March 30^th, 2003:

It was overcast and cold today - which means it was around the freezing point with a bit of a wind, and felt colder than when it was –30°! It snowed a few times, too, but didn’t amount to anything. When Frank counts his seven snows after the first crow, do you think those four blizzards we had on Thursday count as four separate snows?

And by the way, Les McPherson says it is only three snows after the first crow. Who is right? It gets more complicated every day!

Nobleville is a community five miles west of Highway #38 on the Archerwill Grid. There used to be a store, school, and post office, but all that’s left now is St. Lawrence Church. Lately there have been meetings at Fisherman’s Cove as survivors of Nobleville School meet to organize a reunion. Shirley Miller tells me they have set a date for July 5^th and 6^th of this year. Anyone interested in more information can contact Shirley Lupien at (306) 323-2056, or Jeanne Groves at (306) 278-3264. I recently had a chance to copy a class picture from 1949 and will attach it with this report. See how many you can recognize!

We went to Saskatoon on Friday, to take in Gardenscape. Since it had snowed Thursday night, the highways had some pretty icy patches to Naicam, but were fine from there on. We came back yesterday and were amazed at how much snow had disappeared, despite colder weather. The fields near Saskatoon are bare, with just patches of snow at the edges of bushes.

Okay, that’s my column for this week. The rest is just my personal opinion, so feel free to switch channels if you wish.

How short our memories are! France has veto power in the Security Council and indicated it would use its veto to block a UN resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq. They kept talking about giving the weapons inspectors more time to do their work; give diplomacy more time. Yet France is the country that was overrun in two world wars; while they were waiting for diplomacy to work, Germany moved in!

Britain, too, was on the firing line in those world wars. Tony Blair, a young man, realized that the time for talking was past. Yet many in the British Parliament, older men to whom the Second World War is more immediate, call Blair a hawk. Are they really so blind? Or are they making political hay?

I doubt if there are many Canadians who either like or trust George W. Bush. There is no denying that the United States is by far the most powerful nation in the world, economically and militarily, and George W. Bush is the President of that nation. The US is the only nation capable of being the world’s policeman. It defaulted on that responsibility earlier in the last century. If it had taken a stand in 1914, I doubt very much if the First World War would have got started. If it had taken a firm stand in the 1930s, neither Germany nor Japan would have been so anxious to go to war. I believe it took those lessons to heart, and that led it to take a major role in the Korean War, in Viet Nam, and in Kuwait. Like a policeman’s job, it’s a lousy job but someone has to do it!