"I'll go no more a-roving..."

Well, not until next time anyway. This afternoon as I climbed out of the tiny ten-seater Saab airplane that brought me back from Waterloo, that tune popped into my head as I realized that for the first time I can remember in many years I have no future travel whatsoever in the file folder in my desk drawer that I reserve for travel plans. I should have: at first I accepted a wedding invitation to fly out to St Andrews-by-the-Sea in New Brunswick where my friends Pat Huston and Bob Clark will marry the day after tomorrow. Then Pat gave me an opportunity to back out when I told her it would be my third flight out of Ottawa in 2 weeks, so I gratefully made my excuses and won't fly to St John New Brunswick tomorrow. It would have been one trip too many. As it was, I flew to Waterloo yesterday afternoon, took grandson Peter Last and his lady friend Sylvie Spraakman out to a rather costly but excellent dinner last night, had a sleepless night because my jet lag finally caught up with me, spoke for almost 2 hours to the new intake of MPH students at Waterloo this morning, and flew back to Ottawa this afternoon. While I was in Waterloo last night, I had an email from Gilles Paradis, inviting me to perform for his class at McGill next month, but the dates he wants me coincide with the visit to Ottawa of my friends Jeff House and Fiona Stevens, so I turned Gilles down too. Everyone says my interactive chat to the new MPH intake this morning was a success, and I felt pretty good about it too, but I was glad when it was over. Now I can focus on the report Raj Bhopal asked me to write about the RCPE online collection of historically important works on epidemiology and public health, and on licking into final shape the chapters I must write for Public Health and Ecology, which is a lineal descendant of Public Health and Human Ecology, the book I am most pleased and proud about among all I've written and edited. Back to that MPH Class: It's worth the trip to Waterloo for my annual dose of optimism about people and the future. This year, like others in the past, the class of about 70-80 is predominantly female and predominantly made up of experienced public health workers aiming to upgrade their skills, perhaps to leap over a salary bar too. I made enough provocative remarks to stimulate a vigorous interactive discussion that led seamlessly into the theme for the second half of the morning, 'The future of public health' -- of which unfortunately I missed the first half because I was kidnapped by a TV interviewer, and asked among other things for my opinions about the future. I'd have preferred to listen to the views of others, especially the two very bright and capable women (both public health physicians) who conducted that session. I understand that my interview is to be posted on the Waterloo MPH website so I'll post the URL on this blog when I get it.