Books By Bridgeross

By Dr. David Laing Dawson Who knew there was a mild controversy about using referenda or referendums as the plural for referendum? As a fan of Wayne and Shuster’s martinus joke (see video at end), I will stick with referenda. A referendum is a very faulty way of making a major decision, especially a decision with ramifications far beyond the imagination of the average voter. I can picture a…

By Marvin Ross In a landmark ruling in The Regional Municipality of Waterloo v. Named Respondents and Persons Unknown, the Court engaged sections 7 and 15 of the Charter. These sections guarantee two foundational pillars of justice: life, liberty, and personal security (legal rights) and the right to equal treatment under the law (equality rights) The Court emphasized that unhoused people are…

In his many trips to Switzerland to visit in-laws, my good friend and fellow advocate, Steve Liddycoat, often remarked that you rarely see the mentally ill on the streets. A few years ago when he asked, he was told the reason was that the mentally ill were getting treatment in hospitals. On his most recent trip earlier this summer with all the talk of growing homeless encampments in Canada (and…

By Dr. David Laing Dawson Acquired from Fcebook with Apoligies to the Cartoonist My sister was a pianist, quite accomplished. And there was a time, many years ago, while I was still living at home, when an unusual piano tuner came to tune our piano. He had recently served 28 months in jail for accepting bribes as the Minister for Forestry in the Social Credit BC government. On record, he…

Dr. David Laing Dawson Forty-five years ago the number of seriously addicted in our cities was relatively small. They could be excluded from the institutions serving the mentally ill without too many questions of conscience. I well remember a phone call from a government official. She wanted me to involuntarily admit a young man who was sniffing glue. He wasn’t at immediate risk. He was not…

By Marvin Ross The media is full of news reports on the growing homeless problem in Canada and the equally growing outrage at the existence of street encampments and residents fighting against shelter housing. Lost in all this noise are those with severe mental illnesses (SMI) many of whom live with aging parents. The homeless are a diverse group of people with addictions, with untreated mental…

By Dr. David Laing Dawson In March of this year Russia suffered 35,351 troops killed or wounded in the war with Ukraine. The estimated total Russian casualties in this war now exceeds 1.3 million. Kim Jong Un is erecting a monument to the North Korean soldiers killed fighting with the Russian soldiers. Trump threatens to annihilate a civilization. War is a human activity in which old men send…

By Karen Scott Booth In late October 2024, the Mayor of the City of Cambridge, Jan Liggett, received a letter from a constituent, a mother desperate to find support and safety for her adult son who is suffering from a severe mental illness. An all too familiar story, an adult son diagnosed in his early twenties (2012) with schizoaffective disorder and, although on a Community Treatment Order…

By Dr. David Laing Dawson Trump has signed an executive order intended to shorten the time between sentencing and execution in Federal Capital Punishment cases. And to facilitate this, the order allows use of firing squads. With all that is going on at the moment, adding firing squads to a recommended list of ways to complete a death sentence, may seem rather immaterial. But I see it as…

By Marvin Ross Schizophrenia is a chronic life time disease that requires a combination of treatments, including medication, psychological counseling and social support. The foundation of treatment is medication of which there are numerous types but it also requires psychosocial treatments which are essential. These treatments are not given instead of medications; they are given in addition to…

The Family Alliance for Severe Mental Illnesses (FASMI) has created a survey to determine how well hospitals and mental health professionals co-operate with families. Anecdotally, it has been observed that they are reluctant to talk to families based on the belief they are protecting their patient’s privacy. In most cases, it is the family, who provide the most support financially, in care and in…

By Dr. David Laing Dawson There is some confusion about the origins of the phrase: “a useful idiot”. It has been attributed to Lenin but it was used before that in Italian politics. Whatever the origin, it occurred to me that any phrase book should illustrate this particular phrase with a picture of Donald Trump. He may be a useful idiot for Vladimir Putin, if not an actual product of…

By Marvin Ross The photo above is of fully armed tactical officers from the Toronto Police Service guarding Jews attending the first night of Passover Services at an historic synagogue in Toronto. Most synagogues and Jewish institutions are now under heavy police guard in Canada on a night when they celebrated Jewish freedom from slavery. Many Jewish places of worship have been shot at or fire…

The Quiet Part Out Loud By Dr. David Laing Dawson I actually had an optimistic thought about Trump and America, I must share. Throughout my life time, and before, the United States has been toppling governments and starting wars. Some of those governments have been newly elected democratic governments: Chile, Iran (circa 1954), Guatemala, Brazil. Their rhetoric has often been about stopping…

By Dr. David Laing Dawson With a debt of 40 trillion, an oligarchic accumulation of wealth at the top, a very dangerous and compromised narcissist at the helm, enormous corruption, a restless, unhappy citizenry, betrayed and threatened allies, a very costly and foolish war, and massive protests in the streets, the American Empire has reached a tipping point. I have no idea how this will unfold.…

By Dr. David Laing Dawson In a 1722 sermon entitled “The Dangerous and Sinful Practice of Inoculation”, the English theologian Reverend Edmund Massey argued that diseases are sent by God to punish sin and that any attempt to prevent smallpox via inoculation is a “diabolical operation”. The anti-vaccination movement has been with us for 300 years, waxing and waning, but getting new life through…

By Dr. David Laing Dawson It is very painful listening to the whole rant, the rallying cry, of one Pete Hegseth. At a moment of great consequence for individual human beings, for multitudes of people, adults and children, for the stability of the world and the future of humanity, the American Secretary of Defense (War) speaks as if he is Captain America rallying the troops into battle against…