Remember the story I did back in the spring of 2012 about Dunveganite Bruce MacGillivray participating in the Boston Marathon? The one with the bomb (the marathon, not the story). I just learned that Bruce was 59 when he completed the 2012 race, not in his early fifties, as I thought at the time. I discovered this when I emailed Bruce at MacEwen Petroleum, only to receive an automatic response saying he no longer worked there. Why? He’s now 65 and has retired. The reason I was reaching out to Bruce was to confirm a rumour I’d heard that his daughter Laura was in Africa taking a busman’s holiday volunteering as a nurse.
When I reached Bruce at home he told me the rumour was true. Laura just finished her two-week placement and was extending her vacation with a safari. Laura, who followed in her mother’s footsteps and became a nurse, works at the Cornwall Community Hospital. This year, in place of a traditional vacation, she volunteered with a group known as Canadian Nurses for Africa. The organization was formed in 2007 by a nurse from Burlington, Ontario with the goal of helping communities in the Vihiga region of Kenya with affordable health care.
The first mission travelled to Kenya with eight nurses in May of 2009 to conduct clinics and work alongside Kenyan nurses and clinical officers. Since then, the group has returned annually. While I’m not sure of how many cases were just treated by Laura’s team, statistics from their web site indicate that they are having a significant impact on the region’s health. For example, during the 2015 mission (the most recent one documented on their web site), the group conducted eleven days of field clinics. During this period, they dealt with 6,204 clinic visits, administered 293 jiggers treatments and dewormed 4,027 school children… for a staggering total of 10,524 patients. Hopefully, Laura will check in with a brief summary of her Africa mission and her safari adventure.
I did ask Bruce if he had abig project in mind for his retirement years… like completing a marathon on every continent. He told me that he has no firm plans yet. He’s just happy to not have that grueling commute to and from Maxville each day. “Great time of the year to be around home,” said Bruce.
Coming full circle
Last week, we had a brief look at how technology and fads in Ontario’s math curriculum are partially responsible for a generation of school children who can’t do simple arithmetic in their heads or tell time using a clock with a face and hands. Since this is a slow news week, I thought I’d share two more depressing stories in a similar vein that I came across recently.
The first deals with digital evolution. And, by digital, I mean fingers. A February 2018 article in the international edition of The Guardian reports that some senior pediatricians are warning an overuse of touchscreen phones and tablets is preventing children’s finger muscles from developing. As a result, they have difficulty holding pens and pencils correctly.
Sally Payne, the head pediatric occupational therapist quoted in the article believes this is because the nature of play has changed. “It’s easier to give a child an iPad than encouraging them to do muscle-building play such as building blocks, cutting and sticking, or pulling toys and ropes,” says Payne. “Because of this, they’re not developing the underlying foundation skills they need to grip and hold a pencil.”
From an evolutionary perspective, could we be looking at human hands in the future being adapted for texting on smartphones? Will the four fingers fuse into a flipper and thumb become slimmer and more nimble?
The second was a 2016 story in the New York Post reporting that many NYC students can’t sign their own names. Apparently, assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis told New York State’s Board of Education Commissioner that students have become so tech-oriented that they “never learn how to sign their John Hancock, which renders them unable to properly ink contracts, checks and credit cards.”Thepenmanship problem came to her attention when she was helping a constituent fill out a form. Where he was supposed to add his signature he could only print his name, insisting that was his signature.
What this story points out may be one of the unintended consequences of modern educators’ decision to no longer teach cursive writing. Without cursive skills, more and more young people are unable to develop a unique signature and sign their name. Instead, they can only print it, the 21st century’s equivalent of putting your “X” on the dotted line. In days of old, this was the mark of the illiterate.
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