One day recently, I was walking down our street with my son's dog and enjoying the freshness of the after-rain experience. I looked up and saw a lone black crow on a bare branch of a tree.
It is a fact of nature that birds like crows manage a full lifespan without any external help, unlike man. Man constantly seeks support from other people, engages in futile searches for comfort from a wide variety of often destructive drugs, indulges daily in self-pity and generates all kinds of excuses for poor choices in life.
The crow should be seen as a model of self-sufficiency and as a survivor from all kinds of trials from the daily search for food, weather extremes, heavy pollution from man's vehicles, heated houses, buildings and garbage. Why not view the crow as an inspiring role model for man to emulate?
Let Haligonians take down the statue of Cornwallis – a historical, controversial, military killer of native people – and replace it with one of the crow, who proudly survives alone but remains unbowed from the daily challenges of life.
Morris Givner
Halifax