I have three things to get off my chest. I hope you will hear me out.

*****

This green bin thing hasn’t been working out so well for my family lately. I am guessing many of you are having the same problem. The reason is fruit flies. Rotten little fruit flies. We think they came into our home on a bunch of bananas. My meeting with them was when I opened our home-sized green bin to put something or other into it. Among the items already in the container were banana peels. There were scores — a word I have never used in this way in a column — on them.

 I decided to do some research on the little buggers. “Fruit flies reproduce rapidly, laying up to 500 eggs in decaying fruit. Under optimal conditions, their life cycle from egg to adult can take as little as 8-10 days, leading to a high birth rate.” So, if I have 50 fruit flies in my bin and each lays 500 eggs, I have a huge problem. That is 25,000 fruit flies in 10 days if each lived to eat a piece of fruit. That is absurd, of course. We have a much lower birth rate in our bin as far as I can tell. I would like it to be two children per family.

Here is another thing my research found. (By research, I mean I used AI.) “Controlling fruit flies involves eliminating breeding sites by disposing of overripe fruits, cleaning spills, and maintaining proper waste disposal. Use traps with vinegar or beer to attract and catch them. Seal cracks in doors and windows, and consider natural predators like mantises. Regular cleaning and proper food storage are key prevention methods.” We tried the vinegar thing. The flies treated it like a day at the beach. They gathered on the lip of the bowl, with their tiny beach towels and basked in the kitchen light. As an aside, there is no way I would waste a beer on a bunch of bugs. A solution is emptying the little green bin into the big green bin more often, I suppose. And don’t buy bananas.

*****

Lately, I have had occasion to spend quite a bit of time watching the health care system in action. When my father-in-law fell ill in January, I wondered why it took more than two hours for an ambulance to arrive at his condo. I got my answer during my mother-in-law’s recent stay in hospital. One evening there were six ambulances parked in a line outside the Emergency Department doors at St. Paul’s Hospital. It meant there were 12 paramedics standing in a hallway with the person they transported to the hospital. They were waiting for their patients to be admitted. I understand that there are only so many beds and staff in the Emergency Department, but gurneys were lined up in a hallway just inside the doors, with some in view from the waiting area. My wife and I walked past them when visiting her mother, who was already in emergency. There was a lack of dignity for these people. Why couldn’t there be paramedics in the hospital whose job it is to monitor these patients, so ambulances can get back on the road? Yes, I know the system is strapped for cash, but we need our paramedics at the ready. A 93-year-old man shouldn’t lie on the floor for more than two hours. No one should. I should mention that the people working in the health care system are wonderful. As an aside, one nurse in emergency made my wife and I smile. “Maybe I should have been a street sweeper; it would be peaceful,” she said to her colleagues.

*****

Well, well, well. There will be no $30 million spent/wasted to build a soccer stadium at Prairieland Park. Getting a Canadian Premier League soccer franchise was a great idea. Building a stadium for it was a bad idea. We have a stadium at the university and one at the Gordie Howe complex where a soccer team could test the waters before going all in. It still bugs me that Prairieland Park and the Brad Wall government killed horse racing 10 years ago. It was on life support until 2019. For a $1 million in subsidies, the sport and jobs could have been saved. Indigenous people held many of these jobs. It’s not like the government doesn’t pee away cash on a regular basis. My favourite example is the $300 million subsidy to Skip the Dishes. The company skipped town, winding up in Winnipeg of all places. Skip the Dishes is now valued at $2.5 billion. Prairieland Park CEO Dan Kemppainen has said the soccer stadium project isn’t dead, just on pause. It’s dead.

-Cam Hutchinson