Rev; I am still unwilling to cast Canada as a third world country during the 20th century. Let us look at some facts. You (and your mother?) survived your birth. To do this would have required access to medical care, or good luck/good health or all of the above. Many in the third world are not so lucky. As I type this somewhere in the world a young teenage girl will be labouring to give birth to her baby. Unless she can get medical help any problems she has will lead to the prospect of death or disability for her, and also her child. Having survived birth the child will be greatly advantaged socially by being male, he just might be able to go to school, a girl's chance of that are much less. Also in many countries boys join the army, as you did, where they receive training of some use later, but it is a dangerous choice in the third world. Girls stay home in uneducated poverty. You, Rev, are computer literate, so somewhere you did learn to read, (probably because you went to school). That was a useful skill to acquire, many in the world today are illiterate. You have in the past stated that you are growing older, many do not have that to look forward to, and the fact that you have seems to suggest that you have either good health or good medical care or perhaps both to have reached this stage in your life. I get the impression you are surrounded by a family and friends and enjoy a happy retirement with enough money to get by on. I certainly do, thanks to my own hard work and planning but also thanks to a sound social security system that supports older people. This is definitely not so in third world countries where the elderly, who have survived the hardships of their lives, still work, or are regarded as a burden.

I do acknowledge your pride in your achievements Rev, but your life's journey was set against a background of possibilities and opportunities that are not available in the other two thirds of the world. We should not forget how fortunate we are.

(Once again this is just my opinion.)