From Linda Priestley, Editor-in-Chief
In case you’ve been feeling a little down lately, here’s an antidote for gloom: think about the progress that has been made over the past few decades in Canada. Our well-being, for example, is no longer measured simply in relation to the GDP. Work-life balance, the time we spend on leisure activities, and the choices we make as a democratic society all factor into the equation.
Over the years, many positive changes have taken place, such as the decriminalization of abortion, an increase in people’s incomes and in the rate of students graduating from high school, a reduction in poverty and in the seriousness of crimes committed, and a higher life expectancy at birth, which over three decades went from 75 to 83 years—people in their 50s, 60s, 70s, and up are staying younger longer.
It turns out that we might well be visionaries. Pierre Fortin, a professor of economics at the Université du Québec à Montréal, wrote in a 2022 opinion piece published in the daily newspaper Le Devoir that, “thanks to the vision of our boomer grandparents, which was implemented by those who came after them, we have become a rich, egalitarian, and happy people.”
We’re not only visionaries but optimists, despite the challenges in the areas of mental health, inflation, the environment, discrimination of all kinds, and violence against women, to name just a few. It seems that 2023 will even be a year of miracles, with the world of medicine on the verge of finding innovative treatments for diabetes, Parkinson’s, HIV, and some cancers and heart conditions, experts say.
The Good Times team hopes you will be sustained and motivated by the same confident optimism that allows researchers, creators, and visionaries to give people even more hope. We can all be agents of change.
Photo: iStock
