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3 weeks ago | 
timescolonist.com | Trevor Hancock
What can Canada learn from other countries about achieving well-being, happiness and a good quality of life? As the 2023 World Happiness Report noted, people “increasingly think of well-being as the ultimate good,” and “more and more people have come to believe that our success as countries should be judged by the happiness of our people.”This is particularly important right now because the new Liberal government has just established a cabinet committee on quality of life and well-being.
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2 months ago | 
timescolonist.com | Trevor Hancock
From Mother Nature’s perspective, the results of next week’s election are largely irrelevant — and that should worry us. The two main contenders, as well as the NDP, are just proposing slightly different variants of business as usual. Their focus is on more economic growth, more resource extraction and consumption and — although not formally part of their platforms — more resultant pollution. All they really differ on is how the spoils will be divided between public and private sectors.
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2 months ago | 
vancouverisawesome.com | Trevor Hancock
Back in the late 1980s, the first President Bush expressed a wish for a kinder, gentler nation. A joke going around at the time, I recall, was that he had found it — it was called Canada and now he was going to buy it. Fast forward almost 40 years and the U.S. has a president whose whole approach seems based in nastiness and cruelty, the very opposite of kindness and gentleness.
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2 months ago | 
timescolonist.com | Trevor Hancock
Back in the late 1980s, the first President Bush expressed a wish for a kinder, gentler nation. A joke going around at the time, I recall, was that he had found it — it was called Canada and now he was going to buy it. Fast forward almost 40 years and the U.S. has a president whose whole approach seems based in nastiness and cruelty, the very opposite of kindness and gentleness.
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Feb 23, 2025 | 
timescolonist.com | Trevor Hancock
Last month, I began to explore a set of aphorisms that I find helpful in addressing the immense challenges of the 21st century.
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Jan 26, 2025 | 
timescolonist.com | Trevor Hancock
I have spent much of my life working as an educator, whether as a professor teaching graduate students or as an in international consultant working with communities, organizations and governments around the world. Over the years, I have come across a number of aphorisms that I turn to again and again to make important points. An aphorism, dictionaries tell us, is a short saying that is memorable and embodies a general truth, astute observation or principle.
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Dec 21, 2024 | 
timescolonist.com | Trevor Hancock
Last week, I pointed to neoliberal ideology and economics as the fundamental flaw that has led us to ignore all the warning signs — in particular, that there are limits to growth — and instead pursue economic growth and increased wealth at all costs.
That ideology also leads to a hyper-individualized, hyper-competitive, dog-eat-dog society that denies the benefits of community, the public sector, the environment and the common good.
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Dec 15, 2024 | 
timescolonist.com | Trevor Hancock
As I noted last week, I am committed to helping to create a healthy future for all. But I am greatly concerned that we are not on the right path to do that.
When I look back over the length of my career, it is clear that in many ways we have created a healthier future.
One important indicator is life expectancy. According to Our World in Data, in 1970, when I was still in medical school, life expectancy at birth was 56.3 years globally and 72.6 years in Canada.
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Dec 8, 2024 | 
timescolonist.com | Trevor Hancock
Last week, I wrote about three major shifts in perspective that took me from being a family physician to a broader concern with the health of communities, of societies and indeed of the global population and the planet itself.
In my concluding major paper for my master’s degree at the University of Toronto in the late 1970s, I identified two major principles that have guided my career ever since.
The first is ecological sanity.
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Dec 1, 2024 | 
timescolonist.com | Trevor Hancock
Ten years ago, the Times Colonist published an editorial on preventive health care.
As a public-health physician focused on the health of the population I responded with a commentary in which I praised their focus on prevention but suggested that it did not go far enough.
“Health care,” I wrote, “even preventive health care, is a relatively small contributor to the health of the population.
