As you proceed along in life, I think you begin to quickly realize that life is hard. It’s not easy to be alive, it’s not easy to find a mate, it’s not easy to have a career.

And one of the greatest joys I think we all possess is family, traditional family.

Now, I was raised in a Christian family, a Roman Catholic family, and my father was French, and my mother was, I guess you would say Ukrainian, and her mother was Polish, her father was Austro-Hungarian.

My grandfather originally came from the Austro-Hungarian Empire to Homestead in Canada, and one of the great joys he had after walking for probably four days to find his farm, which was nothing but rocks and trees and nothing at all, was the ability

over time to be able to provide for his family. And quite truly, all these pioneers that came to Canada and the United States began with nothing.

And they had a number of children, so they started out, they lived probably in my grandfather’s case, in a sod house, I think many the same.

For the first one or two years, and eventually they built a small mill, a saw mill, and they were able to saw down, cut down some of the trees on the property, and they built a house. And along the way, he had 18 children in two marriages.

I mean, remarkable, hard to believe. And I think their concept of family was unique because they wanted to be able to provide for their family. So they grew enough crops to be able to allow themselves to eat for an entire year.

And they would have, of course, seeds stored, and they would do it again. There was never any thought that you were going to take over the next farm. No expansionistic capitalism, if I could put it that way.

They were just thinking to supply enough food for their own family. And yet, they were generous with strangers. Strangers would come and they always went away.

My mother’s told me with a chicken or a loaf of bread or something. Hospitality was enormously important to these people, for sure. So family was all.

I remember actually going to the farm when I was a little boy. And one day, I think I was about six years old. And one day, the pigs got away.

They had two or three hundred pigs. Wealth, I guess, in that sense. But the pigs are smart animals.

They know what’s coming. So they were gone. So everyone, my uncles, my aunts, a lot of other children were chasing the pigs.

And eventually, I think they were caught, the poor souls, and brought back to their inevitable fate. But it left me with a tremendous impression. The whole family out to chase the pigs.

And actually, there was a family reunion about ten years ago that I attended, and eight hundred people came. Eight hundred people, all from these eighteen children in two marriages that had intermarried. It was a wonderful experience.

Gosh, just a wonderful experience. So I guess family is the bedrock of everything. Now, they say today that families are changing because of the Internet.

There’s kind of two streams. On the one side, we’re getting further away from our families and because of economic collapse.

I understand that in many parts of North America, families are moving back in together, so you’re actually getting three generations living together. But either way, close contact with your family is extremely important for your well-being.

There is no question at all.

Why? Well, I think first and for mostly, when you think to yourself, your family is kind of a bit of a standard, isn’t it?

The person in your family that has achieved perhaps the most, philosophically, spiritually, financially, they’re kind of the person that you want to emulate in some way, if at all possible. So families give stability and I guess security, right?

And I think that there’s also a clear role between parents and children and grandparents. There is a hierarchy. There is a statement in English actually, that a man never truly becomes a man till his father passes away.

And then he’s a man on his own with his own family, right? And families give us standards, don’t they? When I was a child, everyone had a part-time job.

It was normal. And then after your part-time job, there was a division of labor in the family. My mother was always going to build this fantastic, I guess, small pond in the back yard with a slight brook flowing into it.

So my job was rocks. I had to shuck rocks. My father would deliver all this dirt.

And my job was to shake the strainer and get those rocks out. And then the dirt could be spread. And my other siblings had various other tasks to undertake.

You know, and where I grew up, it rained all the time. And my parents had a drying room. And one day I arrived home from school soaking wet, and the fire was out and I wanted to light it.

It wouldn’t light, so I went into my father’s workshop. And everything is locked behind two doors, this sort of thing. But I, being a resourceful lad, knew where the keys were.

And I got some gas of all things. Gosh, insane when you think today. And I put it into the fire and had one of my brothers hold the lid.

And I put a match in and then nothing happened. And then, whack, the fire ignited. And jeez, burnt my shirt off and burnt my brother’s blonde hair off the top of his forehead and put him in the shower.

And later, we’re sitting in the dining room having dinner. And my mother looks over at my younger brother and says, you know, Francis, are you fine?

And I gave him one of those, if you talk, you die, looks, you know, that brothers give to other brothers. And he said nothing. Poor soul.

And, you know, until this day, he still remembers that. And I think I told my mother about 20 years later, and she was, of course, just horrified.

So those are families. Another part of my family, of course, was the religious aspect. And many people say we’re getting away from religion, which I think fundamentally is a bad thing, right?

Because we all need a way to understand this consciousness. And if you’re atheistic, if you’re an atheist, you find your own understanding of God. But there is God, there is no question.

I think anyone would understand that, right? Just taking a walk in nature or seeing a baby born, there’s something bigger than me, for sure.

So the high holidays, I remember midnight mass and then coming home and having a snack, and then going to sleep, and then the next day was an enormous turkey, and lots of family and presents, and a lot of joy.

So I guess families in that sense bind you very closely, don’t they? If you make a family a bedrock of society once again, I think a lot of our psychological problems in the society will go away.

I have had some young students that have told me they never, never speak to their parents because of the internet. They’re on their phones or their parents are busy, or there is no set six o’clock for a meal. Not good things.

And you know, ultimately, when family collapses, so does society. So maybe we’re seeing some of that now. But on the optimistic side, there would undoubtedly be a return to these family values over time.

Otherwise, civilization will change irrevocably. So think of your siblings, think of your parents, and they’re such an important component of your life. And you know what they say.

You know what they say. If we want to grow, we want to nurture our families, we want to have a traditional family, and we want to be at peace. Critical thinking is necessary for all of this, and critical thinking is great.

Truly great. You take care. God bless.

Bye-bye.