his brother Joe, a finished carpenter who was born deaf, and Dom’s father, an elderly but sturdy Italian man wearing patched work pants and steel-toed boots. He was there, apparently, to haul bags of concrete and balance fence posts on his shoulders, two at a time.

We wondered how the men would manage to communicate their tasks, but there was no need for Dom’s brother or the rest of the family to learn sign language, because they already did much of their talking with their hands, generalizations aside.

Dom would pause, stick his pencil behind his ear, and shake his fist and fingers in various manifestations at his brother, who would then roll his eyes, wipe his forehead, and shake out his entire arm. But somehow, the job was getting done, and then some.

According to Dom, there’s lumber and then there’s lumber. Needless to say, the lumber he dealt with didn’t come cheap. But it would last through Canadian winters, more than he could say for some of the bug-laden, cracked imports, he added, twisting his fingers in an upward knot and rotating his elbow a few degrees.

At first, the men arrived with huge coolers full of fat veal sandwiches, water bottles and pop, but then my husband volunteered to provide a lunch.

Correction. He volunteered me to provide the lunch, which gradually stretched to become two coffee breaks and lunch in between.

Even I could figure out it was now payback time for the bathroom hand grenades.

So, when 10 a.m. rolled around, the men stopped all work, and depending on the weather conditions, they would proceed to the verandah and settle in for either hot or cold espresso coffee, and one of those stale Italian biscuits that would choke you silly if you didn’t dip it in the coffee or in a hot cup of milk.

Around one, thanks to my husband, out I would go to the barbecue with every piece of frozen poultry I had in the house, a stack of crusty buns and the twenty different jars of pickled condiments the men liked on their sandwiches.

Other sweltering days would find me rolling out fresh pizza dough, scooping out homemade tomato sauce and grating giant balls of mozzarella.

Four o’clock, out came the coffees again, and something sweet.

Mind you, this wasn’t the men themselves asking, and it wasn’t every single day.

They would have gladly ventured out somewhere, or relied on Dom’s mother’s 50-odd years of experience cooking for a family of five men.

But my husband somehow reasoned that they’d work harder, and finish faster, better fed, and in a climate of friendship.

“You do realize I am running a hot table restaurant in this kitchen!” I protested, hands on my hips.

“Yeah, but look at the work they did!” Mr. Outsource chuckled. “Those fence posts aren’t going anywhere.”

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May 3-9, 2009 is Emergency Preparedness Week in Canada.

This subject is dear to my heart, given that my nickname among family members is Chicken Licken (“The Sky is Falling!")

Emergency Preparedness Week, sponsored by Public Safety Canada, aims to "make sure that in the event of flood or power outage, or other natural or unnatural disaster, Canadians will be prepared to take care of themselves and their families for at least 72 hours."

Years ago, I might have seen this campaign as paranoia, but in the last few years or so in Canada not only have certain parts of the country been dealing with floods and ice storms, but power outages are par for the course in many urban and rural centres now.

Last week it took me 5 hours to get through to Toronto Hydro after a 15 minute wind storm knocked out power in my parents' neighbourhood.

And just last summer, as we were anticipating a delicious roast (flu-free) piglet for my little nephew’s second birthday, a propane blast in the North York, Ontario, residential neighbourhood shattered the windows of my brother in law’s house, and the piglet was fast abandoned as they picked up and ran, a huge wall of fire blazing just two blocks away.

So no, I don’t think it’s unnecessary or even silly to think about planning for the unknown.

Ironically enough, if you live in an urban centre, you can be even more isolated during an emergency, because we’re so reliant on power and technology to keep us going.

In the country, however, many people have gotten used to hydro going off during summer thunderstorms, or winter snowstorms. It’s not unusual these days for people to have a backup generator to run at least an appliance or two.

And you can’t panic so much if you’re near a lake or other water source that doesn’t have to be pumped out, and have a wood burning fire where you can heat up a comforting can of baked beans or two.

But when the power outage lasts more than a day, most people start getting antsy.

So whether you’re on the road, or at home, here are a few quick and basic tips I’ve gathered on getting prepared.

It might seem like common sense, but it was surprising how much work it was to gather and organize everything
so that it could be found in the dark, or in a panic.

For a more elaborate list, or to buy an emergency kit, refer to www. Getprepared.ca.

For tips on dealing with pandemic threats such as "swine" flu, see Editor James Menzies' latest entry: Swine flu: Media hype or a real concern?

1) Keep cash on hand, in your truck, car or home. Keep smaller bills and lots of change. Highly likely the ATMs will be on the fritz and debit/credit banking not operating during some emergencies.

2) Keep at least three days’ supply of drinking water, in your truck or home. Even the Greens will forgive you buying plastic. If you’re the ultimate in paranoid, boil a kettle of water each night to have on the stove.

For washing, keep a supply of baby wipes in your vehicles and home, and a bottle of rubbing alcohol and/or 3% hydrogen peroxide for disinfecting.

3) Keep at least three days’ supply of non-perishable foods, like canned beans, evaporated milk, soups, and pastas, instant noodle packs, dried fruits, granola bars, chocolate, hard candies, and sterilized tetra packs of milks and juices. Mark the canned goods with a date and replace about once a year.

4) Have a small bag packed with a change of clothes, cash, and copies of your ID, bank accounts, etc. if you have to leave your home in a hurry. If you’re packing for kids make sure that you have clothes that fit their current sizes and a couple of entertainment items too.

5) If you need certain medications, make sure you have copies of prescription repeats, and carry an extra supply of medicines at all times. Some items need refrigeration, so always keep an ice pack going in the freezer, while other items are stable at room temperature for several weeks.

6) Light and heat sources: Keep flashlights, batteries, radios and blankets in your vehicle and somewhere you can easily access at home. There are wind-up/crank versions available if you have elbow grease but no batteries. A small camping stove, barbecue and supply of propane ensures you’ll be able to heat some meals if needed.

7) Evacuation plans? If you know someone in your family will need help, such as an elderly or disabled person, set up a buddy system with neighbours, family members or friends, so that that person has a point of contact if you are not there. If they’re in a high-rise building, know what the evacuation procedures are for those needing extra assistance.

8) If you somehow cannot reach family members during an emergency, set up an agreed-upon area in advance, where you can try to meet, or a third person contact, to relay messages to.

9) Toolkit: Remember that small household items like cutlery, bottle openers, scissors, nail files, tweezers, and knives are items that you always need but may easily forget, so get a swiss army knife or something similar to keep on hand in your bag or vehicle.

10) Fuel: Always stay fuelled up, with at least half a tank, so that in the event of fuel shortages you can still cover some distance.

11) The Baseball Bat: For some people, like my husband, this is the only item you need in a crisis. According to him, you can either use it to ward off people trying to steal from you, or you can use it to “barter for goods” when your supply runs out or when sadly, you did not prepare for the worst.

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I don’t remember when or where I first heard of Yoani Sanchez.

But in the past several months I’ve become transfixed in front of my computer screen, waiting to read up on her latest blog, http://desdecuba.com/generationy.

Sanchez doesn’t write about the trials and tribulations of being a modern mother. Her “issues” don’t revolve around hitting the glass ceiling, or achieving that ideal weight, or dealing with nut allergies, or having enough self-esteem.

Rather, she writes about leaking ceilings, broken elevators and not having enough to eat in tropical Havana, Cuba.

Most of us living in North America wouldn’t be able to profess to knowing much about Cuba, beyond news briefs on Guantanamo, the much boasted about 98 % Cuban literacy rate and the high number of trained doctors in the country (that is, in the days before president-for-life Hugo Chavez and the exchange of doctors for oil between Cuba and Venezuela.)

We might also recall that one of our Prime Ministers had a special relationship with Fidel Castro, and that it fairly pissed off the US government.

It might also have gotten our attention recently that the Obama administration now wants to call off the restrictions for US citizens travelling to Cuba, or sending money there.

(Perhaps he wants to open up trade with the country, or maybe he wants to learn something more about nationalization and the ‘redistribution’ of wealth?)

Many Canadians visit Cuba each year, returning to describe endless beautiful white sand beaches and funky 1950’s automobiles, but a buffet that was a bit lacking (after all, if you wanted pumpkin and shredded pork every night, you could get it in Canada all winter long), and a poolside bar that ran out of beer by 11 a.m.

I have never been to Cuba myself, but the life of Yoani Sanchez has my full attention once a week or so when I catch up on her latest writing.

Because regular Cuban people (read: not party hacks or those with government jobs) cannot have e-mail accounts or access much Internet content in Cuba, Yoani’s blog is written, according to her, on a laptop cobbled together with cannibalized parts, saved on a black market memory stick, taken to an Internet café for tourists, snuck into the café somehow, and e-mailed to someone out of country who uploads it to the server housing the portal “DesdeCuba.com/GeneracionY” (FromCuba.com, Generation Y, click on the UK flag for English).

Winner of the 2008 Ortega y Gasset Prize for Digital Journalism (which she was unable to receive in person because she wasn’t allowed to leave the country), Yoani is in her early 30s, married, with one child in middle school. She trained in the study of languages, and was going to go into academic teaching but was basically too much of a s--- disturber. Didn’t kiss up enough, or follow the party line.

Yoani’s blog describes many examples of people arrested for their writing, or speeches, or activities that were deemed, in one way or another, to be “counter-revolutionary”.

But it’s the everyday life of Cubans like Yoani that fascinates me, like her description of a trip to the hospital to visit a friend, and the amount of bribery and extra black market supplies it took for this friend to get proper health care. The part about the glass syringes will definitely make you squirm.

Yoani’s own upbringing involved special youth camps in the countryside, where teenagers were sent to help with the harvests, and children being questioned in school about any possible subversive activities their parents were involved in, or money they were receiving from relatives abroad.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, in the early 1990s, Cuba, which relied on the USSR for fuel in exchange for sugar, etc., went through what the government called “The Special Periods”.

Foods and fuel were in very short supply, and the country’s whole distribution system essentially collapsed.

On and off, Cuban president Fidel Castro (who is, I’ve heard, rarely referred to by name in the country, but called nicknames like ‘Bearded One’) allowed some forms of private enterprise, only to reign in those entrepreneurs when it looked like they were getting too smart for their own good.

The high literacy rate wasn’t really helping people out too much when they had to resort to the sorts of things people have to resort to in order to get food on the table.

In Canada, your kid gets a stomach ache, you pull him off dairy and take him to the allergist. Yoani’s son, as she describes in one blog entry, hasn’t received a milk ration in years.

Another touching piece describes the child, a daughter, that Yoani feels she will never have, because Cuban women are finding it increasingly difficult to bring up families in that country.

There are some who think that Yoani’s story is a little too unlikely. If the government is that repressive, why hasn’t she been hauled in by now? Someone surely recognizes her, when she pretends to be a German tourist in the Internet café.

She even left the country once, to live in Switzerland, but returned, she said “for family reasons.”

Not for me to judge how crazy it was for her to do so. Some people thrive on their own misery. But some people also fervently believe it is their duty to stay in their country of birth and to ‘see it through.’

Now, she’s a media darling, but I am curious to see what will happen to blogs such as Yoani’s when Cuba, as is only inevitable, gradually opens up to the world and a return to trade with the US.

Will she head up the first ‘free Cuban press’? Discard her desire for free speech in favour of better clothing and the chance to eat steak again?

For now, if even half of what she says rings true, Yoani’s blog is a reality check, a window on the soul of a nation where Canadians, “the poor Americans”, go for the white sand beaches and cocktails made with powdered juice mix, because the fruit never made it to market.

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But I hope nevertheless that you’ll find my commentaries relevant to everyday life, family, society and the observation thereof.

Embracing the frugal lifestyle? Shadow a senior

If the current economic crisis has done anything, it has definitely shed light on the huge generational gap that exists, in terms of philosophies about money and spending.

I’m talking about the difference in financial philosophy between those who lived through hardships, like the Depression, wars, and long periods of post-war adjustment and financial uncertainty , and subsequent generations who’ve embraced a culture of instant gratification.

The most sickening aspect of today’s ‘economic downturn’ is without a doubt the vulture culture and opportunism that descends among the people who perhaps will never have to define ‘need vs. want,’ and who will probably just never ‘get it’.

The vulture takes many forms, but the most obvious is, “Sure, there’s a recession on, but what’s in it for me? Where are the sales? Why won’t the car dealers give me a better deal? Who’s going to ‘look after me if I lose my job?"

While there are always ‘opportunities’ in downturns, to ‘buy cheap stocks’ or to ‘sweep up a few reasonably priced bungalows’ (I swear I recently talked to someone who said this), I feel strongly that the lessons that ought to be learned out of what happened with this economic crisis might just miss some targets.

One of the popular themes in newspaper lifestyle sections today is ‘how to slum it’ and make do on less luxury than usual.

Food columnists, for example, now offer up gourmet recipes that aren’t meant to take a bite out of the wallet.

One experiment I read about recently took at couple with a $300 a week grocery bill (how the heck? I asked, unless it’s for organic dog food and imported condiments) and got them down to less than a third of that for a ‘nutritious’ week’s worth of meals.

Yet unsurprisingly, while some of these recipes may use cheap ingredients like cans of sardines and a bag of pasta, they also require a toss of high priced Modena balsamic vinegar and a shake of rare sea salts as a garnish. This sort of disqualifies them in my eyes.

Prior generations, and especially today’s older seniors (less so the newly minted ones) in contrast, sure knew how to make good use of their grocery dollar.

If I’ve heard the story once, I’ve heard a hundred times how my grandmother made a Sunday roast of beef or turkey last well into the next week, reconstituted into leftovers.

That was back when my grandfather’s salary as a public school principal was a pittance compared to what starting teachers make today.

Grandma, the oldest of seven kids, would march back to the Dominion at Yonge and Lawrence in Toronto, where my mother grew up, and demand a refund for meat that wasn’t the freshest, or milk that had soured.

Today most of us just cut our losses and toss the mouldy contents away.

I’ve recently had the opportunity to ‘shadow’ a senior, a distant relative of my mother’s who just became a widow. By ‘shadow’, I mean that this lady needed some help with errands and driving around to various appointments, and my mother volunteered me on one of my days off.

Everywhere we went, and for every transaction, this lady took cash. She did not, I found out, own a credit card, and if she ever had, she had never used it.

Now while most of us today would find this inconvenient in the extreme, just for the fact that to transact on anything you need a credit record, this lady had made it to age 87, paying cash only, including for her car and for a recent furniture upholstery job.

Saving cash was an elementary lesson she had learned growing up as one of a family of 13, living through the Depression.

It was somewhat nerve-wracking to know that she was walking around with wads of bills. I started looking over my shoulder as we went on the errands.

But it was also refreshing to think that, at the end of the day, no paper trail of amounts owing was going to follow her around several weeks later.

And while there are many advocates today for living frugally, there aren’t that many ready and willing to actually execute it.

My mother tells the story of my grandfather, as a young married student at U of T, walking downtown to the campus during the Depression to save transit fare. He ran into a beggar who demanded change. My grandfather said he had none.

The beggar didn’t believe him, so my grandfather shook out his pockets. The beggar shook his head and said “You poor man. Walking all the way downtown? Let me cover your fare,” and handed him some change.

But there is a downside to the sense of insecurity that develops over long term financial insecurity.

Those who have been affected sometimes have a really hard time spending, even when they safely can.

A relative of my husband’s lived super frugally for years, having come to Canada as an immigrant with very little to his name. His wife whined that she was still watching a black and white TV, five years ago.

And yet when this relative died, his sons found (rumour has it) half a million dollars hidden in a wall safe.

I also recall the lady who was my very first financial advisor of sorts. She was totally debt-averse, and
had shrewdly saved enough to purchase a now-pricey house in Leaside, Toronto.

“Now you’ll need a credit card,” she would say disdainfully, practically choking on the word ‘credit’, “but don’t charge anything on it that you don’t have in the bank.”

But apart from her one vice of smoking, she wouldn’t buy herself a thing. The one time she did splurge, three days later, she took the item back to the store.

She later died of brain cancer and her money went to charity, which, depending on how you view charities, was either a good or bad thing.

Difficult to say these days when and if you’re truly safe to go on a spending binge. But it’s definitely more guilt-free if the cash is there in the first place.

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Summer season is almost here and, as I'm sure all the truckers are dreading, with it the increased traffic of daytrippers and holidaymakers on their way to the cottage or campgrounds.

Whatever route they might take, it's bound to be clogged and the irritation factor is sure to go up as grannies and A-type personalities on overdue vacation make their way onto the nation's highways.

Here in Ontario, the route we take to go "up north" is Highway 400 and then Hwy. 11, all the way past Huntsville and then just a little further along.

The most psycho of drivers tend to leave us just after Barrie en route to Wasaga and its dead fish beach, but it's never quite smooth sailing even after that.

The Ontario Provincial Police has been quite helpful the last few years with their on-the-road blitzes to weed out delinquent drivers, blitzes which evoke the most dangerous and risky of military campaigns.

"Operation: Get your smelly feet off the dashboard" and "Operation: Your dog's hanging out the window again" result in hilarious fodder for radio and TV morning shows on Mondays after a long weekend, when the most ridiculous of attempted road feats are relayed to the giggling public (the public that wasn't, of course, actually on the road WITH these yahoos.)

It isn't uncommon to hear about road trippers who had a trailer hitched to the car with a coat hanger, or who were setting up their hibachi barbecues in the back seat, etc.

Then there are the serial speeders who "were just trying to pass" or "who were just trying to avoid a bee that was trying to get in the window."

I fear that my husband, while not a speeder per se, could do with a little talking-to from a Uniform.

He tends to drive in the passing lane from Toronto at least until Gravenhurst, when the passing lane kind of comes and goes.

I have been conditioned out of this by a father who used to haul a trailer up north and who made me follow him, in the slow lane, all the way up at 80 km/h.

Any attempts to pass him resulted in a stony glare until I slowed back down again.

I'm glad of the OPP presence, even though they do tend to slow things down, because my biggest fear is the drivers heading THE WRONG WAY on the highway, something I fear we hear about a little too often.

Despite the driving woes, a long road trip does offer a chance to "stop and smell the roses" so to speak.

Everyone has their favourite pit stops along the way, if a route is familiar enough.

If we're having breakfast on the road, we like the Husky truck stop at Bradford, for example.

We used to purposely bypass Weber's burgers near Orillia but now that the mom and pop restaurants have all been replaced by huge oil refineries attached to McDonald's, Weber's is at least fast and kid-friendly, with a huge picnic area in the back, people walking their dogs, and old VIA rail cars to eat in. And, of course, ice cream that isn't made with petroleum products.

There's also a nearby old-fashioned candy store and Timmy Ho's in case you need a pick-me-up.

There is a spot near Gravenhurst where Hwy 11 curves to the right. If you glance right as you go around the bend, wow, the view of a narrow path of sparkling water against the rocky walls of the Canadian Shield is breathtaking.

So, in my opinion, are rolls of hay in the morning mist and the yellow rapeseed fields in mid-summer.

For in-car entertainment, we see who can spot the first cattle and then that person has to moo. Needless to say, the moos become tiresome after awhile but the sight of these lumbering beasts somehow never does. Aha, so that's the source of our non-fat dairy!

With regard to entertainment, by the way, it used to be that listening to radio programs in the car while heading up north, you got indie French pop on CBC Radio's northern stations or the elevator music of CHAY FM, once you got past the Orillia frontier.

Then there were the small local rock stations where you could hear young DJs making on-air errors and sneaking on their personal playlists.

Now of course everything is syndicated and Orillia sounds like downtown L.A.

And in our car, with the advent of satellite radio, the peace has been further broken by Howard Stern whining ad nauseam and my daughter's Disney station. (not to mention the beeps and plugs and wires of my husband's intravenous cell and headphones. Can't the OPP stop him for a change?)

After awhile I'm almost praying for "Raindrops keep falling on my head" from good old CHAY.

I have a friend who plops her kid in the carseat and blasts heavy metal bands all the way to the cottage, because after all, it isn't the kid's car, but in our car we take turns.

First it's my daughter's choice then my husband's. They both make fun of my music so it's not worth the bother.

Used to be, Friday nights, we'd wait til 9 pm, head out on the highway, and bypass the rush hour traffic on the 400, making it a smooth 2.5 hour drive and getting in to the cottage just before midnight.

That's no longer an option travelling with a toddler. Not to mention that I don't think we see that well at night anymore and the risk of hitting deer and moose just freaks me out.

(Correction: I don't see that well at night anymore and my husband can't take the backseat driving when I THINK I see a moose ahead!)

While she is a good-natured and flexible kid, having a toddler in the car means loading up on wipes, paper towels, drink boxes, a handy change of clothes, kid-friendly CDs, a snack that won't choke her if we hit a bump, and various other sundries.

My husband rolls his eyes when he sees the bags that need packing into our small car for a 3-day trip, but when the need arises he's the one who turns to me and says

"Did you bring the wipes?"

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A day in the life of a trucker as we all know is not often a picnic.

But a day in the life of a trade magazine editor can also be a trying affair!

For example, when we're not in the office, which occurs more and more frequently, we're attending numerous conferences and meetings, etc. where we're expected to do the networking thing on top of gathering information.

If you're someone like me who is on the shy side and, when faced with a crowd of unknowns, prefers to hightail it to the bathroom to check your hair for the hundredth time, you'll sympathize.

Not to mention that the transportation industry can be an intimidating one to work in.

When I first started as a junior editor, it was the junior's job to go to the truck stops and do a "streeter", basically accost the truckers and ask them twenty questions, take their picture and run it in the paper as "truck stop question".

Though I never looked forward to doing this, once I was there I never felt uncomfortable.

In my experience, hanging out at a truck stop to do question and answer stories has often been less intimidating than going to an industry function such as conference or dinner.

When I first started in the industry It was not unusual at some functions to see girls in neon stretch dresses and bleached hair handing out little souvenirs or programmes. Used to wonder if they hated doing that sort of job but now I have been educated and I realize that they are not being exploited at all-they are in fact making more in two nights of work than I probably do in half a year!

Going to transportation industry functions it would frequently happen that I'd stumble upon a conversation between long-standing attendees where they'd be looking wistfully off into the distance, recalling fondly how much it used to be permissible to drink before noon and what sort of salacious activities used to go on at the function (before too many Feminazis got into the biz, I'm guessing!)

I don't quite know what the problem is, because Feminazis are now an emancipated bunch themselves in more ways than one.

Even busy wives and mamas are now expected to take lap and pole dancing lessons along with their Pilates.
It's perfectly middle class and mainstream, like hair lice. But that's another tangent.

Eventually I got more and more comfortable at these functions as I got to know more people and see them again and again. But then my editor said: "Let's raise your profile more in the industry."

First he wanted to give me a "special title".

"Okay, I said, well, I'm into the legislative issues, how about policy specialist?"

"No, that's taken."

After going down a whole list, we were no further ahead on things I could pronounce myself "expert" on, but that's ok, because there's nothing wrong with being a good generalist, in my opinion.

But he wasn't done, because apparently, part of raising one's profile also involved attending seminars where you learned how to "network" better.

I attended one seminar not too long ago with my boss where the instructor had a list of "Five quick ways of breaking into a conversation in a crowded room where everyone is already in a group and half plastered and not at all interested in small talk...." (or something like that.)

One of the suggestions that cracked me up the most was this:

Say you've just arrived at a function and there are 300 people in a room, most of whom you don't know. Instead of maybe sidling up to a little group and introducing yourself, this instructor wanted us to start waving wildly at someone in the room, (as if we knew them), go running up to them and then go "Oh, I thought you were so-and-so," and then introduce yourself.

I could just picture this scenario applied in reality at the type of function we normally attend.

If that's what I needed to do to insinuate myself into a hostile crowd the bathroom was looking better and better. Not to mention the bar.

I think, as I've thought all my life, there are times when you have to do a little bit of something you don't entirely like to do, such as working the crowd, doing public speaking and completing "group projects" (which more often than not is either a pooling of ignorance or one person doing all the work).

But I also believe, there are people whose strengths do not lie in this area and if they have other strengths, these shouldn't be discounted.

From my observations as a journalist, the people who go through a room like wildfire and shake hands with 50 people never know those persons' names later on, or remember much about them.

But if you have a few sentences of conversation with one or two, and, a favourite trick of mine that has helped me overcome shyness, ask them more questions about themselves than they'll ever care to ask about you, that's a guaranteed one or two friendly faces in a crowd next time around.

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My brother-in-law announced at dinner the other day that he’d take a 5 % pay cut if he could bring his dog to work.

Apparently, so would a third of people who got surveyed recently in a poll for the online dog forum Dogster and the job search engine Simply Hired, (where dog lovers can actually do a search for dog-friendly companies!)

The survey also found that 70 % of the 150 people questioned also considered a dog-friendly office ‘an important job benefit.’

Now my brother-in-law, who works for the Ministry of Finance (ONT), could probably swing bringing his dog to the office (if he could get her past the office allergy police and those people who are sensitive to smells).

It’s not like the dog would ever be overworked. She’d have lunch paid for every day. And, she might come up with a better budget every spring!

I think that in terms of working with your pet, though, this could be an area where some truckers might have the advantage over other professions. Finally!

I remember when I first started working for Truck News, my esteemed former editor, John G. Smith, went with me on a photo shoot. We were doing a story on truckers and their pets, and it was the first time I had ever had absolutely no problem getting people to respond to requests for interviews.

For weeks, we got letters from truckers and pictures of their dogs, cats, and occasionally, some other type of pet.

On the photo shoot, we saw some of the best animal accommodations ever in the truck cabs.

I always wondered, though, how does it work for, you know, pit stops, when a pet is along for the ride?

Many drivers told me that the pets got used to the schedule of when they would stop for breaks, and their pets kept them well-exercised when away from the wheel, which definitely kept them healthier. Of all the truckers we interviewed, we found mostly dog and cat lovers. Not too many reptiles and rodents in the cab, that we saw anyway. It always seems to come down to whether you’re a cat or a dog person, I find.

I’d be interested to know what the situation is nowadays (some six years later) with regard to how many truckers are travelling with pets (especially in a climate of ultra-tight security. I mean, can the pet get a FAST card? Does FDA have to come on board?)

I admit, I like all animals but there’s a lot about dog behaviour I don’t understand.

I appreciate that in terms of evolution, dogs allowed man to get further ahead with regard to hunting, for example.

And all working dogs, like police sniffers, seeing eye dogs and sheep dogs, deserve a lot of praise of course.

But the everyday domesticated pooch has some weird habits in the eyes of “cat people” like me.

My brother-in-law and sister-in-law have a half-pug, half-Jack Russell called Milla (after Milla Jovovich, the model. Go figure). We see it once a week when we all get together for dinner.

Milla

I pretend to be glad to see Milla although she always jumps on me and licks my face while my sister- in-law uselessly yells “Milla! No licking!” in the background.

I put up with this treatment because as it turns out, my three and a half-year-old is a dog lover.

She likes to boss Milla around and toss the dog’s slimy rubber toy bone around, back and forth, ALL NIGHT LONG (until I hide it in the closet).

I constantly hear her saying “Paw, paw, paw” for the dog to shake her hand. And she was very disappointed at Christmas when we got a new kitten instead of a puppy.

For several days each morning she proposed we send the cat back to Santa in exchange for a dog. She is still negotiating to this day.

But there’s no way that I am walking around the neighbourhood with a plastic sandwich bag, ready to scoop up you-know-what. And given the “debris” that I frequently find littering the local playground, many dog owners are not prepared to do so either.

Now apparently, dogs can’t eat chocolate, even the smallest chocolate chip, or they will d-i-e, but how is it that they can consume shoe leather, aluminum blinds, molding, the silica filling of a stuffed animal, dryer lint and the plastic casing of an I-pod and remain perfectly HEALTHY?

My sister-in-law, refusing to crate the dog while she was at work as the vet had advised, would come home daily to something else destroyed. The only time she punished the dog was for the I-pod though!

(I would have punished it after the pair of shoes, but anyway…)

At least cats go for the good stuff.

I had a bunch of grocery bags in the kitchen and had to leave them unpacked for a few minutes while I ran into the other room.

I came back to see that our male kitten, Giacomo, had clawed through butcher paper and was gnawing his way through several inches of steak. (My husband got what remained of it for dinner).

The cat had also, (though I didn’t find out until later), sunk his claws into a couple of bags of milk, not enough to gash them, just enough so that they leaked out slowwwwwly into all the fridge compartments by the next day.

Giacomo

I blame some of this not completely on his being a cat, but on his still not being “fixed.”

My husband says daily “No one is taking away his balls!” but let’s just see how we get through the spring.

There’s already been a big vet bill for a cat fight that Giacomo got into when he slipped outside unattended.

Simba, an older cat that roams the “territory” near our yard, fanged him right through his front paw.

My husband grumbled that he had never spent so much in his life on all his previous cats combined, but the very next day, he picked up the purring, bandaged cat and said affectionately (for him), “How are ya, gimp? It’s time to get your revenge.”
Stay tuned!

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I’ve been reading a lot of articles lately about something that has suddenly gotten put on the radar: the fact that in many industrialized countries, seniors will soon outnumber the younger, working-age population.

In Canada, for example, (according to a Statistics Canada report released late last year), by the year 2015, there will be more people over the age of 65 than under the age of 15. That would be a first in the history of Canada’s population statistics, said the stats agency.

Indeed, a worrying trend has emerged in the country: Canada’s fertility rates (the amount of births per woman) are declining dramatically. We essentially are no longer replacing deaths with enough births.

The trucking industry has been well aware of such dire predictions for ages. Truckers already constitute, again according to Statistics Canada, an older work force whose average age in 2004 was 42 (45 for the self-employed truckers).

Even more worrisome, only 5 % of truck drivers were under 25 in 2004, compared with 15 % in the labour force as a whole, says ‘the Man’s’ Stats division.

And trucking will have to compete with many other industries for scarce employee resources. You can’t exactly offshore the profession either!

Now demographics don’t happen overnight, but I think the sudden panic was probably encouraged by the fact that in 2006, the oldest Baby Boomers (encompassing those born from 1946 to 1964), turn 60. This wouldn’t normally be problematic because their generation is, as we all know, immortal, but now all sorts of queries and questions are coming out about what shall we all do? There’s no one left to work!

Continue reading "Trucking needs a baby boom" »

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I’ve been reading a lot of articles lately about something that has suddenly gotten put on the radar: the fact that in many industrialized countries, seniors will soon outnumber the younger, working-age population.

In Canada, for example, (according to a Statistics Canada report released late last year), by the year 2015, there will be more people over the age of 65 than under the age of 15. That would be a first in the history of Canada’s population statistics, said the stats agency.

Indeed, a worrying trend has emerged in the country: Canada’s fertility rates (the amount of births per woman) are declining dramatically. We essentially are no longer replacing deaths with enough births.

The trucking industry has been well aware of such dire predictions for ages. Truckers already constitute, again according to Statistics Canada, an older work force whose average age in 2004 was 42 (45 for the self-employed truckers).

Even more worrisome, only 5 % of truck drivers were under 25 in 2004, compared with 15 % in the labour force as a whole, says ‘the Man’s’ Stats division.

And trucking will have to compete with many other industries for scarce employee resources. You can’t exactly offshore the profession either!

Now demographics don’t happen overnight, but I think the sudden panic was probably encouraged by the fact that in 2006, the oldest Baby Boomers (encompassing those born from 1946 to 1964), turn 60. This wouldn’t normally be problematic because their generation is, as we all know, immortal, but now all sorts of queries and questions are coming out about what shall we all do? There’s no one left to work!

Continue reading "Trucking needs a baby boom" »

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by Julia Kuzeljevich

It often comes up in casual conversation with friends and acquaintances, “What do you do for a living?” and when I tell people I’m a journalist, and more specifically, an editor and writer for a transportation trade publication, the response is always, with some variance,

“So do you, like, write about trucks?”

Well, I say, I do and I don’t.

I don’t profess to be an engineer, mechanic or maintenance manager, and I prefer, when researching a technical story, to consult the experts and relay the information to the readers as accurately as possible.

But I have made attempts in my career as a transportation journalist (now in my 7th year) to gain a better knowledge of trucks and how they operate.

I even took, at one point, an admittedly accelerated truck driving course. I passed the air brakes exam with flying colours, and with no surprise-it involved studying an actual book and listening to the instructor, and then responding in concise, organized sentences to exam questions.

I’m a whiz at that.

But I failed rather miserably at the driving exam.

Sure, I could drive smoothly down some of Ontario’s secondary highways while actually shifting gears in the truck without much grinding. (I credit this with having first learned to drive on a standard transmission.)

But on the actual day of the driving exam, a blustery, overcast December day, I did not succeed in backing up my trailer properly. Instant failure.

Of course I blamed it on the female examiner being extra tough on me, and later, on the fact that I was pregnant at the time and didn’t know it, a condition that surely must have affected my already-limited spatial judgement!

And technically, I had only accumulated about half the required driving hours, so I really was wasting the Ministry’s time trying to make a go of the exam.

But I was secretly relieved, because the exam taught me many things.

First of all it, that someone is doing something right by not letting me loose on small city streets to clog up traffic with my wide left-hand turns that put the cab on the curb.

It also taught me that I’m a real Girly Girl who likes uninterrupted sleep, doesn’t like doing circle checks in the frigid cold, or getting grease on my hands, and who is unwilling to part with the high heeled boots that actually would have allowed my 5’2 height to reach the pedals in those multi-tonned machines.

Sitting in the Ministry’s waiting room with some of the other candidates, however, I was ashamed of myself because so many of these guys were relying on a successful test to permit them a chance at a new career when their current ones in manufacturing and farming, to cite two examples, were coming to a premature close due to circumstances well beyond their control.

I was there because someone thought it a good idea for a trucking magazine editor to actually get in a truck for a change, and indeed, it was a good idea.

I’ve gained a whole new perspective, appreciation and respect for what drivers do, day in, day out, night in, night out.

You have a damned difficult job, and it’s time you earned some more credit for doing it.

So the next time people ask me, do I, like, write about trucks, I won’t worry about their eyes glazing over when I launch into all the varied aspects of the transportation industry.

I won’t wish I was writing an article about “10 different things to do to brighten your day” in one of those grocery-store magazines.

I’ll simply say yes.

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