We will have to make sacrafices - April 17th, 2015

 April 17th, 2025  

The global system of economics is changing.  It is not going to go back to what we have been used to for the last 35 years.  This change will mean sacrafices for all Canadians.

We will need a stronger and more robust government, and that will cost money, money that will come from businesses or individuals in Canada.  It will mean a sacrifice. 

• Economic growth will be much slower for years and this means wages will stagnate
• There will need to a constant campaign to protect Canada as a nation state
• Taxes will have to rise
• The government will have to provide more services especially in areas the private sector is doing now
• The most important issues globally will be off the table for a number of years - think climate change
• Military spending will rapidly increase as will the nuimber people in the Canadian Forces.  How much will we spend?  within a couple of years $60,000.000.000 a year, and within six to seven years it will be $100,000,000,000.  That is about $2400 per Canadian per year, up from under $1,000 a year
• We will need more robust defences of civil society and that is not going to go over well with the narcissistic freedom whiners.  Another anti-freedom truck convoy is probable

This is not going to be easy; people will have to lower their expectations.  It has been 43 years since we last had a major economic crisis.  What will happen is going to a lot worse.  No one is left who was an adult the last time when the shit really hit the fan.

Day 84 of the Trump Regime - April 14th, 2025

April 14th, 2025

The Trump regime is into its 11th week, and the Gleichschaltung continues.  More and more people and institutions are falling into line with the desires of the regime.

Glaichschaltung was a process in Germany in the early months of 1933 when the Nazis took the institutions of democracy and made them all be in sync with the regime.  They ended up controlling all the media, every elected government from the smallest community to the whole nation, industry, universities, churches, social clubs, youth groups, and much more.  In about 100 days the Nazis went from being an elected government to a dictatorship.  

This process is happening in the USA.  It is not as harsh or complete as the Nazi seizure of power but that is only because they have not figured out how to remove some of the opposition.  

It has been 12 says since Trump announced his tariffs and he has had to back down a lot.  Many are calling it him caving.  The problem is that he has not removed all the tariffs.  The 10% cross the board tariff is still in place (though not on Russia for some reason even though the US does some trade with them).  The 25% tariff on car and car parts is still in place, as is the one on aluminum and steel.  And of course, there is the insane tariff on China.  The tariffs currently in place are bad.  The pause has not removed them.  

The recession is coming:

• The remaining tariffs are a large tax hit for Americans and will reduce their disposable income.
• Countires around the world are being cautious of dealing with the US
• American consumers are afraid of a recession and paying down debt
• In some countries, Canada is the main example, the public is boycotting US products and the country
• American companies are laying off people because of the tariffs
• The US economy was already in a fragile place

I am not sure how anyone thinks the recession will be avoided.  For there to be no recession, the lost income for American business has to be made up somehow.  

The problem is that the US markets have not priced in the coming recession.  The stock markets held even today but they should be lower as would be expected in a recession (or depression, which may be the case).  American stocks are over valued by a lot.  There are companies that will be losing a lot of money and some of them will go bankrupt.  

Today, and on Friday, the TSX was doing much better than the Dow, S&P 500, or NASDAQ.  I think that is also not a realistic view of the world.  

American markets are going to see long term drop in value.  30% in the next six months is not unrealistic.  The US markets will not reach past the rough peak of today for years.  There is not enough money in the American economy to buy the stocks.  

The Trump regime also suffers from the multitude of dumbass shit they are doing or how slighted people around the world feel.  In 2001, 2008, and early 2020 the world worked with the United States on the economic crisis of the moment.  Not this time.  Why would Denmark do anything that favours the Americans when the Trump regime shits on Denmark?  76 years as a very loyal ally.  Denmark let the Americans build Camp Centiry on Greenland - google that insane idea.

Trump is taking a flamethrower to any goodwill that exists in the world for the US.  In less than 100 days Trump has made the US a pariah state.  

How do we go from here?  

I am not sure on a national level because I am not convinced that many nations are ready to do what they need to do in the face of the Trump regime.  On a personal level, I will have as minimal financial ties to anything American as I can.  This will be an ongoing process and will likely take deliberate actions on my part to stop.  I will get used to boycotting the US.

I certainly am not going to cross the border as long as there is any part of the Trump regime remaining in the US.  

Enough for today.  

Reflections on Sunday April 13th 2025 about the Trump chaos

 April 13th 2025

I have not posted for the last few days, I have been under the weather.  It is not COVID, I tested for that.

The biggest thing is that Trump is all over the place and has caved again. Various electronics will no longer be subject to tariffs. Even before anyone can adjust to a new tariff things change, yet again.

At this point, I think everyone will assume that the US will drop any tariffs when American businesses squawk loud enough.  Trump has caused a lot of damage to the economy and further inconsistency only means business and consumers will think very hard before spending money.

There is an irrational optimism among American investors.  They are still not noting how bad the damage to the American economy is already.

Trump's actions have caused nations around the world to look for ways not to deal with the US.  Sales of American products are down all over the world.  Tourism to the US is down as well.  American treasury bonds are losing popularity.  These things will continue on till Trump is no longer a president.

Trump is very well known as a person who never stands by his word and will even disavow agreements the US has signed.  It would be a foolish government to believe an equitable agreement is possible.

The global boycott of the US is not being led by government or industry; it is being led by the people.  No one is telling people they should not buy American.  Governments are going to be able to get people to buy American products.

Even as trade with the US falls, the trade deficit will get much larger.  How will Trump react when he finds out that his trade deficit with Canada has massively increased?  I assume anger followed by a desire to punish Canada for not buying American.  

This is enough for today.  I have other things I need to work on.

ICE can police what an illegal idea is in the US??? - April; 10th 2025

 

April 10th 2025

This was posted by ICE on Twitter today but has been taken down now.  I got this from CNN.

I have so many questions:

• I am not sure what an illegal idea is.  
• How do you even stop an idea?  
• Does this mean ICE will stop ideas from coming into the states by mail?
• Will ICE now be stopping ideas on the internet from coming into the US?
• How will they stop ideas in people's heads?
• If you express an illegal idea will you be detained?

This is beyond insane.

Watch this to Make Your Day a Bit Better

 

Welcome to Ever More Chaos - April 9th 2025

 April 9th, 2025

Trump trying to be Nero

I am utterly flabergasted.  Trump has caved with his tariffs, again.

Trump had talked about a 25% tariff on Canada and Mexico.  He first paused them and then simply sort of forgot about them.

He rolled out his random global tariffs a week ago and now he has paused and I think has said they will only be 10%?

Though he keeps putting more tariffs on China, 125% effective tomorrow?

The pause has resulted in a 7.3% increase in the Dow, 8.4% in the S&P 500 and 10.1% in the NASDAQ.  This is in 90 minutes.   This is turning investment into nothing more than gambling.

Businesses need to know what the landscape looks like years down the road.  You can not make an investment decisions if you have no idea what the state of the world will be in a couple of months?  OK, in the case of Trump, the next day. 

A few things that have become clear because of this pause:

1. Trump wants a total break down of trade with China.
2. Trump is not interested in onshoring any manufacturing
3. Trump is still tariffing his closest allies for no real reason.
4. Trump has given up on collecting new government revenues from tariffs.
5. Trumo is a weak leader and an utterly shit negotiator.  

Trump has caved on the tariffs before he could negotiate any new deals.  With a 90-day reprieve, I am not sure why anyone would negotiate with him now.

This may be a double-posting day.

Another day and it is not getting better - April 8th, 2025

 April 8^th, 2025

The decline continues today after a rally at the start of the day.  In my opinion this is people buying in because they saw a chance to make a buck.  Having multiple days of large declines is not normal for American markets but the situation is also not normal.  Having an American president accidently starting a recession is something we can not plan for or understand the impacts of it.

With the 104% tariffs being levied on American businesses that buy products from China is going to really mess the American retail sector.  I am not sure how a company like Walmart, or Michaels, or Apple, or any one of a number of companies, will manage to deal with this huge cost increase for them.  Changing to different supplies will take a long time.  There is little choice but to sell the items from China. 

Right now we see the US stock markets reacting.  The people that drive the stock market are by nature centre right pro-business.  They are looking for reasons to be opotmistic about the markets.   This happened yesterday when the markets flew up after a rumour of a pause in the tariffs was going to be announced.  The market makers tend to lean into optimism and that makes what has happened in the markets look worse.  Bu the markets are not the economy.

It takes time for a really stupid policy decision to work its way through to the economy.   It is all about stock on hand.   Retails sales for the last few weeks are likely to be up because the public is forward loading their purchasing because of the fear of the tariffs.  We should then see a lag of a month to three months before retailers need to bring in new stock.  It is in early July the scope and scale of the decline will become public.  Then the Q2 earnings calls from companies will be coming in and there will be some bad ones, really bad ones.

In May and June we will start to hear about layoffs and this will increase each and every week for the rest of the year.  I am not sure how 2026 will look, and I doubt anyone can with any accuracy, but I am leaning towards apocalyptic. 

At what point will Dumpster Don accept he fucked up more than any other American president?  How will he back down?  How will he react when after he backs down things do not get better?

The negotiations Trump speaks of in relation to the tariffs are unlikely to lead anywhere much.  It does mean that he is signalling the tariffs are not intended to last at all, and this flys in the face of using the tariffs to increase manufacturing in the United States.  You can not have both.

How does Dumpster Don negotiate in any case?  The tariff rates that did exist are much smaller than what the Americans have imposed.  In his first term he negotiated NAFTA to create CUSMA.  His negotiation skills did little to make an serious changes to NAFTA in the process.  How does a country like South Korea negotiate with the US?

South Korea and the US have a free trade agreement in place and not most of Suth of Korea’s economy is open to American products.  This was renegoatied by Trump in 2018.  

That did the tough negotiator get in 2018?  Not a lot.  A few more cars.  For a deal Trump said  "It's a horrible deal, and we are going to renegotiate that deal or terminate it.", the results do not reflect the fantasy words as spoken by him.

What is there that South Korea could negotiate away to get Trump to drop his outrageous tariff against a free trade partner?  It is not like Trump even demand South Korea pay for the costs of the American military there because they already do so.

Anyone negotiating with the US is going to want to see this moronic and illegal tariffs to be removed.  They are not going to accept them continuing.  To get deals the US will have to give up their tariffs they announced on April 2^nd, recession day.

Trump has very little to offer.  To get deals he is going to have to remove the tariffs in return for minor concessions.

All that said, I think Trump has no interest in dropping the tariffs because he wants the money to allow for the Oligarchs’ tax break.  I do believe this is all about getting new revenues for the American government more than anything else. 

Something like $10,000,000,000,000 of American wealth is gone.  It is likely that over the next two weeks that this will rise to $20,000,000,000,000 to $50,000,000,000,000.  At this scale of a loss, it will take the American economy 20 to 30 years to make up this lost wealth through growth in the economy. 

•        The world is headed towards a really bad recession

•        Americans have a very large new tax to pay

•        Americans are losing huge amounts of wealth

•        Trump is unlikely to be able to negotiate any sort of a meaningful agreement with any country

•        Recovery will take up to a decade

My Day Off but there is No Peace - April 7th 2025

 April 7th 2025

I have been thinking all day about what to write today.  My goal is to try and write about the events of this crisis each day as long as it lasts.  In part it is because I need to work things out and not go insanes, and in part because when major global events happen, when that change happens, we forget how things felt the day before.

I should have started this sort of thing in 1989 as communism fell.  Or the start of the Ukraine war, Or numerous other events.  But I did not.  All the previous events did not suck the soul out of me each and every day like Trump is.

This crisis is also different because it only exists because the President of the United States is stupid and has no understanding of economics, governance, or business.  We are headed into a recession, which will very likely be the worst one of my life.

A recession will happen because the tariffs will harm the exchange of goods for money.  In theory it is still possible for for Trump to call this off but that would require him to clearly state this week that his strategy is a huge mistake and he will not do this again.

Something like $10,000,000,000,000 has been lost by American investors.  The US GDP is only $28,000,000,000 per year.  In the space of three business days and a weekend, the American economy lost 1/3 of the projected total production of value by the American economy.  The American stock markets have not yet accounted for the coming recession, not really.  The markets have also not accepted that Trump is serious about the tariffs.

I am not sure what it would take for Trump to step back from the brink and stop what he is doing.   Clearly it is not trade negotiations since his tariffs are not connected to the reality of trade.  He is also not treating countries fairly.   Trump only cares about the goods trade deficit, but he still put tariffs on countries that the US has a surplus with.  

Let us say the American economy really crashes, something much worse than 2008/09.  Would that be enough to change his mind?  Will he withdraw his tariffs and declare victory?  I am not expecting him to apologize for the harm he has caused.  Even if he backs down now it is likely too late.

Canada has the longest free trade relationship with the US, the core of which was the 1965 Auto Pact.  The North American car industry has been integrated for 60 years now.   This is what both of the countries wanted and the industry has spent two generations working as if there is no border.

Donald Trump was still in high school when the Auto Pact was signed.  He does not really remember a time when the car industry was not integrated.

I am bothered by Trump constantly saying how the US is suffering and he has to do this to make it the biggest economy on earth.  Did I miss the memo?  Did the US at some point cease to be the large booming economy it is?  The US is a very wealthy country, how will the tariffs make it wealthier?  

One way I can be certain a recession is coming is that the loss of Canadians going to the US and the total drop off of buying American produce is more than amount the American economy was predicted to grow by six months ago,

Attacking Canada he way he has means that alone will start the recession.  Increased cost of Canadian aluminum will hurt.  The car industry will have a drop in sales and that alone would cause a recession.  Now, imagine all the products from China being 50% more expensive.  I do not see how Walmart survives this as they are China's retailer in the United States.  

And then there is the rest of the world.

This is not going to be a recession, this is going to be a bad American depression.  Unemployment like not seen since the early 1930s.

The Day Before - Sunday April 6th 2025 Entry. What will happen to the markets tomorrow? More fall out from Recession Day

The Era Trump is taking the US to

April 6th 2025 

Tomorrow morning we will see what the markets will do. I have no way to know what will happen but here are some scenarios:

1. Trump removes all the tariffs and amidts he was wrong. I think this is highly unlikely but would be best thing Donald Trump could do to stop the economic melt down in the United States. 
2. The market holds for Monday because of value investors buying into the market. This might be possible but I do not think it will happen because there are not enough people willing to do this. The scale of the losses are higher than could be counteracted by some contrarian investors. You would need to mobilize multi trillions of dollars to have this happen. 
3. The sell-off continues and we see another 10% to 15% drop in the markets on Monday. I think this is most likely. Where will the sell-off end? That is a very good question and no one knows the answer to that. Imagine the Big Three and Walmart going bankrupt, what will that do to the American economy and the markets? 
4. The sell off is so bad that trading is halted on American exchanges. A halt would spook the shit out of the markets and when they reopened they would crash harder. I think this is the second most likely outcome. 
5. The Republicans grow a backbone and stop Trump - I think this is highly unlikely. Even if Trump were to take all the tariffs off and apologize for his extreme blunder things will not return back to normal. It will just not get as bad. 

I do not see a path in which the United States does not avoid a bad recession. I do not see how they avoid 10% to 15% unemployment. I do not see how they avoid high inflation for the next year or more. 

The crazy part is that the US is putting tariffs on things the US can not produce. Bananas, chocolate, and coffee are all being tariffed. It means the prices for all of these things will rise 10% or more in the next MONTH, not year or decade, MONTH. 

 The only saving grace for the Americans is that new tariffs on Canada and Mexico were not introduced on Recession Day. Still, the impact on the American car industry is catastrophic and will likely lead to a 30% to 50% drop in car sales in the US in the next year.

Enough for today.

Trying to Enjoy My Weekend - April 5th 2025

April 5th I am wrting these posts mainly for me to look back on ho wthings went day by day. I did not do this in 1989-1992, when I should have. It woudl have been good to do this with the pandemic as well as the Russian invasion. I am going to do it this time documenting how this Trump sit plays out over time. I need to not be thinking about this stuff everyday and all the time, but it is hard not to. When I go out I see the world as it is right now, which is not yet a dramatic change from where it has been for the last four years but I know dramtic change is coming. My own life will be in a relatively good place. If I was just thinking about myself this chaos does not impact me directly. But I do not think like that. I am always think about the bigger picture and how others will suffer. I can see so much suffereing coming. Needless suffering, and that is what bothers me more than anything is that all the coming economic depression was entirely the creation of one human being. I am not going to wrote anything more for today. Tomorrow there will be more. Look after yourselves, be safe.

Trump Stock Market Crash - April 4th 2025

 

View of the BC Legislature from in front
of my office building

April 4th 2025

The American markets have dropped about 10% in the last two days.  That last time there was a drop like this was during the pandemic, and that was unexpected and surprising and no one knew how it would play out.

This is market crash is the first time it was caused by a single dumbass mistake.   This crash was 100% unnecessary and only exists because Donald Trump decided to engineer it. Everyone who understands economics pointed out this would happen.

The US imposed massive tariffs on all the world except for a few exceptions.  Israel and Australia did not have tariffs on American products, still they were hit with tariffs.

Canada and Mexico got no new ones, but the cars and car parts tariff along with the steel and aluminum tariff were quite specifically aimed towards Canada and Mexico.  

Remember store shelves during COVID?

Russia was not tariffed because Donald Trump is under the control of Putin and is going to have a lot more trade with Russia as soon as Trump can get away with it.  At the same time Ukraine was remtariffed!?!?!?!?!?!!!!???

Things are going to get really bad.  Everything the economy goes downhill the one single constant is that everyone underestimates how bad it will get.  Everyone in the media talks about how it will be bad but not that bad.  The American March jobs report come in positive but that is a really bad thing to happen right now.

This market crash and economic depression is completely and totally created through incompetence.  This makes it hard to understand how bad it will get bad but I am certain it is going to be a lot worse than anyone expects.

This is no longer the 1990s when the US was globally dominant in a way that was unbelievable.  China was not a factor yet, the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc were gone, Japan was no longer the economic super power, and so on and so on.  The Us is big but no longer the only axis the world's economy needs to operate on.

There are two countries that are still very tied to the American economy, Canada and Mexico.  I am not sure what is going on in Mexico but here in Canada there is a strong appetite to end the relationship with the US. OK, not end, but accept the US walked away from Canada.   Canada is not going to beg for the US to come back.  Instead Canadian PM Carney is talking about Canada taking the mantle of the US as leader of the free world.   

Let me say that again.  Mark Carney has stated Canada is ready and willing to step to be the leader of the free world.   Wow!  Canada has a very long history of acting like it is a small country like the Netherlands or Denmark when it comes to global affairs, and not act like it is one of the biggest economies on earth and part of the G7.   Will Canada now be a major global player?  

How far will the markets fall?   That is a very good question and I have no clear sense of where it will all end.  I suspect retailers and manufactures that rely on China may go bankrupt in the next six months and their stocks will collapse.  American Big Three auto makers could very well go bankrupt given that this will be worse than 2008/09.  Do not forget that Canada and Ontario did a lot to bail out GM, much more than the Canadian share of the industry would warrant.  The Big Three stocks could go way down.

To reiterate, this will be worse than 2008/09 and COVID combined.  50% to 70% fall in markets is not unrealistic but no one wants to think about that happening so they ignore the possibility of it.  

Time to stop writing because my blood is boiling and I need to calm down.

Welcome to the Recession, will it be a Depression? Entry for April 3rd 2025

 April 3rd 2025

This was public sentiment in Canada in mid March

Where does one even start when the most powerful man on earth decides that starting a bad recession is the right thing to do?

It is not just one thing but a multitude of things Trump is doing that causing a recession:

• The dramatic rise in taxes on Americans will drop the growth in their economy
• Ongoing uncertainty on what the American Administration will do, about anything
• Incompetence in the senior staff of the administration
• A fall is US exports
• A dramatic drop in tourism 
• More inflation - the huge tariffs on China will raise the prices of everyday goods in places like WalMart buy 30% to 50%
• Layoffs - they are already happening today and will increase a lot among car manufacturers.  This will lead to rising unemployment
• Loss of arms sales
• Falling oil prices
• Flight of capital - investors are moving their money out of the US because they are not sure what will happen next
• The flight of highly educated people to other countries
• Global shift away from dealing with the US
• Lower consumer spending
• Higher taxes on the bottom 95% of the population

Each of the items above could put a weak economy into a recession.  Two or three of them would put an okay economy.  With all of these things happening at once, the US economy will be determined to be in a recession now in the fall when the data is in.  

In 2008/09, the US caused a global recession because of its badly managed housing mortgage system. This recession is going to be many times worse.  

With a recession started, we will see:

• Rising unemployment
• A fall in capital for projects
• Mortgage foreclosures
• Business bankruptcies
• Personal bankruptcies
• A fall in government revenues
• Falling exports
• Rising interest rates due to inflation
• Falling housing prices making people feel much poorer
• Falling stock prices making people feel poorer and causing problems with retirement

These factors will all make the recession a much worse one.  So how bad?

This is a very hard thing to estimate because we have never seen the President of the United States deliberately cause an economic meltdown. Here aser my estimates through to the end of 2025:

•  US unemployment 11% to 15% this is based on the early 80s recession, 2008/09 and COVID.  
• Fall in the US GDP between 5% and 10%

OK, this is officially very depressing for me, time to stop writing for today. There are more things that will happen with a bad US recession.

I only added this pic of Bernie because
dogs make things better

The Heard and McDonald Islands - why does Donald Trumo want to tariff these penguins - Entry for April 2nd 2025, American Recession Day

 Few people have know of the Heard and McDonald Islands, but Donald Trump does, and he is levying a 10% tariff on the islands.  Seriously.   These islands have never ever levied any tariffs on the US, and there is a good reason for that: no human has ever lived on these islands.  The only inhabitants are penguins.  

I really have no idea why Trump has against these penguins.  The ones on South Georgia and the Kerguelen Islands were not tariffed.  

The serious issue with this is the fundamental incompetence of the people working for the administration in Washington. They list a tariff being charged by these islands of the US.  This is something that is not possible.

What it says to me is that the numbers for tariffs are not based on anything real and were just made up on the spot.  It would seem that any location that somehow made the list, and no one could be bothered to research, was just charged a 10% tariff and accused of charging the US a 10% tariff.

A first-year undergraduate who made this mistake would get a very low mark on their paper.  Somehow the people dealing with trade for the most powerful economy on earth would fail if they went to university.

This is not the only blunder,  The US is putting a 10% tariff on Diego Garcia, an American base in the Chagos Islands and part of the British Indian Ocean Territory.  Diego Garcia is the only location in the BIOT that has any people on it and they are American service people.

And that is not it only it.  The EU is getting a 20% tariff, but parts of it are getting a 10% tariff.  The parts of France that are overseas almost all have a 10% tariff, but St Pierre and Miquelon has a 50% tariff.  Reunion is getting a 73% tariff!  Not only are they all in the EU, they are all as much a part of France as Hawai'i or Alaska are part of the US.  This is very nice loophole for EU exporters as they just have to get a post box in Cayenne to reduce the tariff to 10%. Or are the Americans going to demand French business to show in which part of France they made their products?

Greenland is getting no tariffs at all.  Greenland may be Danish, but it is not part of the EU.

The incompetence is beyond stunning.  I have to laugh because what else can I do.

These are not people who can manage an economy or a country, or understand how to interact with the world.  Which we already knew from them sending their war plans out in a group chat on Signal.

April 1st Entry, the day before Trump Unleashes Chaos

 
April 1^st 2025

I can't think of a written prank for today.  The world is much too fucked up for me to do this.

At the moment, I am hoping Trump will cave in and issue tariffs of one to five percent tomorrow.  I am amazed at how hope rises within me even when there is no reason to have any hop, at all. 

I am feeling hopeful from my gut, but my brain knows things are bad.  This ongoing cognitive dissonance will kill my soul over time. I am not sure how others are doing with this though I suspect a lot of people are just going about their day to day lives trying not to think of the coming depression.

Trump is an evil man and clearly wants to introduce the tariffs to cause maximum pain for Americans and destroy the global system of rules related to commerce.  I know some of you are thinking “Maybe Trump thinks his approach is a good idea.”  No he does not.  Every one that knows anything about business has pointed out to Trump that this is a really bad idea.  There are no voices in his ear that have any argument for the tariffs.  Trump is doing this knowing he is going to cause the worst economic disaster in the US since the early 1930s. 

So why is he doing it?  First, he hates the world.  Second, he hates democracy.  Third, he has an abiding and total hatred of American people.  Four, he wants to use it to annex Canada. Fifth, Trump is pushing the Republicans to back policies that are anti-Reagan and thereby show their loyalty to Trump.

Trump has no good reasons for the tariffs.  He is happily bringing about global chaos.

I have to remember these things because rationality keeps rearing its head.  No rational actor would do this.

I have completely ignored all the DOGE stuff because I do not know what the outcome will be of that.  They are not going to be able to fire close to enough people to have any significant impact on the budget.  The only part of the budget the US could actually save some money would be the military.  All I will say about DOGE is that it is being run with the height of incompetence.  DOGE is costing more money than the US needs to spend to reduce the size of government.

Since I am at DOGE lets go to Tesla.  The stock price of Tesla was about $275 today.  This is down from the peak but much higher than what the company is actually worth.  If one applies the same economic logic for investing in a manufacturer you would want to see a price earnings ratio of around 10.  Right now it is 130.  Tesla stock is wildly overvalued. 

What is a realistic stock price?  About $21, this is a 92% drop in value of the stock.  I would argue that given the way Tesla’s stock of cars is becoming the oldest one on the market.  Their one new vehicle, the Cybertruck, has been complete failure. A more realistic stock price is ,ore like $10 a share.  This is a 96.4% drop in the stock price. This is assuming the company does not go bankrupt and that is now a real possibility.

Today is the day before the storm of the tariffs.  What I will be looking for:

•        Tariffs on Canada and Mexico – will they be much lower than 25%?

•        Scale of tariffs on the democracies and the tariff rate.  20% has been out there as a number

•        Scale of tariffs on the dictatorships – will he favour the autocrats?

•        How will he justify the tariffs?  In the case of Canada the trade between the two countries is actually skewed in favour of the Americans.  The only real trade issue is the continuation of supply management in Canada for some areas of agriculture.

•        Will there be Republican leadersjip in the US that will stand up and oppose these tariffs?

I think this is enough for today.

One More Day - March 31st 2025 Diary

 March 31^st 2025

Yeah, I had the date wrong on yesterday’s post.

It feels odd to think that the US has decided to destroy it’s relationship with Canada and do so in a way that will last for a generation or more.  If the United States can not maintain a decent relationship with Canada, they will have no friends. 

The US is not nearly a big enough economy, or have a large enough population, to go it all on their own.  It is their integration into the world economy and taking the leadership that has brought them so many benefits.  The auto industry that will suffer massively with the tariffs, is American owned.  If Ford, GM, and Stellantis do move all their production to the US they will lose the Canadian and Mexican markets.  Canada is an important market for the Big Three.  They all become weaker companies.

Canada has for generations sent our brightest and best to the US.  The reality is that there has been a long term brain drain from Canada to the US.  This seems to be coming to an end now, or at least I have seen the first signs of it.  This is unlikely to hurt the US in the short term but it is will be felt.

Elon Musk is part of that brain drain.  He is a Canadian that moved to the US to make his fortune.  Do we want him back?  No and that is why people focus on his South African background, Canadians are ashamed to have him as a citizen.

Part of my issue with the whole Trump shit storm is that we have to live through each day and seeing any hope of the American administration not being evil fades further and further.  Knowing that the American administration is evil does not help because then we have to wonder when will the evil end and how long that will take.  Each day it sinks into me more and more that the US is possessed by evil people and it will be four years before anything might change.

On a positive side, I think the odds of an invasion are quite low, less than 5% as long as the US gets their oil, electricity, and potash.  The likelihood of being invaded being remote is a positive?

I also place hope in Trump’s age.  There is a decent chance he will die of natural causes in the next four years.  I do not believe this fascist regime will continue without his irrationality at it’s centre.

One more day.  

Trump is Evil and Making a Hellscape in the World. March 30th 2025 Diary Entry

 March 30^th 2025

I am at a loss with what is going on in the world.  TO make some sense of it I am going to try and write my daily thoughts on where I am at with the hellscape that has descended on us.  We will see how this goes.  

I may do them as daily Vlogs.

This is really about getting the stuff out of my mind so that my soul is not destroyed by the evil that has descended upon earth.

I can not believe it is only 10 weeks since Trump was sworn in.  I could not have imagined the utter moronic shit he would be doing and his one way direction to becoming the dictator of the United States.  It is utterly overwhelming.

My day to day work has been almost entirely focused on tariffs and how do deal with them for the last four months.  I have to pay attention what the narcissistic idiot is doing all day long. Right now everything is waiting for what happens on Wednesday.  A cross the board 25% tariff on all Canadian products will have a huge impact on a lot of Canadian businesses but even more so it is going to have a huge impact on the US.

What really angers is that these tariffs are illegal.  The US, Canada, and Mexico have a treaty dealing with trade and it specifically does not allow for what Trump is doing.

I am sure as I go along these will get more focused, but this is day one and a small brain dump.

Trump wanting to annex Canada is beyond insane.  Canada is a G7 country.  We are a globally large economy coming in at around #10 our of 200+ countries.  Saying something in a joking way is rude and stupid but can be overcome but Trump is not able to joke about anything.  He also kept this up for weeks and weeks.  I am now of the view that an invasion by the United States is no longer impossible.  It is still likely remote but it is a possibility.  As a country we have act as if this may actually happen and be happy if it does. 

The threat of a US invasion means Canada is going to have to massively increase military spending.  We likely have to get to 5% of GDP within only a couple of years.  We need to give countries like Britain, France, Germany, Australia, and South Korea military bases in Canada.  We need NATO+ military protection. 

Canada needs to get a statement from as many democratic heads of state and by an act of their legislative body saying that any attack on Canada is a declaration of war on them as well.  Not article 5 but binding laws in each country.  The same should be done for Greenland as well.

This is where we are at, I wrote the previous paragraph and it is not some fevered dream of mine after too much booze and cannabis.  This is the cold hard light of day.

I also would never have expected Canada to be so unified.  Regular people are so far ahead of the political leaders.  Quebecoise are speaking of feeling Canadian for the first time. The public will not buy American produce.  They did this faster than the stores could react and the American produce had to given to food banks,  Travel to the US has fallen off to a degree that stuns me.  People are cancelling trips and losing a lot of money.  I could go on and on and on about this. 

The Americans do not seem to understand what they have unleashed.

What I think the Americans do not understand about Canada is that as a nation we were founded by people who did not want to be Americans.  It is also a country that gained independence the proper way, negotiating it over time.  And if I were to name the core Canadian value, that is fairness.  Broomgate is so Canadian.  No one did anything wrong but it was clearly unfair.

Trump has broken the treaty he signed with Canada – that is unfair.  Trump declared an economic war against Canada, and that is unfair.  And he wants to annex Canada, a country filled by a population that does not want to be American.  Most so than almost anywhere.

Trump has gone after Canada in the most egregious way from the point of view of Canadians.  And Canadians are not going to take it.  Canada will go into debt, raise taxes, and rebuild the nation all so that we do not need to have anything to do with the Americans. 

How long will it be before Canadians can trust the United States?  This all depends on when the United States utterly repudiates Trumpism.  As long as anything of Trump’s action s in the US remain it is unlikely to happen.

Canadians know that we are not as financially rich as Americans but because of how we structured our society we do not need to be as rich because the state does many of the things we need. Canadians know that the American climate is better but the cold winter weather (other than where I live) has created a nation of people how understand that we are tougher and more willing to work together to stop the enemy and the US is clearly the enemy of Canada.

This is my first post, my goal is daily till Trumpism over  

Campfire at Mahood Lake August 2022

Heavy Hail and Rain in Kamloops August 2022

The Crown and I

The passing of Canada’s monarch has raised many thoughts and feelings within me.   The personal embodiment of the Crown, the Crown any of us in Canada have ever really known, died but the Crown endures and instantly is embodied in our new King.   And he is our King much more so than the King.

Canada is a constitutional monarchy where the monarch is not here very often and it really costs us nothing which that means that we as a nation are generally agnostics when it comes to the underpinnings of our system of governance, the Crown.   I reflect on all the ways the Crown is still part of our lives and am slightly surprised at how all pervasive it is.   There is nothing new to me, I just never thought about all the aspects at once.

I work as a civil servant which means I work for the Crown.  This really has always been an abstract thing for me, the legal construct we have to ensure we have a government.  The Crown has evolved over the ages as the way for us to name the source of power for government.   I work next door to what was the Queen’s Printer and is now the King’s Printer.  The human aspects of the Crown have intersected with the governance aspects in ways like this because of the passing of Canada’s Queen.

There is something absurd about the very idea of the Crown but having the Crown means we have a monarch and there is always a human being that embodies it.   It is only within a constitutional monarchy that the underpinnings of governance are given real human form that is truly apolitical.   This matters and more than people think it does.

Constitutional monarchies, with all their preposterous traditions, are oddly the most stable and consistent form of government we humans have come up with.  It was the established constitutional monarchies of the 30s that resisted fascism and totalitarianism.  George Orwell made this observation at the time, and I always thought it was purely coincidental but as I reflect on this as King Charles has ascended to the throne, I think there is a lot more truth to this than I ever thought before.

This change in the Crown will be more noticeable than it might have been because the Crown has a gender.   We have lived in a country where for the last 70 years the ultimate fount of governance was female in form and now it will be male.  Most countries are “it”s but through the personal embodiment of the state in the monarch our country has a human gender.   I have to wonder if part of reason constitutional monarchies seem to be immune to extremism is because the state is not a genderless object to be controlled by one political faction or another but has a tangible human component that remains above politics?

The Windsors are a family of privileged people who have many foibles.  We have a whole celebrity culture built around them.   It is this flawed humanity that has been why many of us in Canada have this agnostic feeling about the monarchy.   In the 90s I lived in the UK and the monarchy was much present than I had ever experienced in Canada.  My uncle had had a much more personal connection to the family than people in Canada ever have, he tried to get John Turner and Princess Margret together.   I reflect back on our conversations about the institution, and I can see he had a wisdom about the humanity of the people who are quite literally stuck in the system.

Should we judge our recent Queen by the funny Paddington video she made this year, or should we judge her as the person that sacrificed her life to allow us in all her realms to have stable governments?  And anyone that does not believe she sacrificed her chance to have a personal life does not understand what she did for 70 years.  King Charles made mistakes as a human being in his life, but we should not judge him on any of that and should judge him about how he embodies the state and helps ensure stable and, ultimately, fair government.

I have a strong revolutionary and radical streak within me but for once I think I can say “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it”.  For all the weirdness and human flaws, the system lumbers along and generally works. 

I am trying to decide how to end this because the obvious ending is to say I am a monarchist now, but I can’t bring myself to say it.   In keeping with the contradictions of the Crown, I remain a monarchical agnostic but do not support getting rid of it.    All that is left to say is Long Live the King.

Depression Ep 63: Things are Spiraling Down Really Fast Today

Spanning the Generations - 250 years is within human understanding

100 years is considered a long time but it is really only at the extreme of a single human life.   100 years ago is history but a history that we can still have some personal first hand connection with and in fact has a human we can have connection to up to 250 years of history personally.   As humans we have to be thinking in the terns of hundreds of years and not a couple decades

I am 51 years old now and I have personal memories of world events from the early 1970s which is a span of around 44 years.   My experience of history increases through knowing my parents and my grandparents generation.

My father was born in 1922 and his memories went back to the late 1920s.   My personal connection to history through first hand stories from my father goes back 85 years, not far off 100 years.  If do the same with my mother's father this takes the stories I have been exposed to to 105 years ago because he was born in 1902, more than a century ago.   As a child my grandmother told me stories of the First World War and the Estonian War of Independence.

Admittedly these timeframes have been getting longer as I get older.   For my kids the range is shorter but they connect with the history I can tell them and the same will be true of my grandkids.

The point of all this is that a couple of centuries is not a long time for humans but we act as if 50 years is a long time.   We fail to see the long term as being relevant because it seems so far.   I also use my family as the way to view this because family has historically been the way we connect the generations.

Vancouver is very young it was founded in the same year my grandfather was born.   Canada was founded in 1867 when my great grandfather was 13.   Fort Victoria was founded a scant six years before my great grandfather was born.   What was have done in such a short span of human history should shock us.

My sister met her maternal line great grandmother Gabrielle, born in 1870, when she was young.  That is 146 years.   We must think in much, much longer terms.

"Locker Room Talk" - My thoughts about Trump and Rape Culture

In the wake of Donald Trump minimizing his confession of sexual assault saying it was "locker room talk" I had some immediate reactions and now ten days later some more reflection.

My immediate reactions:

1. First the idea of having any sort of a sexual talk in a locker room is not something I ever experienced. 
2. Second, I have known very few men that would ever consider talking in this way.   Among my friends and family I could not think of anyone that would talk like this.
3. Third, how could anyone consider supporting a man that confesses to sexual assault and shows no remorse?  

Now ten days later I have had more time to think about this and some of my initial reaction was not accurate, the rape culture is much more prevalent and there is still a long way to go to change things.

I have thought back over the last 35 years and there are men I have known that objectify women in conversation' though I can not remember anyone ever boasting about sexual assault.   It has been more common that I think I would like to admit and I realize that in retrospect I have not taken active steps to stop it, just passive ones.   These conversations were just as likely to be among lefties as right wing people.

I personally do not find objectifying women's appearance in conversation interesting on any level.   The primary reason for this is respect.   I realized from early on this seems to place me on outside of the norm for men.   Men either really thought that looks were all that mattered or went along with it.   All these conversations did was to bore me, but I rarely have called the other men on them.   (I should add that find the same sort of conversations about men boring when drinking with friends at a gay bar but there it is put down to me not being interested because I am a breeder.)

I am thinking back, was I someone who just went along with the conversation?   Have I been complicit in the rape culture?

I think too often I did not do enough, at best what I did was to steer things towards conversations more interesting to me.   Did I have an impact?   I am not sure, but at university, when it was the most common time for me to be near these sort conversations, I was different enough from the norm that people I knew noticed.  I do think my lack of interest in the conversations dampened them when I was around.

As I have aged these "locker room" conversations have become much less common.   This comes from being older but more because of my own self selection.   I have quit hanging out with men that would have conversations like this.  There are a number of men in Victoria I have no intention of having conversations with again because of their attitude towards women. If they knew this is why we do not have conversations I suspect they would crap on me but I do think respect for other people matters.  

If the women you grow up around set your attitude towards women that would explain in part why I am the man I am today.   My mother, grandmother, sister, and aunts were all strong and smart women. I grew with a lot or respect for them and they clearly set much of my internal moral compass and part of that is women are not objects.   I think about my 20 closest male relatives past and present and I can only think of one that would take part in "locker room" talk and he is someone I do not speak with.  

Being not part of the problem is not enough, but what have I done to improve things?   I think the biggest contribution will be my four sons.   Two of them are adults now and it is very clear that they respect people for who they are.  I suspect my oldest would call others out for a "locker room" conversation and my second son might just beat them up.  Yes Ben has some anger issues to work out.

What can I do to improve things?  I need to call it out objectification of women.   It has to be something more than the passive way I have done it to date, something more than answering a sexualized comment with "how would I know if see is appealing if I do not know her?" which has been my stock answer for years when asked if I was attracted to some women.

The other thing I have been thinking about is Bill Clinton.  Trump is on a good day a disgusting human being so it is easy to believe and condemn him but Bill Clinton is a charming charismatic man that clearly was sexually assaulting women.   What he did 20 to 30 years ago is still not OK.   At a minimum he should be acknowledging what he did and apologize for it.    The current day strength of the rape culture comes through in how people dismiss his victims.   He could do a lot by coming forward admitting what he did and apologizing for it.   Trump and Bill Clinton should be held responsible for their acts and both should come forward and voluntarily admit everything.  

You can not just focus on Trump and ignore Bill Clinton if you want to see an end to inappropriate behaviour.   Bill Clinton is not running for office but he will be the first "Gentleman" if Hillary wins and as much as a dislike it, the spouse of the US president is a public figure.   Anyone that can defend Bill Clinton's actions needs to give their head shake because they are part of the problem.   Letting Bill Clinton off with out expecting an admission from him will not do anything to improve things.

100 years ago my grandfather went to prison

August von Schulmann ca 1943
the earliest picture I know of him dates from the late 20s

In August of 1916 my grandfather August von Schulmann was captured at the Battle of Kowel and became a prisoner of war of the Germans for the remainder of the war.    I am not certain where he was held but I seem to remember Königstein.

For a lot of people 100 years ago seems close to ancient history but to me it is very real for a number of reasons.   First I grew up being told the stories of my grandfather by my father and aunt and second because I come from a family where  for a long time 300 years ago was the recent past.

August was a Czarist cavalry officer.   I deliberately used Czarist because he was not a Russian and he swore no allegiance to Russia   His allegiance was to the Czar.   My family are Baltic Germans, a people that due to the circumstances of history ended up being not very nationalistic and served whomever was in power

My family were Germans that had been under Russian rule since Sweden lost the Great Northern War(1).   We had arrived in Estonia 700 years before World War 1 and five hundred years before the Russians took over Estonia.   At no point did we become Russian even when there was Russification policy from 1887 to 1905.

August was 27 when the war started and because he was in the reserves joined the war when Russia mobilized.   He fought in the battle of Tannenberg and the unit he was part of was one of the only ones to have any success on the Russian side.  

As I think about August I realize that there were many questions I never asked my father about him so my knowledge of his war is more limited than it should be.   I do not know what he did from the fall of 1914 to the early summer of 1916.   When I have some more time I do want to do some more research into my grandfather's war experience.   I do not know what his unit was called I just know the battles he was in from my father  I do not know what ranks he held only that he was an officer.   Based on his rank in the Baltenregiment in 1919-1920 and during World War 2 in the Wehrmacht, I believe he held a junior officers rank.

I am not certain which POW camp his held in.   I was never told about his experience in the camp.  I was told about his experience in Germany after the war ended and before he managed to return to Estonia.   He was released from the POW camp when the war between Germany and Russia was over.  He ended managing the estate of a Prussian noble but which noble and where I do not know.

I know he managed to get back to Estonia by January 1919 because he enlisted in the Baltenregiment, a Baltic German unit of the Estonian army

(1)  In my family "the war" meant the Great Northern War for over two centuries.   I can remember a conversation with my father and my grandfather Patrick von Dellingshausen in 1979 where grandfather said "the war" and it became very quickly clear that he meant the Great Northern War

My presence on YouTube and what is being watched

I am going to Social Media Camp this year so I thought I would look at some of my social media impact starting with YouTube.   I have played around on YouTube to try and figure out what drives views.

I have several YouTube channels:
BC History - 418,814 views and 1564 subscribers - I started this channel December 14th 2013 because I was finding all manner of interesting old film clips from BC.   Some of the films I have simply uploaded unchanged but many of them I have edited them to focus on a single thing and cleaned up the images as best as I can.   I try to post something new a couple times a month, but life intervenes and I have long gaps of nothing.   The channel seems to consistently get at least 400 views per day

Bernard von Schulmann - 280,030 views and 373 subscribers - I have had videos on this channel since January 20th 2009.   The number of views is misleading because 238,000 of them have been in the last 10 weeks from a single film I posted online.  This film has brought me 330 new subscribers in 10 weeks.    Most of my videos on this channel have at most a couple hundred views and often languish at less than 100.

BC Iconoclast - 34,022 views and 34 subscribers - I created this channel to post things about politics but have not done much with it.   I have posted some old political clips and interviews I have found online but none of my own content yet.   21,175 views come from a single, a 1978 interview with Pierre Trudeau.   It spiked around election day in 2015

My top 5 most viewed videos
244,117 - In The Name of the King June 22nd 2015
21,175 - 1978 Interview of Pierre Trudeau by Jack Webster posted Feb 5th 2015
17,275 - The Coquihalla posted Dec 13 2013
17,140 - To Build a Better City - a 1964 City of Vancouver/CMHC film posted Feb 24th 2014
11,087 - 1976 Vancouver Tourism Promotion Film posted April 20th 2014

I have 11 more videos on the BC History channel that have had between 5,000 and 9,999 views,   On my Bernard von Schulmann channel I have one video in the same range.   With BC Iconoclast there are none.

BC History is one my one channel where I am consistently offering new content and trying to get views,   On the channel there is an ongoing and consistent growth in views with some videos clearly doing better than others.   I am not sure why some and not others do well when the two are basically the same in style and content.

On a regular basis someone discovers something interesting and highlights it online somewhere.   The Tyee has shown a few as has the CBC.  While both sources drove a bunch of views, it was in the thousands and not more than that.   Over the longer term I get a lot more views from YouTube suggested videos.

In the Name of the King is a really badly made Uwe Boll film that had my oldest son as an extra which is why I posted it online.   From June 2015 to Feb 2015 it got almost no views but then suddenly took off when it regularly has been a suggested video by YouTube.  Why did this happen?  No idea,

My fastest video out of the gate video is one I made yesterday.   The film is a photo slideshow of images from the webcam at the Fort McMurray airport.   I posted it at 4:30 pm on May 4th and 18 hours later it has 4,300 views and the views are staying consistently high.  What is odd is that it does not come up in searches I do on YouTube for it.

The 23 Meats I Have Eaten

This is a totally meaningless post that I am just doing for my own interest

I have been rethinking my meat consumption because of the environmental impact of eating meat.   As part of that I have been considering what meats I have eaten:

Traditional meat mammals
Cow, pig, lamb and rabbit

Game mammals
Deer, elk, moose, boar, and hare

Traditional birds
Chicken, turkey, and duck

Game birds
Grouse, squab and pheasant

Non traditional mammals
Cougar, black bear, horse, cat, camel and dog

Reptiles
Snake and alligator

Amphibians
Frog

I think that is everything

The surprising history of cannabis in BC

Hiking on the western edge of Pavilion Mountain 1997

Last year I become involved with opening a medical cannabis dispensary in Victoria.   This means I have become a lot more interested in cannabis than in the past.

Meanwhile I also have a passion for history and was recently asked to give a talk about old maps of Victoria BC.   Because of this talk I was looking at some of the oldest maps, HBC ones of BC from the 1830s and this lead me to re-read some of the journals of two HBC factors, Samuel Black and John Tod.   While doing so I came across a line I had read years ago and not never given much thought to

"Even after a brutal and long journey from boat encampment the Canadiens have always managed better on this last stretch to Fort Kamloops.   I had long wondered why this was and Pierre Blanc in the lead canoe said it was because of a plant they were given by the northern Couteau Indians.   He called it plante de guérison et de rêves and said not only did smoking it like tobacco relive the pain, it gave them energy to go on for much longer in a pleasant mood."

It reminded me of an entry of a trade John Tod made at Pavilion in the late summer of 1847

Acq.  350 dried salmon
            35 grns gold
          200 bndles plante de guérison et de rêves
for    15 4 point blankets
          4 copper pots
          3 ax blades

Clearly this plante de guérison et de rêves was worth trading for, but what was it?    I had never bothered to consider what this plant was but I am fairly certain it is a form of wild cannabis.

There are some areas in the southern interior of BC that have a sativa like looking cannabis plant growing right at the edge of the alpine.    This plant has broad leaves normally but I have seen it with the flower or buds one expects from marijuana but at the time I could not have told you what a sativa cannabis plant looked.  Ror years I was not even sure it was related to marijuana.  

In 1997 while I was working for the Ta'kw'aylaxw First Nation I joined a hunt on Pavilion mountain.  It was a beautiful day and Billie I started to get into a long conversation about the plants around us.  Billie was an elder in his early 70s at the time.   The most interesting was what he told me about the cannabis looking plant.   Turns out it is a strain of cannabis that had always grown in BC.   The chinook for the plant was la mestin moosum nanitch - medicine of dreams.    .Billie told me it was a medicine plant that was gathered in about July.  He remember his mother using it on him when he was young after he had broken an arm and was in a lot of pain.

What is interesting is the term the Canadiens and HBC used for a plant,  plante de guérison et de rêves, translates as plant of healing and dreams.   It is now clear to me that the plant referred to in the old HBC journals was the same plant the people at Ts'kw;aylaxw knew and is this wild strain of marijuana that grows in southern BC.

So if today you wander the sub alpine of the southern interior of BC you may run into some wild cannabis.

Broadcast TV as one example of the ever increasing speed of change

I am 50 so in slightly longer than my life broadcast TV came into existence and has some to an end

1948 - Nov 25th - KING goes on the air - first TV station in the Pacific Northwest
1953 - June 3rd  - KVOS  first TV station aimed at Vancouver
1953 - Dec 10th - KOMO goes on the air
1953 - Dec 18th - CBC goes on the air - first station in Vancouver
1954 - Dec 7th - KCTS goes on the air - first educational broadcaster in the Pacific Northwest
1956 - Dec 1st - CHEK goes on the air - first Canadian commercial TV station and first one in Victoria
1958 - Feb 8th - KIRO goes on the air
1958 - April 5th - JP Patches Show starts - it runs daily until 1979 and Pacific Northwest youth all grew up with it
1960 - my family rents a TV for the Olympics
1960 - October 31st  - BCTV (CHAN) goes on the air - first commercial station in Vancouver
1964 - my family rents a TV for the Olympics
1966 - my family buys their first TV and get cable in Tsawwassen
1970 - my family gets their first colour TV
1970 - Catherine Novak remembers the first TV coming to Ocean Falls
1970 - Oct 7th - PBS formed and KCTS programming offers more than educational shows
1976 - September 1st  - CKVU goes on the air
1976 - Sept 27th - CBC French goes on the air
1979 - My brother at age ten buys his own TV, a 12 inch black and white, the first time the house had 2 TVs
1980-83 - I rent VCRs with friends and we watch movies all night
1981 - Jan 12th - Knowledge Network goes on the air
1993 - Return from the UK and do not plan to have a TV, offered one by numerous people
1993 - 2000 - did not own a TV, borrowed for the 1998 winter Olympics
1997 - Sept 22nd - CIVT goes on the air
2000 - I get satellite TV and buy a VCR
2001 - Oct 1 - CIVI goes on the air
2003 - Jan 27th Omni (CHNM) goes on the air
2004 - buy a DVD player
2006 - February - final time I had cable TV
2009 - Canwest announces it will shut CHEK but the employees buy it out

August von Schulmann's enlistment in the Baltic Regiment

This is the Estonian government record of my grandfather enlisting in the Baltic Regiment on January 10th 1919.  He is record #48

The Baltic Regiment (Baltenregiment) was a Baltic German unit created to fight on the side of the Estonian government in the Estonian war of independence against the Soviet Union.   

In Latvia the Baltic Germans created the Baltische Landeswehr which opposed both the Soviets but the Latvians as well.   The   Baltische Landeswehr worked closely with the Freikorps which did not endear them to the Latvians or Estonians

Historical Background and the Beginnings of the Baltenregiment
In the course of the Great War, Germany captured the Baltic Provinces of Russia with the intention to separate them from the Tsar's empire. After Germany had lost the war at the western front, the Bolsheviks decided to export revolution to neighboring countries. The Bolsheviks invaded Estonia, among other countries.
Since the Bolsheviks posed a serious threat to Estonia, its prime minister, Konstantin Päts (1874–1956), decided to negotiate with the Germans. The result was that Baltic-Germans were allowed to form their own companies commanded by Baltic-German officers; the Estonian government would help to equip them. In early November 1918, the Baltic-Germans tried to create an international “Landeswehr” (territorial army) in Tartu, which the Estonian authorities opposed. On 20 November 1918 the Germans from Viljandi County founded their own military forces with Victor von zur Mühlen (1879–1950) as their commander.
Baltenregiment in Estonian War of IndependenceOn 27 November 1918 the Germans in Tartu formed their own military forces, which eventually became the “Baltenregiment” (Baltic Regiment). Only a day later the “Dorpat-Heimat-Schutz” (“Dorpat Homeland Security”) was formed. Both activities were initiated by corps students from the local university, mostly sons of Baltic-German nobility. The Balten-Battalion, formed by the Germans living in Estonia, participated in hostilities on the Narva front in 1918. In January 1919 the main Estonian forces consisted of 2,500 Estonians and 300 Baltic-Germans. Considering that the Germans only made up 1.8 percent of the Estonian population, they were clearly over-represented in these forces.
At the beginning of 1919 the Balten-Battalion merged with units under Victor von zur Mühlen’s command and reorganized into the Baltenregiment. Constantin von Weiß (1877–1959), a former colonel of the Russian Army, was appointed commander of the newly established military formation.
The Baltic unit was send to the Lake Peipus region, where it captured the city of Gdow. Later the unit was transferred into the Volosovo region to support the White Russian Northern Corps. In August the Baltenregiment fought on the Luga river as a part of the 1st Estonian Division. In October it took part in the offensive on the Whites in St. Petersburg. Despite their initial successes, counter-revolutionary forces were eventually beaten back. In November the Baltenregiment again saw action on the Luga line. Soon, a ceasefire ended the hostilities; on 2 February 1920, a peace treaty was signed in Tartu.
Importance of the BaltenregimentAt the end of 1918 the ´ consisted of 1,000 soldiers, mostly Germans from Estonia. They were organized into four infantry companies, one machine gun company, one artillery battery, and one cavalry squadron. During the second half of March 1919, the Battalion of Baltic Germans consisted of twenty-nine officers and 445 noncommissioned officers and men.
After Estonian independence was achieved, the Baltic-German troops were no longer necessary. Moreover, due to their activities in Latvia, the Baltic–Germans had worsened the situation of Baltic-Germans in Estonia and were already considered a threat to the newly founded Estonia. They were, however, far too weak to take over the government. Therefore, the Baltenregiment would not exist past general demobilization.
During the war of independence the regiment suffered sixty-eight fatalities (fifty-two were killed in combat, while sixteen died of natural causes) and about 120 wounded.
The Baltenregiment played quite an important role in the Estonian war of independence, but was too weak and could not play as significant a political role as the Baltische Landeswehr in neighboring Latvia. Therefore the Estonians did not need to disband it before general demobilization of their own forces.
Jarosław Centek, Nicolaus Copernicus University