Photo Credit: Blacknight Solutions

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…The famous opening phrase to Charles Dickens’ novel “A Tale Of Two Cities” was applied to the times in which Dickens lived, but it probably also applies to all periods in history, including our own. This past year represents both the best of times and the worst of times for us. What follows are a few random snapshots of the past year, representing both the good times and the bad.

Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States and became the first African American President.

In 2009, the economy continued to suffer, but Canada weathered the global economic storms better than most countries.

This year included “Earth Hour” during which millions around the world turned off their lights. This was followed towards the end of the year with the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. Unfortunately, climate change is a policy area that the Harper Government ignores.

2009 was the year that we lost some political heavyweights: Ted Kennedy in the U.S., Douglas Fisher and Romeo-Adrian LeBlanc here in Canada.

In 2009, we were distracted by scandal: Toronto M.P. Ruby Dhalla’s alleged mistreatment of Filipina caregivers, the Afghan detainee file, the taser death of Robert Dziekanski at Vancouver’s airport and Conrad Black’s appeals of his prison sentence.

Michael Ignatieff was acclaimed as leader of the Federal Liberal Party.

In 2009, we feared the swine (H1N1) flu virus, but eventually the H1N1 flu vaccine was made available for everyone, and the pandemic turned out to be relatively minor.

Wishing you happiness and peace for the New Year ahead and a year that includes more of the best of times than the worst of times.

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Tags: barack obama, climate change, global economic recession, h1n1

This entry was posted on Monday, January 11th, 2010 at 10:08 pm and is filed under Canada and the World, Federal Government. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.