Beautiful white snow all around us and still falling. The company has cleared the laneway so we are free to go where ever we want as clearing the end of the laneway is not the easiest job in the world. Canada gets a lot of snow - some years more than others but a lot of snow. I cleared the porch and patio and the top of the laneway later in the afternoon yesterday and will do that again today. But we are now officially covered with snow and hopefully it will stay now until spring. I do love the snow. It is so comforting watching it coming down snowflake by snowflake year after year. It tells the story of Canada; we are the land of ice and snow covered most times six months of the year. It shapes everything about us although we have come up with unique ways to get Mother Nature to work with us using greenhouses and growing summer vegetables in the winter. Often we get enough sun to really make that viable in some areas of the country. We do really enjoy all the fruits and vegetables that come north to us from our friend and neighbour the United States but necessity has determined that we need to be tariff proof and so we are on our trek about the world finding new customers for our goods and buying theirs and so the food on our shelves may just have a different look and it will help us to be tariff proof.
Yesterday was a washing day and I spent a few hours at that as my washing machine is very efficient but has an extremely strong spin and I like to be on hand just in case it decides that the items within its drum are not arranged exactly to its liking. I can then halt it and re-arrange which I do. It is a very effective machine though I must admit. We bought the new washer and dryer just after the COVID shutdown and had to wait for delivery perhaps two months during which time we mimicked our ancestors and washed clothes by hand. It was a very interesting experience actually.
I also worked on Chromosome 22 for the phasing of the great grandparents and completed that chromosome and again I was able to separate out quite a bit of the Knight family (Maria Jane (Knight) Blake was my great grandmother) and a length for Cotterell/Cotterill which was very interesting. A few of the others appear obvious but need to do a little more work on the trees to say one or the other. But I will move forward to Chromosome 21 as I want to complete this table quickly and then move to the more difficult work of separating the two lines at each grandparent level. Having the data in a neat display works very well for me. These are the short chromosomes that I am working with and perhaps one a day but I do need to think more about the Newsletters - H11 and Pincombe - that are past due and I am also getting back into the two books I am writing. Sometimes in variety I get more done as I do not get bogged down in one thought.
A research day primarily but I have a meeting at 1:00 which I do want to attend (a prayer group) and groceries as it is that time of the week once again so must prepare my menu thoughts and my list. The skis are also ready to go and we may give that a try as well although it is meant to be a wind chill of -19 degrees celsius so perhaps a short run which might be good for this 80 year old. But I do love skiing.
The bargaining chips begin to pile up as we head into discussion on USMCA/MUSCA and CUSMA this next year. One wonders where the United States will move to on this one although our main effort at this time continues to be making ourselves tariff proof and that has a tremendous effect on our old traveling/buying/spending habits as we move to increase our internal purchases between provinces to support everyone's production of goods and services. It is good for us actually but we were not unhappy with the system as it existed but times change and so must we. Some of us drag our feet but the forward momentum can be felt and we are seeing good results with the unemployment rate decreasing slowly and the GDP going up slowly. It will benefit Canada in the long run in a huge way as we diversify and start to incorporate some of the items that we have just not taken advantage of (minerals, oil, gas and others) and increase our GDP (which increases how much we can spend on the military). I had a thought on the F-35 and I do think we should continue with buying the 88 myself but we need planes in the Arctic specific for that area and why not the Swedish Griffin as it is a very effective plane especially in the Arctic and there is the bonus of increased production here in Canada if we buy their planes as well. Having two different kinds - I do not see it as a problem since we are a huge country and having two different sets of military planes happened often during World War II. It just makes our military ever more versatile and that is a good thing. Then there is the need to make ourselves tariff proof for sure. The Prime Minister is doing a great job (I didn't vote for him but could see that he has the background that is working very well for Canada) and the discussion on why he does not make deals with the other parties very obvious really. In an election he would win far more seats because the other parties constantly prove how inadequate they are unfortunately. We need discussion in Parliament not throwing about ridiculous ideas and actually wasting time voting on them. We also do not need an election - a perfect waste of money if there ever was one. Get with it; the Liberals won the last election. The Prime Minister has earned his spurs and he is getting this show moving on to make us tariff proof in as gentle a way as is possible.
The Conservative leader let the last Prime Minister bait him constantly and he fell for it every time and what happened so much money wasted and expenditures over the roof although I do not begrudge children their school lunches or their day care, people their dental care but the weakness of the Conservative Party is very concerning to me as it used to be the party of economy and trade (social issues are dead in the water in Canada and belong at the provincial level really). You can not fight tariff you must become tariff proof. You can not dictate at the federal level what each province must permit; that is an internal issue that each province must deal with - the province that wants something needs to convince the province that has it to come in and be part of whatever which includes a pipeline (stop trying to create tension where none existed; the MOU was a good idea). We need to be tariff proof and that should be the 100% goal of this government which Canadians elected just a few months ago. Having support with an MOU between the feds and the province simply opens the beginning path of the discussion knowing that there is support for aspects mentioned in the MOU. Get with it Conservative party and lets get this show on the road that will make us tariff proof. I nevertheless expect the Conservative Party to continue being very attentive to how money is spent and to encourage the building of roads (Ontario needs to widen the Trans Canada continuously from Quebec to Manitoba and sooner rather than later). There are many ways that the Conservatives could be pushing to help make us tariff free and we will notice that you are helping; we do not need waste in the Commons arguing over trivialities when there is work to be done that is needed.
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