War baby. ENFJ. Poorly enculturated. Pastafarian. Suited more to the hod than to the epaulet. Bleeds green. Master of The Irish Goodbye. @mjglass@mstdn.ca
Gronlid, Saskatchewan
Joined January 2014
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MJGlass 🇨🇦 retweeted
B. B. King sets the record straight:
“When Elvis appeared he was already a big, big star. Remember this was the fifties so for a young white boy to show up in an all-black function took guts. I believe he was showing his roots and he seemed proud of those roots. After the show he made a point of posing for pictures with me treating me like royalty. He’d tell people I was one of his influences. I doubt whether that’s true but I like hearing Elvis give Memphis credit for his musical upbringing.
Back in 1972, Elvis helped me get a good gig at the Hilton Hotel while he was playing in the big theater. He put in a call for me and I worked in the lounge to a standing room only crowd. Elvis fans came in different colors but their love for good music was all the same. They were always a good audience.
Many nights I’d go upstairs after we finished our sets and go up to his suite. I’d play Lucille [King’s guitar] and sing with Elvis, or we’d take turns. It was his way of relaxing.
I’ll tell you a secret. We were the original Blues Brothers because that man knew more blues songs than most in the business - and after some nights it felt like we sang every one of them. But my point is, that when we were hanging out in the Hilton in the 70s, Elvis had not lost his respect, his ‘yes sir’, his love for all fields of music. And I liked that.”
MJGlass 🇨🇦 retweeted
Par une froide journée de novembre 1874, une petite fille naquit dans un minuscule village de l’Île-du-Prince-Édouard, au Canada. Ses parents la nommèrent Lucy Maud Montgomery.
Elle ne se souviendrait jamais de sa mère.
Avant que Maud n’ait deux ans, la tuberculose emporta Clara Montgomery. Son père, brisé par le chagrin, ne supportait plus de regarder cette enfant qui avait les yeux de sa mère. Il confia la fillette à ses grands-parents âgés à Cavendish, partit en Saskatchewan, se remaria et fonda une nouvelle famille.
La petite fille qu’il laissa derrière lui ne le reverrait presque jamais.
Imaginez être cet enfant.
Pas de frères ni de sœurs. Peu de tendresse. Seulement une ferme isolée, deux grands-parents écossais presbytériens sévères, et un silence infini. L’esprit imaginatif de la jeune Maud se heurtait sans cesse à la discipline rigide de sa grand-mère et aux attentes froides de son grand-père.
Alors elle fit ce que tant d’enfants solitaires ont fait à travers l’histoire.
Elle créa d’autres mondes.
Elle inventa des amis imaginaires qui la comprenaient. Elle donna des noms aux arbres du verger et conversait avec eux. Elle transforma les collines verdoyantes et les routes d’argile rouge de l’Île-du-Prince-Édouard en royaumes enchantés où des filles comme elle pouvaient enfin trouver leur place. À neuf ans, elle commença à confier son cœur à la poésie et aux journaux intimes, donnant une voix aux sentiments qu’elle ne pouvait exprimer à haute voix.
Les livres devinrent son refuge. Et elle osa rêver : un jour, elle serait écrivaine. Un jour, ses histoires compteraient.
Mais le chemin vers ce rêve fut brutal.
Adolescente, elle partit brièvement vivre en Saskatchewan chez son père et sa nouvelle épouse. Ce fut un désastre. Sa belle-mère lui en voulait. Maud se sentait comme une intruse dans ce qui aurait dû être sa propre famille. Elle retourna à l’Île-du-Prince-Édouard le cœur brisé — mais déterminée.
Elle obtint son diplôme d’enseignante, étudia la littérature à l’université et accepta des postes d’institutrice qu’elle détestait. Mais l’enseignement payait les factures — et surtout, lui laissait du temps pour écrire.
Au début de la trentaine, elle avait déjà publié plus de cent nouvelles. Sa plume commençait à être reconnue. Mais elle rêvait de plus grand.
Puis, en 1905, elle trouva l’inspiration dans une vieille note de carnet :
« Un couple âgé demande à un orphelinat un garçon. Par erreur, on leur envoie une fille. »
À partir de cette seule phrase, tout changea.
Elle versa sa propre solitude d’enfance dans une orpheline bavarde, rousse et couverte de taches de rousseur : Anne Shirley. Elle donna à Anne l’imagination ardente qui avait sauvé son propre esprit. Elle situa l’histoire sur l’Île-du-Prince-Édouard qu’elle aimait — à la fois sa prison et son paradis. Et elle offrit à Anne l’amour inconditionnel dont la petite Maud avait tant manqué toute son enfance.
Lorsqu’elle acheva le manuscrit, elle l’intitula Anne of Green Gables.
Éditeur après éditeur le refusa.
Trop long. Trop centré sur une fille. Pas assez commercial.
Dévastée, Montgomery rangea le manuscrit dans une boîte à chapeaux et tenta de l’oublier.
Pendant près de deux ans, Anne Shirley prit la poussière dans cette boîte tandis que Montgomery écrivait d’autres histoires, d’autres poèmes, essayant d’avancer.
Mais Anne refusa de se taire.
En 1907, Montgomery ressortit le manuscrit, le révisa une dernière fois et l’envoya à la maison d’édition L.C. Page Company, à Boston.
Cette fois, quelqu’un comprit ce qu’elle avait créé.
En juin 1908, Anne of Green Gables fut publié. Lucy Maud Montgomery avait trente-trois ans.
Ce qui suivit dépassa tous les rêves qu’elle avait jamais osé faire.
Le livre se vendit immédiatement dès le premier tirage. En un an, il connut six réimpressions. Les librairies n’arrivaient pas à suivre. Des lecteurs de tous âges tombèrent amoureux de l’irrésistible Anne Shirley — de son « champ d’imagination », de sa loyauté farouche, de sa détermination à trouver la beauté même dans l’adversité.
Mark Twain déclara qu’Anne était « l’enfant la plus chère et la plus attachante de la fiction depuis l’immortelle Alice ».
Des lettres de lecteurs affluèrent du monde entier.
Soudain, la petite fille solitaire de Cavendish — celle que personne ne voulait — était devenue célèbre.
Montgomery écrivit huit livres d’Anne, vingt romans au total, plus de 530 nouvelles et 500 poèmes. Elle épousa un pasteur presbytérien, éleva deux fils (après en avoir perdu un à la naissance) et passa des décennies à s’occuper d’un mari souffrant de dépression sévère. Elle lutta contre ses propres ténèbres — survécut à la pandémie de grippe espagnole de 1918, endura les horreurs de la Première Guerre mondiale, affronta des éditeurs qui la trompaient.
À travers tout cela, elle continua d’écrire.
Lorsque Lucy Maud Montgomery mourut le 24 avril 1942, elle fut enterrée sur son Île-du-Prince-Édouard bien-aimée — le lieu qui l’avait façonnée, inspirée et lié à jamais à sa création la plus célèbre.
Aujourd’hui, plus de 150 ans après sa naissance, son héritage vit encore de manière extraordinaire.
Anne of Green Gables n’a jamais cessé d’être publié. Il a été traduit dans au moins 36 langues. Il s’est vendu à plus de 50 millions d’exemplaires dans le monde. L’Île-du-Prince-Édouard est devenue « l’île d’Anne », attirant chaque année des centaines de milliers de visiteurs.
Mais peut-être que son plus grand héritage ne se mesure ni en ventes de livres ni en tourisme.
Il se mesure aux générations de lecteurs — surtout de jeunes filles — qui se sont reconnues dans l’histoire d’Anne Shirley. Qui ont vu leur propre solitude reflétée. Qui ont appris qu’être différent n’était pas quelque chose à cacher, mais à célébrer.
Lucy Maud Montgomery a transformé la douleur de son enfance en des histoires qui ont donné de l’espoir à des millions d’enfants.
Elle a prouvé que l’imagination n’est pas une fuite — c’est une forme de survie.
Elle a montré que l’enfant solitaire qui parle aux arbres et rêve d’appartenance peut grandir et créer quelque chose qui touche le monde entier.
D’une boîte à chapeaux à un phénomène mondial.
D’un nourrisson abandonné à une légende littéraire.
Du chagrin à la guérison — non seulement pour elle-même, mais pour tous ceux qui se sont un jour sentis étrangers, en quête d’un foyer.
Merci, Lucy Maud Montgomery.
Merci pour Anne.
Et merci d’avoir prouvé que la fille que personne ne voulait pouvait devenir l’écrivaine dont le monde entier avait besoin.
MJGlass 🇨🇦 retweeted
I keep thinking about a talk I listened to by @JulianAssange back in 2017 where he warned that one day AI could be used to facilitate the propaganda interests of the powerful by manipulating news media and information in ways that are too subtle for the human mind to notice.
Assange described a future where AI-powered algorithms serve us a customized feed of information based on data collected about our search queries and interests, calculated to appeal to our biases and construct a worldview for us which advances the agendas of those who control the machines.
He explained that sufficiently advanced artificial intelligence systems could arrange this information with more subtlety and complexity than human perception can pick up on, in much the same way a computer can outperform any human brain at a game of chess.
Here’s an excerpt from Assange’s remarks, delivered via video chat at the Meltdown Festival in June 2017:
“What I think is probably the most important development that is happening as far as the fate of human beings is concerned is that we are getting close to the threshold where the traditional propaganda function that is employed by, you know, the BBC, the Daily Mail, etc... can be encapsulated by AI processes.
“Now, if you think about when you’re playing chess, already we’re in a situation where AI can do better than any human chess player. So you can see a certain number of moves ahead. And someone moves a piece onto the board and you go ‘Why did they put that knight there?’ And you start to think what is the intentionality behind it, and you try and look several steps ahead to work out what the intentionality was and then counter it: Okay, they want to manipulate me into moving here so this will happen and so I will lose.
“We take these considerations already when we’re — well, some of us — when we’re reading stories in the press. What is the intentionality of this story? Why is this particular information being pushed to the public and not some other form of information? Who’s the name of the author? What publication is it appearing in? What language? Etc. Well, possibly the reason is because someone wanted to promote a particular agenda, therefore we should read it in a different light.
“But when you have artificial intelligence programs harvesting all the search queries that people have on their phones, all the YouTube videos that human beings have uploaded etc, and it starts to lay out perceptual influence campaigns 20 to 30 moves ahead, this starts to become totally beneath the levels of human perception. And once a computer-augmented organization such as Google is able to engage in influencing human beings 20 to 30 moves ahead, keeping each move beneath the level of human perception, there’s nothing we can do about it, because we can’t see it.”
I keep thinking about these remarks nearly a decade later because this does seem to be the goal. It’s becoming clearer and clearer to everyone that these new technologies are not intended to improve the lives of ordinary people, but to serve the interests of the oligarchs and empire managers who rule our world. That’s why they’re being rammed into existence at breakneck pace despite the obvious fact that they’re making life worse for most people without advancing human quality of life in any meaningful way.
A big part of the agenda seems to be to re-centralize the control of information that was temporarily lost with the advent of the internet. Revolutionary sentiments are rumbling around the world as our species becomes increasingly discontented with the abuses of capitalism and the US-led world order, assisted by humanity’s unprecedented ability to network and share information around the world in real time.
Artificial intelligence’s usefulness in re-centralizing information in ways that can be easily manipulated has already been noted by the Israel lobby.
At an American Jewish Committee event this past June, Santa Clara University’s Maya Ackerman argued that generative AI presents an exciting new opportunity for imposing pro-Israel narratives on public consciousness, because AI companies can be lobbied directly to push pro-Israel narratives since their leaders can control what information people see.
Here’s a transcript of what she said:
“The really cool thing about AI is that while it can become a great ally for our enemies, if we act early it could be exactly the opportunity that we need after missing the boat with social media. AI is now becoming the dominant source of information — the main source of information. People trust AI more than anything else. They trust AI more than social media. They turn to chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini instead of using Google. And young people use these bots instead of Google in very, very very large numbers. So this is becoming the main source of information.
“And so when I say this, I still find Jewish people being discouraged, they say ‘Oh, but Wikipedia is already so antisemitic and social media is so antisemitic — why bother? The AI just learns from all of this data.’ So, you know, whatever, not much we can do.
“But that’s not true, because over the past two years the AI companies have been moving towards alignment. So instead of algorithms sort of honestly representing what’s in the data, we’re finding that these chatbots and the text to image models are increasingly showing us exactly what the companies want us to see.
“Okay, so it’s becoming intentional. Which means that instead of trying to control the whole world and trying to somehow manage what’s happening in this big blob called Wikipedia and social media, we can go directly to the companies with clear technical and advocacy solutions. For the first time, there is a path to correcting the digital world.”
Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt recently confirmed that this was the Israel lobby’s new MO, saying the ADL has been “working with” all the top AI companies and pushing them to into alignment with the pro-Israel agenda.
Speaking at a Jerusalem Post conference last month, Greenblatt said the following:
"So we've been working with the frontier labs — OpenAI, Anthropic, Alphabet the company that runs Gemini, Google, Meta who runs Muse, and others, X, who run Grok—testing their models and using the results to push them to do better."
“Look, we’ve had excellent collaboration with Silicon Valley. These companies want to improve ChatGPT and Claude. We’ve got to help them. So we’ve run the tests and seen where antisemitism shows up and helped them develop strategies to tackle it right in the source code.”
If the Israel lobby manipulators are doing this, then we can assume that all the high-level imperial narrative managers are doing it as well.
In January 2018, Assange tweeted the following:
“The future of humanity is the struggle between humans that control machines and machines that control humans.
“While the internet has brought about a revolution in our ability to educate each other, the consequent democratic explosion has shaken existing establishments to their core. Burgeoning digital super states such as Google, Facebook and their Chinese equivalents, who are integrated with the existing order, have moved to re-establish discourse control. This is not simply a corrective action. Undetectable mass social influence powered by artificial intelligence is an existential threat to humanity.
“While still in its infancy, the geometric nature of this trend is clear. The phenomenon differs from traditional attempts to shape culture and politics by operating at a scale, speed, and increasingly at a subtlety, that appears highly likely to eclipse human counter-measures.
“Nuclear war, climate change or global pandemics are existential threats that we can work through with discussion and thought. Discourse is humanity’s immune system for existential threats. Diseases that infect the immune system are usually fatal. In this case, at a planetary scale.”
Anyway, just some things we should keep in mind as we make our way into this strange new future.
MJGlass 🇨🇦 retweeted
The farmer down the lane borrowed Nelson for his ewes on Wednesday, and had to take the horse as well, and by Friday morning forty Welsh ewes had worked out which of the two was in charge of them and it was not the one you could see from the road.
He had lost two lambs to a fox last spring and did not intend to lose any ewes to a dog this autumn, and he had read, like everybody has read, that a donkey in with sheep sorts it. He rang up. The Denbighshire farmer said yes, and then said that the donkey did not travel without the horse, and the man down the lane, who has a four-acre field and a small trailer, went quiet for a moment and then said he would make two trips.
Nelson walked down the lane on a headcollar. He has never needed a trailer for a lane. He walked at Nelson's pace, which is the pace of a man who has read the terms, and went through the gate into a field of ewes who had never seen a donkey, and the ewes did what ewes do with anything new, which is bunch at the far end and stare.
He walked the boundary. All of it, nose down, stopping where he judged there was a reason to stop, the whole fence line and both hedges and the gap at the bottom where the brook comes in under the wire, and he stood at that gap for a while. Then he went to the middle of the field and stood there.
Hector arrived an hour later in the trailer, seventeen hands of Cavalry Black coming down a ramp into a field of sheep he had no idea what to do with, and the ewes, who had been easing toward the donkey all morning in the way sheep ease toward a thing they have decided is safe, scattered to the hedge again at the sight of him.
He stood in the gateway looking enormous and lost, until he found the donkey, and then he walked over and stood four feet off the donkey's shoulder, and the field settled, and that was the arrangement.
The man down the lane watched it from his kitchen for three days and says the same thing happened every evening. At dusk the ewes drifted in from the edges and lay down in a loose ring, and the donkey stood in the middle of the ring with his ears going, and the horse stood at the edge of it, which is to say the horse was being guarded too and had not noticed.
The fox came on the second night. The man did not see it. What he saw, at six on Friday morning, was fox prints in the frost coming under the wire at the brook gap, forty yards into the field in a straight line, and then stopping, and turning, and going back out faster, in longer strides, with a set of small round donkey prints following them to the wire and no further.
Nelson was in the middle of the ring. The ewes were asleep. Hector was asleep on his feet beside them, and had, as far as anybody could tell, slept through the only thing that had happened.
A donkey does not guard because it is told to. It guards because it has looked at a field and decided what in it is his, and then it stands in the middle of that and declines to let anything through, and a ewe knows the difference between an animal that has decided and an animal that has been put there.
Nelson came home on Saturday. He walked up the lane with the man beside him and did not look back once. The ewes stood at the gate and watched him go until he was round the bend, which the man says they have never done for him, and he has fed them every day of their lives.
MJGlass 🇨🇦 retweeted
Dolly was found on the streets looking like a giant ball of fur. 🥺
Her fur was so badly matted that it completely hid her legs, and her nails had grown long and twisted from lack of care. After more than two hours of shaving off nearly 800 grams of dead fur, Dolly could finally see her own legs again. At first, she had to learn how to walk, but soon her little tail was wagging happily nonstop.
From a neglected, heartbreaking sight, Dolly transformed into a beautiful, happy dog. A volunteer fell in love with her at first sight and decided to make her part of the family forever. 🐶❤️
MJGlass 🇨🇦 retweeted
This little girl arrived at Al-Rahma Clinic yesterday with a note from another doctor. She had suffered burns some time ago and urgently needed her dressings changed.
There was nothing unusual about the treatment she required. Her wounds needed to be cleaned and dressed regularly, ordinary things in medicine that a doctor scarcely thinks of until he finds himself unable to provide them.
For several days, she had gone without proper dressing changes because of shortages of medical supplies. Her wounds had become infected, and her condition had deteriorated.
I have treated many children with burns, and I know how much they suffer. A child learns to fear movements she once made without thinking. Sleep becomes difficult. Even an affectionate touch may hurt.
Looking at her, I thought of the days she had spent waiting, not for an operation requiring extraordinary skill, nor for some medicine yet to be discovered, but for clean dressings.
There is something particularly cruel about suffering that could so easily have been prevented.
She will now return to our clinic regularly for treatment. But she is far from the only child who needs our help.
In recent weeks, neighboring clinics have begun referring patients they once treated themselves. They have run out of gauze, sterile dressings, antiseptics, and other basic supplies.
It is strange how little importance we attach to such things when they are plentiful. A piece of gauze is hardly worth mentioning. Yet take it away, and a wound that might have healed becomes infected, while a doctor discovers that his knowledge is of little use without the simplest materials.
When people speak of Gaza’s collapsing healthcare system, they think of ruined hospitals, empty operating rooms, and surgeries that can no longer be performed.
But there is another kind of destruction, less visible. It happens in small examination rooms, where a doctor must explain to a mother that he cannot dress her child’s wound because there is nothing left with which to dress it.
No building need collapse for such a tragedy to occur. A cupboard need only become empty.
Today, we were able to help this little girl. But our supplies are dwindling, and more patients arrive from clinics that have already exhausted theirs.
I wonder what will happen when our own shelves are empty.
Perhaps another little girl will arrive with a similar note, her mother believing that here, at least, someone will be able to help her.
They will examine her wound. They will know what treatment she needs.
But there may be no gauze, no clean dressing, nothing with which to begin.
There are few things more terrible for a doctor than to stand before a suffering child and discover that all his years of study and experience cannot provide her with something as simple as a clean bandage.
And the child will understand none of this. She will know nothing of shortages, destroyed supply chains, or the collapse of a healthcare system.
She will know only that she is in pain, that she has been brought to a doctor, and that the doctor has done nothing to make it stop.
#AlrahmaClinic
MJGlass 🇨🇦 retweeted
"Housing, treatment, harm reduction and community support are essential to lasting public safety. We will never arrest our way out of problems that require investment in people."
-- Winnipeg Police
Yes! ↓↓↓
SHOCKING! Winnipeg police acknowledged that enforcement doesn't address poverty, homelessness, mental health challenges or addiction. Resources do.
You can arrest people, seize drugs and clear encampments, but you can't police away the conditions driving these crises.
Housing, treatment, harm reduction and community support are essential to lasting public safety.
We will never arrest our way out of problems that require investment in people.
cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/…
MJGlass 🇨🇦 retweeted
THEY STOOD ON GUARD
NOVEMBER 9, 1944
A SECRET MISSION. A STORMY SEA. SEVEN MEN WHO NEVER CAME HOME.
On the night of November 8–9, 1944, a 19-year-old Canadian air gunner disappeared over the North Sea while carrying out a secret mission to help the Norwegian resistance.
Pilot Officer Peter Barnicke was born in Oakville, Ontario, on May 24, 1925, to Harry and Lucy Barnicke. Raised on a small family farm alongside his brother J.J., Peter enjoyed playing hockey and worked as a gardener and machine operator before enlisting in the Royal Canadian Air Force in April 1943.
By November 1944, he was serving with No. 138 Squadron at RAF Tempsford, England, a highly secretive base used to support resistance movements in Nazi-occupied Europe.
His final assignment, Operation PUFFIN 2, involved delivering supplies to Norwegian resistance fighters aboard a Short Stirling aircraft, LK198.
But that night, the weather turned dangerous.
Conditions deteriorated, forcing the operation to be abandoned. Peter’s aircraft never returned. All seven crewmen aboard were lost, including four Canadians.
Years later, Harold Watson, a flight engineer who survived a mission that same night, recalled witnessing a brilliant blue flash followed by an aircraft plunging into an uncontrolled dive. Lightning was suspected in the losses, although the precise fate of Peter’s aircraft remains unconfirmed.
Back in Oakville, the Barnicke family was left waiting for answers. According to a later biographical account, Peter’s father received formal notification in September 1945 that his son was presumed dead.
Peter was just 19. His body was never recovered.
But his story did not end there.
More than sixty years later, a Canadian student researching Peter’s life travelled to England, visited RAF Tempsford, and met Harold Watson. Upon returning home, the student shared the findings with Peter’s brother J.J., helping preserve the story of a young airman whose secret wartime service had remained largely unknown to his family.
Today, Peter Barnicke is commemorated on Panel 249 of the Runnymede Memorial in England, among Commonwealth airmen with no known grave.
Eighty-two years later, we remember Pilot Officer Peter Barnicke, J/92693, and the six men who vanished alongside him.
Their mission was secret. Their sacrifice must never be forgotten.
#TheyStoodOnGuard #LestWeForget #WWII
MJGlass 🇨🇦 retweeted
Koda casi no parecía un perro cuando lo encontraron. Lo curaron, lo acompañaron y esperaron. Después llegaron los juegos, las corridas y una familia para siempre. El mismo que antes apenas podía sostenerse terminó corriendo hacia su nueva vida.
MJGlass 🇨🇦 retweeted
I’m so fucking tired of the Alberta UCP and their American conservative playbook. We can say no and they’ll do it anyway. thetyee.ca/News/2026/11/09/A…
MJGlass 🇨🇦 retweeted
These compassionate individuals rescued this helpless deer trapped with its antlers tangled, using their courage and skill. 🦌
MJGlass 🇨🇦 retweeted
You will never convince a young man who has been indoctrinated since childhood and a good part of his adult life.🤦🏼♂️
MJGlass 🇨🇦 retweeted
To some people they are just sick street dogs with no future.
To us, every single life matters and can be transformed.
Have a lovely Sunday ❤️
MJGlass 🇨🇦 retweeted
A woman said that the impala she raised and named Cheryl listens better than her kids.
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
The video shows a pet deer named Cheryl (not an impala), raised on the Australian farm of former rugby player Billy Slater and his wife Nicole.
dailymail.com/sport/nrl/arti…
realestate.com.au/news/billy-sla…
MJGlass 🇨🇦 retweeted
The reason Americans defend billionaires with such genuine passion:
Not cynical passion. Genuine. Heartfelt. "How dare you tax him more, he earned it."
The reason is that the billionaire is not experienced as a class enemy.
He is experienced as a possible future self.
And you cannot tax your future self. You cannot regulate your future self. You cannot speak with contempt about your future self without experiencing it as self-hatred.
The fantasy protects him better than any security team.
The fantasy is the security team.
The gate that keeps the pitch fork away from the manor is not made of iron.
It is made of the unexamined belief, held by people who are one medical bill from catastrophe, that they are fundamentally more similar to the man with nine houses than to the man sleeping in a doorway.
It costs him nothing to maintain.
It costs you everything.
MJGlass 🇨🇦 retweeted
THEY STOOD ON GUARD
NOVEMBER 9, 1917
FROM MUSIC TO MUD: GEORGE STRUB'S FINAL DAYS AT PASSCHENDAELE
When George Adolph Strub enlisted in Kitchener, Ontario, in March 1916, he joined the 118th Battalion as a bandsman.
But the First World War would take the young Canadian far from home and into one of its most terrible campaigns.
Strub eventually served with the 1st Battalion, Canadian Infantry, during the fighting at Passchendaele, where Canadian soldiers battled through deep mud, relentless shellfire and devastating casualties.
He survived the battlefield long enough to be taken for medical care, but died of his wounds on November 9, 1917, aged just 24.
He was buried at Boulogne Eastern Cemetery in France, far from his family in Waterloo County.
Among the photographs preserved in his Veterans Affairs memorial is a family portrait showing George with his parents, brothers and sisters — a reminder of the lives left behind when young Canadians went overseas.
Today, 109 years later, we remember Private George Adolph Strub, service number 751661, and the sacrifice he made.
#TheyStoodOnGuard #LestWeForget #WWI
MJGlass 🇨🇦 retweeted
On December 12, 1952, a nuclear reactor in Canada went out of control. Someone had to go inside and take it apart. One of the young men who did it would later become President of the United States.
The reactor was called NRX, at the Chalk River Laboratories in Ontario. It was one of the most important research reactors in the world at the time.
That day, a series of mistakes caused its power to surge. Part of the core overheated and melted, and about a million gallons of radioactive water flooded the basement. It was one of the first serious nuclear accidents in history.
The reactor had to be dismantled before it could be repaired. But the radiation inside was so strong that no one could stay near it for long.
At the time, the United States Navy was working on the first nuclear-powered submarines, and its engineers had a strong interest in learning from the accident. A young Navy lieutenant who was working on the program was sent to Chalk River with a team of American sailors to help.
He was 28 years old. His name was Jimmy Carter.
The plan was carefully worked out. Each man could only be exposed to the radiation for about 90 seconds. So the team built a full-size copy of the damaged part of the reactor on a nearby tennis court.
Over and over, they practiced every movement until they could do their part perfectly and fast.
Then, one at a time, they went in.
Carter later described being lowered into the damaged reactor in a protective suit, working as fast as he could on his task, and then being pulled out. In those 90 seconds, he said, he absorbed the maximum amount of radiation considered safe for a whole year. For months afterward, his urine was tested for radioactivity.
Years later, he would joke that he and his men were "hot" for a while afterward. But at the time, nobody knew exactly what the long-term effects of that much radiation would be. The young sailors volunteered anyway. They knew the reactor had to be fixed, and they knew someone had to do it.
The work took weeks. Team after team went in, each man doing one small job in his 90 seconds before the next man took his place. Slowly, piece by piece, the damaged parts were removed. The reactor at Chalk River was eventually rebuilt and ran for decades afterward.
He later said the experience changed the way he thought about nuclear power and nuclear weapons for the rest of his life. He had seen with his own eyes what happens when something that powerful goes wrong.
Carter rarely made a big deal of it. In his memoir, he described it in a few plain sentences, the way a man describes a job that simply had to get done. Many Americans who voted for him never knew it had happened.
The following year, his father died, and Carter left the Navy to go home to Plains, Georgia, and run the family peanut farm. He went into local politics, then became governor of Georgia, and in 1977 he became the 39th President of the United States.
After the White House, he spent decades building homes with Habitat for Humanity, monitoring elections, and fighting diseases in some of the poorest countries on earth. In 2002 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Jimmy Carter died on December 29, 2024. He was 100 years old, the longest-lived president in American history.
Few people knew that before any of it, as a young officer, he had once been lowered into a broken nuclear reactor with 90 seconds to get the job done.
Did you know this part of Jimmy Carter's life?
