As in years of yore, I've scanned in the Prime Minister's annual Easter card so Canadians who happen to be out of the country or who didn't receive their greeting before the holiday can see what Stephen's up to.

This Easter Prime Minister Harper will be on-site at the Alberta Tar Sands handing out Easter chocolates to animals whose habitat has been destroyed by the Tar Sands and the numerous children worldwide whose futures have been put in jeopardy by the plundering of our environment. Just look for the Syncrude signage if you want to know where to go to collect your free chocolate. There will also be a hunt for Canadian democracy (likely lying at the bottom of a toxic tailing pond) and Tar Sands Easter decorating competition. So you gotta know that will be a wicked fun time! Get your pastel paints and scuba gear ready.

* CAUTION: The Government of Canada and Syncrude are not responsible for death, dismemberment or illness suffered in conjunction with this offer.

Additional Harper greeting cards, action figures, and promotional photos available here.  

When we last peeked in at model of manners and dapper dresser Mister Dash, the mixed breed pooch was saving Madame Croissant's rambunctious granddaughter Daphne from a Radio Flyer accident in Merci Mister Dash! Happily there's a brand new Mister Dash adventure on shelves and it involves tantalizing cupcakes, the spirited but troublesome Daphne, more Dash heroics, and heaping servings of charm and laughter.

Jauntily gorgeous illustrations by Esperança Melo are the perfect match for Monica Kulling's (author of Lumpito and the Painter from Spain and Tundra's award-winning Great Idea series) warmly dynamic story. The delightful combination is bound to make Mister Dash and the Cupcake Calamity a favourite with youngsters.

Kulling has a winning hero in the fastidious but loyal Dash, who plays delivery dog for Madame Croissant's bakery business even as he feels foolish in the baker's hat, and I hope we have many more Mister Dash adventures to look forward to.

I'm honoured, thrilled and stunned to be able to say I found out earlier this week that I got a Canada Council grant for a YA book I've been working on! To have this vote of confidence from Canada Council is such a heady thing. I'm over the moon and have never felt more like a Canadian writer.

Recently I also learned, to my immense joy, that Yesterday made the Canadian Library Association's Young Adult Book Award shortlist along with 9 other fantastic books: 40 Things I Want to Tell You (Alice Kuipers), Bright's Light (Susan Juby), The Calling (Kelley Armstrong), The Last Song (Eva Wiseman), My Book of Life by Angel (Martine Leavitt), One Good Hustle (Billie Livingston), The Reluctant Journal of Henry K. Larsen (Susin Nielsen), Such Wicked Intent (Kenneth Oppel), and What Happened to Ivy (Kathy Stinson). You can see the complete lists for the CLA Book of the Year for Children Award, the Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon Illustrator’s Award and the CLA Young Adult Book Award here. Congrats to all the CLA-nominated authors!

Before these two wonderful pieces of news good luck was in short supply (the publishing business is hard, hard, hard) and it means so much to me to have this recognition from other Canadians. It would be impossible for me to overstate that. And if it happens that there's another tough patch around the corner, these two things will see me through it.

Finally, before I go I want to share the stunning cover of the Chinese edition of My Beating Teenage Heart. Four copies arrived from my agent yesterday and I keep wandering over to the sideboard to stare at them. Aren't they lovely?

Did you happen to see the report released by the Conference Board of Canada six weeks ago that revealed Canada dumps more garbage per capita than any other country in the developed world? Additionally, its water use is almost double the average of other countries. In the report entitled "How Canada Performs - Environment" Canada was ranked 15 out of 17 countries. Only the United States and Australia's performance were worse.                      

And do you happen to remember the annual Climate Change Performance Index results released in December by Germanwatch and Climate Action Network Europe? "Canada fell to 58th place out of 61 countries analyzed for their policies and action on climate change this year, trailed only by Kazakhstan, Iran, and Saudi Arabia." It's embarrassing and unconscionable that a country of Canada's wealth and natural beauty should behave with such recklessness and disdain for the natural world, our home.

It's this disdain that so often in recent years leaves me feeling acutely embarrassed to be Canadian. I would like to apologize to the rest of the world for our brazen disregard for the environment, only apparently they don't care either.

That's right, nobody much cares. A global poll of nearly 23,000 people across 22 countries found that environmental concerns are at record lows. "Asked how serious they consider each of six environmental problems to be-air pollution, water pollution, species loss, automobile emissions, fresh water shortages, and climate change-fewer people now consider them "very serious" than at any time since tracking began twenty years ago. Climate change is the only exception, where concern was lower from 1998 to 2003 than it is now. Concern about air and water pollution, as well as biodiversity, is significantly below where it was even in the 1990s. Many of the sharpest falls have taken place in the past two years."

It's staggering. Wasn't this the year we saw Hurricane Sandy vomit the Atlantic Ocean up over New Jersey and New York? The summer of 2012/2013 was Australia's hottest on record, not in a nice let's drink our margaritas on the beach way but in a "catastrophic" fire threat one. Then there's Bangladesh. Experts predict that 250 million people worldwide will become climate refugees by 2050. Of those, 20 million to 30 million climate change refugees (likely the largest number from one place) are expected to be in Bangladesh, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Rising sea levels, a result of melting glaciers, could flood and/or erode 17 % of the country.

The human capacity for denial is seemingly infinite. Surely, at some point we must've been smarter than this? Otherwise how did we make it this far?

In the short term I guess as a Canadian I should be glad that generally people aren't as worried about climate change as they have been in the past, because it means this country can act like the asshole it apparently is without any worry about folks coming over to pelt us with rotten tomatoes and kick sand in our faces. As for our long term strategy, I can only conclude that Stephen Harper (our cyborg Prime Minister) is arranging safe passage to another solar system for all us Canadians. When the planet revolts against our abuse with a vehemence that makes daily living a struggle beyond our capabilities the Conservative Party's alien pals will whisk us away to a peaceful, unoccupied planet with an enviable bounty of natural resources. There, our descendants will be free to repeat our loveable old tradition of junking the planet with wild abandon. Hell, as long as Stephen Harper's at the helm, NHL is on the boob tube, there's Tim Hortons coffee readily available, and the bright promise of a new Target opening around the corner, millions of us Canucks may not even notice we've left earth.

You may have already heard about Books with no Bounds, founded by Oakville teen sisters and ardent readers, Julia and Emma. If you haven't, and particularly if you live in Ontario, I'd like to call your attention to their cause: a book drive sending much-needed books to aboriginal young people in Northern Ontario.

In a Facebook post Julia and Emma explained: “(First Nations) Regional Chief Stan Beardy once told us that First Nation kids sometimes grow up owning only one book their whole lives.” Many of these kids are also four to five years behind in literacy skills.

That this is happening in our province is to our deep shame. But Julia and Emma are on a mission to change these conditions. We can help them in their aim “"to fill the shelves of the children's homes and school libraries.”"

So far Books with no Bounds has sent 12,500 books to the northern communities of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, but they're not done yet. Shipments are continuing four times a year. Last weekend I donated several copies of my own books and if you're an Ontario reader/writer/concerned resident, please consider doing the same.

Book or monetary donation can be arranged by visiting Books with no Bounds Facebook page or website. You can read more about Books with no Bounds in the National Post and Inside Halton articles from July and February.

"Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change." ~Thomas Hardy

I've been a fan of time travel stories since, as a second-grader, I watched Charlton Heston discover the half-sunken Statue of Liberty on a shoreline of a planet ruled by intelligent apes. Our planet. Charlton, understandably, takes the news of his whereabouts badly. "Oh my God," he says. "I'm back. I'm home. All the time, it was... We finally really did it... You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell."

Later, in Escape from the Planet of the Apes (the third of five Apes movie), three chimpanzees from the future escape the destruction of the earth by repairing the same spacecraft Heston had arrived in. The intelligent apes arrive back in 1973 where one of them gives birth to the world's first talking ape, thereby setting the stage for the rise of the apes (something which has both already happened but has still, in 1973, yet to happen). A perfect circle. Watching Escape from the Planet of the Apes for the first time my brain looped around and around, trying to get a handle on this idea.

I think the chief reason that time travel in fiction and movies has such enduring appeal is that for all our technological advancements time is still something we have no control over. Yes, theoretically time travel is possible but I don't have any friends who have actually achieved it. And there are occasions in all our lives when we could desperately use a do-over. Occasions when such intervention would have prevented terrible disasters. Then there's nostalgia, the feeling that the past is somehow closer to perfection than the present. We can hope for the future (or dread it) and miss the past, but both things are always beyond reach.

One of my favourite time travel plots occurs in Stephen Fry's Making History (1996). Time travel prevents the birth of Adolph Hitler. This deviation in history turns the United States into an ultra-conservative nation where racial segregation still occurs and homosexuality is a crime. The alternate post-WWII history of the western world is fascinating and feels credible.

Here are my some of my other favourite time travel plots, mostly from the film world: 

La Jetee/12 Monkeys: I first saw Chris Marker's 1962 French sci-fi short La Jetee in film school. It's both stark and beautiful and contains only a brief moment of actual moving footage. The rest of the film is composed of still-photographs and centers on a Third World war prisoner who is sent back in time, in a series of experiments, to seek help for his world from the future. Director Terry Gilliam made an appealing full length version of the film in 1995: 12 Monkeys. 

Donnie Darko: A teenage boy is haunted by visions which include a guy in a creepy rabbit costume and time lines made visible. Where the hell is all this going? Trippy as all get out but in the best possible way. 

Donnie Darko

 The Terminator/Terminator 2: Judgment Day: Trying to save the future from doom when what's left of humanity only has access to inferior cyborgs is an uphill battle. One that we have to wage time after time. Peristance is everything. 

The Time Machine: First published in 1895, a movie adaptation was produced in 1960 and a second in 2002. This classic tale of humanity's downfall — a collapse brought about by scientific "advancement" — remains as potent as ever. 

Groundhog Day: The transformation Billy Murray makes from perpetually irritated self-centered newsman to a well-rounded human being when he finally stops fighting the fact that the rest of his life might well be spent in the same winter day is hilarious, warm and wise. 

The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey: The Black Death is sweeping 14th century England. A Cumbrian village boy's visions inspire a group of his fellow villagers to tunnel through the earth and erect a cross in an attempt to ward off infection. The journey through the earth leads the travellers to 20th century New Zealand, a place they struggle to understand as they race to fulfill their quest.

The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey

Planet of the Apes/Escape from the Planet of the Apes: The 1968 film was based on a 1963 book by Pierre Boulle. The horrifying idea that we might one day devastate the planet through human invention (atomic bombs) was much newer when these films were released than it is now. In fact, the rise of an ape civilization after a nuclear war would now appear to be the good news. There's something intriguing about watching our nearest biological relatives follow in our footsteps in these films. 

Looper: In 2044, where time travel is possible but illegal, a crime syndicate has come up with a handy workaround to help them wipe out their enemies and, ultimately, the assassins themselves. When hitman Joe is sent back in time to be killed, young Joe is the one about to pull the trigger. Until he discovers who his target is. And this is just the first few minutes! A must-see for people who like their action movies smart. 

Lost: "Think of the island as a record, spinning on a turntable," Daniel Faraday said. "Only now, that record is skipping." Whatever you say, Faraday! Time travel back to the 70s was only one of the treats in Lost's goody bag. I think the main reason we devoured all the weirdness (including temporal disturbances) was our fondness for the characters who remained three-dimensional no matter what was thrown at them. 

Life on Mars: BBC police procedural show about a cop who wakes up in 1973 after a 2006 car accident and aims to enlighten the '73 police force while hoping for a return to the future. This show simultaneously inspires nostalgia for a less politically correct time while we also root for main character Sam Tyler in his efforts to, in effect, make the future arrive faster by putting his progressive twenty-first century ideas into action. 

Being Erica: Emotional Canadian time travel drama about a woman whose temporally gifted therapist allows her to work out her various issues by travelling back to certain parts of her life and redo them. Erin Karpluk plays the likeable Erica Strange (intrepid time traveller!) and Torontonians will especially enjoy the local scenery, from Centre Island to Casa Loma. 

Fringe: I've seldom been so sorry to see a series end. For five seasons Walter Bishop was the smartest man on television and Olivia its greatest hero. Fringe featured astounding plotlines hinging on parallel universes and a race of people called Watchers who have mastery over time. But it never forgot the humanity of its central characters and the importance of their relationships with each other. Love. Sacrifice. Hope. Courage. On Fringe these qualities endured across time and place proving a wonderful inspiration.

Fringe