On Monday four by-elections were held in Canada.  The Liberals had a modest goal of coming in second or increasing their share of the votes in each riding – but failed even at that.  The Block won one seat in Montreal and the NDP retained their New Westminster-Coquitlam, BC riding.  

The Two New Conservatives: 

Bernard Généreux, the former mayor of La Pocatière, scored an upset in Montmagny-L’Islet-Kamouraska-Rivière du loup in eastern Quebec, taking more than 42 per cent of the vote, ahead of the Bloc’s Nancy Gagnon, with just under 38 per cent.

Scott Armstrong reclaimed the riding of Cumberland-Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley in Nova Scotia, a longtime Tory stronghold.  He won almost 46 per cent of the vote. His nearest rival, NDP candidate Mark Austin, took nearly 26 per cent, followed by Liberal Jim Burrows at just over 21 per cent.

Current Standings in the House of Commons

Conservatives – 145 (up by two)

Liberals – 77 (unchanged)

Block – 48 (up by one)

NDP – 37 (up by one)

THE FUTURE??

One can only wonder if this is a prediction of the next federal election (sometime in 2010).

The NDP are declaring the Liberals to be dead – and already counting on claiming a number of their seats – and also claiming to becoming the new alternative in Quebec (because they came second in the Montreal by-election).

The Liberals are declaring that they never held any of these seats in 50 years (but forgot when they held all four during Chretian’s tenure).

The Block, well they simply declare that by-elections don’t mean anything.

The Conservatives – maybe a majority is in store for them.  This win in Nova Scotia is a big step toward the Atlantic provinces going blue again.  Their win in Quebec make them the Federalist alternative in that province, which is beginning to come out of their separatist view.

Only the next federal election will show for sure what the results will be.

On the Sunday before Thanksgiving (which is on the 2nd Monday of October) our church family suprised us with a pounding.  We thank God for such a wonderful church family.

On Monday we went to Lake Ontario Park and took some fall pictures.  So here they are:

LONDON – Willy Wonka would be horrified. Children who eat too much candy may be more likely to be arrested for violent behaviour as adults, new research suggests.

British experts studied more than 17,000 children born in 1970 for about four decades. Of the children who ate candies or chocolates daily at age 10, 69 per cent were later arrested for a violent offence by the age of 34. Of those who didn’t have any violent clashes, 42 per cent ate sweets daily.

The study was published in the October issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry. It was paid for by Britain’s Economic and Social Research Council.

The researchers said the results were interesting, but that more studies were needed to confirm the link. “It’s not that the sweets themselves are bad, it’s more about interpreting how kids make decisions,” said Simon Moore of the University of Cardiff, one of the paper’s authors.

Moore said parents who consistently bribe their children into good behaviour with candies and chocolates could be doing harm. That might prevent kids from learning how to defer gratification, leading to impulsive behaviour and violence.

Even after Moore and colleagues controlled for other variables like different parenting skills and varying social and economic backgrounds, they found a significant link between childhood consumption of sweets and violent behaviour in adulthood.

Previous studies have found better nutrition leads to better behaviour, in both children and adults.

Moore said his results were not strong enough to recommend parents stop giving their children candies and chocolates. “This is an incredibly complex area,” he said. “It’s not fair to blame it on the candy.”

Doctors say a man who was plagued with coughing fits should be fine now that they have removed a 1-inch (2 1/2-centimetre) piece of plastic from his lung, where it had rested since he apparently inhaled it nearly two years ago while sucking down a soft drink at a Wendy’s restaurant.

Doctors at Duke University Medical Center say the plastic fragment of an eating utensil – with the Wendy’s logo still legible on the side – was likely to blame for the coughing, fatigue and pneumonia spells that plagued John Manley for almost two years.

They pulled the fast-food foreign object from Manley’s left lung during a Sept. 10 surgery. The 50-year-old Wilmington, North Carolina, resident said he probably inhaled it while gulping a drink from Wendy’s.

“I like to take big gulps of drink,” the former home remodeler said. “I don’t know of any other ways of it getting in there.”

Manley said he and his wife were puzzled by his bouts of illness after moving to the North Carolina coastal city from New York about two years ago. He met with multiple doctors, who eventually determined there was a foreign object in his left lung. But they couldn’t figure out what it was or the best way to remove it.

“One doctor said they could remove my lung,” Manley said. “I said no way. That was the easiest way for them, and I said I didn’t think so.”

Manley’s case eventually came to the attention of Dr. Momen Wahidi, director of interventional pulmonology at Duke. Wahidi, who mostly works with cancer patients to remove tumors from their lung airways, told Manley he would try extracting the object using a rigid bronchoscope. The procedure would allow Wahidi to insert a camera and other instruments to examine and remove the mystery object.

Wahidi said he still remembers his staff’s amazement in the operating room when they pulled it out.

“We’re looking at it and realizing that there are letters on it … We started reading out loud, ‘A-M-B-U-R-G-E-R,’ and realized it spelled, ‘hamburgers.”‘

“Everybody was shocked. We had no clue why something that said, ‘hamburgers’ would be in someone’s lung,” he said.

They had read a side of the plastic that spelled Wendy’s motto of “Old Fashioned Hamburgers.”

Wahidi said foreign objects in the lungs are much more common in children, but he’s extracted false teeth, nails, and even a peanut from adults who have held the items in their mouth and accidentally sucked them in. Patients often don’t realize there’s a problem until their bodies begin to react.

But Wahidi said the piece of plastic was a first.

“It’s definitely one of the weirdest things I’ve removed in my career,” he said.

Manley said he’s unsure if he will contact officials from Wendy’s, based in Dublin, Ohio. Wendy’s spokesman Denny Lynch said he has never heard of a situation like this in his 29 years with the company. He said company officials would contact Manley at the appropriate time.

“We’re as quizzed by the whole situation as everyone else is,” he said. “This is quite a surprise that this could even happen.”

Manley said there’s a huge difference in his quality of life days after the surgery.

“I can breathe now,” the father of three adult daughters said of his recovery. “I can get up and walk my dog. I couldn’t do that before. I was pretty much house-ridden.”

Wahidi said he will meet with Manley in a month for a checkup, but he expects a full recovery. 

“The body has an amazing ability to heal,” Wahidi said. “Now that the object is out, his body should be able to recover and his airways should be back to normal.”

Today we had a church picnic, followed by an afternoon hymn sing at 2:00 PM.  We had 40 in the morning service and 32 in the afternoon service.  We also had a graduation party for Connor, who is headed for South Africa.

At the hymn sing we sang: “I’ve settled the Question; Satisfied; Jesus, Sweetest Name I Know; and Victory in Jesus.”  We also had a ladies quartet and instrumental.  I preached this on “Keeping our Praise up-to-date” (Psalm 149).

Here are three pictures of my grandfather’s tiller.  My father-in-law painted it all up for me – using “International Red.”  With the new paint job and oil change it looks better than it did when it was new.

We have a smaller garden then I intended to have this year, due to the deer eating my green beans, lettuce, carrots, and sun flowers this year.  We do have six rows of corn, one row of lettuce, one row of potatoes,  eight tomato plants, one pepper plant, and one zucchini plant.