Staying Possitive

Back to School!

So, tomorrow I go back to work! I am looking forward to having an absolutely great year with all the students I will be teaching, monitoring during nutrition breaks and recess times, during the craft club as well as any that I will meet in the halls and stairwells while "commuting" to the various classrooms I will be in. I am also looking forward to a wonderful year with the staff :)


Guatemala - Landslides:

How can one be positive when hearing of the many deaths that the landslides in Guatemala are causing - while others may say that the human death toll is not much compared to what has happened in other regions of the world, they are still human lives: fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, children to other people. I pray for those who have lost loved ones - may God help give them comfort and help them to continue to live life always remembering the happy moments of the lives of those they have lost.

Canadian Mining in Central America

Goldcorp Inc. is a Canadian based mining company - it extracts silver and gold in "developing counties" including Honduras, and Guatemala. In these developing countries, Goldcorp Inc. uses cyanide to separate the metals - Cyanide has been banned for use in these extractions in Canada and the US. Cyanide, lead, mercury, and arsenic are allowed to seep into the ground water causing numerous unexplained illnesses in animals and in human beings living in areas around the mines.

Although Goldcorp Inc. has provided jobs, and funded the building of schools in the communities they are affecting, they should be forced to use "1st world" methods of extracting the metals. They should also clean up and better manage their mines.

Unfortunately the Ontario Teacher's Pension Plan buys shares in Goldcorp Inc.

This means that I am directly a part of the problem. So I plan on writing to the Government of Canada, the government of Guatemala, and to the OTPP letting them know that I do not support their actions and asking that they clean up their act.