Category Archives: 2018 Trip to Ottawa

People are entitled to the presumption of innocence and Judges should not be rapists or harassers

2018 Trip to Ottawa, Human rights, Law, Sexual harassment/Assault

The recent hearings in the US Senate to consider and decide whether or not Brett Kavanaugh should be confirmed as a judge on the US Supreme Court exposed some of the glaring weaknesses in the American system of judicial appointments to that nation’s highest court. Remember that judges are appointed for life and can have a profound effect on many social issues of great importance. Issues such as the right of women to an abortion, or the rights of a foetus, the rights of gays and lesbians, and countless other important issues. No doubt America should put the best people on that court.

In criminal law there is an expression, ‘better to let 10 guilty criminals off than send 1 innocent person to prison.’ That is acceptable in a criminal court.  Is that the appropriate principle to other important decisions? Not always I would suggest. No one in his or her right mind would say, ‘Better to have 10 rapists as judges than decline one innocent candidate.’

The problem of course is what should the decision makers do when the evidence is not certain or all the facts are not in? That can be difficult. Did the American Senate get it right?

What are people to do when all the evidence is not in? In a criminal court it is clear. The court cannot convict unless it is proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused is guilty.  If the judge or jury decides the case is not certain, a verdict of not guilty is required. That is as it should be. But what about other circumstances? What about outside the criminal court?

I think environmental law has found a workable solution.  It is called the precautionary principle. This means that decision makers should act to prevent harm when it is within our power to do so, even when all the evidence is not in. For example, if someone proposes to install a petroleum pipeline that might or might not lead to environmental contamination should the pipeline be approved or not? This principle requires that the pipeline which might cause great harm, only be approved if the persons who wants it gives reasonable credible evidence that it is safe to do so.

If it is not certain whether a particular course of action will create harm or not, as for example when the existing scientific evidence is unclear or uncertain about whether it will lead to serious harm or not, the precautionary principle imposes an obligation on the proponent of the  course of action, such as a pipeline, to prove that it will not lead to harm until further evidence makes it clear that the harm can be averted. In other words, policy makers are required to protect the public when there is a reasonably plausible possibility that a particular action will cause harm.  The decision makers can and should act to do this even it is not certain that the action will lead to harm. These protections can only be relaxed when further sound evidence makes it clear that no harm will result. The onus of proof is on the proponent to establish a lack of harm. Not the other way around.I think the American Senate ought to have been guided by such thinking in the case of Judge Kavanaugh.

In the case of the Senate hearings both the complainant Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and the proposed judge, Kavanaugh made plausible cases in support of their position. Kavanaugh came on strong and made a forceful defence against the allegations. On the other hand, Ford was clearly credible too. She made some inconsistent statements about what happened 36 years ago, but it would have been suspicious if that were not the case. I would say it was not certain beyond a reasonable doubt who was right.

The Senate appointed Judge Kavanaugh on the basis, I believe, that Dr. Ford’s  allegations were not proven. I think the Senate put the onus of proof on the wrong person. It should have said, Kavanaugh must prove he was innocent on a balance of probabilities, not on beyond a reasonable doubt.

Ford’s testimony might not have led to a conviction in a criminal trial, but it certainly was enough to reject him as a judicial candidate for a lifetime position to the highest court in the land. The public should not be required to accept a candidate as tainted as Kavanaugh, even though he might be innocent, because the public should be protected from the immense harm he might inflict on the public as a result of his lifetime appointment unless he could first prove that he was worthy.

Judge Kavanaugh was right when he called the hearing a national disgrace but not for the reasons he said so. It is a disgrace when the weighing of judicial appointments becomes a pure partisan game on both sides. It is a disgrace when an alleged sexual assault victim becomes a pawn in a political game. It is not a disgrace when an unworthy candidate is rejected for high judicial office when on a balance of probabilities, even if not beyond a reasonable doubt,  it is clear that he is wholly unsuitable for that office.

I would put it this way: If you were on the board of your local school division would you hire Brett Kavanaugh to be a janitor for the school? Not me.

Autumn

2018 Trip to Ottawa, autumn, photography

 

Everyone should experience the magic of autumn in the Eastern deciduous forests of North America. There is nothing like it anywhere in the world. The incredible variety of colors of the changing leaves is astonishing. That variety is produced by the great variety of trees in the east. In the west we are much more accustomed to the boreal forest where the trees are mainly coniferous and do not change color or shed. There are also much less varieties of trees.

Whenever I see the impossible beauty of autumn, I think of that French existentialist thinker, Albert Camus, said, “Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.” That is probably why autumn is my favorite season. Until recently I was always a little leery of autumn. I think it was because I knew what came next–winter. I never wanted to think about that. I dreaded winter. In the last few years we have largely escaped winter by travelling to the southwestern United States where winter is much more tolerable. Again, this year I am looking forward to the dead of winter to escape it. In the meantime I want very much to enjoy autumn. On this trip we certainly did that.

Rocks and Trees

2018 Trip to Ottawa, Geology, photography, waterfall

Rocks and Trees and waterfalls in the Canadian Shield

Often when we tell people that we are headed to the east people ask, “Why would you do that?  All you will see are rocks and trees and more rocks and more tree.” Then often, they add, “Boring!”  I would say if you think Northwestern Ontario is boring that you are probably boring.

Shortly after heading east down the Trans-Canada Highway we saw evidence of something that intrigues me.  That is the Canadian Shield. I kept thinking about this as I travelled east.  I love to see it, but my viewing pleasure is enhanced by what I have learned about this astonishing Canadian Shield.

We experienced snow on day 1 and 2 of our trip to the east

When I was at the Grand Canyon we were amazed that the oldest rocks at the bottom of the canyon  were 1.7 billion years old. That seemed like a lot, but those rocks are youngsters compared to the rocks in the Canadian Shield!

The shield contains some of the oldest rocks on the planet.  Many are 2 billion years old. Some are nearly 4 billion years old! The Shield goes well beyond Canada’s borders. Nearly 2/3 of North America is part of the shield.  It stretches from the Arctic to Mexico.

To geologists rocks seem to be alive since they tell us so much about where we and our world came from.  The earliest mountains on our planet are about 3.9 billion years old. The continents of our planet  have always been migratory. They travel like rafts on the surface of the earth. This is part of the system of tectonic plates. When continental plates collide parts of one plate can be added to the other. This is referred to as continental accretion. The plate tectonic process began soon after the earth was created. The Shield was assembled over billions of years. Since then many successive mountain ranges have been created and worn down over deep time. As a result geologists often look for ghosts of ancient mountain ranges. The Shield is one of these ghosts–the worn down stumps of very old mountains.

Colliding continents created immense volcanic activity which in turn created many rocks including  gneiss.  Gneiss is a highly metamorphosed rock that is composed of distinct bands of alternating pinkish granitic rock and darker more iron rich rock. It is very common in Canada. This rock shows the intense deformation of rock that occurred at great depths under the surface of the planet when crustal rocks collided to create the crustal mosaic that constitutes the oldest part of our country.  Where it is now exposed at the surface over large parts of the country these rocks are evidence of deep erosion of mountains and the removal of vast volumes of rock over the millions of years that followed these collisions creating a relatively flat Shield surface with which we are familiar.  The rocks we see are often the very deep roots of what were at one time very high mountains.  Contemplating such immense erosion gives one a profound sense of the power of time.

Gneiss is produced when 2 plates squeeze against each other and the igneous rocks are heated to extreme temperatures as a result of the friction and the pressures are enough to create mountains. The rock at that point is as soft as toothpaste.  The heat is so intense and so extreme that rocks are dehydrated  and produce water streaming from a burning rock.  The rock that is forced out is mineralized water.

Even though the Canadian Shield contains some of the oldest rocks on the planet, from time to time sojourner rocks have arrived from far off places. Some of these have even arrived from other worlds. For example, at Sudbury about 1.8 billion years ago a meteorite rocked the earth, digging deep beneath the surface at that time to create what we now call the Sudbury Basin.  The Basin is so deep it can be seen from space.

The force of that blow was awesome.  In fact it exceeded the force of all of our nuclear weapons combined!  The Sudbury Basin close to where we travelled is the second largest known impact crater on our planet. It is 62 km long and 30 km and 15 km deep.  To consider the force that created such an impact is a humbling task. Railway engineers who were constructing the Canadian Pacific Railway discovered it accidentally in 1885.   Another surprise meteoric visitor from outer space created the crater that later filled with rock. We now call that crater West Hawk Lake.

The last two million years in the Shield have produced great fluctuations in climate. From time to time, this generated massive continental ice sheets that came and went over the continent wearing down mountains, depositing rock materials, and retreating again, only to arise again later.  The changes created by these forces were also awesome.  These ice sheets were HUGE.  Imagine ice sheets 2 km. deep above where we were driving. It really was difficult to comprehend.

I love these little islands of rocks and trees

         My friends probably think I’m nuts, but I was thinking about such things as we drove through the Shield. It is much more than rocks and trees.

Castle in the Forest

2018 Trip to Ottawa

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6tspb5b7ry8cq8j/Screenshot%202018-10-03%2008.21.45.png?dl=0

White Otter Castle

 

Outside our Motel in Atikokan –the White Otter Inn–where we spent the first night on our trip to Ottawa we saw a display of an extravagant castle in the forest. This is a photograph of it I found on the Internet. We learned that the motel was named after that castle–the White Otter Castle. The castle deep in the north woods of northwest Ontario that can only be reached by boat or plane is an amazing 3-storey log house built by James Alexander “Jimmy” McOuat on the shores of White Otter Lake. Like any self-respecting castle it has a turret extends 41 ft. above the 3 storeys. McQuat built the castle by himself starting in 1905 and finished it in 1915.  Clearly he was another man with passion. He felled the red pines all by himself in order to complete construction. If you are not familiar with red pines they are Manitoba’s and Ontario’s version of the California Redwoods. McQuat’s grave is beside the castle. The castle was falling into disrepair though recently restored.

According to a brochure in our Inn the castle is “a symbol of man’s triumph over nature.”  I am not so sure. Although it has been restored,  I think it is a symbol of nature’s triumph over man. As the saying goes, nature always bats last. We’ll have to see who is right.

 

Travel Sluts

2018 Trip to Ottawa, Family, photography, Waterfalls

There is little doubt that Chris and I are travel sluts. We have already traveled this year from Arizona to Manitoba by way of Utah, Iceland, and now to Ottawa. After the last trip, we were so tired we thought we would not travel again for quite a while. Well, it is less than 3 months since we got home and we are off again. Yes, we are travel sluts.

So what is a travel slut? It is a person who is promiscuous about his or her travel desires and is willing to travel without a lot of courtship or foreplay. We took this trip without much forethought. The opportunity arose and we took. Surely that is a travel slut.

I had a narrow 2-week window of opportunity between teaching engagements with the Manitoba Real Estate Association. That was a window that had to be filled. Hence here we are meandering toward the nation’s capital in the autumn. Ready for the best and the worst.