Blog # 174...February, 2026
Well, we've taken a bite of the new year, bittersweet so far, predictables and surprising, many elephants lumbering around the room, keeping me awake at night...business as usual.
I mentioned Hope in Action last month and I'm now reading it. I've always been interested in Finland,visited a number of times and had some long term close friends there. I've been struck by some similarities to Canada, two official languages, many lakes and forests and northern regions stretching to the Arctic. They also share a long border with a large super power, theirs took Karelia, a large chunk of their land in 1942, ours is threatening. Reading Sanna Marin's memoir has given me a totally new ;ook at the country from the inside and helped put some hope in action myself.
Sanna became Prime Minister of Finland in 2019, at the age of 34, bringing together a coalition government with 5 parties, left, right , centre, green and Swedish, all led by women, all but one under 40. She's open about being raised by a single mother in a same sex relationship, surrounded by the LGBT community, Her memoir tracks her involvement from an early age and includes many candid looks at the political process, both inside her country and in the many EU agencies and committees on which she served. I'm loving it.
Politics and hockey are both pretty hyper masculine settings and it's comforting to see some push back against the two sex only rules being enacted south of our border. The TV series Heated Rivalry has attracted huge audiences around the world in communities both straight and gay, sport loving and not so much. I'm lacking the equipment to see it, but will figure something out to deal with that.
Watching the world spin into disorder sometimes seems like some cruel version of whack a mole (not to be confused with guac a mole which is delicious). Ukraine, Gaza. Sudan, Venezuela, Iran, and othe troubled spots, not to mention Minneapolis! Two speeches in Davos, ours and theirs. And Greenland,which evokesmemories for me, not just from a few days spent there but from. Peter Hoeg's 1964 novel Smyla Thinks of Snow. A young indigenous woman from Greenland struggles with life in Copenhagen. We're not the only people with a history of treating our first nations brothers and sisters badfly
In the Cree language,when they ask someone's age, it translates as How many winters do you have? The National Gallery as well as stirring up political scandal has been busy putting up Winter Art, a vast and ambitious show featuring artists from around the world...Kurelek to Kandinsky, Monet to Monkman. I'm planning a trip to Ottawa in February, so I will tell you all about it in March. In the meantime, Katherine May’s book Wintering offers rest and retreat in difficult times.
