Salmon Arm to Radium, Thursday. July 4, 2019

We drove from Salmon Arm to Radium today and listened to the audiobook of "Big Sky" by Kate Atkinson. One of the characters threw out a piece of trivia that the suicide rates among farmers is alarming. I paused the audiobook and wondered why farmers. Nicola wondered about teachers. Neither of us had heard of a teacher committing such an act but who know? Nicola looked it up and found some stats relating to the U.S. that confirmed that in fact, yes, suicides among farmers is very high. Also among construction workers and loggers. I figured this had to do with the seasonal nature of the work. Then Nicola found that suicide rates have going up generally in the U.S. especially for middle aged males. For teachers though, it's almost too low to measure.

Cocktails at Canyon Campsite

She did discover that suicide's a problem for primary teachers in the UK. The main problem, standardized tests. The cognitive dissonance for these people seems between their reason for entering the profession and this expectation of performance. I look back at our kids who all scored very high on their Grade 9 provincial tests but were pretty average in Grade 3. Our of curiosity, I looked at the marks of a few other students and could find little correlation between their Grade 3 provincial exam marks and high school performance. It's interesting that the government is planning to reintroduce these exams in Alberta.  

While drinking cocktails in our little trailer at the Canyon Campsite in Radium, Nicola announced that a professor in New Brunswick was fired when he spoke out against the use of glyphosate because he said it killed deer. West Fraser, in the Slave Lake area, is planning to use the herbicide to kill aspen trees that compete with the conifers that West Fraser would like to harvest at some future date. Our friend, Caroline, has set up a Facebook group to protest the spraying. Naturally, Nicola joined the group as did I.