In “Latest swine flu Screwup!” Conservative blogger Andrew Coyne notes that Canada has already vaccinated almost 2/3 of its widespread population.

He quotes another article:

Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq revealed the Public Health Agency of Canada will provide 5.7 million doses of pandemic vaccine to the provinces next week — a shipment which could in all likelihood fulfil the country’s H1N1 vaccine needs.When that shipment is in place, more than 21.5 million doses of vaccine will have been made available across the country.That’s enough to vaccinate nearly 64 per cent of Canadians — considerably more than have indicated a willingness to be immunized up until now.

“That would be well above anything we’ve ever achieved,” said Dr. Ross Upshur, director of the University of Toronto’s Joint Centre for Bioethics…

The virus was first identified in April. From zero to two-thirds of the population in less than eight months. What a fiasco.

The epidemic is not over yet, with 204 more deaths from Nov. 3 to 27th.

I mention her age only because teenagers tend to be slightly smaller than their full growth, so a teenage woman might be a smaller, less intimidating human to a coyote.

A young woman was killed by two coyotes when she went for a hike in Nova Scotia, on a popular marked trail in Cape Breton Highlands National Park. It’s a place I’ve often wanted to hike. When I do, I’ll take a stout stick or club.

A 19-year-old folk singer from Toronto has died after being attacked by two coyotes in Cape Breton Highlands National Park.

Taylor Josephine Stephanie Luciow, who went by the stage name Taylor Mitchell, died overnight at the Queen Elizabeth II  Health Sciences Centre in Halifax. She had been on tour in the Maritimes.

Mitchell was hiking on the Skyline Trail when she was attacked Tuesday afternoon. She was taken to the hospital in Cheticamp, then airlifted to Halifax in critical condition.

Park officials said Mitchell was walking the trail alone. They said other hikers managed to scare off the coyotes and call 911.

There really seems no bottom to the depths of stupidity. If you’re going to break the law, don’t videotape yourself and post the video on YouTube.

Animal lovers and legitimate hunters, as well as the Fish & Wildlife folks, are cooperating to identify three young men who bravely shot sitting ducks and ducklings at a pond in Saskatchewan or Alberta.

Thoughtless poachers of ducks

There is no bottom to dumb: creationists.

Norma Scarborough, was the sensible soul of the pro-choice movement in Canada, died April 2. A mother of five children, she had compassion and a helping hand for the unwillingly pregnant. She was a founding member of CARAL and its president for several very important years, 1984 – 92. Thus she was of of the people supporting Dr. Henry Morgentaler in his struggle to bring safe, legal abortion to Canadian women.  In January of 1988 Canada’s Supreme Court struck down the criminal law on abortion because it violated women’s right to life, liberty, and security of the person. In other words, the law coerced women and put them in danger.

Louis DuLude recalls:

Once, I asked Norma why she cared so much about women’s right to an abortion. She told me that in the 1940s, when she was in the Canadian Women’s Army Corps, one day she came back to the barracks and found a colleague moaning in bed. There was blood everywhere but the woman hadn’t summoned help because she was afraid to be punished because she had had an illegal abortion. Norma told me that the woman bled to death. She never forgot it. Asked later to help start a movement to legalize abortion, she didn’t hesitate for a minute before saying “yes.”

I mean residential schools for aboriginal peoples. John Wilkins at Evolving Thoughts blogged about the Roman Catholic residential schools scandal in Ireland, and that reminded me that I hadn’t covered the Truth & Reconciliation Commission in Canada. In 2007, it Canada’s parliament formally apologized for the wrongs done and a compensation package of $1.9 billion was put in place. You can read about it on the CBC’s Residential Schools FAQ.

The main purpose of the schools was to separate children from their ancestral culture. This purpose is now considered to be genocidal, I suppose because to obliterate a culture has similar effects in history as obliterating a people.