A Morning Routine

For years after we arrived in Aurora, the Globe and Mail was delivered before we were up in the morning. We had the same delivery person and he never failed to have the newspaper on our doorstep by six a.m.

Then he gave it up. Probably went to University. The service became erratic. If I didn't get to read the Globe and Mail first thing, it was as if my day couldn't start.

Then the Toronto Sun was launched. The Globe and Mail changed to meet the competition.Not for the better.

The Toronto Sun was modelled on the Daily Mirror, a British tabloid. It was sized so that we could hold it with one hand while hanging on to the strap on the underground or the bus with the other, on the way to work.

In the mid-fifties a terrible accident happened in Portsmouth, a naval port. A bus ploughed into a company of marching sea cadets. Many were killed and many others severely injured.

For weeks, it seemed the newspaper reported daily on the death of another young person .

The sadness was overwhelming.

It was about then I started seriously thinking about leaving that place altogether. The war had ended twelve years before. The misery never did.

We came to Canada and life suddenly held promise such as I had never known in my adult life.

I cancelled the Globe and Mail years ago. I took the Star from time to time. I never enjoyed it like the Globe and Mail.. I cancelled the Star and decided to read it on line. That way I can choose my what to read and not feel I had to absorb everything to get my moneys worth.

I hadn't really gotten into it online until a couple of weeks ago. I read the GTA section. And there are some columnists whose views interest me. It's not the same as having The Globe and Mail on my doorstep every morning . But the Globe and Mail isn't the same either.

This morning I read a headline about the brain being affected by races. I thought the races were of the exercise variety. I don't do physical exercise. I always think I should so I was interested in the story.

Turns out it was about a psychological study by some academic at Toronto University
about how white men's brains react when they see people of a different race on a video screen.
Seems they don't. And that is somehow seen as a negative.

That stuff is almost enough to put me off reading a newspaper again.