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Love is the reason you are here

February 14, 2026 By Chris Corrigan Being, Uncategorized No Comments

Louise Erdrich, courtesy of Maria Popova

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.

Got it.

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My spark bird

February 12, 2026 By Chris Corrigan Uncategorized No Comments

My spark bird was a Bufflehead duck seen in 1991 through the binoculars that were a childhood gift. I was walking with Caitlin across a bridge in Peterborough on a still and hot summer night and we were looking for birds. She pointed to the small black and white duck with a bright white patch on its head and said "Bufflehead."  For whatever reason, I thought the only ducks were Mallards, familiar to the parks and lake shore where I grew up in Toronto.  The Bufflehead was a revelation.  

Today I found this BEAUTIFUL site called "Searching for Birds" which you should lose yourself in.

And also, with yesterday's Stellar Jay, I'm up to 157 species for the year so far.

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I have deleted my Facebook account

February 11, 2026 By Chris Corrigan Uncategorized One Comment

It has taken me a while, but I have finally deleted my Facebook account.

Lots of you will say “it’s about time” and others will say “oh no! that’s how we stay connected.” Doesn’t matter. You can easily find me on the actual internet.

I’ll tell you why I did it. For a website that knows more about me than I know about myself, today I was served a stream of hate in my feed related to a mass shooting that happened yesterday in British Columbia. I am not going into any more details than that. But it is OBVIOUS to me that the Facebook algorithm chose the material to put in front of me that would enrage rather than inform or connect. It was so hateful that I wasted no time in actually searching for the arcane spells to chant to do it and then I did it. I am no longer on Facebook.

I know all about the kind of place that Facebook is and the kind of violence it enables. I know that they are complexity unaccountable for the hate they spread. I have gradually weaned myself away from it, keeping it mostly to stay connected to local events. But today was the last straw.

So. How’s your day going?

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Truth and power

February 10, 2026 By Chris Corrigan Community, Culture, Democracy, Organization No Comments

I’m sceptical about any politician that says they will lower grocery prices by instituting tax cuts or providing rebates to consumers who will just spend that money on inflated grocery prices. Solutions need to be structural. Public grocery stores might be part of that solution, however.

I had no idea about US energy markets and the role that meteorology plays in them. Today Mark Ingalls lifts the lid on all of that a bit.

Chief Laurie Carr expresses an eloquent calling to account for Prime Minster Carney, using his Davos speech to hold him to a high standard of integrity at home.

Prime Minister, this is precisely what Canada demands of First Nations, participation without power, consultation without influence, reconciliation without restitution. We are asked to stand politely at the edge of the room while decisions are made and then told we were included. 

You called for “naming reality.” 

So let us name it. Canada speaks the language of values abroad while practicing expediency at home. It champions a rules-based order internationally while treating First Nations rights domestically as obstacles to be managed, delayed or overridden. 

For many of us, as important as Carney’s speech was, and as truthful as it was, it was also clearly at odds with how his government has pursued their domestic policy over the past year. The excuse of “we need to move fast because the world is facing a crisis” cannot be a rationale for us to move unjustly. Both can be true if both speed and justice are principles that limit and drive your action.

Loneliness at work, at home, in community. It’s pervasive. Some research is reporting on interventions.

Research points to several evidence-based approaches that can reduce loneliness when implemented thoughtfully. First, providing social support is one of the most reliable ways to reduce loneliness, particularly for people already at higher risk. Peer mentoring, group-based support and structured opportunities for connection are especially effective because they create safe environments where relationships can develop.

Building social skills also helps. Loneliness is not always about a lack of opportunity; it can also reflect difficulty initiating or sustaining social connections. Interventions that strengthen interpersonal skills, such as communication and relationship-building, can reduce loneliness by helping people feel more confident and about social interactions at work.

Volunteering reduces isolation. Volunteering has emerged as a particularly promising strategy for reducing loneliness. Engaging in meaningful, pro-social activities outside one’s core role can strengthen social bonds and increase feelings of connection, making it a valuable component of broader organizational strategies.

Give someone a call today.

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Watching others be great

February 7, 2026 By Chris Corrigan First Nations, Football No Comments

The weather has been glorious this week on the west coast, warm and sunny with beautiful conditions for walking and bird watching. Since I knew we were travelling this year to Costa Rica, Texas, Europe and eastern Canada this year I decided to see if I could observe or hear 365 species of birds during the year. I’m off to a good start with 151 so far (104 of which we saw in Costa Rica) and the weather has brought about plumage changes in the gulls so it’s getting easier to pick out the Californias from the Glaucous-winged. Yesterday I added the year’s first Black Oystercatcher and Hutton’s vireo (heard but not seen).

This weekend the Men’s Six Nations has started and it is know as rugby’s greatest championship for good reason. France absolutely dismantled Ireland yesterday and I just watched Italy nick a famous victory at home over Scotland in a downpour. England hosts Wales now, and although I would love the Celts to recover some form, I doubt this will be a very close game. Still, rugby delivers fantastic surprises.

Thursday night I finally got to see Tanya Tagaq live at the Chan Centre at UBC, as part of the PuSh Arts Festival. She is one of the most powerful performers I’ve ever seen. She channels and works with power, rage, love, sensuality, joy and the raw, wet, glossy work of life. Her art has always had a @sit down and pay attention” quality to it. I can only listen to albums like “Retribution” maybe once a year, in a dedicated sitting. Her work this week – Split Tooth Saputjiji – contained elements of her “Inuit mythic realism” book Split Tooth and recent to-be-released album Saputjiji. Predictability there were a couple of walk outs but you don’t have to know much about Tagaq’s work to know that the throat singing is not offered as an ethnic curiosity but rather as the vehicle for her to draw the source power from life itself to put hair raising power behind “Fuck War.” She is amazing.

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