Veteran. Pic is me. I hunt, atv, ski, dive, teach, get taught. Academic & practitioner. I know things. Mostly nice. Formerly @GlobalRaider
Canazuela
Joined August 2011
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Tango Mike 🇨🇦 ⚔ retweeted
262 days.
It’s been 262 days since you were airlifted to BC Children’s Hospital.
262 days since we were told, “We did everything we could, but we don’t think she’s going to make it through the night.”
Since then, I’ve watched you fight for every single one of those days.
251 days ago, you opened your eye, moved it, and shifted your leg only to be rushed back for emergency surgery that morning when hydrocephalus set in.
238 days ago, you were extubated and breathed on your own for the first time.
230 days ago, you felt the sun on your face again.
224 days ago, the cranioplasty we had planned turned into yet another emergency when an infection was discovered.
214 days ago, your EVD was finally removed.
213 days ago, you sat on the edge of the bed with a little help, and I wrapped my arms around you for the first time since the morning I left for work before any of this began.
191 days ago, the NG tube came out, and I saw your beautiful face completely clear of tubes and tape.
179 days ago, your prosthetic skull was placed. Your fifth surgery, and the one that finally stuck. After that, things slowly began to feel possible again.
145 days ago, you smiled for the first time (intentionally) while we played thumb war.
140 days ago, I wheeled you off hospital grounds for the very first time.
61 days ago, I heard your voice again.
40 days ago, we celebrated your 13th birthday at the Foo Fighters.
And today, today you’re being released.
There was never a day I stopped believing we would get here. The road ahead is still long, but this is a milestone no one thought we would reach. Maya, you are the bravest person I know. You are an inspiration to so many people. Giving up was never an option for me, and it clearly never was for you either. You refused to accept the words we heard 262 days ago when you came out of the OR. Look at you, my girl. You blew every expectation out of the water.
Thank you to the incredible nurses, doctors, and therapists who walked every step of this with us. Thank you to everyone who supported Maya and our family we could not have done this without each and every one of you.
Now it’s time to leave these hospital walls behind and keep moving forward, Maya Bear.
I love you forever and always.
—Dad ❤️
Tango Mike 🇨🇦 ⚔ retweeted
SIR PATRICK STEWART (1940-2026)
Before everything else, Patrick was defined by being born and bred in Yorkshire, the proud county in the north of England which he loved to the end. You could hear it in his accented voice and in the stern honesty with which he told you what he thought and felt. Yorkshiremen have no truck with half-truths or avoidance of big issues. He wore his heart on his sleeve, which made him a man to rely on, to admire and in my case, love.
We first met as ambitious young actors with the Royal Shakespeare Company half a century ago but we weren’t in the same productions. My first strong memory was a few years later, meeting him in the street in central London when he told me about an offer to take over a leading part in 'Star Trek'. “But Patrick think of your stage career in the UK. Do you really want to risk—getting lost in Hollywood for years and years?”. Well, he took the risk and thank goodness for us all that he did for not just his devoted Trekkies but film and theatre audiences, who marvelled at his using international celebrity to star in a string of cinema successes ('X-Men' of course) and in great classical plays by Shakespeare, Ibsen, Arthur Miller, Peter Shaffer, Pinter and Beckett at Stratford-upon-Avon, in London’s West End and on Broadway.
America was his adopted home, where he met his adored Sunny who has cared for him through sickness and health, through thick and thin. But he never forsook his origins: and the proudest achievement of the most respected and beloved actor of his generation on either side of the Atlantic, was his appointment as Chancellor of Huddersfield University in Yorkshire.
His farewell performance in 'Avengers: Doomsday' is yet to be seen.
Ian McKellen 29 October 2026
Photo: University of Huddersfield
Tango Mike 🇨🇦 ⚔ retweeted
In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to:
Johns Hopkins Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center Fund
alzresearch.org/giving/
Alzheimer’s Foundation of America Caregiver Resources
alzfdn.org/donate/
Photo Credit: Tommy Garcia
Tango Mike 🇨🇦 ⚔ retweeted
Spare us the sermon, @WabKinew . You're an intellectual and political lightweight with a record of misogyny and a seriously questionable, immoral history. Shame on Manitoba for electing you. And as the interloper you are, let me remind you that you have no business posing as anyone's moral compass.
We fired an unethical government whose negligence and nefarious "management" has caused irreparable damage– sold out our rights and freedoms, fuelled division, racism and hate, and devastated British Columbia. Full stop.
Be happy for now that we don't have the legislation to grab your buddy Eby to hold him responsible for what he's done to this province.
The scandal is what the NDP did with power and always has.
Lorne Doerkson on Wab Kinew’s comments that the BC results “should concern every elected politician” and that being elected is “a responsibility not to be played with”:
“Well, I don’t disagree. We should all be concerned. British Columbians voted for change last night and for whatever reason they liked the platform that we put forward. … I’ve always been somebody that the moment I’ve been elected I’ve got to work and for me that isn’t going to change. I intend to get to work right away. I intend to work for British Columbia hard because four years comes quick.” @WabKinew @LDoerkson
Tango Mike 🇨🇦 ⚔ retweeted
History’s darkest chapters show the danger of treating people as enemies to eliminate.
Language questioning anyone’s right to exist demands condemnation, whoever it targets.
Emily Lowan didn’t just speak against Conservative policies. She spoke against the Conservatives “and their existence.”
Whether she meant the party or its supporters, that language is unacceptable from a political leader.
You cannot preach inclusion while questioning your opponents place in democracy.
As British Columbians and Canadians, we must demand better. And our standards cannot depend on which party crosses the line.
This should be unacceptable to everyone regardless of how they voted.
This is excellent.
I must say that I’m more invested in the success of the incoming Doerkson government than I’ve been in any goverment in nearly a decade.
What interests me most is the potential fecundity of the premier-elect’s back-to-basics, normie conservatism. Doerkson isn’t offering political dopamine. His whole pitch is about competent government, economic growth, and public institutions that fulfill their basic purposes. The magnitude of his victory is a sign of how broadly that proposition can appeal.
The story, in a nutshell, is a guy from Williams Lake offered a recognizable conservatism that could win in Vancouver-Yaletown. His temperament helped bring together rural communities, suburban families, and urban voters around some straightforward expectations about how their province should work.
Schools should teach. The justice system should protect the public. Hospitals should treat patients. The civil service should deliver services competently and impartially. These institutions have important yet bounded missions. They should discharge them effectively and resist the temptation to become vehicles for every passing political or ideological cause.
The same practical instinct should guide economic policy: make it possible to build homes, grow businesses, develop resources, and attract investment. Give people reasons to believe that hard work and initiative can produce a better life here.
This is the politics of normalcy in practice. And even if its rhetoric is moderate, its ambitions are considerable. Restoring focus and competence to institutions that have lost them will require conviction, persistence, and capable people.
That’s another reason for optimism: the quality of the candidates and potential front bench, along with the talented people Doerkson’s leadership drew to the campaign. @gavindew is someone to watch in particular. His interest in both economic growth and making government more productive—including through AI—could make him an important contributor to this governing agenda.
The test now is governing. There will be hard choices and inevitable disappointments along the way. But this is a conservatism that I want to see succeed—and an unusually promising opportunity to show what it can accomplish.
Tango Mike 🇨🇦 ⚔ retweeted
I have to say, David Eby and the NDP have run what is perhaps the worst election campaign of my lifetime.
Devoid of any positivity, any coherent rationale for why they deserve to be re-elected.
Filled with embarrassing gaffes (see Eby’s $10/day daycare) and a total lack of policy or rhetorical imagination.
31 days into the campaign, they can’t even articulate why they called this election in the first place.
All they have left is fearmongering, division and misinformation.
Tomorrow, October 24th, let’s vote for a change.
This shitpump is going to have a very bad time. It'll be expensive, if not a little stint in cells. He deserves it.
Jumping the chain of command and publicly requesting an audience with @MarkJCarney.
Clearly seems urgent and using today's means to achieve the effect.
I hear the pain in this young man's voice.
Tango Mike 🇨🇦 ⚔ retweeted
I want to update my original post which was based on another post that laid out the scenario & location of the incident.
I accepted the scenario & questioned the location. In fact I’ve now received a great deal of new information from soldiers who were there & want to correct the record.
So here’s what I know: the location is correct, the scenario (an artillery round caused the explosion) was totally wrong.
Soldiers on the ground are saying 2 training scenarios were happening in that location simultaneously.
First there is lots of static ranges that face the second lake from rifle ranges to a 60 mm mortar range to a grenade range to an antitank range limited to the M72 & 84 mm Carl Gustov. These hand held shoulder fired anti armour weapons have been used by CDN infantry platoons for 4 decades now. They are generally very effective & reliable.
I’m told a Carl G was being fired at a target some 300 metres away from a static cement bay using the standing position. The safety officer stands about 18” away in a cement bay observing every action taken by the loader & gunner. This is very basic infantry training & carried out at least annually.
In this case a high explosive (HE) round was being fired.
Apparently shortly after the HE round was fired it malfunctioned & dove at full speed into the ground striking either a buried natural gas wellhead or pipeline which exploded. There were casualties at this range caused by the blast wave.
Simultaneously there were some 150 soldiers training in fighting in built up areas (FIBUA or Urban Warfare) using blank ammo or just running through the basic drills using dry fire. No live ammunition, no explosives of any type, certainly no live indirect fire. There were 3 wooden structures being used & all three were completely destroyed by the blast. A significant number of casualties occurred here.
The explosion led to a grass fire which was whipped up by strong gusts of wind which blew directly through the units bivouac site (tented area where troops sleep, rest, park vehicles etc) casing additional casualties. The fire then continued on & went beyond the training area into the municipality of Wainwright.
At this point, it appears that this series of incidents began with a round malfunctioning & doing damage that never could have been imagined let alone predicted or prevented.
As was the case last night, the fog of war/crisis still exists so information may still change.
This is not because of a cover up or some imaginary conspiracy.
If the casualty count is only half as high as some are claiming you will have to go back to the darkest days of WWII to find similar numbers & never has a training exercise seen anything like this so a great deal must be done in the immediate aftermath before making definitive public statements so please have patience, please believe everyone is trying to get this right & those who really care are more than willing to correct their earlier errors as the newest information comes in.
Think long & hard about what you post…thousand of soldiers & their families are watching! Please keep them all including the military & civilian first responders in your prayers.
I hope this helps & I’ll potentially post more as it becomes available.
I have no direct knowledge about what happened but based on this post, I think I can add some clarity to things I read in the comments.
There are many types of ranges within the CFB Wainwright training area & there is an attached permanent base area that has training & administrative buildings, dining halls, barracks & even a whole community of houses for married permanent staff members. All ranges are in the training area several kms from the base area.
Some ranges are permanent & fixed in place, some amount to an area on the map & range orders that tell the user what types of weapons can be fired within that designated area. This type of live fire range is likely where this incident took place.
Once you decide that a live fire range is going to happen a Range Safety Officer must be designated. The RSO works with Assistant RSO’s who are qualified to template (safely determine where a weapon can be fired from based on its maximum range, if it’s an indirect fire weapon like an artillery or mortar shell, there’s lots of added factors to be considered) the different weapons that will be used from rifles to medium & heavy MG’s to anti tank weapons to 2 calibres of mortars to artillery. All these folks work with a permanent base organization called Range Control who ensure all the templates are properly done, all the safety rules are understood, all the temporary safety staff are qualified for their jobs & that flags, road barriers & guards on the outer perimeter have been assigned & are in place so no one just wonders into a shit storm.
They assign a safety frequency separate from the tactical frequency. Whenever any obstacles or sensitive things are located within a designated live fire training area or range, they are made known to the range safety staff by Range Control so that buffer or restricted zones can be placed around them.
The area indicated (see the map) near the 2 lakes was never authorized for indirect fire & if my memory is correct, it was never authorized for any form of live fire training.
It should also be noted that prior to any live fire range involving multiple weapons systems (especially indirect fire) & movement by troops, the safety staff would not just rely on maps & templates & written rules, they would be walking the ground repeatedly so they were 100% familiar with what is referred to as the trace, which is just another way of saying, the direction the training troops would generally follow.
A good range gives as much latitude to the tactical officer or NCO in charge to fire & maneuver using the ground to their advantage but still ensuring that their weapons are staying within the safety arcs. This takes a lot of effort by a very large safety team & must also stand up to the inspection by a full time Range Control Officer.
Typically indirect fire is tightly controlled both by the safety staff assigned to monitor the tactical fire controllers requesting the indirect fire & by the safety team at the gun or mortar line positions to ensure the rounds will land safely & avoid any potentially dangerous targets such as a gas well. This is double checked by those doing the firing & their safety monitors several kms away.
So two things jump off the page with this report. One based on my years of working in Wainwright both as a trainee, as permanent staff & as a safety officer for indirect mortar fire countless times including on static & maneuver ranges, I can’t imagine this part of the training area ever being used for any form of live fire let alone indirect fire.
And two, the idea that at least 6 people would have had to miss the fact that a restricted target had been selected or the folks at the gun line had entered the coordinates incorrectly into the targeting computer or set up the gun line incorrectly is beyond imagination.
There are so many safety redundancies built into using indirect artillery fire with troops on the ground it’s nearly impossible to believe.
Hope this helps!
Tango Mike 🇨🇦 ⚔ retweeted
All the individuals who were close to Justin Trudeau and stuck with him for a decade (or most of it), and who are NOW saying publicly how horrible / unqualified he was...
...owe an explanation to all Canadians as to why they didn't speak up when it would have mattered.
Tango Mike 🇨🇦 ⚔ retweeted
It would be easy to blame Trudeau, his dad or Harper or Mulroney or Chretien but the real blame for the current (& long time) state of the CAF is the voters of Canada.
There’s absolutely no incentive for any gov to follow through on the promises they make during campaigns to invest in the CAF.
Every single gov in my lifetime has cut the CAF to the quick, the very second the economy slows down. They freeze salaries, defer or cancel much needed procurement of equipment & just keep extending the life of existing platforms long past their useful lives in order to save or increase social programs or minimize tax increases because that’s how they get reelected. Literally the only time military spending is popular is when it’s used to bribe voters in specific regions. Countless times the CAF has ended up with inferior equipment made in a riding that a political party desperately needs to win or hold.
No gov in my lifetime has been punished for underfunding the CAF though twice major procurement programs have been cancelled after being used to hammer the party that was in power when the kit was ordered. Voters didn’t complain about the billions in wasted taxpayer dollars or that in the long run in both cases the original piece of equipment was actually purchased at a higher price, they just shrugged.
The current state of the CAF is bad & the promised capital investments in new equipment & infrastructure won’t change that because the operating budget remains dismal. To meet recruiting targets standards were dramatically lowered resulting in a much higher training failure rate so the actual number of trained deployable troops continues to drop.
The CAF is indeed in a death spiral & it’s on CDN voters who have let both political parties that have governed Canada get away with this willful neglect to change that trajectory!
Tango Mike 🇨🇦 ⚔ retweeted
A military underfunded, undermanned and underprepared nationalpost.com/news/a-mili…
Tango Mike 🇨🇦 ⚔ retweeted
After speaking to a family member of one of the 158 fallen I can tell that they were all notified 5 days (via email) before the ground breaking ceremony that they were welcome to come to Ottawa at their own expense but would not be permitted to speak or participate in the ceremony. 72 hours before the ceremony, the date was moved up by 24 hours so even those who planned to attend now had to pay change fees for their flights. In the end none attended.
This gov, in part won the 2015 election on the promise they would never oppose veterans in court, they would give veterans everything they deserved including respect & they would honour the sacred oath to never break faith with those (veterans) living or dead made by PM Sir Robert Borden after visiting wounded soldiers in France, yet here we are!
A gov who has repeatedly opposed veterans in court, can’t seem to process claims or appeals in the timeframe they set & tries to red tape veterans to death & now flat out disrespects our living & dead veterans of the Afghan War!
.@VeteransENG_CA Minister @JMcknightDelta tells Commons committee that excluded combat veterans was merely “one step in many” to honour ex-military.
“Your department couldn’t tell me how many families of the 158 fallen were invited to the groundbreaking of the Afghan Monument.”
— MP @TolmieFraser
blacklocks.ca/silent-on-botc…
#cdnpoli
Fuck these fucking people (not Holly).....
.@VeteransENG_CA says it didn’t have time to invite Afghan War vets to speak at ceremonial groundbreaking for National Monument to Afghan War dead. 40-minute ceremony heard from non-combatants including Minister @JMcknightDelta.
blacklocks.ca/no-time-for-co…
@VetsOmbudsman #cdnpoli
Tango Mike 🇨🇦 ⚔ retweeted
David Eby is a shrewd, confident competitor.
He will challenge anyone currently suffering from a stomach virus to a hot-dog-eating contest. He will dare any chess champion to a tournament when they are sleeping.
theglobeandmail.com/opinion/…
Tango Mike 🇨🇦 ⚔ retweeted
👀 The Liberal govt has finally acknowledged there is no legal definition of an “assault-style firearm,” while RCMP says it does not specifically track crimes committed with the very category of firearms Ottawa has spent years prohibiting and buying back. rebelnews.com/liberals_admit…
ALT Liberals admit ‘assault-style firearm’ has no legal definition as RCMP says it doesn’t track crimes involving them
Tango Mike 🇨🇦 ⚔ retweeted
Mamdani Lays Wreath At Tomb Of The Unknown Hijacker buff.ly/Fqnok61
