Posts Tagged With: Environment

Saving the World – another in a series

I’ve recently taken to wiling away rainy afternoons by offering up snappy solutions to some of the pressing problems of the day, in hopes that the relevant politicians may someday stumble upon my humble blog and be galvanized into appropriate action.

The solutions all seem so simple when concocted from the comfort of my favourite armchair – why just last week I took a stab at vanquishing the current housing affordability crisis ttps://gentlemansrelish.ca/2022/04/25/down-to-the-sea-again/, so this week I thought I would offer up a”twofer’ and tackle two burning problems- climate change and indigenous rights, with a single stroke of the pen.

It is time, I suggest, to re-visit the long mothballed Mid Canada Corridor Project, the personal centennial project of Maj. Gen Richard Rohmer, soldier, lawyer, author, public figure, and passionately patriotic Canadian.

Rohmer’s plan was essentially to kickstart the development of the north by creating an infrastructure corridor across boreal Canada, anchored by large planned communities in locations such as Fort Smith, Flin Flon, Whitehorse, Timmins and Labrador City, and linked with road and rail corridors that would open up the ports of Churchill and Inuvik. Back in the sixties, no-one was paying a lot of attention to either climate change , or indigenous rights, so nationalism, and resource extraction were the real driving forces behind the plan. Rohmer was concerned that, in a vast, empty land, we all lived in a thin ribbon of population right along the border with a restless and unpredictable neighbour. Indeed he wrote several novels exploring the theme of the USA annexing Canada.

40 years on, our southern neighbour is even more volatile, climate change is top of mind everywhere, agriculture is creeping northward, and the north is starting to look a lot more hospitable than it did in the sixties when his grand scheme could never get beyond the fact that nobody actually wanted to live in Flin Flon or Labrador City.

If last summer’s heat dome here in the south is the harbinger of future summer weather, a temperate northern summer now seems almost alluring, and as crops wither and bake down here, agricultural opportunities expand to the north, where technology, ample water, and the midnight sun could combine for exciting possibilities.

Presently, most think of the north as a void of endless uninhabited acres of boreal forest, but of course , it isn’t. Not only has our north been inhabited by indigenous people for thousands of years, it remains so today – dotted with many small communities, albeit most on life support. Our First Nations remain anchored to their ancestral homelands, but no longer utilize them as their ancestors did. The result has been to create artificial communities that exist without any economic rationale.

Southerners shake their heads at reports of 90% unemployment rates in indigenous communities, and bridle at the astronomic and ever increasing cost of supplying them with services. Indeed some communities can only be accessed by air, so it is little wonder that they are unable to sustain a viable economy. Even those communities blessed with nearby natural resources can’t benefit from them without the infrastructure to move those resources to market, and those without resources have no economic advantages they can leverage. Who wants to set up shop in a remote location without access to the tools of commerce?

Surely a large part of the solution to “the First Nations Problem” is to integrate indigenous communities into the mainstream economy by providing the infrastructure that would enable them to participate fully in it. The North has the land, the resources, and the potential workforce- but it needs the roads, railway, and power grid that the Mid Canada Corridor envisions, in order to thrive. Welfare or infrastructure – we are going to pay either way, so we have little to lose.

Too glib a solution? probably- but a key component to beginning to address and improve our complex relationship with our indigenous peoples has to be economic empowerment, and that requires a bold vision, and a big plan (the sort of stuff Canada used to be built on). Some have called Rohmer’s vision grandiose and doomed, but serious thinkers, including the Northern Policy Institute, in 2014, and even the Senate of Canada’s Standing Committee on Trade and Commerce, as recently as 2017, have dusted off Rohmer’s detailed report.

Selfishly, I love the wilderness, and would love to keep the north empty and wild, but realistically, is it possible? or fair to our First Nations? It is time to start the conversation, so I can move on to armchair quarterbacking more solutions to the world’s problems.

Balckstone River running through Tombstone Territorial Park, with the Dempster Highway slicing through the landscape
Categories: entrepreneurship, Environment, First Nations, visions of the future | Tags: , , , , | 2 Comments
 
 

TIS THE SEASON – OF CONTROVERSY

We came across the tree of remembrance on a snowy trail deep in Mundy park- a small fir tree festooned with photos -some of humans, but mostly of dogs (Mundy is an off -leash dog park) a small hand lettered sign inviting walkers to hang a photo in remembrance of someone dear, but now departed, that had walked the park with them in days gone by. The memorial was a new creation, since we walk the park frequently and had never encountered it before-doubtless it was done in the sprit of the season, since Christmas was almost upon us.

It seemed a simple, and heartwarming gesture, and judging from the comments of others as they passed, one which was appreciated by the community of dog walkers who inhabit the park. Imagine then, my surprise when our local community Facebook page came alive with a diatribe against Christmas decorations in parks!

Decorating trees along local forest trails with Christmas ornaments has been gaining popularity over the past several year. I’m not sure when I first noticed a decorated tree in one of our local parks,- likely at least five years ago, but they have become common place, with families and groups, like my wife’s walking group, adopting a tree for the season and decorating it.

But alas, the grinchly Facebook post had ignited a fire storm, and incendiary posts poured in – the Ornamentalists pleading for reason- the pastime was innocent, and gave joy to many-a delightful and unexpected enhancement of a stroll through a wintry wood- while the Puritans insisted it was a desecration of nature- an un-needed and unwanted intrusion- surely unadorned nature should be enough!

Many of the Facebook Flame-throwers insisted that Christmas ornaments were simply bad for the environment. I could have saved them the energy of a Facebook post- I know for a fact that argument doesn’t work- I tried to use it a few years ago to get out of hanging the outdoor Christmas lights, and ended up on the top of a stepladder with a flea in my ear and a string of lights around my neck quicker than you can say Merry Christmas.

The social media ‘War in the Woods’ continued to escalate, as one of the most strident puritans, emboldened by the luke-warm support she had received, posted that all Christmas decorations were henceforth deemed “litter” and she was personally forming a work party to clean up the park . The Ornamentalists were put on notice – if they valued their baubles, they had best remove them within 48 hours before a volunteer posse of environmentalists assembled to sweep the park clean of man-made clutter – Christmas be damned!

The litter argument was a curious one, I thought, since the ornaments have been appearing in the park for years around Christmas time, and promptly disappearing, a few days after New Years, leaving no trace in the forest. Whether the work of unseen forest elves, or of conscientious Baublistas, the woodland park has remained pristine, without the intervention of zealots.

Social media being what it is, the challenge did not go unanswered, as the Baublistas replied with fury-how dare others be offended- and who gave the puritans the right to preach, or interfere with the god-given and probably constitutional right to hang ornaments in parks?

Feeling the need to nurture the seasonal myth of goodwill to all mankind, and yearning for the simple pleasure of a tranquil walk in the woods, free of controversy, we elected to avoid encountering the threatened work party and the likely clash of ideology along the trail, by taking an alternate, and unadorned path.

There, to our delight we discovered the work product of that endangered species of the deep forest –

THE MODERATE!

Someone, of obvious diplomatic mien. had taken the time to adorn the path with a seasonal icon- a snowman- BUT- using only natural materials – compacted snow, fir boughs, twigs, and pinecones. Something human crafted- to amuse the passersby, – but no man-made materials to offend.

On a snowy path, deep in the forest, a master class in the art of compromise, taught by an anonymous Moderate.

We tried to follow their tracks, since its so rare to see a Moderate in the wild, but the tracks eventually disappeared into the deep snow, leaving us to muse that, in the Canada of our youth, Moderates were everywhere- their range extending Canada wide- from the great boreal forest, tp the the Canadian Shield and beyond- even occasionally being spotted in Ottawa. What had caused their decline, we wondered ?

So we continued our walk, wistful that we had missed a rare sighting, but gladdened by the knowledge that untamed, free-range Moderates continue to exist in the wilderness at our back door. My wife, always with a soft spot for wildlife, suggested that we should leave some food out for them, but I’m against it-let them live as nature intended, I say.

Then again, to settle the debate, perhaps I should try to solicit some feedback from our friendly neighbourhood Facebook group?

Categories: Environment, Etiquette & manners, Nature, Parks, Reflections | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

All aboard the climate change bandwagon!

Whistler has just sent a demand letter to a major Alberta oil company seeking compensation for the extra costs incurred by the municipality because of climate change. Now that is a bandwagon I can climb aboard!-here’s a draft of my own demand letter to Big Oil: Continue reading

Categories: Environment, humour, Reflections, Travel | Tags: , , , , , | 1 Comment

Is it too much to ask?

My heart sank this morning when I heard that a fuel barge with millions of litres of fuel on board was in danger of grounding itself  on the shores of the Goose Group, a tiny, uninhabited group of islands that lie offshore of the remote stretch of the  BC coast known as the Hakai. Continue reading

Categories: Environment, kayaking, Nature, Travel | Tags: , , , | 2 Comments

Blog at WordPress.com.