Jonathan Brun

American Memory

As I stood at the hot dog stand at the Tokyo Disneyland theme park with my five year old son, I could not help thinking about my own childhood and my memories of America. Growing up in Montreal, we made nearly weekly trips to northern Vermont where we enjoyed the ski hills and the beautiful hiking trails. At one point, my parents nearly moved us to the US for a job my father was considering. It never happened, but America was ever present as I grew up in the 90s. We made regular trips to Florida, visiting Disneyworld and other places and we of course had friends and family in the US. Growing up in the 90s was special and though I am certain all generations feel nostalgic about the era they grew up in, the 90s was definitely a turning point in history.

With the end of the Soviet Union in the early 90s and the opening up of China, the entire world shifted in a very substantial way. America was the dominant economic and military power in the world with no peer, it felt ebullient. I proudly wore a bathing suit, a sweatshirt and other clothing adorned with the American flag, listened to American music, watched American movies and looked up to the US in many ways. The US was a global power with great influence and power. In the 90s, China was actively engaging with the US as US companies to develop its economy and absorb new technologies. The US was very well respected by the Chinese, many of whom dreamed of sending their children to study at prestigious US universities. US companies opened operations in China, formed joint ventures and start producing more goods and services at lower prices. Big box stores, Costco, Wal-Mart and other low cost retailers came to dominate the landscape in Canada and elsewhere. The US was everywhere all at once.

In addition to the geopolitical changes, the 90s also marked the emergence of the Internet – another revolutionary force in the world. I recall logging onto the internet around 1994 with my loud 14.4 Kbps modem that came to monopolize our home telephone line. Shopping for a new computer at the local electronics store or going to RadioShack were out of body experiences. The future of a global interconnected and peaceful world seemed at hand. In short, growing up in the 90s in North America was awesome.

What came after the 90s is more questionable and I suppose that all generations say that about the period following their childhood when everything seemed glorious and open ended. The turning point may have been 9/11, but that was likely just one day amongst many that led us to where we are today. Like most people who were adults at the time, I vividly recall 9/11. I had just left my house to go to school when the first hijackings had happened. I was sitting in CEGEP, or the equivalent of grade 12 when 9/11 strikes occurred, our teacher told us something horrible and major had just happened in New York. We were called out of class and they setup televisions in the cafeteria, we were then sent home. Prior to 9/11 the border crossing we used in Vermont was a quaint cottage with a one-armed border patrol man (no joke) who asked us where were were going. My family explained we were going skiing and he waived us through without looking at any ID. After 9/11 that all changed and the border crossing is now a large imposing building with barbed wire, fenced off areas, cameras, and a variety of intimidating features.

Sitting here in 2025, it is clear that society has radically changed. A deep seated politics of division is omnipresent, the economy is more challenging for most working class people and technology has invaded every corner of our lives and minutes of our days through the amazing power of the smart phone. Now, AI is driving people to insanity, eliminating jobs and changing entire industries. What comes next is anyone’s guess.

The importance of not planning

Last summer I was travelling in the beautiful Beauce region of Québec, which borders Northern Maine. This rural and agricultural region has a charm that has not been overly damaged by large cottages and the accompanying high end boutiques that go with them. With three young children I am always looking for something where they can expend their energy so they can please fall asleep more easily at night. Though my wife and I are not big planners, we inevitably use cell phones to do research and communicate and share calendar events to keep track of things. In today’s age of constant internet connection and prudent parenting, we inevitably get sucked into a situation where there are few surprises in our daily lives. How I sometimes wish for the days before smart phones and ubiquitous photos and review of every tourist location, trail, restaurant and museum.

As I was driving in Beauce with my two boys I noticed a sign on the side of the road for a hiking trail. With some time to kill and child energy to drain I decided I would stop and have a look. I had no snacks, just a few old candies from the bottom of the glove compartment and I did not research the trails or the site beforehand. We left the car and saw that the trail had a voluntary contribution of $10 or so. Thinking my young kids would not last that long, I skipped the contribution and committed to put some money in the pot if they actually used the trail a bit. My youngest, who was 3 at the time, is not the most energetic walker so my hopes that he would climb a long rocky trail up a small hill were limited at best. The trail started off with some natural play areas for kids – logs and ropes – which kept them occupied for a while. Somehow the boys were willing to leave this play area and start up a trail that we did not really know.

The trick with many of these long walks is to turn the hike into a game with hidden items and a bit of a competition between the kids. We let the younger one lead us up the hill and ensured he felt in charge. I assumed they would go a few hundred meters and insist on turning around. Surprisingly and happily, they kept walking and walking as I turned the dried out candies from the car into ‘energy pills’ that they would periodically take to boost their stamina like a video game character. The trail continued upwards and became rockier and more challenging, but they enjoyed scrambling up the slippery rocks. Based on the maps, the trail made a run up the mountain and then circled the top and came back down. It was maybe a total of 4 KM with 300 M of height. Not much, but a fair bit for kids of their age. As they continued to walk, my fear evolved into a concern the younger one would melt down and request I carry him all the way back to the car. In a certain sense I am kind of ashamed I had so little faith in him.

It was to my surprise and pleasure that we reached the top of the hill without complaining from either kid. My wife called me to ask where we were as we had not returned home as planned. I explained we had reached the top of a rocky hill without jackets, snacks, water bottles or planning or any sort. We would be home in a couple of hours if all went well. The boys started down, running so quickly that their shoes were sending flames behind them. This fun game kept them going without complaining. Upon reaching the car, I put some money in the voluntary contribution and they asked for water, which I did not have.

If I had tried to plan this hike it may never have happened. Even if it has happened, it would have been more tame and less thrilling than the hike without any snacks or research. Like so many things in life, planning can only take you so far and in a certain sense limits the excitement of the unknown. We are told by parents, business gurus and others to plan our days, our weeks, our lives. We should list our goals and then strive to accomplish them with all our might. But sometimes, it is much more pleasant and liberating to have no goals, no to-do list and just the minimal information required to act. Both kids and adults are tougher and more resilient and tougher than we think – we do not need power bars, water, or google reviews to climb up a small hiking trail. Sometimes it is best to just go for it and see what happens. This small hike up this small hill in this small region of Québec with my two small boys was a small and memorable event for us all.

Jane Goodall

Jane Goodall visited my elementary school when I was about 10 years old. Jane Goodall was a pioneer, visionary and soft spoken powerhouse who dedicated her life to conservation and spreading environmentalism.

She had a big impact on me and many of my classmates. The early 90s, when I was in elementary school, was a time of environmental awakening for many of us. Acid Rain, Polluted Rivers, Greenhouse Warming were all emerging topics that changed the way society looks at the natural world.

Years later I would start Nimonik and our initial product was a tool to help organizations understand, comply and stay abreast of Environmental Laws and Regulations. Today, Nimonik offers much more than environmental compliance tools, but my interest in environmental protection can be traced back to a lucky 10 year old boy who heard from a wise woman with a deep expertise in our nearest relatives – the Chimp – and their fragile and threatened ecosystem.

May she rest in peace after her decades of tireless work for the planet, for animals and for all mankind.

Death by Fire

I stood on the top of the Hebrew fortress of Masada wondering why families, men, women and children preferred to starve to death than surrender to the Roman army in 74 C.E. About 960 people died in their resistance to the occupation forces and the mountaintop fortress became a monumental part of Jewish and Israeli history.

From a rational point of view, surrender and physical survival seems like the best option in many circumstances and yet, over and over, people willingly or collectively choose death over submission. This happens regularly in wars and conflicts all over the world. Sometimes submission comes with near certain death and torture making surrender less appealing, but very often groups of individual prefer to die together the live alone. Humans are, after all, fundamentally social creatures – both in life and in death. Even our cemeteries are organized by religious groups.

When the Mongol warrior Genghis Khan united the tribes of Mongolia and rode across the plains to conquer the largest territory any single person has ever conquered – he brought ultimatums with him. Before attacking a city, the Khan would raise a camp within eyesight of the city and put up a white gher (traditional Mongolion tent). If the city surrendered, he would not kill the inhabitants. If the city did nothing for a few days after the white tent went up, they would change the gher for a red tent signalling impatience. If the city still refused to submit, a black tent went up indicating all would be killed. Despite widespread knowledge of this signalling mechanism, city after city refused to submit – leading to mass killings, rape and rampage. In some cases a city would submit to the Mongols, but once the marauding tribe had moved on to another place, they would revert to their previous masters and ways, forgetting to send tribute to the Mongols. This did not make Ghengis Khan happy. He would promptly return to the traitorous city and kill everyone.

Why do we so often choose stubbornness, pride, and ego over compromise and subjugation? This topic likely fills libraries of books and mountains of researchers, but still troubles me. In many ways, these social upheavals and wars feel like a slow moving train wreck and even when they are clearly crazy – Ukrainian War, Gaza, World War I, World War II, – actually nearly all wars – we are unable to stop the momentum. The emotional sunk cost of having lost loved ones or having been collectively insulted by another group of humans is enough to drive us to the most depraved and extreme forms of human action.

To survive as individuals and groups, we undoubtedly had to be stubborn and egotistical. When we were starving for food, travelling on foot, and subject to attacks by wild animals or equally starving neighbouring tribes, we had to stick together to the bitter end. To give up to a tribe living nearby often meant death or slavery, or both. It was once said that the the way humanists have managed to achieve progress over the thousands of years since we left the plains of Africa was by progressively, slowly and haltingly expanded the circle of what we consider to be fellow human beings with equal rights.

The Athenians considered anyone outside their walls sub-human, the Iroquois tribes considered the Algonquin nearly animals – the list goes on and on and on. The problem with breaking through these man-made walls that separate us is that there are actual genuine cultural differences between people. There is also long historical and sometimes legitimate (certainly perceived) reasons why one people distrusts and sometimes hates another people. I do not claim to have any form of a solution to this problem, but the great Gabor Maté gives a poignant response to a question about the current and ongoing Genocide in Gaza. His response, summarized, is that when one group hates another it often boils down to an ignorance of what the other group has gone through and why the conflict exists.

The point he makes and with which I agree with is that history is important. Working to overcome this ignorance of the lived experience of the other group is very often the first step to finding a solution that keeps the wolves of war at bay. It may not be sufficient, but if no effort is made to understand the history of a situation, the situation will only fester like an infected wound, potentially killing the entire organism.

In Canada, we recently created the Truth and Reconciliation civic holiday after having conducted a commission into the horrors of the residential school system. This residential school system, which existed from the 19th century to the late 20th century forcibly took children from their homes at the age of six, sent them to boarding schools run by the Church and tried to teach the Indian out of them. A very high percentage of children died in these under supervised and under resourced schools and many children left with life long trauma that carries through generations of native Canadians. Though I consider myself well read and smart enough to have my own blog, I knew very little of this political, social and governmental institution until only ten or fifteen years ago. I suspect this is true for nearly all Canadians and I would say, humbly, that I likely have spent more time trying to understand this past than most of my fellow Canadians who remain largely ignorant of what happened.

When facing a Mongolian horde, the most ferocious war machine the world had ever known, it may be unrealistic for the people in the enclaved cities to take the time to understand the centuries of trauma the Mongolians had suffered under the hands of the Chinese or other groups. Sitting down with Ghenghis Khan was not always possible as he was clearly a man on a mission with little patience for long winded diplomatic debates. So, that leaves us back where we started with one people unwilling to submit due to their legitimate fears of torture or rape, their egos and their collective social bonds that hold a series of families and communities together and another people on the other side of a wall, willing to attack and kill in vengeance or in a desire to take what the others have.

Peace is a fragile thing. It is a flickering flame that can be extinguished at any time if not taken care of. With more wars today in 2025 than in any recent past, we must actively work together to understand each other and find solutions that people can accept. In any good negotiation, no one is 100% happy, but everyone is better off than they were before. Being able to find an acceptable compromise based on a shared understanding of each other is the foundation of all happy relationships – from marriage to global war.

On Life

A few years ago I stood in the small room that my wife’s grandfather was occupying in a retirement home. The room was no larger than 12 feet by 12 feet in a nice building with good services and friendly staff. He had a television, a small closet, a bathroom and a bottle of rum. He insisted we drink a bit, “A rum and coke?”, he proposed. Who was I to turn down an offer like this? He then poured a bit of coke into a glass and then followed with a lot of rum. Sitting in that room and drinking the stiff drink, I thought to myself two things – “So, this is how it ends” and “I would drink too in this situation.”

Life is terribly ephemeral – a moment we are here, living and breathing and the next we are on our way out. As has often been repeated, the only truly certain thing we have is death. It comes for us all and when it does, there is nothing else. You may choose to believe in some form of mystical afterlife or reincarnation depending on your religions inclination, but life as we know it on this planet with all of its foibles and challenges is over. For some, death comes early and swiftly and for others there may be a long wait after a wholesome life filled with emotions and love and all sorts of ups and downs. No one knows and no one can tell you what will happen.

At 42 years of age, I am hopefully somewhere towards the middle of my life. This is both a comforting thought and a scary thought. Thanks to much good fortune, I have thoroughly enjoyed my first 42 years on our little spaceship called Earth. Born in a great country to a good family and blessed with good health, my time so far has been pleasant and meaningful. As a father of three, with a wonderful wife and meaningful job, and living in a great city – I have no reason to complain about anything really. My main hope is that this trend of luck and health continue for another 40 or 50 years – fingers crossed. As I have progressed through life, I have accumulated experiences that remind me of how sacred the good life is. People I have personally known have died at a younger age than I am now, parents I know have lost children to accidents and disease, I have seem the misery of hopeless abject poverty in places such as Haiti, Ethiopia and the United States. Said another way – things could be worse (for me).

When William Shatner, the actor who played Captain Kirk in Star Trek, returned from an actual trip to the edge of space onboard a Blue Origin rocket, he explained his experience:

“I saw a cold, dark, black emptiness. It was unlike any blackness you can see or feel on Earth. It was deep, enveloping, all-encompassing. I turned back toward the light of home. I could see the curvature of Earth, the beige of the desert, the white of the clouds and the blue of the sky. It was life. Nurturing, sustaining, life. Mother Earth. Gaia. And I was leaving her.

Everything I had thought was wrong. Everything I had expected to see was wrong.

I had thought that going into space would be the ultimate catharsis of that connection I had been looking for between all living things—that being up there would be the next beautiful step to understanding the harmony of the universe. In the film “Contact,” when Jodie Foster’s character goes to space and looks out into the heavens, she lets out an astonished whisper, “They should’ve sent a poet.” I had a different experience, because I discovered that the beauty isn’t out there, it’s down here, with all of us. Leaving that behind made my connection to our tiny planet even more profound.

It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness.”

The abject emptiness of space should act as a strong reminder that life is precious. In many things in life we choose to define ourselves by what we are not – racist thoughts, sports team rivalries, thoughts about people we know and dislike, etc. While this way of thinking is not always desirable, it serves a useful purpose of creating structure in our perception of the world. If we care to define life as what it is not, space would be the contrasting thing. Outside of earth, to the best of our knowledge, there is no life. There is nothing but but an infinite and expanding universe that is likely unreachable by us and can only reflect back light that we can observe. There is no salvation, no saviour and nothing of note outside of our spaceship which we live on and which orbits our Sun.

The bleakness of space should help remind us of the joys of life. As my young children demonstrate to me every single day – life is worth celebrating. Their joy, energy, happiness and reactions to food, people, events, friends and more are what make life so amazing. You can do so much, take in all that you want and express yourself as you wish. As long as you are not breaking the laws of physics, you can do a lot. In a wonderful TED talk by brother David Steindl-Rast, he explains how to be happy: be grateful. He provides a useful reminder of the many things we enjoy every day and should marvel at. For many of us in the developed world we should marvel every day at some of the basic things we have and one of the most overlooked things we should all be grateful for: free potable water.

Water is the essence of life, without water there is likely no life or certainly no life as we know it. Every time we open our faucet to take water to drink, cook, clean or do so much else – we should be reminded of the beauty of life. The act of experiencing something and especially of experiencing life alongside others – people, family, friends, animals, plants, insects, and other forms of life – remains the most fulfilling thing we can do. We are all in this show together – whether we like it or not. The uniqueness of life and of our perception of it is what makes it so special. Every living thing is unique and is constantly changing, reacting, growing, suffering and renewing itself all the time. The past is largely set in stone, the present and future are great and infinite unknown sea we must travel. As Robin Williams explained in the film Good Will Hunting,

“So if I asked you about art, you’d probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo, you know a lot about him. Life’s work, political aspirations, him and the pope, sexual orientations, the whole works, right? But I’ll bet you can’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You’ve never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling; seen that. If I ask you about women, you’d probably give me a syllabus about your personal favorites. You may have even been laid a few times. But you can’t tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy. You’re a tough kid. And I’d ask you about war, you’d probably throw Shakespeare at me, right, “once more unto the breach dear friends.” But you’ve never been near one. You’ve never held your best friend’s head in your lap, watch him gasp his last breath looking to you for help. I’d ask you about love, you’d probably quote me a sonnet. But you’ve never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable. Known someone that could level you with her eyes, feeling like God put an angel on earth just for you. Who could rescue you from the depths of hell. And you wouldn’t know what it’s like to be her angel, to have that love for her, be there forever, through anything, through cancer. And you wouldn’t know about sleeping sitting up in the hospital room for two months, holding her hand, because the doctors could see in your eyes, that the terms “visiting hours” don’t apply to you. You don’t know about real loss, ’cause it only occurs when you’ve loved something more than you love yourself. And I doubt you’ve ever dared to love anybody that much. And look at you… I don’t see an intelligent, confident man… I see a cocky, scared shitless kid. But you’re a genius Will. No one denies that. No one could possibly understand the depths of you. But you presume to know everything about me because you saw a painting of mine, and you ripped my fucking life apart. You’re an orphan right?

[Will nods]

Sean (Robin Williams): You think I know the first thing about how hard your life has been, how you feel, who you are, because I read Oliver Twist? Does that encapsulate you? Personally… I don’t give a shit about all that, because you know what, I can’t learn anything from you, I can’t read in some fuckin’ book. Unless you want to talk about you, who you are. Then I’m fascinated. I’m in. But you don’t want to do that do you sport? You’re terrified of what you might say. Your move, chief.”

This dramatic quote may have some exaggeration to it, but the point remains – each person has a unique story to tell and their own view of the world. This is something that should be embraced and cherished. We are all going to die and we will take with us all of our experiences and memories to the tomb. While we do live, we should strive to fill our lives with as much positive meaning as possible, because afterwards it is all gone. After three generations, no one will remember you. No matter how rich you are, it always ends the same way. Even the wealthy Pharoah Tutankhamen could not leave us his thoughts and dreams – only his gold and perhaps some dead slaves in his tomb. Let me end with a one last thought from another film, Ferris Bueller’s day off, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”