Eat locally, eat healthily

(September 02) - Go to the farmer’s market. You can get most of the food you need, and it won’t kill you.

The country has been shocked lately by an outbreak of a mysterious bacteria called listeriosis. It’s killing people across Canada, making a lot more very sick and thousands more very worried.

I don’t blame Stephen Harper for this health catastrophe. I don’t even blame Mike Harris even though he’s the proud author of nearly everything that ails this city. It wasn’t just them. They had help. The social forces that propelled them into positions of power also brought these new health risks. These forces brought us deregulation and centralization. The food inspection system suffered when government funding and taxes declined.

Competition within the meat processing industry is a thing of the past. A huge amount of the sliced meats sold across the country originates in one Toronto factory. Whether on sale at Zehrs on Imperial Road or Safeway in Saskatoon, whether it’s a sub sandwich in Guelph or a pre-packaged sandwich in Moncton, odds are the meat was shipped from the Maple Leaf plant in Toronto. When you read the list of recalled brands, you see some Schneider’s and some Burns. Both were once competitors of Maple Leaf.

The free enterprise economic model pretends to thrive on competition, but it really drives to end it.

Economies of scale have led to centralized production facilities, giant retail outlets and food treated with enough chemicals to allow it to travel across the country and around the world. Go into any supermarket today and look at how many apples on display come from South Africa or China. This while orchards across southern Ontario are weighed down with fresh fruit.

If you want to eat healthily, eat locally. You can do that if you shop at the market every Saturday morning. The eggs are fresh, the meat is clean, the fruit and vegetables are tasty, and the prices are good.

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It doesn’t matter what you want to know, there is always someone in Guelph with the answer. A couple of weeks ago, I wondered about the 1957 general election. The rest of the country voted on June 10. Wellington South, our riding name at the time, voted on July 15.

A loyal reader, Walt Atkinson, called to say the Liberal candidate, Henry Hosking, died on June 3 while the campaign was still underway.

He’s buried in Rockwood cemetery.

Candidates don’t die on the job very often. When one does, the election has to be set aside to allow the affected Party time to regroup and nominate someone else.

This very rare event sparks some interesting what ifs. Hosking was running for re-election as an incumbent. He was first elected in 1949, succeeding another Liberal, Robert Gladstone, who had been the MP from 1935 until 1949. Alf Hales had run for the Conservatives in 1953, but lost to Hosking. They were up against each other for the second time in 1957 when tragedy struck the Hosking family.

Probability suggests that Hosking would have beaten Hales again. Twenty-two years of Liberal incumbency would have been tough to overturn. But the delay allowed voters here a chance to watch the rest of the country elect a Conservative minority government on June 10. Wellington South went Conservative on July 15, and Hales held it through thick and thin until his retirement 17 years later.

Now we can only speculate on the different story that might have been written into Guelph’s history book if Hosking had lived another few weeks or months.