My Vision Quest - Chapter 2

"How do you eat an Elephant?" About two decades ago now my Mom posed that question to me in an email. She was responding to a note I had sent to her earlier in the day, in which I had expressed my troubled thoughts over the daunting task that lay ahead of me; writing my Master's Thesis. For some time, despite a massive volume of collected research to draw upon, I had been like a man standing paralyzed on a high diving board, with toes gripping tightly to the very edge. I knew I was not going to turn around and climb back down the ladder, but the longer I stood there the harder it seemed to be to take the plunge. Her answer, "one bite at a time!", not only made me laugh, but also reminded me of another piece of profound wisdom; "the first step in solving any problem is to begin." Keeping both of those lessons in mind, the time has come to spring forward. It has been nineteen years since I put my Thesis draft in a box and withdrew from the M.A. program, but it is time now to resurrect the words I wrote back then in a series of articles for my blog, because it is a voice and an argument that is every bit as important to be heard today as it was back in 1996.

Finding a meaningful voice in the dialogue relating to First Nations' aspirations for self-government and self-determination within Canada's assumed territories has required a rather lengthy vision quest. Born into a family of Christian Missionaries, the earliest experiences of my life were from the 'Dark Continent', where my Grandfather was serving as a Doctor in Angola, and my Father was serving as a Minister with the United Church of Zambia at the time of my birth in 1963. Throughout my childhood I was raised to believe in and to respect the dignity and worth of all peoples within the family of humanity, as well as to support and defend the rights of all peoples to equality and freedom from persecution and oppression. The associations and friendships my parents shared were with people from a diversity of racial identities, and I grew up in those early years as comfortable in the companionship of a 'black' child as with a 'brown' or 'white.' It was a world in which I had been one of the 'minority', but also one in which, at least as far as I can recall, race played no part in the friendships I made or shared.

When I arrived in Canada in 1970 my family settled in Medicine Hat, Alberta, for a period of about six years, and it was during this time that I received my first exposure to the images of the 'Noble Savages' of North America. Despite my egalitarian upbringing, like every boy (and some girls) I knew at the time, we played 'Cowboys and Indians', watched the Westerns on T.V., and spent the early evening hours before moms called us off to bed pretending we were settling the 'Wild West' in days of old. The racial composition of my environment had changed dramatically with the move to a 'New World', but my exposure to 'real Indians' was quite limited. There were the occasional despairing souls who came to the door of the Manse we lived in seeking food stamps and lodging arrangements, but I was perhaps too young at the time to appreciate the gravity of their predicaments or to make the correlation between their indigenous character and the socioeconomic conditions they faced. Aboriginal peoples dressed in buckskins and headdresses, mounted on horses, and riding in the annual Medicine Hat Rodeo Parade or Calgary Stampede provided the surreal identity for those "dusky" foe that lurked around the corners of Mr. Gardner's garage or the bushes in the Daniel's front yard. Geronimo was taken down by my steady aim on many a night. I did not perceive myself as a racist at the time, and I do not recall feelings of hatred either. It just seemed like pretending to kill Indians was what kids in Canada did for fun. Years later I would look back on those 'games' with both regret for my ignorance over the indoctrination that such boyhood imaginations were perpetuating, and my naiveté over the implications of 'playing' out genocide against the 'Red Skins' of the Prairies on which I was living.

In 1976 Dad's career required a move to Edmonton, where for the first year we settled into the Strathcona community. My first friend in the neighborhood was Ravin Eagle-Spirit (not his real name), an Aboriginal boy my age who lived a few houses east and across the back alley. Ravin and I spent every day out-and-about; riding our bikes in Mill Creek Ravine, skateboarding along White Avenue, playing street hockey in Kinsmen Park, and smoking cigarettes while hiding in the garage attic with girlie magazines. His indigenous heritage was of no significance to me then, except perhaps in providing a personal affirmation of the authentic humanity within a peer's 'Indian' identity. We were not peer's in every respect though, and it was from my friendship with Ravin and access to his home environment that I was first exposed to at least three aspects of family life that all-too-frequently serve to define reality for a vast majority of Canada's Aboriginal peoples today; abject poverty, spousal violence, and intoxicated requital.

Our time of companionship on the road of life only lasted for about a year before my family moved to the west side of the city and we lost touch. As the years passed though, like many other Canadians, I followed the resurgence of the First Nations' political agenda leading up to the Patriation of the Constitution in 1981. My prior friendship with Ravin provided an intimate frame of reference in which I was able to identify with some of the consequences attributed to divestiture, which it has been proven that the Canadian government has practiced against the First Nations' peoples throughout the state. The 'games' I had played around the neighborhood in Medicine Hat and the movies I'd watched with friends at Saturday Matinees flashed back to provide mental images of the type of treatment that Aboriginal peoples faced during the formative years of our nation's history, and still continue to struggle against. Images of dire poverty and social decay in reserve communities, reports of abhorrent levels of unemployment, and evidence of disproportionate hardship through incarceration statistics captured the media spotlight and were graphically portrayed with increasing regularity on National and local news broadcasts throughout the 1980s. As I passed from youth, through adolescence, and toward adulthood I was quickly becoming a 'less-proud' Canadian, and the road was being paved for the years of intellectual inquiry that were to follow during the course of my endeavors in post-secondary education.

I became more intensely interested in the plight of Canada's Aboriginal peoples as the Constitutional Conference mandated by S.37 of the Constitution Act, 1981, and the three subsequent Conferences, proceeded to capture center-stage on the national political and media agendas during the period from 1983 through 1987. Then, in 1987, while I was studying toward a Diploma in Law Enforcement at Lethbridge Community College (L.C.C.), in Lethbridge, Alberta, a more localized set of circumstances became the focus of my attention. For a couple of years thereafter the 'coffee-house agenda' in Lethbridge periodically centered around discussions over a number of deaths of Kainaiwa Nation (Blood) peoples in Lethbridge and on the reservation that stretches south from Fort Macleod to the town of Cardston, in southern Alberta. Being privy to some of those conversations as a consequence of over-hearing them while performing part-time Server functions in the Restaurant Industry, I became disillusioned by the assumptions of inferiority and worthlessness I repeatedly heard used to define Aboriginal identity. The Constitutional Conference process failed to reach consensus on the establishment of understanding in relation to the 'rights' of First Nations' peoples to self-government and self-determination, and the climate in Lethbridge provided me with ample evidence of unresolved intolerance from 'white' people toward 'Indians'. An attachment to the principle of a 'cultural mosaic' as the defining characteristic of Canada's identity and my altruism both served to motivate me into searching out an argument that could provide the moral and legal authority to convince fellow Canadians that the premise of an inherent right to self-government and self-determination for Aboriginal communities throughout the nation was one that they must acknowledge and give credence to.

In 1988, Chief Roy Fox sent letters to the Premier of Alberta that expressed his community's concerns over what was perceived as a pattern of  increasing incidents of deaths and murders of Kainaiwa Nation members under peculiar and mysterious circumstances. Those letters, and others sent by concerned parties, also expressed dissatisfaction with the police investigations into those deaths, and suggested that the authorities had been either unwilling or unable to solve the tragedies to the satisfaction of the community. A Public Inquiry was established under the direction of Commissioner C.H. Rolf in 1989, and shortly thereafter hearings began in Lethbridge and Cardston. Coinciding with the climate of intercultural tensions in southern Alberta at the time, in 1988 I had graduated from L.C.C. and had decided to move across the Coulee to the University of Lethbridge (U. of L.), to begin a four-year term of study toward a Bachelor of Arts Degree, majoring in Political Science. Throughout my years of study at L.C.C., and during the years that would follow at the U. of L., I became increasingly disturbed by the allegations of racism and genocide that members of the Kainaiwa Nation claimed were motivating the treatment they received at the hands of the authority figures responsible for justice administration within their community. Hitherto I had not given much thought to the colonial regime that provided the foundation of our nation's historical evolution, nor had I understood how many comparisons were possible with the Apartheid regime in South Africa and the colonial administrations that had emerged to exploit and oppress the indigenous peoples across Africa during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Driven by the influences of my early life in Africa; by the experiences of thirteen years living in southern Alberta and the exposure I had to some racist attitudes; by my belief in the concept of a 'just' society, fairly and impartially governed by the 'rule of law'; and by my passion for investigating, rooting out, and exposing injustice, the appeal to learn more about the historical and legal arrangements between the Crown and Aboriginal peoples magnified.

The cumulative impact of all of these experiences stimulated my interest in pursuing graduate studies, and in 1993 I began course work at the University of Alberta, Department of Political Science, toward the Master of Arts Degree that this, my Thesis draft paper was prepared for. By that point I had already been influenced by reading the reports and findings of the Royal Commission on the Donald Marshall, Jr., Prosecution in Nova Scotia, the Report of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba, the Report of the Task Force on the Criminal Justice System and its Impact on the Indian and Metis People of Alberta, the failed Meech Lake Accord process, the Oka Crisis in Quebec, and the Lone Fighters Society attempted blockade of the Old Man River Dam project in Southern Alberta. The evidence available to stand in support of the dismal treatment Aboriginal peoples have experienced during their centuries of association with the Imperial and Canadian Crown is abundant, and yet the political and legal will in Canada has been quite resistant to the acceptance of an inherent right to self-government and self-determination for First Nations' peoples. For at least the past thirty years Canadians have been struggling to articulate exactly what is meant by the sentence, "existing aboriginal and treaty rights are hereby recognized and affirmed," as it reads in Section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1981.

Without question, the greatest source of dissension has arisen out of the correlation between inherent rights and sovereign rights. Instructed by Brian Slattery's observation that, "issues of sovereignty are implicated in many current disputes between native Americans and governmental authorities over such matters as land claims, treaty rights, the application of customary law, and powers of self-government," I arrived at a similar conclusion to the one that he reached in a 1991 article, "Aboriginal Sovereignty and Imperial Claims," (published in the Osgoode Hall Law Journal, Vol.29, No.4, at p.322). Slattery noted that, "[u]ntil some understanding on this matter is reached, it seems unlikely that the disputes will be resolved or fade away."

The argument presented in this and subsequent articles on this blog is primarily addressed toward reaching resolution of these disputes. In an effort to bring closure to the debate over the scope and content of Aboriginal rights, therefore, I intend to focus the analysis within these articles on the following question:

Is the right to self-government and self-determination an inherent right possessed by Aboriginal peoples as a consequence of being the original occupants of the lands now claimed by the Canadian state, or is it a contingent right, based on the benevolent 'grant' of powers and jurisdiction from the Federal and provincial governments?

Further on the examination of this point, I want to consider the underlying question that inevitably flows from a consideration of the dichotomy between these opposing schools of thought toward the rights of First Nations' peoples in territories claimed as being a part of the sovereign domain of the Canadian state:

In International Law, does Canada possess an unfettered sovereign title to the territories it has assumed control over; based on Imperial Crown transfer of land title, Post-Confederation Treaties with First Nations' peoples, and/or premised on a 'Settlement Thesis' legitimating acquisition of title to lands over which no treaty was signed? Or, conversely, regardless of Treaties and the settlement of Canada by peoples of European heritage, do First Nations' peoples still possess a sovereign title to the lands that their ancestors have inhabited since time immemorial that can serve to fetter Canadian sovereignty over British North America?

During the course of the past three decades I have traveled a trail through eight centuries of convoluted legal and historical scholarship with the aim of discovering a conclusive appraisal of those seemingly elusive 'existing aboriginal and treaty rights'. As a consequence of the research I have completed, I defend the argument that the historical archives and my research supports:

First Nations' peoples in Canada possess an inherent right to self-government and self-determination. Further, and coincident with this right, there must be an acknowledgment by the Government of Canada, the provincial legislatures, and the people of Canada that First Nations' peoples continue to enjoy a sovereign title over the lands on which they live and have a right to establish whatever processes and institutions they deem necessary and desirable for the good and orderly governance of their communities - including the right to make laws and to establish independent justice systems for dispute and conflict resolution functions within First Nations' territories.

Undoubtedly, there are those who will shudder at the potential for jurisdictional chaos within such a hypothesis, not to mention the possible threat that such a conclusion could hold for the very complex of the existing Confederation. Those who hold and manipulate the strings of power and authority under the current 'quasi-federal' system will most certainly resist, as they have for well over a century, any infringement on the 'rights' and 'titles' that they have come to believe they inherited from the forefathers who reached terms of agreement for the formation of Canada, and from the imperial Crown that preceded them. Those prone to 'doom and gloom' imaginations of such a complication of legal entitlement over Canada's assumed territories will hesitate in giving any credence to such an argument, regardless of its merit, for fear of the change that it will bring to the identity of the state that they have found a sense of security within and an allegiance toward. In response to such resistance and defensiveness, I intend to suggest that, far from tearing apart the very fabric of our society, there is the potential within such an acknowledgment for a positive and dynamic reconstruction of the ties that bind us together. As a means to articulate this vision, I propose that in fact:

Syncretism of 'distinct societies' within 'the Village' (Canada) can be achieved through the paradox of pluralism in governing bodies and institutions, by adopting and promoting a new 'Longhouse' paradigm of cohabitation.

As the above synthesis of my vision quest infers, this work is the product of many contributions. If the evidence and insights I share herein serve to improve the lives of First Nations' peoples and help to strengthen 'the Village' in the twenty-first century, the credit goes to those people who I have met and been influenced by along the journey to now. I thank them for their teaching and guidance, for their support and encouragement, and for the wisdom I was able to glean from their thoughts. If this endeavor does not prove to contribute to those aims, the burden for failing to do so is mine alone. That said, I believe my conscience will be clear, for all that I am attempting to do is share with you 'the truth as I have come to know it.' Beyond that, no person can go.

Truth & Reconciliation - Toward a New Path - Chapter 1

Crescent Falls, a few minutes drive west of Nordegg, Alberta, is a deep gorge and waterfall in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Standing on the rocks above and watching the water rush over the ledge to the canyon floor, it is hard to think of anything but the magnificence of nature. A glance up-stream to the towering mountain range in the distance binds the imagination to pondering over the millions of years it took to shape such splendor. Mesmerized by the roar of waves dancing head-long into the stream below, the anxieties of daily life and the polemics of humanities relations seem transient and trivial against the back-drop of nature's apparent antiquity and immortality. Undaunted by the affairs of mankind, these waters have continued to flow along their course, day-after-day, since continental ice sheets contracted to expose an ice-free corridor from the Yukon to Montana some 12,000 years ago.

The perpetuity of this stream running through the wilderness is analogous to the sustained fluidity of transition that characterizes the history of civilization. During the same epoch that the waters at Crescent Falls have been pouring across the rocks, the ancient societies of Babylon, Rome, Greece, Prussia, the Ottoman Empire, the Kingdom of the Kongo, the Mayas, and the Aztec Empire all rose to prominence and then fell to impotence. Their individual eras are little more than fleeting moments in the life of a tributary, and they are only a small number of the societies and cultures that have come and gone.

The year is now 2017 A.D., and across the globe currents of change persist in their assaults on the complexion and organization of many other political communities. In our preceding twentieth century alone a host of distinct societies and political orders proved incapable of stemming the tides that threatened to erode their foundations. The once powerful British Empire succumbed to the demands of self-government asserted by colonial societies throughout the regions of its realm and transformed into the Commonwealth of Nations; a loose alliance of independent nation-states. German society was divided by a brick wall and barbed-wire fences after the defeat of Adolph Hitler's Third Reich in the Second World War, only to be reunited by the collapse of Communism and the crumbling of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. South Africa emerged from decades of Africana-minority rule under the Apartheid system of government to see the day when Nelson Mandela, one of the founders of the indigenous liberation movement, was elected as the first black President. In the 'Americas' a renaissance of indigenous cultural identities, suppressed by the ancestors and institutions of European imperial powers over the course of the past few centuries, underscores intensified quests for self-government and self-determination in First Nations' communities across both 'New World' continents.

The focus of this article, and subsequent ones to be posted on this blog, is the broad subject of claims to rights of self-government and self-determination by Aboriginal peoples in Canada. The challenge to the hegemony of Canada has become located within the articulation of legal rights that the Constitution Act, 1981 claims to protect for First Nations' peoples living within its borders. In Part II of the Act, Rights of the Aboriginal Peoples of Canada, Section 35.(1) states that, "[t]he existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada are hereby recognized and affirmed." The Act did not, however, define just exactly what rights it was referring to in the context of "...existing aboriginal and treaty rights..." Instead of defining those rights, the Act established a process of Constitutional Conference(s) in Part IV, Section 37., that were intended as a means to arrive at "...the identification and definition of the rights of those peoples to be included in the Constitution of Canada,..."  Somewhat ass-backward, the idea was that the Constitution Act, 1981 would provide constitutional recognition for whatever rights it was that the Constitutional Conference(s) agreed upon; through the participation of the Prime Minister, the First Ministers of the provinces, and whatever "...representatives of those [Aboriginal] peoples..." the Prime Minister chose to invite participation from in the course of the discussions.

In approaching this field of study it is my intention to center my analysis around two specific ongoing debates. First, I will examine the debate between 'inherent' and 'contingent' rights approaches to the acceptance of an Aboriginal right to self-government and self-determination in Canada. Secondly, I will address the common perception that the Government of Canada possesses exclusive sovereign title over the territories that it has assumed, and the corresponding challenge being presented by Aboriginal peoples against this claim to unfettered title over lands that their ancestors have lived on since time immemorial. Drawing upon references from legal and historical scholarship dating back to as early as the thirteenth century and following right through to the twenty-first century, I conclude from my analysis of these two debates and the body of research behind them that Aboriginal people in Canada do possess an "inherent" right to self-government and self-determination; that such an inherent right encompasses an existing right to sovereign authority over their lands and peoples; and that the Government of Canada's sovereignty is not exclusive within the Canadian confederation of regions. I further assert that, coincident with the recognition of these rights, Aboriginal peoples in Canada and the governments of their making possess the right to establish whatever processes and institutions they deem necessary and desirable for the good and orderly governance of their communities - including the right to make laws and to establish independent justice systems for dispute and conflict resolution functions within First Nations' territories.

To the vast majority of Canada's population an argument made by a citizen of this country that brings into question the legitimacy of Canadian sovereignty might be perceived as tantamount to treason. On November 11th of each year, Remembrance Day, millions of people across this country gather at cenotaphs and/or wear red poppies to pay their respects to those men and women who have fought and died for the protection of the rights and freedoms of Canada's citizenry. To assert that the country these people died to protect may have been founded on a debasement and bastardization of International Law principles, and to suggest that other 'nations' may have equally legal and moral claims to this territorial region, is likely to be taken as a great insult by many war veterans.

My Grandfather and Father, as well as many other members of our family tree, served in the defence of Canada, and our family has roots in British North America that date back five generations. Many lives were lost so that I and the other children of my age could live in a future where ideas and arguments are expressed freely, and to live in a world where notions of peace, freedom, and respect for rights to life and liberty shape the idealism in international political pronouncements. Any who believe that I am somehow less committed to respecting and serving that legacy are sadly mistaken. However, there is a rapidly growing body of historical and legal literature emerging that stands in support of an existing Aboriginal right to sovereign title over the lands on which they live and on which their ancestral heritage is located, and 'justice' dictates that it cannot simply be ignored. There are also many Aboriginal families who lost the companionship of sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, as well as mothers and fathers to the battlefields of Europe during the 1940s, and it seems self-evident that their ancestors have an equal claim to ensure that articulations of Canada's historical evolution take into account the communal rights of First Nations' peoples.
Rather than presenting a threat to the hegemony of the Canadian state, as many might first be inclined to believe, I would assert that recognition and statutory articulation of such rights within our nation could have dynamic consequences that would serve to remind all in our society that, "...as Canadians we take our life from the fruitful collision and interpretation of many inheritances and thus, we grow."

Toward defence of this premise, in future articles on this blog I will support the argument that syncretism of 'distinct societies' within 'the Village' (Canada) can be achieved through the paradox of pluralism in governing bodies and institutions, by adopting and promoting a new 'Longhouse' paradigm of cohabitation.

There are a few points to make for clarification in reading of future articles on this blog. First, I have used italics, perhaps more frequently than readers my be acustomed to, in order to emphasize the specific legal paradigm that the reader should be considering while reflecting on the accompanying text. For example, at several points the reader may encounter the terms Canon Law, Natural Law, Positive Law, Roman Law, English Law, the Law of Nations and/or International Law within the same paragraph/page. Each of these titles refers to a specific legal paradigm or tradition and the transition from one body of legal theory to the next might be confusing unless emphasis is utilized to draw attention to the specific paradigm/tradition under consideration. I should also note that I do not pretend to be providing in these articles a comprehensive overview of these bodies of law. If the reader is not versed in these legal traditions it will be necessary to seek elsewhere for a detailed account of their constructs.

Secondly, throughout this work readers will find the terms indigenous, Aboriginal, and First Nations' peoples used interchangeably to identify those peoples whose societies and cultures possess an ancestral heritage on the American continents which precedes the arrival of European explorers, colonial representatives, and immigrant settlers from the 'Old World'.

Lastly, while I hope that this work will be easy enough for a reader of general interest to understand and appreciate, I do not present these articles as an introduction to the issues of First Nations' politics in Canada. This is a multi-article argument addressing a critique of historical and legal interpretations that have served to disadvantage First Nations' peoples in Canada, and its intended audience is most specifically those scholars and public policy formulators who, in my opinion, need to reconsider and reflect on the inaccuracies and injustices within the paradigms of legal rights and entitlements that they have hitherto been relying upon to guide their thoughts and actions.

In a multi-media age of fifteen second sound-bites it is frequently possible, and in some cases preferable, to make rapid judgments based on scant information. Many television news broadcasts now feature summaries of the top stories of the day within the first few minutes and the last few minutes of an hour-long broadcast; just in case members of their audience do not have the time or patience to stick around long enough to hear the whole story. I would implore my audience to discard such haste in drawing conclusions with respect to the 'existing aboriginal and treaty rights' of First Nations' peoples in Canada as they are presented in this and subsequent articles on this blog. Two points should be kept in mind. First, by acknowledging and articulating Aboriginal rights to self-government and self-determination in Canada's assumed territory it is not necessary to view the relationship as a dichotomy of rights or a zero-sum argument. Secondly, it is also not possible to achieve a thorough understanding of the merit within a call for their recognition by reading the Introduction and Conclusion. I ask that the reader suspend popularized understandings of Canadian history and hitherto common perceptions as to the legal rights of First Nations' peoples within it while absorbing the argument that is to be laid before you. Instructed by the maxim, "...it's easy enough to have a clear conscience - all it takes is a fuzzy memory," I propose that by doing so the experience will be made richer through the clarity that insight and objectivity can produce. I would also ask that the reader reflect on the words of Carl Schurz:

"Our country, right or wrong. When right, to be kept right, when wrong, to be put right."

Turtle Island - Our Home in First Nations' lands - Preface

The Mithraic and early Christian association of the turtle with 'internal forces' is a reality in Canadian historical and contemporary society and culture. It is an apt description for these lands we all share and consider as, "...the true North, strong and free". "Our home and native land..." has indeed been governed for generations by the use of power and violence on people who were already living in these territories when the forefathers of European immigrants claimed 'dominion' over them and established governing laws and institutions to facilitate their assimilationist and genocidal intents. It is an abhorrent legacy for any 'Village' to acknowledge, but We own it no less.

The rights and freedoms of the First Nations' peoples housed within the shell of Turtle Island has been the subject of public discourse for as many centuries as immigrants from European nations have lived amongst them. Debates employing Canon Law, Natural Law, the Law of Nations, International Law, along with English and Canadian Law have all been exhausted for and against the inalienable First Nations' inherent right to be respected in law and in fact as equal in their humanity and in their capacity to own title to these lands preceding the arrival of European colonizers, to justify today an inherent right to self-government and self-determination in these lands. The Federal government has acknowledged these rights, and even enshrined them as "hereby recognized and affirmed" in Canada's Constitution Act, 1981, and still more than a quarter century later our society is grappling with what that means and how best to make it a reality. The Chief Justice of The Supreme Court of Canada recently acknowledged this pathetic record, but until the Government of Canada starts living the spirit and intent of the words it has agreed to in both national and international treaties, covenants and pronouncements that pace of progress will continue in keeping with the speed of a tortoise.

Through the decades of debate First Nations' women continue to go missing at alarming rates, alcohol, drug abuse and violence rip apart families and communities, that themselves suffer the added challenge of insufficient opportunities for employment, a lack of adequate schools and resources, and poor or non-existent infrastructure in terms of fresh drinking water and the systems for dispensing it, along with inadequate housing and challenges with respect to the costs and delivery mechanisms of food supplies rage on. These challenges are endemic and glaring examples of the incapacity of the Government of Canada to live up to its fiduciary responsibilities toward "Indians and lands reserved for the Indians" as specifically recognized and affirmed in the British North America Act of 1867. Since the invention of television and the advent of the nightly news you will undoubtedly find news stories about the third world living conditions, abject poverty and high rates of substance abuse and crime in many of Canada's First Nations' communities. In contemporary times gang and drug turf challenges increase the complexity of needed solutions.

It is long past time that Canadians demanded that the Federal and Provincial governments work together with First Nations' peoples to make significant strides in achieving an enhanced quality of life and improved communal and economic conditions for Canada's First Nations peoples. If Canadians valued the humanity and historical legacy of First Nations' peoples we share as much as they valued "black gold" you can be certain they would all be living in Utopias by now. The fact is that there have been enough pronouncements from enough politicians and representatives of the judiciary. We do not need as a society any more guilt and shaming exercises and speeches. What we do need is for the Federal government to live up to its fiduciary responsibilities honourably, and to commit with priority in manpower and resources to the obligations it has, as long as the sun rises and the rivers flow, to serve ALL of its citizens with equality and justice before and under the law of this nation. To do any less is to bastardize the integrity of The Government of Canada and prove it disingenuous in its sacred commitment and obligation to the service of our collective well being as its nation's citizens. That must no longer be tolerated.

The record is clear, it is no longer uncertain, and it is not at all pretty. It is time to do something about that in the now. The next Government and political party I vote for will commit to doing exactly that or they will not be getting my vote. I urge all Canadians to take an equal stand. Canada and all that makes it wonderful and unique began and is at its core identifed with its First Nations' peoples. It is past time ALL Canadians benefit equally and are able to be rightly proud of the reality that is our cultural mosaic. It is past time that We treated all of Our peoples with the honour, dignity and respect that they deserve as Our brothers and sisters in humanity and as Our fellow citizens in Our home and their native lands.

Perplexed by the way things are done sometimes? Me too!

I admit it, I am a political junkie. It's hard not to be, since political community is an ever-present part of what it means to live in society with fellow human beings. I'm also a proud Canadian, but I must confess from the outset that I am not a fan of the Conservative party in charge of the government on behalf of our citizenry. I, like many Canadians, have lost faith in and respect for the leadership we are receiving, and have become disenchanted at least, and enraged at worst, with the judgement being employed and the decisions that are being made and not made on our behalf.

This week I have been reading John Ralston Saul's impressive work, "A Fair Country - Telling Truths about Canada". I strongly recommend it to all Canadians as a very worthy read. Some of John's observations relate to language and the utilization of words in languages, as well as in regions of the world and Canada, and their influence on culture as well as on one another within a shared culture. I have also been following a fair amount of news recently referencing the, "Stephen Harper Government". It struck a chord with me this evening that personality politics in Canada is damaging our democracy severly and needs to be altered promptly. 

Stephen Harper, as leader of the Conservative Party, was appointed as Prime Minister of Canada, on behalf of Her Majesty, Queen Elizebeth II. It is not and never has been "Stephen Harper's Government" or even the "Conservative's Government" and we need to stop allowing these individuals and the media to refer to them as such. It is the "Prime Minister's Government", and the "Government of Canada". It does not belong to Stephen Harper or the Conservative party for the duration of their majority mandate and its formal identity should never be attached to individuals or their political identities. 

These individuals were elected to represent Canadians in OUR federal government public offices and have been entrusted to serve OUR Government of Canada while they are holding those public office's in good standing, regardless of their political stripes. The only time we should be experiencing the partisan nature of Canada's political system is during the election phase. At all other times, the political stripes of the individuals and groups should be subordinated/eliminated from public discourse in respect to the actions and initiatives of the governments that are there to serve us all, regardless of partisan values and priorities. 

A mandate to govern is not the same thing as a mandate to proseltize and Canadians do not need the perpetual focus on the divisiveness inherent within the partisan nature of the current environment and practice of Canadian politics. Outside of the election phase, all Canadians want their governments focused on good judgement and management of their collective best interests. The privilege to govern is not a license to enter a perpetual sparing match with the other representatives of the People appointed to govern on behalf of the People. All MPs, MLAs and Councillors, once elected, are there to work collaboratively and cooperatively with their peers to achieve the best interests of the citizenry as a whole. Failing to keep their focus on that quest, or allowing it to be distracted by partisan politics, should be grounds for recall and/or banishment. 

We also need to take the personalities out of all references to Federal, Provincial and Municipal publicly elected officials. When the Minister of Health speaks on a podium at a luncheon, or releases a media press release on a new law, regulation or initiative, we should not be attaching an individual personality or political party identity to the vessel fulfilling a function on behalf of all Canadians. Rona Ambrose's personality, and that of all other public servants, needs to be subordinated to the Office that she, and they, are charged to hold by not being utilized at all, period. It is my view that this can help to significantly reduce the egos that emerge and run rampant when celebrity-like status inflates an individual's or a group's persona above that of the people's Office held.    

I know, about now you are looking for something better to do because you thing I have gone wing-nuts, but please, let's play these thoughts out together. 

First off, by eliminating any individual or political personas from the Offices of our governments, we minimize the likelihood and ability of individual ego's being able to expand exponentially to put their own personalites, priorities and values ahead of the Public's best interests as a whole and the Mandate they were elected collectively to serve. 

Secondly, it would also reduce the ability of the media to turn what should be the reporting of news into a perpetual ideological struggle rampant with speculation, and at times even fabrication, being passed off as 'news'. Simply put, it will help to make reporting of the work of the government(s) that serve us more about the actual actions and inititiatives of OUR governments, and much less about the nature and political persuasions of the characters in the suits and dresses standing at the podiums explaining them. If it serves to reduce the constant competitiveness and ideological conflicts between elections that is often times created and fueled by the media, that would be a positive outcome for the on-going dialogue about the influence and impact of governments in our daily lives. 

Thirdly, it would also allow all of those elected officials to spend much less time worrying about their personal safety or about what they will read about themselves in the morning paper or find said about them in social media, and will allow them to focus instead within their relative anonymity and diminished stature with increased emphasis on their servitude to the duties they have been elected to fulfill.  

There are a plethora of changes that need to be made within the systems and processes of governance in Canada to counter the current capacity of individuals and political parties, who represent only a portion of the Canadian populace, to hijack and/or distort the Mandate they have been given the sacred privilege of fulfilling on behalf of the People they serve. An increase in individual obscurity in favour of increased prominance for the Office and its ownership by the People would be a start in a positive countering of the propensity for some to forget that they are there to serve US and are entitled to no more or less than that. 

Backwards Progress - Challenges of Contemporary Times

Reaching the half-century mark a couple of years back, I've witnessed my share of change; in the communities and societies I have grown up in, in the greater world beyond and the many nations that comprise it, and in my personal life along the journey to now as well.

"Life is about change", as someone at some time or another is undoubtedly credited with having observed along the way, and accordingly that reality is not in itself extraordinary. But if one stops to ponder for a few minutes on the historical changes in technology, lifestyle, societal values and cultural norms that have taken place over the past five decades in Canada, as well as around the world, I think one has to concede the half-century I have lived is pretty mind-boggling in comparison to most if not all earlier generations in human history. 'Survival of the fittest" has taken on a whole new meaning, literally and virtually.

I type today on a wireless keyboard to my IPad, using an App that backs up all my files to an Internet storage location, transmitted wirelessly. When I started College in 1985 we were just starting to see computer labs introduced and most all of my term papers were still done on a typewriter through Under-graduate studies in College and University. If you messed up a page half way down the text, you had to re-type it. There was no auto-correct and a Dictionary on the desk was your best friend in a slow, deliberate key-pecking process. As a child there was one phone in the house and a black and white T.V. made by Zenith. It had 3 channels as I recall. We were allowed one hour of T.V. a night and the rest was time spent on homework or playing outside with friends in the neighbourhood.

Today I have Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google, Pinterest and Instagram accounts, to name but a few, and if it weren't for needing to walk the dogs a couple of times a day I likely wouldn't see much of the great out-of-doors at all. Even when I do, I could easily get a half dozen distracted walking tickets a day with my IPhone in hand, practically always. Pretty much all of the familial ties and friendships I have in life are now more virtually present than physically present in my experience of daily living. My 'Social Network' is global today, but my 'Social Circle' seems to have shrunken proportionately. I have a 'small' 32" colour LED flat screen T.V. with at least 30 channels to watch, and I can never find anything I want to see on them. It all seems like a backwards kind of 'progress' to me at times, and in many ways it is! These are also only some of many ways our country and our world has taken one step forward while taking more than two backwards along the journey to now.

As a Missionary's kid in Zambia in the mid to late-60's, my early years were shaped by an environment where being 'white' meant you were in the minority, with gated properties and bars on the house windows being the norm. I have childhood memories of being inside our home when burglarly attempts were in progress. I was then transplanted at the start of the 70's into Southern Alberta, where the kids in the neighbourhood were pretty much all shades of beige. We watched Westerns at Saturday Matinees and then played 'Cowboys and Indians' around the neighbourhood for "fun". The only 'Indians' I actually met in person were ones experiencing hardships, who came to the Manse we lived in looking for lodging and food stamps. The only 'Savages' I ever saw were on horses, dressed up in their war paints and feather head-dresses and riding in the summer Rodeo parades.  The only 'black' guy in the community I knew about was a homeless man I'd see around town from time to time.

I don't recall 'racism' in Africa or feelings in respect to it, perhaps because I was still too young then to understand. I also had parental guidance that respects and champions the equality of all people and the value that each has in teaching and stewarding the commonalities shared between us. I was raised to know that wherever 'racism' exists, it is most certainly wrong and must be challenged.

In contrast to my early years in Africa, I certainly saw and heard no shortage of racism in the communities I lived in on the Prairies during my childhood and in young adulthood while attending College and University. Sadly, as with the 'Cowboys and Indians' games I participated in as a kid, as a young man I even told a few disparaging jokes about 'Natives' as well. It was not until I read and studied the Rolf Inquiry Report, The Manitoba Justice Inquiry Report, and then the subsequent Royal Commission Report on the experience of First Nations peoples within Canada and it's 'majority' Anglo-European inhabitants and Institutions that I really started to appreciate, and feel pathetic about, my part in perpetuating the indoctrination such games and jokes were aimed to serve; namely the denigration and genocide of fellow human beings based solely on skin colour and being defined as a "them" distinct from and inferior to "us".

I ultimately pursued post-secondary studies for eleven years, undertaking a host of courses in law, politics, history and international affairs in respect to First Nations peoples and the Canadian state, to glean an in-depth understanding of the impact of Colonialism and European migration to North America. It is not a historical legacy that any of its ancestors should be particularly proud of in my opinion, and demonstrates hypocrisy to stand on soap boxes professing the 'barbarous' nature and tactics of ones adversaries today. The contempt is clearly well earned from any measured reading of the annals of 'Discovery', 'Settlement' and 'Conquest'.

I certainly came to appreciate through those years of post-secondary studies how naive I had been, and still am today, about the plights that many good people have faced and still face today in Canada, as well as globally, in striving to enjoy the basic needs of Maslow's Hierarchy. I read it reported recently that there are over 50 Million people on Earth today living in Refugee Camps! Are you kidding me? That is more people than live in Canada, by another third at least! In Canada the evening news regularly features stories month to month, year in and year out, decade on decade, about the third-world conditions many First Nations peoples continue to live in within their communities, with no or minimal basic services available.

It is a sadly observable reality that while 'progress' may have been made in leaps and bounds in technology, when it comes to achieving a 'civilized' global community it is most definitely stunted, if there has indeed been any 'progress' in my life-time. Canada is lagging well behind the curve of where it should be for the pronouncements it makes in support of Human Rights in Canada and internationally. It is unacceptable failure and a perpetual example of hollow words and unfulfilled values to my reckoning, and based on many an official governmental inquiry report and tribunal decision rendered over the decades as well!

When I was a lad looking out at the awe-inspiring starlit nights on the Prairies I recall feeling the fear and contemplating the very real threat and the 'doom's day' propaganda of that era; namely Nuclear devastation of the Planet. I spent many a night falling to sleep, or not falling to sleep, thinking about what I would do if ever the news came, and looking and listening for planes coming in the night sky from our Russian neighbours to the North. Today that threat and the fear associated with it still exists, but it has been muted by the "War on Terror", and the more recent sensationalism and barbarism in beheadings of hostages to serve a defined 'Extremist' group's political, social and, purportedly, religious aims. In more recent months tensions in Ukraine and global tensions between Russia and the 'West' rip scabs from latent childhood fears of mass devastation. I can well imagine children today are falling asleep, or not falling asleep, the world over with one eye a bit less tightly shut than before all this nonsense took centre stage again as adversarial events and regional conflicts within the global community wax and wane, and wax again.

ALL of my life's education and experiences impress on me ever-more each day that OUR collective problem as humans is OUR propensity to focus on the differences that define a narrowly conceived and constructed 'US' rather than the commonalities that do exist and can serve to harmonize a global WE and serve aims that are in OUR common interests as fellow human beings on Earth.

There have been an enormous number of past, and present, injuries that have been and are being perpetuated in defence and defiance of states, races, ethnic or religious identities that in some way or another claim 'insult' and 'persecution' as the measure of the justness for their atrocities and to rationalize root causes for their hostilities and violent aggression. The motives in reality were and are most definitely all driven at the core by human greed and primal survival urges for 'supremacy', and by it the achievement of physical and economic security of ways and means to better ends than what people had before.

It should be clear by now that the rush to 'progress' at any cost has and is exacerbating and not marginalizing the distinctions between US and ensures that WE cannot ever get past acting out our humanity's "Grumpy Amygdala" like our cave dwelling ancestors; with a destructive and vicious reaction to each new insult and injury triggering mob insecurity and absurdity the world-over of one form or another in one group or another every day of the year!

Mass candle-light ceremonies following the most crushing atrocities affecting the collective human psyche are an example to my mind of Humanity's capacity to achieve brotherly love, tolerance and compassion the world over. I have witnessed such mass movements on nightly news casts in recent weeks that have included countries in a diversity of regions and on different continents standing up for equality, justice and the virtues of respect within our shared human community, and standing in protest of those who would try to utilize fear to achieve divisive, destructive and audacious means for political and 'Extremist' ends. The will of the masses is most certainly there to over-come the grievances of the marginalized and disenfranchised, but the leadership to date is devoid of actions that are genuinely intended to achieve mutually advantageous resolutions and outcomes.

There is a seminar being held presently in Washington, hosted by President Obama, that is addressing the very real concern of 'Extremist' movements throughout the world. I applaud the initiative if the intent is to gain greater understanding of the concerns of one's adversaries and if a genuine interest in seeking their win/win resolution is the guiding intention. Otherwise, it is akin to having a conversation while the Elephant is out of the room. It's flaw is in thinking it will arrive at possible resolutions absent of the offended parties and instead only perpetuates the opportunities for Intellectuals and military strategists to sit around agreeing with themselves about their interpretation of how others feel and why they are acting the way they are and doing the things they are doing because of it.

Lets face it, my Canada and my world are not the nice, welcoming, caring, secure and 'progressive' environments they should be for all the human knowledge and international principles and proclamations that exist in print that we and all nations are signatories to. WE need to get better at practicing what is agreed to and holding our leadership accountable to support the values and pronouncements of Human Rights, rather than think they have a mandate to amend them to their defined group's interests.

To my mind the usefulness of political parties has outgrown itself in the contemporary era. Smart Canadians need to sit down and think about how fellow Canadians can be better served than through an adversarial political system designed to perpetually stimulate conflict and confrontation and take valuable time and energy away from cooperation and collaboration in the day-to-day affairs of those elected to represent further micronized communal interests. With a business approach, we need to undertake a 'Situation Analysis' and work through a process of consensus building to achieve a renewed Mission and Vision, along with an agreed-upon direction for the country and its citizenry that can be voted upon through trust-worthy and transparent on-line election processes.

There is an opportunity existing today for Canada to renew its historical reputation as a peace-keeping nation, with an international rainbow of citizens proudly comprising its societal and cultural mosaic. WE need a process that achieves an updated 'Social Contract' and a renewed commitment to walk-the-walk on internationally agreed-upon Human Rights principles and declarations. In so doing it can provide an example of the possible and a testament to it for the rest of the global community.

WE as Canadians need to focus our collective energies with a renewed sense of urgency and priority on achieving acceptable living conditions for all Canadians in communities from coast-to-coast-to-coast; with basic services of electricity, water and sewage systems, adequate housing, schools and employment opportunities. WE need to ensure that the people of our northern regions can receive their goods and services at reasonable costs comparative to all southern regions of the country, and that they can receive their governance and justice in ways that best serves their communities as well. We need to address homelessness and addiction with compassion, to aid and nurture recovery and reintegration. Restorative justice needs greater exercise in achieving genuine resolution of some crimes and offences as well. In reality the whole Justice system needs extensive reform to achieve restorative rather than punitive Justice aims. Holistically, WE need to renew our commitment to 'Good Governance'; binding it less to 'Institutions' designed to control people and attaching it primarily instead to serving the 'Greater Good' by adapting and modifying the institutions and tools of governance to meet that objective.

WE have had enough experience with looking forward while taking steps backwards as a country and as a global community. WE need leadership that genuinely cares about the fellow human beings they serve. WE need to strive diligently to utilize tools such as the Economy to achieve the 'Greater Good' through renewed instruments of 'Good Governance', rather than the self-interests of the wealthy, political and military 'elite' that today make it quite clear they have not earned OUR trust and confidence to steer OUR course forward well, nor seem to be genuinely trying to do so with much earnest.

That is what I will be looking for from those who want my vote in coming Federal and Provincial elections. I am a champion of change after five decades of experiencing it, so long as it for the better, and not a continuation of OUR backwards 'progress' simply dressed in renewed rhetoric that is rooted in divisiveness and promotion of a 'fear' agenda.


Andrew Gilchrist B.A., C.C.M.

Member of the Canadian Society of Club Managers since 2002
Internationally accredited Certified Club Manager (C.C.M.)

Perplexed by Instinct and 'The Voice'

What's with that inside voice of ours anyway? You know the one, you are listening to it right now read and process these written words in your head. When you look away, it is the same voice you hear saying, "I wonder where he is going with this? Maybe I should just stop reading now. Oh, look, a bird, how pretty."

But most people will come back to read on, because that voice in our heads has an insatiable desire to pursue the unknown at times, or so it seems to me, even though that most bizarre of human characteristics, 'Instinct', tells the voice to click the back button on the search engine and return to following other links for something more enlightening. Truth be known, enlightenment is not my aim as much as reflection is.

If one considers how often we hear from our mind's voice on a daily basis, it surely must be appropriate from time to time to ponder a while on what it is saying and how it is demonstrating its effectiveness to guide our lives and the decisions in them in order to avoid dangers to our well-being and pitfalls along the journey of life. Is it a voice we should more often than not be listening to, or is it one that we should be wary of and seek others' opinion on before acting on the feelings, observations and conclusions rendered from it? You have likely heard the expression, "trust your instinct, it won't let you down", but is that true in all cases, or even in most cases, or are we more often deluding ourselves into bad choices by following our gut instincts in the decisions we make while living our daily lives?

There have been occasions in my life when I feel that my instincts definitely saved me from personal harm or death, perhaps mixed with some good fortune and luck as well. There are other occasions when following my instincts has lead to uncomfortable, frustrating and physically or financially damaging outcomes, at least in the short term and if it were not for good fortune and a bit of luck I would likely be much worse off today than I am.

From time to time in life I have felt an instinct to purchase a lottery ticket from a specific store on a particular day, but that has never born financial abundance as instinct suggested it would with the idea of purchasing the ticket. One might argue that the purchasing of a lottery ticket is more of an impulse than an instinct. My view is that an impulse is a spontaneous act, while instinct are driven by a sense that to do so will be good for you or provide something good for you and involves premeditation for specific action to achieve predetermined results, be that relatively instantaneous or longer in duration between the mind's thought and action. The lottery ticket is purchased on impulse after the instinct has been introduced by the mind's voice as something that should be done today to improve one's life and lifestyle opportunities for the future. Instinct has not been my friend trying to strike it rich.

By contrast, from time to time in life I have had an instinct to walk into a specific business, store or restaurant and in doing so either found a job I was looking for, found an item I had been looking for, or met a person that became important somehow to my journey in life. Of course I have walked into far more businesses, stores and restaurants when that has not happened, but the timeliness of certain occasions over the past three decades has made me feel that my instinct was the impetus for the discovery made at that point in my life's journey. My instinct tells me as I write to believe that to be true, even though it knows full well that it has failed me more frequently than it should have along the journey to now as well.

Is there a magical formula for knowing when to follow one's instinct and when to quiet the inside voice? The straight forward answer I believe is, no. All I think one can do is trust it for so long as you feel upon reflection that the choices it guides you to are the outcomes you thought you were going to achieve with the actions taken, and you are happy with the results. If that is not the case, then stop following your instinct and spend more time in thought and reflection, as well as doing research and seeking advice from others who are likely to know better what is best to do in your circumstances.

Either way, you are the one who is responsible for your life, and the decisions you make in it. Your instinct can either be your best friend or your worst enemy and it’s important to reflect on how well it has been serving you periodically to make sure it is producing the intended fruit of your actions and is serving your well-being and best interests optimally. What is your mind's voice telling you today? Are you worthy of better? Can you do better? Is being worthy of or doing better relevant or important to your circumstances at all? For most of us humans, I think it likely is on any given day.

I read once that, "High expectations equal high results and low expectations equal no results". I have high expectations for my mind's voice and I expect that it will never steer me wrong. I know that a few times it has, but on the whole I am impressed with its results. So, I choose to listen to my instincts a vast majority of the time in life, and accept the consequences of my decisions as they come. I don't always like the outcomes, and that's when I know for sure that my instincts were off. Or, perhaps the instincts were right but my luck was bad. Either way, the outcomes from time to time are not what I had planned for or hoped would be the result. It is then that I have to begin at a new starting point and trust new instincts to guide future decisions about what comes next in coming weeks and months beyond.

Life has its fair share of perplexities and really should come with a much better instruction manual than it does. For all of humanity's intelligence, inventions and advancements, one would think a "How to be a Human for Dummies" manual would have been written long before now; recognizing that humans are dummies more often than not. It would have been great if I had been better prepared in my earlier years for how to manage my instincts over the decades for optimal gains, rather than the trial and error that has been my course on the pathway to now. It would have been time much better spent in high school to be studying the history and intimate workings of instinct and how to use it in my life effectively rather than to be reading and talking for several classes Romeo & Juliet, I am pretty much certain!

Be that as it may, the years of living with that voice have certainly taught me that it is not perfect. My analogy with Golf is that one's Instinct is like one's Driver. If you know how to play it, it can be a valuable tool to have in life's bag, but sometimes the fairway you are facing is more wisely traversed with a 3 Wood, 5 Wood or a Hybrid from the tee. So, when you are standing on the tee box and are about to grab the Driver in life, before you start your back swing just take that extra second to ask yourself whether the terrain you can see before you is forgiving enough to allow for some degree of error, or whether it might be wiser to choose a more reliable and certain club from your available arsenal. If it still feels right, then grip it 'n rip it! With risks there are opportunities for reward, but the most important factor is keeping your ball in play.

Perplexed by Some Golfers in Canada

As a golf course and club General Manager/Chief Operating Officer, Food & Beverage Manager, and Banquets Manager I have had the unique opportunity during my management career to garner an appreciation for both the public and private sides of the golf industry; the past five years running a public golf course and multi-use recreation area, and the ten years prior to that managing private and semi-private golf clubs. It has been a wonderful career to date, filled with a host of anecdotal tales to tell that have occured while managing and facilitating the delivery of products and services to thousands upon thousands of golfers and clubhouse patrons over the past decade and a half. Some day I may well write a Sit Com about those many memories and stories.

At tournaments, banquets, meetings, weddings, funeral receptions, private functions, annual holiday events, as well as in the daily use and enjoyment of the courses, amenities and services of the properties I have managed, where there are people there are destined to be perplexing ones lurking amongst them. When alcohol is involved, their numbers multiply. While the vast majority of the thousands upon thousands of people I have met and served have been wonderful, the golf industry from my experience of it certainly also provides its fair share of folks who have made me shake my head and question whether evolution is really occuring.  I can think of several who have most definitely in my mind earned the distinction of being strong contenders for Darwin Awards, and a number of others that are only slightly less deserving.

I won't get into names (sorry), but I do want to identify a few personality types of golfers within the golf clubs and communities I have served that I believe are reflective of the dispositions of similarly natured golfers at other courses and clubs across the country. There needs to be serious effort given to exterminating these types within the cultures of clubs across the country where they may exist, since their presence is insidious to the morale of the employee cadre, and often annoying to their fellow members and patrons as well. It is also cancerous to the achievement of communal unity in respect to the mutual interest of living with pride in the golf community for its course and club, and with respect for the people who work each day to make it possible for the game to be enjoyed and the services to be provided throughout each season.

The Golf Egoists

These are the golfers that one would think by listening to them, the world revolves around and could not live on without, but for their self-proclaimed expertise. Forget that a golf course is a living, breathing organism with its natural cycles of waxing and waning from season's start to end, or that because of those cycles annual maintenance programs and routines need to be completed for the health of turf to be enjoyed by thousands of golfers on every course all season long. Forget that there is a professionally trained Turf Care Management team in place in virtually all clubs today to deal with its good care, maintenance and upkeep.

The Golf Egoists are only able to see the world through lenses that reflect back at them as the only important thing or person in any and all circumstances. They judge everything within the instant they are experiencing it and give little to no consideration to what practical needs or limitations may lay behind their experienced inconvenience or dissatisfaction before they decide it's worthy of giving a manager or front-line employee a verbal tongue lashing over it.

It's like Ground Hog Day in clubhouses across the nation each spring I am certain, when 'Mr. Gripester' hunts down the Manager, Superintendent, Golf Pro and whoever else he can get to listen. He's predictably going to begin with some ramblings about his extensive expertise in golf course aeration practices and the lack of need for them, and then proceed to condemn the personnel doing it as inept bafoons who wouldn't likely be able to dress in the morning without his guidance. He doesn't say as much, but by his annual criticisms about the "crater sized holes" on the greens he certainly infers it.

News flash Golf Egoists, it's not just for you that we do the things we do; we prepare the course for thousands of players every season, not just for your rounds on it! Aeration, top-dressing and over-seeding programs, along with verticutting and fertilizer, fungicide and limited pesticide programs are an annual part of what it takes to appropriately condition a golf course and they are scheduled pretty consistently from year to year. Get used to it and stop complaining every spring and summer about the aeration of the greens, tee boxes and fairways already! You cannot maintain healthy turf conditions on high traffic greens, tee boxes and fairways without aeration practices as part of your course conditioning standards, it's as simple as that. It ideally needs to happen twice a year, every year.

If it bugs you that much to live through some bumpy greens for a couple of weeks, go fishing or go to the Range. Don't come to the course and Clubhouse to saturate us with your predictable discontent and contempt for this annual practice. Stay home and address the Honey Do Jar if you must but please, be somewhere other than where you can pollute the positive culture of the club and the energy of our team's days by casting aspersions on their good works and deflating their motivation through your perpetual grumblings. The holes should be completely filled in within a couple of weeks or so with decent weather and you can come back then, to undoubtedly complain about the pin placements, too fast or two slow of green speeds, and/or a lack of sand or poorly raked bunkers for most of the rest of your rounds during the remainder of the season instead.

If you must think that all of the course maintenance practices have been purposefully scheduled to offend your personal golf outing plans, at least get creative in coming up with some new things to complain about. The employee cadre is most certainly all too familiar with and fatigued by the Golf Egoists typical list of disgruntlements. Perhaps use that time window when the greens are recovering to take some lessons from a Golf Pro, so we can all get more enjoyment out of your use of the course and its amenities in the future.

The 'Loco-When-Parentless'

It was during a hot stretch of days in July of 2008, with day after day of blue skies and temperatures mid day exceeding 25C. It was to the point for me personally, and I think for lots of others, that rain would have been a welcome relief from the heat and humidity and there were no shortage of minds praying for it, I'm sure. I got an email one afternoon from a patron, a Doctor he claimed no less, who was infuriated that he had not seen the beverage cart on the back 9 of the course for the two hours he was out there that afternoon. He asserted that the golf course was responsible for the fact that he and his playing buddies came off the course in a state of physical dehydration as a result. We had risked their lives in the heat, as his argument went, by not ensuring that the beverage cart provided them service during the course of the back 9 holes of their round.

The beverage cart, as it turned out, was never able to catch up with that particular foursome on the back 9 that day. She was kept too busy with a tournament group on the front 9 of the course and did not see all the groups on the course on both 9s as a result. The lack of service, as disappointing as it may have been, is one thing. To assert that a golf course or club and its employees somehow have a responsibility to fulfill a parental role of ensuring that grown-ups, Doctor's no less, take enough water in their golf bags to ensure hydration when they plan to go out and play in the heat of the day during a heat streak was then, and is now, absurd! This is just one example of many I can offer of golfers and patrons who seem to turn off their brains when they drive in through the front gate.

Mother Nature is not to be triffled with, there have been examples of that on the nightly news since the invention of the television. If the golf course does not, the Clubhouse surely does provide water, whether it be for free or for sale. If you think you will need it, get some. Every golf bag I have seen for decades has side pockets on it, all power carts have beverage holders in them and the pull carts typically do as well. Load up before you leave the Clubhouse with what you will need for H2O, and don't blame others for the responsibility over your personal health and well being when you are out playing your sport of choice in the mid-day's sun; take charge of it yourself!

The beverage cart is a service to enhance food & beverage sales on a golf course, it is not a mobile first aid kiosk. It can and has provided that service as well at times no doubt, but it is not the primary reason for its utilization in daily operations and should not be relied upon as such. There is no course I have ever worked at or played at in thirty-seven years that has published a guarantee of beverage cart service on both 9s of every round. While that is the aim, it cannot be guaranteed for a variety of unpredictable potential disruptions to its service delivery; from vehicle mechanical issues to staffing shortages, or workplace health and safety reasons related to weather or other factors. Golfers are responsible for their own hydration and well-being on their rounds, not the beverage cart girls!

Playing golf in thunder storms is another one that also never ceases to baffle me; recreation golfers out risking their lives for the sake of a little white ball and a score on the card that they will likely either embelish on or commiserate about with friends and peers when they back to work anyway, and within a month or less they likely wont recall without referencing their score card again, unless they had a banner round going when the storm arrived. I have loved, lived and played golf for thirty-seven years, but I have never understood that behaviour. Testing the timing of arrival of an approaching storm is a fool's game.

I read in one article several years back that lightning can travel forward or backward of a storm as far as 10 kms. If you can hear thunder and see lightning anywhere near you, pick up the ball, seek cover, have a bite to eat and a beverage in the clubhouse, and live to play another day. I do consider it my responsibility as a golf course operator, if not legally then at least ethically, to constantly monitor the weather and to ensure as early a warning as possible to players if/when a storm system is approaching. With that said, as a Golfer, I also know that when I am out playing I am responsible for my own health and well-being, as at any other time in daily living; I wouldn't dream of delegating that much responsibility for me and my personal safety to others. Neither should you! Today there are weather radar apps that can be downloaded on all smart phones. Know the conditions expected for the day you are playing on, and be conscious of forecasted storm warnings. At the end of the day, "I didn't hear the horn" or "it really didn't look that bad" are really pathetic lines to read on a tomb stone.

The 'Rules Renegades'

These are the guys and gals at every course and in every club that quite simply choose either not to know or, as more often is the case in my experience, choose to blatantly break and disregard the established and published policies and rules that govern their use and enjoyment of the golf course and club assets to suit their personal preferences. These ones can, and often do, fill a General Manager's day, and often several days and weeks thereafter; dealing first with the discovery or reporting of their infractions, and then the resulting processes, communications, and often times adversarial interactions that are generated from them to censure the offender and try and correct the breaches in acceptable and appropriate conduct in the future.

News Flash Rules Renegades, there are policies and rules for the good governance and management of thousands of peoples' products and services needs over each golf season at courses and clubs nation-wide. There are also various Acts and regulations set by external governing entities such as municipalities, provinces and the Federal government that serve to mandate and define policy and rules needs and perameters.

When you pay a green fee, purchase a pass or buy a membership, it is your duty and responsiblity to know and to adhere to those policies and rules during your use and enjoyment of the communal asset. It is not your duty and responsibility to blatantly ignore them or test the perameters of what is acceptable or not acceptable by looking for ways to work around the spirit and intent of the instructions.

There are processes to affect desired change that is in the interest of the majority, while protecting the interests of minorities, within the internal workings of every golf course and its club's governance policies. Get to know about them and utilize them to produce change if you desire it, but do not think that simply flouting the policy or rule is okay somehow. It is not!

Every member and patron to my way of thinking has purchased rights to group-identified and defined privileges, but also has responsibilities in the enjoyment of those privileges. Primary among them is the duty to ensure that as members and patrons they are not serving to contribute to the creation of an uncomfortable work-place environment for the employees hired to serve them. It is the duty of every employer to ensure that its employees enjoy a comfortable workplace environment, and when you decide it's your place as a member of a Club to break the rules and disregard or argue with corrective measures from the employees charged with enforcing the policies and rules of the Club they serve, you are contributing to that unpleasant work-place environment.

Most of the people using golf courses and clubs in Canada are adults, or supervised by one. It would be great if the proportion of Golfers who respect the rules and their employees, as well as their courses and clubs, could see significant growth in years to come. There needs to be a renaissance in appropriate decorum and etiquette to match the "gentlemenly" history and traditions of Golf from my experience noticing its decline over the past two decades.

Rules Renegades need to be more firmly disciplined to discourage their proliferation and impact on the positive and harmoneous culture of the community. It would be even better if more Golfers lived their duties and responsibilities in the life of their courses and clubs in such as way as to ensure they don't breach policies and rules they have a duty to know and adhere to, which produces the need for them to be censured in the first place. My duties as a General Manager/Chief Operating Officer would be so much more enjoyable, and I would also likely enjoy greater longevity at a club, if I were not so often placed in the position of having to fulfill the policy and rules enforcer mandate within my job description with members who should and most often do know that what they did was not okay according to the policies and rules of the Club they joined.

There is a fundamental incompatability in the combined mandate of any employee of a Club to achieve objectives of excellence in quality service to members and to also enforce policies and rules with those we serve. It is inevitable that eventually sufficient numbers accumulate who are disgruntled for getting their wrists slapped at one time or another and can't move past that with an appreciation for the fact that they were responsible for the original infraction(s) and reason(s) they came to dislike you and your handling of their policy or rules misconduct in the first place.

Simply put, to my way of thinking the employees of a club cannot and should not be expected to be its policy and rules enforcers. Recognizing that is a controversial position to take, it is no less my experienced opinion that the volunteers who are leading the organization as the elected representatives of their memberships need to take accountablility for the policing, judgment and adjudication of complaints and infractions related to policy and rules breaches by fellow members and their guests.

Systems and processes need to be modified in clubs if they do not already exist today that remove the organization's employees, inclusive of its management personnel, from the onus and responsibility to take any action beyond reporting the policy or rules breach to the Club Captain or Membership Committee Chairman. Continuing to utilize an administrative process that involves the organizations management and/or staff in the censuring of members' misconduct is akin to allowing a dog to bite the hands of its masters. After enough teeth impressions, the hands decide to stop feeding. They have only themselves to blame for habits formed and their resulting injuries from invitiing it, but ultimately it is the dog that ends up paying for it the most.

It is the membership that establishes and sets the rules for the use and enjoyment of a Club, and it is the membership that needs to be responsible for the communal adherence to and enforcement of the policies and rules they establish for their communal use and enjoyment of their Club. It may be uncomfortable at times for fellow members to sit in judgment and discipline of one another, but that is the very peer nature of a group of people coming together in a Club for collectively agreed-upon communal objectives and purposes. There are no shortage of members more than willing to judge and report on the misconduct of their peers with a poor organizational model and associated policies in place that has encouraged them to wipe their hands of their disgruntlements once they take them to the General Manager to be dealt with, and then to typically be disgruntled further when it isn't addressed in the manner they thought it should have been.

Don't leave it up to the hired help to resolve your membership's relationship issues; that is not what our time is best spent focused on. We are there to organize, manage and facilitate the delivery of a quality conditioned golf course, along with products and services to you. You are there to establish, adopt and live by the communal policies and rules that you as a group decide on for your Club and agree to when you join one, and you need to be responsible to make sure that all amongst you live by your Club's creed. Passing that duty off through delegation to your hired help only encourages potentially negative experiences to adversly shape and impact the daily relationships between your members and your management and staff in the use and enjoyment of the Club's amenities.

If you as a Golfer identify yourself within the above noted personality types, it's time to change your ways! If you as a member of a club can recognize any of these personality types within your membership, it's time for you to do something about it!

Good, hard-working and devoted employees leave clubs because of negative club cultures that allow for the presence of uncomfortable work-place conditions, and so do members. You have a duty to your organization's employees and to your fellow members to ensure that those who you welcome into your ranks follow the policies and rules you have established for your Club. To do less is to invite decay in the quality of the experience for all and serves to weaken the social fabric in the Club, as well as the perceived value in acquiring and keeping membership in it.

Don't pass the buck to your employees. Members are likely to be kept in check and a harmonious Club culture achieved as a consequence  far more effectively if they know it is a jury of their peers that will adjudicate and met out discipline for their misconduct as opposed to a Paper Tiger process by delegating membership relationship management to the Club's hired help.

Remember that Golf is a game, and belonging to a Club is a choice. With that choice come privileges as well as responsibilities. It would be great to see a growth in the numbers of members and patrons who live theirs in the daily life of their courses and clubs and in their interactions with the employees hired to deliver on their products and services needs and desires.