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The Citizen, 2017-06-15, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JUNE 15, 2017. PAGE 5. Other Views Where do they begin to go wrong? Sometimes the proximity of events kicks off a chain of thoughts. That happened for me recently. We had just spent a weekend with our two youngest grandchildren. One is three, her personality (bright, curious, agreeable) just starting to emerge. The other, merely six months, still a blank slate as to how she will affect the world and how the world will affect her. Then the next day came the news that 2,458 people had died of drug overdoses in Canada last year. These deaths were termed "preventable" in the story. The inference was that society should somehow be doing more to prevent these deaths — that government should be saving these people from their own self- destructive impulses. But how do people get themselves to these circumstances, I wondered, remembering the innocence of those two little girls in our home and realizing that most of these victims of addiction at one time were just as innocent. A couple of days later three terrorists went on a rampage with a truck and knives, killing eight people in London, England. When they were six months or three years old, I thought, no one would have foreseen that those little boys would become so twisted that they would somehow think it was a good thing to sacrifice their own lives in order kill innocent people walking down a street. We all start out in pretty much the same place: tiny, unshaped human beings. We might be born in India or China or Syria or Canada but no matter what the location, no matter what our skin colour, no matter what our parents' religious beliefs, we're all pretty similar. What then goes wrong to make people self- destructive or want to destroy others? In his new book Matters of Life and Death, Keith Roulston From the cluttered desk medical journalist Andre Picard argues that the greatest determinant of good health and life expectancy is the economic circumstances of the individual. Well-off people live longer and enjoy better health than poor people — even here in Canada. Probably the same reality holds true to mental health. Certainly it's easy to see that some people start off in pretty deplorable circumstances. CBC journalist Nahlah Ayed in her book A Thousand Farewells, describes life in a Palestinian refugee camp that her parents had returned to from her birthplace in Winnipeg when they felt guilty for leaving their parents and relatives behind. The camp had been set up to take in Arabs fleeing Israel after the 1948 war between Israel and its Arab neighbours. Those "temporary" camps still exist and it's easy to see how young people, particularly young men, with plenty of bitterness and little future, become angry and determined to punish the country, Israel, that now occupies the territory where their families lived for generations. Yet not everyone born into these circumstances becomes bitter and violent. Some will improve the world, becoming doctors or teachers or, like Ayed, journalists, helping us understand the complexities of the Middle East. Likewise poverty here in Canada will play a part in the likelihood of young people turning to drugs or alcohol or crime. Children born to parents who are themselves addicts have an unfair chance of succeeding. It's understandable that some young people living in impoverished, isolated indigenous communities with little hope of prospering because of a scarcity of good jobs can become so discouraged they turn to intoxicants, and even to suicide to escape their depression. But again, some people will have the strength to get through all this and contribute to a better world. On the other hand, we all know cases of people who grew up in loving families where there was little economic hardship. Many of the parents of drug -overdose victims who have come forward are very middle class. Yet something in these affluent young people still turned them to alcohol or drugs to fill some need or ease some hidden pain. Why, when they have everything going for them, do they self-destruct? People of my generation were hopelessly naive as we reached adulthood. Growing up in the optimism of that era after World War II, better educated than any generation in history, we believed in the perfectibility of mankind. Show people reason and they would see the light. Take our society to the top of the mountain and we would stay there. Sad experience has shown us that despite the circumstances the seeds of self -destructiveness are still within us. My granddaughters have gone home now. I have only photos and memories of their visit. I look at those photos and I wonder about their future. I know they have good parents and will grow up sheltered from real hardship. But what strengths and weaknesses hide behind those sparkling eyes? I can only hope they have what it takes to realize their potential. A little outside can go a long way Health Canada has set its sights on cheese, chips, caffeinated drinks and pretty much every guilty pleasure imaginable in a bid to try and keep children healthy. No, the government organization isn't hoping to stop these things from being produced, but it is considering a ban on advertising everything from energy drinks to cookies, from donuts to pop and, yes, as stated above, cheese. Health Canada is suggesting a ban on advertising unhealthy food to children under the age 17, which goes above and beyond a ban that was implemented in Quebec in 1980. While I am a parent, I don't quite have to worry about my daughter wanting to go to McDonald's after seeing a commercial, or thinking she wants to try waffles because Eggo has great commercials (and yes, frozen waffles made the list). However, I am prepared for that eventuality. See, it's all in this very simple vocabulary my parents used when I wanted to do something they felt wasn't necessarily conducive to a healthy lifestyle. It consisted of the words, "no. Go outside — now." Sure, I'm not exactly a dead ringer for a young Arnold Schwarzenegger here, but I am able to referee back-to-back soccer games without having a heart attack. I'm able to haul a third of my weight in AirSoft (similar to paintball) equipment for four or five hours without asking everyone to take a break while I catch my breath. I can play a hockey game (and I'm not talking to skill there, I'm just saying I can stay on my feet for the length of the game) without throwing up. In short, my fitness level has never stopped me from doing something I wanted. I'm able to do those things because I've made a conscious decision to not lead such a sedentary lifestyle that I can't be physically active and I'll make sure Mary Jane knows the importance of that as well. That's my responsibility as a parent, not the government's responsibility. There are all sorts of arguments supporting this ban and, I'll admit, some of them are good, but the simple fact is, children aren't going to stop hearing about Happy Meals or chocolate bars or potato chips because they don't see them on television. Heck, I can't remember the last time I purchased a bag of chips because the company had a particularly alluring commercial. If I buy chips, it's because I've got a hankering for a salty snack and I don't feel like making popcorn. The government needs to stop spending money trying to do what parents should be doing: guiding their children to healthy lifestyles. Aside from that, the government is focusing on the wrong contributing factor to unhealthy children. While I realize that obesity and weight are a problem for children (and adults) now more than ever, I don't think that banning commercials on Red Bull and Rockstar energy drinks is going to fix it. The problem that needs to be addressed is screen time. When I was young we had two televisions and one computer in our house. We had one nice, new television upstairs that got all the channels we could ever want and one old wood -paneled television downstairs that could display channels two through 13. All told, I probably spent a couple hours a day in front of a television playing Nintendo games before my mother would stomp down the stairs and "encourage" me to go outside. I would hop on my bike and, again, at my parents' suggestion, go knock on doors, find enough of my classmates to form teams and then go play road hockey or basketball or something similar. The odd thing was, I wasn't the only person doing this. There were kids on bikes on every street and it would never take long to get a game of soccer or 500 going. Whether it's due to safety and security concerns, the ease of turning on a television and finding hundreds of channels or the advent of the internet, I don't see that happening anymore. It seems to me that children aren't encouraged to go to local parks and play a game of pick-up basketball or even head to their front lawn and read a book. And let's be fair here, by encourage, I mean my parent's method of encouraging, which was to march over to the circuit breakers and shut off the power to the televisions in the house if they felt we were inside too long. Stopping Tim Hortons from running advertisements about donuts isn't going to prevent a child from wanting a donut, however standing there, ready to shut down the power to the entire living room will make sure that children get outside and burn off the calories they got from that donut and, the great thing is, you don't need a single consultant, survey or report to tell you that. All you need is the knowledge that, for decades, parents told their children to get outside and they have done so without the government's help. Shawn Loughlin ALIMIllik Shawn's Sense Sleepless in Arizona Last week I did my part to stave off the boredom I suspected might have been creeping into the lives of several North Huron firefighters by calling them with a potential emergency. Sometimes we all just have to do our part to create and maintain a vibrant and successful community. It's true. My King Street home suffered a bit of a simple machinery malfunction that filled the main floor with the soothing aroma of an electrical fire for a few hours. I gave the gang a call and they took care of the malfunction and confirmed that while the smell was unpleasant at the time, there was no fire risk. With that electrical fire smell hanging in the air, I had a nervous night of sleep. While I don't distrust our local firefighters, my nose just kept me on edge and I was kept sleepless for a good long while. So, while I was battling a headache the next day (presumably from the fumes), combine that with the lack of sleep and I just wasn't at my sharpest. These days happen. Everyone has them. No doubt my colleague Denny has had a lot of them lately as the father of a teething daughter. It's good to know that these kinds of things happen to the best of us, though — not just me. Senator John McCain was in the news last week because people found his line of questioning during the hotly -anticipated James Comey hearing a bit confusing. McCain responded by saying he was out of sorts, likely due to watching a few Arizona Diamondbacks baseball games that had gone a bit late in the days preceding the hearing. While the Diamondbacks are actually off to a pretty good start to the season, this hardly seems like a legitimate reason to be disoriented for something as important as the Comey hearing. But, you know what? McCain is just saying something we've all wanted to say (or have said) at the office at some point or another after something kept us up past our regularly scheduled bed time. Jess gets up really early for work, not to mention the long drive she has every day, so any major fluctuation in bed time can be a big factor for her. For me, like McCain, it tends to be sports that can throw off my schedule and dull my pencil the next day — whether it be at work or at home. Take game seven of the World Series last fall. That was a long game that included a rain delay, extra innings and plenty of lead changes en route to being one of the better baseball games I've ever watched. Some of you know — because we were texting one another during the game — that if it had gone 21 innings and not finished until the sun came up, I would have watched every pitch of that game. It was just too important to miss. But, just like with a night of drinking or a day full of something very active, like cycling (once you're over a certain age), you pay for it the next day with the hangover, the sore muscles or the glazed look in your eyes. So, while we don't likely need to be building statues to celebrate McCain for what he said, to a certain extent he should likely be commended for being honest and forthcoming about why he wasn't setting the world ablaze last week with his intelligent and probing questions. (I don't think I need to mention that honesty is a fleeting proposition in politics south of the border these days.) But, you know what, John? We've all been there and while we may make excuses to sound a bit more professional, we've all had our brushes with our own version of late Arizona Diamondbacks games.