Tag Archives: Books

Finances, History

The Quadra Project: Globalization – Part 1

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Peter Zeihan, in his 2022 book, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization, offers an insightful and credible explanation for the globalization process that affects us all, and is becoming increasingly relevant because of global economic, political and environmental factors. Although his book might exaggerate the importance of America, his ideas deserve our attention because they provide a framework for illuminating other related subjects.

At the end of World War II, in 1945, the world was in a political and economic mess. Although Germany and Japan had been defeated, most of the rest of the world had been heavily damaged by the conflict. In the East, an imperial Japan was in ruin, as was China after the Japanese invasion of its northern territories. In Europe, Germany, too, was in ruin. Great Britain, Italy, France, Russia and their many adjacent countries had been heavily damaged.

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Arts, Indigenous Nations History

Public Launch in Campbell River of Homalco First Nation’s Graphic Novel

Xwémalhkwh Hero Stories, was publicly launched at a reception at the Museum at Campbell River on February 27, 2025.  Homalco’s Community Launch was held in November, 2024, at the Discovery Inn.  Xwémalhkwh Hero Stories is the latest outcome of a journey of rediscovery and preservation of Xwémalhkwh history, culture, language, and traditions that began in the early 1990’s with recordings of the stories of the elders.  

At the gathering on February 27, the Project Manager and Editor of the Graphic Novel, Tchadas Leo, explained how the novel came into being as an outgrowth of Homalco’s radio station, The Raven, 100.7 FM’s podcast series, that used a portion from the recordings of the Elders to produce 12 episodes entitled, Remember – Recordings of the Elders Explored, available on Spotify. The gathering was treated to segment of one of the recordings with the voices of Elders speaking their language and translation.  This introduction provided the context for the graphic novel which tells three traditional stories.

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Cost of Climate Change, Technology

The Quadra Project: The Uninhabitable Part 2

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David Wallace-Wells divides his book, The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming, into four sections, each dealing with the effects of a warmer planet on human life. The first, “Cascades”, deals with the general notion that every single climate event will trigger a multitude of effects. For human civilization, this will mean a multiplying of stresses all amplifying the seriousness of each other in a “cascade” of complex problems, none of which can be solved without solving all the others. Once problems reach some unspecified level of disruption, they become so interconnected that they overwhelm our ability to address them. This means that we regress rather than progress. And just as progress tends to amplify itself, the same applies to the deconstruction process, until the structure of a civilization is so riddled with dysfunction that it is no longer viable.

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Arts

Cumberland Gold for Frank Mottl

Frank Mottl’s latest novel, Cumberland Gold, takes us to the quaint village of Cumberland BC. This is the same setting as his first novel,  The Cumberland Tales, in which Mottl described the community he knew in the 1960s. Only now he is writing about the late 19th century, when Lord Dunsmuir (1825-89) was attempting to recruit Chinese immigrants to work in his coal mine.   

Mottle explained, “ I did some research at the Cumberland Museum, and there was an unsolved homicide in the 19th century in the old Cumberland Chinatown. Nobody knew much about it, other than it was unsolved. That really appealed to me, so I just ran with it. Of course I spent a year teaching in China, so it did have a lot of that Chinese influence inside of it.” 

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Cost of Climate Change

The Quadra Project: Uninhabitable – Part 1

A global temperature review of 2024 confirms the trend that has been so concerning to climatologists. The last 10 years have been the warmest on record, and 2024 has been the warmest yet. The European Copernicus calculation measured 2024 as 1.6°C above the pre-industrial temperature, with most days being above the 1.5°C aspirational target set by the Paris Agreement (COP21) in 2015. Other organizations measured a slightly different temperature for 2024: NASA at 1.47°C, NOAA at 1.46°C, and Berkley Earth at 1.62°C. The differences are technical but the trend is the same. Global temperatures are rising in concert with our greenhouse gas emissions.

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