This past summer, rummaging through a table of used books, I found Elizabeth Gilbert’s The Last American Man. It’s her 2002 biography of Eustace Conway, a modern-day Daniel Boone who lives on a thousand acres of pristine land in the hillbilly country of the Appalachian Mountains. He has made himself an expert at everything he puts his hands to, which is mostly recovering ancient ways of farming and building and cooking and concocting remedies from tree bark and forest plants.

I read recently a report detailing an investigation into RCMP misconduct. One finding of the investigation: the RCMP were guilty of a "flawed process." There was botched handling of the situation, insufficient checks and balances, ignorance or negligence of procedural protocols, and the like. My single opinion about all that: being a cop is a tough job, and anyone subjected to the same level of intense scrutiny might likewise be found guilty of a "flawed process." But I got m