Ehlana and Ethan:
Happy 11th Birthday, Brianna!
We are currently on the road from Halifax to Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island; so we’re writing this update while we have time to do that between the stops we’re making along the way. Along with the work last night and today; we’ve mixed in some sightseeing, so instead of offering many details about that work; let’s mention some highlights and history for Nova Scotia and Halifax. Ethan and I read up a bit ahead of this trip, but most of our friends and cousins at home likely don’t know much about Canada in general or the eastern provinces. For history, the Halifax harbor explosion of nineteen-seventeen would be among the most-famous – a shipping accident in the harbor that involved a collision between ships with one of them fully-loaded with high explosives that decimated the harbor and city; killing and injuring thousands. It was also the largest explosion known in world history until the invention and testing of nuclear bombs. Those disaster stories are still amazing; and we can’t help but compare that event to the destruction happening now in Ukraine and the Middle East.
Nova Scotia is world-famous for coastal tides and waves; and we went to see that for ourselves last night and today. You really have to see and experience that kind of natural power to really understand how awesome it is; and we definitely don’t see that kind of water action on our hometown river or at Quarry Lake! The spot we visited to see tidal changes has water levels that change by more than fifty feet; and the high-tide inflows are amazing to watch! There is amazing surfing along the coast too, but we didn’t have time to go out and give surfing a try today – though that would have been awesome!
As for the rest of our sightseeing, we checked out a museum that had Titanic artifacts among the Atlantic maritime displays; a Victorian-era gardens park; the harbor boardwalk and shoreline; and we’ve especially-loved all of our local cuisine samplings. Let’s take a moment here to mention that it is a lot of fun and very different to be around Cassie when she is multi-tasking her language skills; and we’ve experienced that a lot already both for work and with the sightseeing. Canada’s official languages are English and French, but it is a multi-cultural country; there is a diverse, international tourism industry, and the First Nations’ tribes have many different languages too. Cassie and Michael are developing First Nations partnerships with our charities and businesses across Canada; so we’ll get to see her impress all of them with her ability to understand and speak their own languages! That’s true for everyone that experiences her talents – whether that is a tourist needing help with interpretation to business executives expecting to need to communicate exclusively in English with the Americans. We’re closing in on our next stop; so let’s wrap this up with our world news report.
The Iran war ceasefire is apparently over – according to President Trump; we’re back to bombing Iran; they are retaliating; and the vaunted Memorandum of Understanding and peace talks are off again. Yes, that could change again by tomorrow, but that doesn’t really matter; since that was all political theatre; and ‘our’ leaders have again proved that peace talks are really only used as a ruse to mask real plans for war and conquest. There aren’t even talks actually happening for the Ukraine war – though President Trump still offers regular assertions for imminent deals with Russia that don’t happen while allowing our military to help Ukraine with targeting attacks into Russia and selling or giving them more weapons. The latest Ukraine attacks on refineries and oil tanker ships will only add to the world oil and energy supplies issues; and the leaders currently hanging out in Turkey for the NATO summit are all delusional to continue plans to expand and build up armed forces and weapons while destroying their own economies with these never-ending wars. As with the attacks on Iran; Russia is escalating their retaliations against Ukraine, and while we have no doubt that Ukraine and their western backers can keep an asymmetric war going indefinitely; nobody will win that war and they risk destroying far more than Ukraine and Russia in the process. Here’s a hint – both sides can play that game, so just because Russia hasn’t attacked any of the countries colluding with Ukraine doesn’t mean that they won’t ever retaliate.
Finally, the NATO summit really has been all about more war; talking tough about Iran and Russia and any other country that doesn’t do whatever the neo-colonialists demand of them; and the answer to our world problems is not to spend trillions more on our collective militaries! Since we’re in Canada, that includes their leaders and government; and that is truly insane; since their country would be impossible to defend from real, attacking enemies with such a comparatively-small population. Yes, they’ve been a member of NATO since inception, but Canada used to be known for being pacifists and peacekeepers – whether entirely-true or not; so they should go back to those non-intervention policies or risk joining the club of western nations earning the hatred of the rest of the world.
Time is up for this report, since Michael is slowing down for one of the last road changes for our next stop; so we’re out of here and back to the real world fun and adventures.
Until next time, live with love, fellow Magi of the Light!
