Why?

The purpose of this newsletter is to give coverage to important stories that have been censored, suppressed or ignored by the mainstream news media.

Though I’ve ended up talking a lot about COVID issues and the war in Ukraine, that’s only because those are the areas currently most prone to censorship.

Be forewarned: If the mainstream media are not willing to talk about an important story on any topic, I reserve the right to talk about it.

Subscribe:

If you subscribe, each new post I write will be delivered direct to your inbox. Free.

Comment:

I would encourage you to comment on anything I write. Together we can create an ideas forum.

If there’s a story that you think has been unfairly ignored by the mainstream media, please tell me about it. (You can email me directly at bruceohara@substack.com)

If you think someone you know would enjoy a particular post, please forward it to them. If you think they’d enjoy this site, please send them the link: bruceohara.substack.com

Substack:

To find out more about the company that provides the tech for this newsletter, visit Substack.com.

About Me:

In a poem, an ex-wife once described me as being ‘tormented by the possible.’

In 1972, at the age of 20, I became a Quaker and a pacifist. My next two summers were spent in Quaker work camps in Belfast, Northern Ireland, doing sports and crafts with slum kids in a war zone. (They were among the best summers of my life, if that makes any sense.)

In 1977, I completed a Bachelor of Independent Studies degree in the area of Counselling at the University of Waterloo. Integrated Studies was an amazing student-run program. Imagine a Summerhill for adults and you have a close approximation.

In 1984, I founded Work Well, an information centre on family-friendly work schedules in Victoria, BC. While Work Well’s Executive Director, I wrote Put Work In Its Place, a 256-page self-help guide for those wanting a better work/life balance.

In 1993, I wrote Working Harder Isn’t Working: A Detailed Plan for Implementing a Four-Day Workweek in Canada. For the next several years, I made a passable living promoting the four-day workweek as a conference keynote speaker.

In 2004, I wrote Enough Already: Breaking Free in the Second Half of Life. I then fulfilled a decades old dream to teach English in China. That was followed by stints teaching English in Cuenca, Ecuador, and in the Galapagos Islands.

In Cuenca, I met my wife, Catalina. Our son Daniel was born in 2007, Juan Diego in 2010. We lived for several years in Vilcabamba, Ecuador. I taught English part-time, and semantics at the University of Loja.

In 2016, we moved to Victoria, BC. Since then, I’ve had the great luxury to be a stay-at-home dad. So far, I have been able to slow the slow the aging process with dance aerobics, yoga, doing weights and playing squash at the local YMCA. I love to garden. We like to camp in our 1987 Econoline campervan.

My family is a delight. Victoria is a beautiful and dynamic city to live in. Though my friendship circle and my play life both suffered some diminishment during the COVID pandemic, I am making steady progress in reclaiming life’s pleasures.

It is the larger world that casts a long shadow over my life.

Month after month, we keep skating closer and closer to a war that could vaporize all the good in your life and mine in a matter of hours.

The COVID pandemic looked to me suspiciously liked a trial-run on how to use an ‘emergency’ to impose something close to totalitarian rule.

I see the uber-rich steadily getting richer while ordinary people’s expenses rise faster than their incomes.

Not only do billionaires, giant corporations, the Military-Industrial Complex and Big Pharma exert an inordinate degree of control over Governments in North America, they also exert a frightening level of control over what can be talked about in the mainstream media.

None of that is okay with me.

I see that the truth has a certain power and potency in the world. Just let it out of whatever cage imprisons it, and it has an inexorable tendency to spread. If I can be a part of that process, it’s all I need.

Subscribe to News Non Grata

News Not Welcome in the Mainstream Media

People

Bruce O’Hara is 71 years old and lives in Victoria, BC, with his wife Catalina and sons Dan, 15, and Juan Diego, 12. He adopts news orphans whenever he can.