Lemmy NZ

Last year, the Canadian Medical Association Journal published an article on a case of scurvy diagnosed in an elderly woman in Toronto. It deserved attention because scurvy, a condition resulting from lack of vitamin C, is virtually never reported in advanced countries like Canada.

This year we have learned of 27 more cases, all diagnosed last year or this year, in the Lac La Ronge Indian Band in northern Saskatchewan.

Live without vitamin C for three or four months and you will begin to feel bad. You’ll be exhausted and irritable, and your arms and legs will hurt. Your gums will swell and start to bleed easily. Your teeth will loosen in their sockets, and you’ll have bad breath. Your skin will be rough and dry and will bruise easily. Wounds won’t heal quickly; in severe cases, old scars will open again. Left untreated, scurvy can result in internal bleeding, convulsions, organ failure and jaundice.

According to Food Banks Canada’s HungerCount 2024 report, food banks had two million visits last March — six per cent higher than in March 2023, and 90 per cent higher than in 2019.

A third of food bank users are children. Forty per cent of users are on social assistance or disability supports, and 18 per cent are currently employed — the highest percentage ever recorded.

This is test art work from an upcoming project.

The Liberal prognosis is grim. For Trudeau to stand a chance, the government will need a major policy pivot. The Liberals could harness some of the populist economic momentum by cracking down on monopolistic practices or opening the telecom sector to foreign investment. Trudeau could make a generational commitment to restoring the dream of homeownership to the middle class. He could articulate his positive vision for Canada, as the nation he described in his father’s eulogy: a place “where simple tolerance, mere tolerance, is not enough.” A nation animated by “genuine and deep respect” for Canadians of all origins, values, and beliefs. A nation we may yet become.

Whether he will do any of these things is, of course, anyone’s guess. For all I know, Trudeau will be swallowed by the anti-incumbent wave after all—or take cover long before it arrives. But we are not the United States. We are not Britain, France, or anywhere else. Our future is unwritten, its outlines discernible in polls, perhaps, but also in the relationship between a father and son, their half-realized dreams, and long, lonely walks through the snow.

Verizon Message+ is set to stop working in a few days (after a delay), and Google is out with a guide for those switching to its Message app.

Without a doubt a 1970s rockstar

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/20064232