Happy New Year Comox Valley!

The late Jack Layton, Canada's 2011 Newsmaker, in Courtenay

With 2012 upon us there are many predictions floating about.  Although 2011 was a much more globally eventful year-- no doubt than most people could have predicted -- what can we expect in 2012?  This island life of ours has been a relative safe haven on the world scale and even on the Canadian scale. We have been cushioned from earthquakes, major storms, famines and flash floods or widespread pestilences.    No terrorists lurking in our back yards.  We have survived strikes at Air Canada and Canada Post.

My close friend just canceled a trip to Christchurch, New Zealand because in the last few months Christchurch has had over 6,000 earthquakes.  Our son and his family are on their way home from the Philippines where they have experienced some of the strongest out-of-season typhoons in recorded history.

Financial chaos, for the most part, has not crossed our paths. So what is there to complain about?  Of course there are our politicians. But no Arab Spring in our country.  And then there are our neighbours to the south digging themselves into a hole.  We can, I suppose, take the position that with things so bad around the world things can only get better.  That, naturally, depends on how we define 'better'.  Most events in life seem beyond our immediate control or sphere of influence.  And even though our world is groaning -- but not really so much locally-- we are in some ways affected by circumstances beyond our invisible borders. Mark Twain said that history does not repeat itself but that it rhymes.  Perhaps we can latch onto Biblical prophecy that predicts a world that is going to keep on getting worse.  However, if that will be the case, even in our own neck of the woods, within that scenario, as long as persons within a society care for a better world and step forward, there will be bright spots within the supposed gloom and doom.  Happy New Year.