Amidst all the ridicule Canada is the subject of right now — thanks largely to the antics of Toronto’s mayor — it’s time to focus on some of the better things about Canada and its inhabitants.
I scoured the headlines late last week and pulled some gems for your reading pleasure, and, if you’re like me, to somewhat restore your shaken faith in humanity as of late.
Last week, two Newfoundland men saved a Greenland shark from choking on a piece of moose hide in what is possibly the most Canadian story ever told.
The first man to encounter the shark was driving on a road near a harbour on Newfoundland’s northeast coast when he saw what he thought was a beached whale. It turns out it was a shark about two and a half metres long, with a piece of moose hide sticking out of its mouth.
Another man came upon the scene and the two yanked the two-foot chunk of moose out of the shark’s mouth. Then they hauled it into deeper water and probably felt great about likely saving its life.
Even though it was in distress, I bet that shark was fairly intimidating to come upon and I think those men were quite brave to take it upon themselves to and shove it back into the water.
In August, a stranded adolescent killer whale in a small and remote bay on the central coast of B.C. was rescued by scientists.
The whale had been trapped in there for about a month calling out for its family. There was a way out but the whale couldn’t or didn’t find it on its own for whatever reason. It was assisted out of the bay by the scientists.
The Vancouver Aquarium recently released seven harbour seal pups that it rescued about three months ago. The aquarium has a rehabilitation centre for distressed, sick, injured or orphaned sea mammals, and studies how they do once they go back into the wild using information obtained by these silly little tracking hats that the scientists glue to their heads.
I wonder if they’ll be trend-setters or outcasts out there in the ocean.
In southern Alberta earlier this month, a group of people from Crowsnest Pass saved a mule deer from drowning in a partially frozen lake.
The doe fell through the ice and rescuers used an axe to break up the ice so she would have a path to get to shore. The rescue operation reportedly took hours, but the people were dedicated to saving the deer they saw in distress.
Stories like these give me a welcomed break from reading about, listening to, and watching people and their sometimes inexplicable actions. It’s uplifting to see people using their opposable thumbs and sophisticated tools to help their non-human friends rather than against their human enemies for a change.
It’s a reminder that for all the incredibly ridiculous stuff happening out there, there are still decent people who voluntarily do decent things that are not necessarily in their own self-interest, and it’s a relief.
