#39: WORDS, WORDS, WORDS 💬
"Burnt out" Ontario boomer requests MAiD for his wife. Ontario mayor off the hook for pole-dancing joke to female colleague. And BC man accused of sexually assaulting horses under cover of night.
Peter Wilson
January 30, 2026
🧑⚕️ HEALTHCARE - Ontario boomer euthanized after husband requests MAiD due to “caregiver burnout”
🏛️ MUNICIPAL POLITICS - No discipline for Ontario mayor who made pole-dancing joke to female mayor of neighbouring township
🐴 AGRICULTURE - BC man accused of breaking into stable, sexually assaulting horses under cover of night
Words, words, words.
Word inflation is at an all-time high. More words are spoken, written, and recorded today than ever before.
And as words grow cheaper year by year, it’s important to ask: what even are they? and should we pay them any heed?
For instance, Carney’s speech in Davos generated a lot of buzz last week. Some said it represented a generational shift in geopolitics while others said it was just words.
We’re stuck once again with a definition problem: what are words?
I thought of consulting the dictionary here, but it felt silly to define the word “word” with more words.
So I will defer to people much smarter than me to teach us about WORDS in this issue.
Enjoy today’s words.
-Peter
⌛️ Today’s words should take you around 2.5 minutes to read.
“I’m very highly educated. I know words—I have the best words. But there’s no better word than stupid.”
An Ontario woman in her 80s was euthanized after her husband, who said he was experiencing “caregiver burnout,” requested an urgent assessment from the provincial Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) coordination service.
A report penned by the Ontario MAiD Death Review Committee detailed a case from 2024 where a woman referred to as “Mrs. B” told her family she was interested in MAiD after complications arose from her coronary artery bypass graft surgery.
The same day she expressed this interest, her husband contacted a provincial euthanasia referral service.
The next day a practitioner dropped by to see if the woman was eligible for MAiD, but Mrs. B told the practitioner that she’d changed her mind and wanted to withdraw her request because of “personal and religious values and beliefs.” She said she’d rather continue with palliative care.
The next morning, Mrs. B’s husband brought her to the emergency ward of their local hospital and said he was “experiencing caregiver burnout.” But doctors assessed Mrs. B as being in stable condition and sent her back home with continued palliative care.
The same day, her husband called Ontario’s MAiD coordination service and requested an “urgent assessment” for his wife. This time, a different MAiD assessor determined that Mrs. B was eligible for MAiD.
The initial MAiD assessor expressed concern with this new finding and noted the “possibility of coercion or undue influence” from the husband. The assessor asked permission to visit Mrs. B the next day to ask her about it, but was denied by the MAiD provider, who said Mrs. B needed MAiD urgently and could not wait an extra day.
So the MAiD provider contacted a third practitioner and arranged for a “virtual assessment” of Mrs. B that same day.
The third assessor found that Mrs. B was eligible for MAiD and she was euthanized later that evening.
The report—which was published by Ontario’s chief coroner—said that many committee members believed Mrs. B’s husband was overly involved in the process.
“Many members brought forward concerns of possible external coercion arising from the caregiver’s experience of burnout,” it said.
The federal government’s most recent statistics show that a total of 16,499 people received MAiD in 2024.
“A word after a word after a word is power.”
An Ontario mayor who made a pole-dancing joke to the female mayor of a neighbouring township will not be formally disciplined, says the local integrity watchdog.
On Feb. 25, 2025, Oro-Medonte Mayor Randy Greenlaw and Springwater Township Mayor Jennifer Coughlin were getting ready for a flag-raising ceremony to mark the beginning of ITSTARTS month, a public awareness campaign aimed at addressing “racism and discrimination in Simcoe County.”
Coughlin grew impatient waiting for her fellow Simcoe County council members to come outside to the flagpole, so she went inside the chamber to “request that the other members come to the flagpole.”
Coughlin alleges that when she suggested Greenlaw should come outside, he replied, “Are you going to dance around that pole for us?”
“I told Mayor Greenlaw, ‘I’m going to walk away from that,’ and I left the chamber and did not participate in the photo,” she told Barrie Today.
Greenlaw reportedly called Coughlin later that night and apologized for the remark, but Coughlin said she was seeking a public apology.
In early March Greenlaw apologized for his remark in a closed county council session, but Coughlin rejected it, saying he should apologize in public.
The Simcoe County integrity commissioner released his findings concerning the matter on Dec. 30, 2025. He said Greenlaw’s comment was “somewhat suggestive,” but deemed his apology was “genuine and heartfelt.”
“The remark… was unequivocally off-colour and inappropriate,” the integrity commissioner wrote. “Although doubtless it was intended as a light-hearted quip, and we accept that he intended no disrespect by making the remark, it is the impact on the recipient of a comment rather than the intention of the speaker which must be considered.”
The commissioner indirectly speculated that Coughlin may have taken Greenlaw’s joke the wrong way.
“Often intent and impact do not align,” the commissioner wrote. “The individual speaking may have the best intentions, but that does not necessarily translate to those around them. A comment may not land well. A flippant remark can be received as disrespectful, hurtful, insulting or belittling. The recipient may feel offended.”
Source: Barrie Today
“Today, the meaning of words is ever more fluid, and the concepts they represent are increasingly ambiguous. Language is no longer the preferred means by which human beings come to know and encounter one another. Moreover… language is becoming more and more a weapon with which to deceive, or to strike and offend opponents. We need words once again to express distinct and clear realities unequivocally.”
A man has been arrested after allegedly breaking into a stable in Vernon, BC, and sexually assaulting several horses.
Last Saturday the owner of Abigail Equestrian, a pro horse training facility, posted several security-camera images on Facebook of a man she said had broken into her stables overnight.
“Does anyone recognize this person?” wrote Erica Van Meenen. “Please msg me. Last night he was in with my horses in the middle of the night and assaulted some horses.”
In a follow-up post, she accused the man of doing “the unspeakable.”
“Yes, 🍇,” Van Meenen wrote. “If he is doing that to large animals I can assure you he is not right in the head and is doing other things too.”
Vernon North Okanagan RCMP later confirmed that they had arrested a man in connection with the incident.
Van Meenen also told The Morning Star that the man “raped at least one horse” and that she caught him on “video surveillance.”
Police say the investigation remains ongoing.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.”
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