By Jeff Carter

The onset of winter came late this season in Southwestern Ontario, well into January. I remember the day, observing from the back porch that overlooks our garden the first few flakes of the first substantial snowfall in the air, glimpses of impossible blue in an otherwise overcast sky. Quiet.
Every day I spend an hour there, often longer.
In the fall, guided by an impulse beyond the mere understanding of two-legged kind, flocks of blackbirds appear, flying east to west, always east to west, for hours upon hours, thousands upon thousands, tracing the broad sweep of the Sydenham’s flow. Miss a flight, and you would never have believed it had occurred at all.
In Guelph at the organic conference, just outside one of the conference rooms, two young lads, dressed in identical, blue-checked shirts, black caps and shoes jostled playfully as their fathers spoke — of farming matters one might guess.
Seated nearby were an elderly couple. He appared to be a elder and I engaged with him. He was well worn and well fed after years of labour, cane in hand.
I referred to the young woman who had just spoken, her comments concerning the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He suggested that Hamas was to blame for starting the trouble which brought to mind the words of a woman from Lebanon I knew many years ago who had experienced violence in Beirut, the capital, body parts flying.
“What comes around, goes around,” I said, relaying her words. “And I might add, what goes around comes around and what comes around, goes around …”
At that earlier time, I thought, she was speaking of love.
He countered with a familiar quotation from the book of Matthew, “Those who live by the sword, die by the sword.”
“They’re killing children, like those,” I said, gesturing toward the two boys.” I might well have added, “they carry no swords”.
Speaking at the Guelph Organic Conference was Yara Ibrahim. She works as a farmer in Canada on other people’s land and is the Egyptian-born daughter of refugees, one from Palestine, the other from Algeria.
The point the young woman emphasized during a panel discussion concerning local food alternatives to the corporatized food system, was that Canada should not support Israel by purchasing its food exports especially in light of the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip and the efforts to displace Palestinians from the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
It struck me as a reasoned, non-violent response, one that might have been implemented years ago, given the context of the struggle, the “tit for tat”, or as Mahatma Gandhi said, “An eye for an eye will only make the world blind.”
Canada, meanwhile, is supporting the United States and, as such, is complicit in the arming of Israel and the denial of aid through the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. More than 100,000 have been killed or maimed in the Gaza Strip, many children and women among them, and all involved are traumatized, the sword being a doubled-edged thing.
It has long been my thought that if the world is to be changed, the best place to start is home.
The other day, visiting one of the local discount grocery stores, I took note of at least three people begging near the entrance. I offered the change in my pocket to the first on my way in some change to another fellow on the way out. I did consider offering the package of bacon I had just bought instead but upon consideration, decided the resources to prepare it may be lacking. It’s the way it is when you’re homeless.
The incident reminded me of another farming conference, one that took place in Oxford, England in the first few days of 2024.
Among the speakers was economist, historian and philosopher Guy Standing who spoke about “the commons” from a most English perspective, citing 1207 The Charter of the Forest that was signed, as was the more familiar Magna Carta, by the English King at the time. Unlike the Magna Carta, however, which focused on the rights of the nobles, The Charter of the Forest enshrined the rights of ordinary people.
“Common property defines what belongs to all of us or what belongs to a definable community,” Standing said.
Within those commons, people have the right to shelter and sustenance, the right to clean air and water – essentially, the right to exist.
The Charter of the Forest was only repealed by the British Legislature in 1971, and since that time, the fate of the commons has only deteriorated, the current plight of indigenous Palestinians being an example of how far removed from the concept society has shifted.
Tears came to Standing’s eyes as he expressed his dismay. I’ll leave the last words to him.
“Throughout our history, we have been losing our commons. Every type of commons is lost through the same process: encroachment, neglect, social forgetting, enclosure, privatization, financialization and the ultimate strangling aspect is neo-colonialization,” he said. 
“It (the Charter of the Forest) is our charter. We need to revise that spirit because only if we revive our commons will we have a civilized, good society for the 21st century.” ◊