It's a beautiful, sunny day in Perth County, Ontario, after a cool night tinged with the whiff of woodsmoke that has become the signature scent of this summer. The Canadian Armed Forces are now involved in the wild-fire effort, in the form of airlift to move people and supplies in Quebec and British Columbia, and two companies of infantry deployed to the fire front in BC.

To a large extent, Canada's public response to major natural disasters hasn't changed much over a century -- when it gets bad enough, call out the Militia.

If this year is a sign of things to come, that unwritten policy has been overcome by events. If the Fantasians still want to invade us, they now have two golden opportunities per year: flood season and fire season.

On the home front, with respect to digital subscriptions: I'm all for them. After Edmund died, I changed all the news media to the on-line versions and decided to stop buying novels on paper. After more than two years, this choice has allowed me to cut back the contents of my recycle boxes by about three quarters, so they now go out to the curb only about once a month. Over the same period, I have reduced the fiction section of the real-life library from five 80-cm six-shelf bookcases to two 60-cm six-shelf bookcases. I still chug through three newspapers per day and consume prodigious quantities of fiction, but I have ceased to stuff my living space with the evidence of my habit.

Now, if only I could give up Perrier water ...