August 13, 2009: A very good day for 5 year-old Geoffrey Burton

Having just flown in from Shanghai the day before, I returned to the Toronto Airport on August 12 to pick up Mary, Lucy and Geoffrey who travelled back to Canada from Kunming via Beijing.

Geoffrey had been there since the end of May. He was obviously very happy to be home this morning. He played quietly by himself with his toys that he had been away from for 2 and a half months. For lunch he had his favourite food, shepherd's pie into which he mixes some ketchup. After lunch we went for a swim in the condo pool (just the two of us in there the whole time). Geoffrey spent a long time in the bath afterwards playing with his boats and plastic figures of pirates, etc. For supper I made him a hamburger. He watched a video and spoke to me in English only all day.

Nothing much happened. But I feel that perhaps we could not have had a better day together. It has been a day to keep in memory for all its simple joy.

Peter Michael Burton - 05/31/2009

Peter Michael Burton, MB, BS, MRCS, LRCP, MD. Physician. Died peacefully on May 30, 2009, Peter was for 55 years the loving and much loved husband of Rachel (nee Greaves). Born in London on March 7, 1916, Peter was educated at St. Martin’s Preparatory School, Epsom College, and at the Medical College of St. Mary’s Hospital, London, where he studied under Sir Alexander Fleming while Fleming was undertaking the first trials of penicillin. Peter enlisted as a medical officer in the RAF in 1940. After the war, he returned to St. Mary’s for postgraduate work. In 1954, he and Rachel were married at St. Michael’s, Chester Square, and decided to come to Canada. While Peter was on the staff of the Civic Hospital in Ottawa for 35 years, he was primarily a family physician and, in the custom of the day, made house calls every morning and evening. An immensely elegant, kindly, and reassuring figure, he was completely free of pretence, had a wonderful sense of humour, and a talent for putting children at ease. Uninterested in politics, he was a favourite of politicians of all parties who enjoyed his easy good nature and sympathetic ear. (He was, for example, a confidant of successive Prime Ministers, and Household Physician to the Governors General of Canada from the 1950s to the 1970s). But his heart lay with poor elderly people living alone, to whom he was especially attentive. He was respected and loved by his patients, family and friends. He is survived by his wife Rachel; sons Prof. Charles (Brock University) and the Rt. Rev. Anthony (Diocese of Dallas); daughters-in-law Mary and Anna; grandchildren Lucy, Caroline, Peter and Geoffrey. A Requiem Eucharist will be held at St. Bartholomew’s Anglican Church, 125 MacKay St., Ottawa on Wednesday, June 3, 2009 at 11 a.m.

Keith Tinkler Child Porn Charges

Wed, 2009-04-22 15:35.
A 67 year old man is facing child porn charges after a raid in St. Catharines Wednesday.
Police say they started investigating earlier this month.
Today, they searched a home on Bellevue Terrace, seizing computer components and other evidence.
Keith Tinkler is facing charges of possessing , distributing and making child pornography.
(http://www.610cktb.com/news/565/916084)

Comment: I just became aware of this today. Keith Tinkler is a colleague at Brock University. He is set to retire from the Department of Earth Sciences this June. He has been teaching at Brock since 1975. I did not know him well, but I often nodded to him as we passed in the halls on the way to lectures.
The part of this extremely disturbing news that preys on my mind is the allegation that he was "making child pornography." I shudder to imagine what that implies. How is it that he could have acted on such utterly evil impulses? Did we all miss some critical signs that behind Keith's mild gnome-like gently smiling exterior lurked Satan himself?
I pray for the healing of all the children that he is alleged to have damaged.
If the charges are proved, I ardently hope that Keith Tinkler will spend the rest of his life in prison in remorse and repentance.


Update June 3, 2009: Keith Tinkler was sentenced to 20 months imprisonment: http://www.stcatharinesstandard.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2607237

Reference Letters and TAs

I am finding more and more that students that I have never met are asking me for letters of reference. These are students who have attended my lectures, but have never had me as a seminar leader. These students have gone through their university careers instructed mostly by part-time contract employees. So they are in an awkward situation when it comes to requesting reference letters as the part-timers tend to be transient and anyway their lack of academic qualifications weakens the authoritativeness of their recommendation letters.

Undoubtedly the quality of education these students have received is inferior to that that students I taught in my early years at Brock received when classes were much smaller and direct interaction with tenured faculty was more the norm. This is a serious concern and a source of considerable regret to me.

The Principles of Psalm 72 Inform My Life's Work

A Psalm for Solomon.

1  Give the king thy judgments, O God, and thy righteousness unto the king’s son.

2 He shall judge thy people with righteousness, and thy poor with judgment.

3 The mountains shall bring peace to the people, and the little hills, by righteousness.

4 He shall judge the poor of the people, he shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor.

5 They shall fear thee as long as the sun and moon endure, throughout all generations.

6 He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass: as showers that water the earth.

7 In his days shall the righteous flourish; and abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth.

Observation on the U.S. Election Result

President-elect Obama won 52.9% of the popular vote in the recent U.S. general election.  So close to half of the voters did not vote for Obama.

It makes me wonder about the electoral process in liberal democracies.  The results are often very close.  Why is this?  To my mind one would expect that in the course of a campaign one candidate and his policies would emerge is clearly superior to that of his rivals.  I would therefore expect result to be say more than 70% in favour of one over the others.  But it rarely seems to work that way.

It makes me question how really "democratic" our election system is.  But that being said it is clearly the best system compared to all others currently existing.