blogcutter

Just like Max Frost in Wild in the Streets, I have now been taken down a peg. The Baby Boom generation (to which I belong) is no longer the most populous one in Canada. Instead, it is the Millennials who prevail. I would assume that the situation is similar in the U.S. although I haven't researched it enough to say for sure.
Anyway, back to Max Frost.

Max felt that the world revolved around him and his generation and the world owed him a gold-plated living. Folks over 30 were not to be trusted and were forcibly retired and trucked off to places resembling concentration camps. Meanwhile, Max and his people campaigned to lower the voting age to 14. In the song Fifty-two Percent, they boasted about the great youth-oriented society where all the TV shows are written for them and just about everything else is geared to their wishes and whims. Eventually Max ran for U.S. president and won by a landslide. It's beyond the scope of this entry to speculate as to whether a young or an old U.S. president is better for their country or for the world as a whole but anyway, you can listen to the Wild in the Streets soundtrack here:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcN_ivZdpJQFsYSkS_lbyhep1xc7BAfNX

Is it a blessing or a curse to be in the majority? Perhaps it's a mixed blessing. Or a mixed curse, if you're in the "glass half empty" camp.

Even back in 1968 when I was a teenager and we were supposedly a youth-oriented society, there were plenty of people and public- and private-sector institutions who really had no use for young people! If we took too long browsing the magazines at the Little Brick Smokehouse on Elgin Street, the proprietor would sarcastically ask if he could stamp our library cards for us. (Aside: That may be why I eventually became a librarian - so I could stamp my own library card and possibly refuse to issue him a card!) Later, when looking for an apartment to rent while I studied for my librarianship degree, I constantly walked past places with rooms or apartments for rent and the firm statement "No students, please!" on them. Summer and part-time jobs were in short supply because there were so many of us and as for getting a job after graduation? Well, I think we've all heard of the archetypal person with a PhD working as a night-shift janitor or a taxi driver earning below the minimum wage.

Now I'm a senior and society can be quite ageist. But do the Millennials have it any easier? Jobs may be easier to come by, but not necessarily good or secure jobs. Housing is scarce and expensive. I really don't envy the younger generations.

But to end on a more positive note, I do see the progress we've made over the decades. I'm encouraged by some of the intergenerational initiatives I've seen. I think the generation gap is definitely closing. The gender gap too. We're not there yet but I think we are more socially conscious and less classist. I'd love to see the politicians work harder on issues that transcend party politics, like Universal Basic Income and fairness and equality for groups that are marginalized for whatever reason.

Below, here's the StatsCan release that sparked all this:

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/240221/dq240221a-eng.htm

Today instead of a throwback Thursday, I'm going to do a kind of throw-ahead Thursday. Our local newspaper is asking people to write in and briefly describe what their "new normal" will look like, or what they would LIKE it to look like once this pandemic is a distant memory.

So here's what I hope for, tempered by what I think we can realistically expect.

You know that old adage, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger"? I don't think anybody will come through this totally unscathed, even if their own and their family's health are not directly affected. I would hope that most of us have learned to be kinder and more compassionate than we may have been previously, and that we will be more appreciative of what we have. I think we are coming to understand, in a more heartfelt way, the value but also the fragility of our lives. Many of us have reassessed our goals and priorities over the past several months. Some of us have had ample time to take stock of our lives. As for those stressed-out folk fighting a sometimes losing battle on the front lines? It's probably fair to say that somewhere in the back of their minds, their psyches are busily taking stock FOR them and once the day-to-day and minute-to-minute crises have ended, these people will find themselves at a fork in the road, making decisions about what to do next.

That's the more macro picture. There are some more specific things I'd like to see happen too.

In Canada, I'd like to finally see a universal basic income for every adult Canadian citizen. And in fact, that is definitely on the agenda of the federal Liberals at the moment. I'm hoping it won't go the way of the Liberal promise to get rid of the first-past-the-post electoral system. We shall see.

I'd like to see more of a "Man is the measure of all things" society. Human-scale, walkable, public transit-rich environmentally conscious cities and towns. But to accomplish this, we need to be conscious of people's habits, of the things people DO do rather than just what we think they OUGHT to do. For example, it's one thing to say that everyone should travel by bicycle instead of private car ALL THE TIME and no one should EVER smoke or eat junk food or do anything that's bad for them - but that's just not going to happen! So what do we do instead?

We need to make it easier for ordinary everyday people to do the more desirable things, at least a good portion of the time, and to feel their efforts are being acknowledged. Less of the carrot and the stick; more of the incentives and deterrents, without actually outlawing most popular activities. Provide as much in the way of information and social, consultational and educational opportunities as possible and let people make up their own minds about how they will proceed.

Politically, we have so many levels of government in this country and things can end up being very polarized. What doesn't always work well is executive federalism, where the Prime minister meets with the Premiers or the Health Ministers or the Finance Ministers of the provinces and territories (and lately often with indigenous leaders, which is at least a step in the right direction). Individual Canadians feel very much excluded from the process as in fact they are, with no MP or MPP or local councillor or other constituency person to represent them.

But there are many issues that transcend party lines. I'd like to see more collaboration between politicians of different political stripes. All-party committees, special committees, public consultations, even more good old-fashioned constituency work on the part of our representatives at all levels.

I know I've lapsed into generalities again here, but I'll close with one specific example. While I'm unlikely to vote Conservative any time soon, I definitely applaud the private member's bill of our local Conservative MPP, Jeremy Roberts, which aims to get rid of the nonsense and aggravation of changing our clocks twice a year. And good on him for seeking collaboration with Quebec and New York State!

Of course, we'll need to backtrack on that message of changing the batteries in smoke alarm and CO detectors at the same time as we change the clocks! I wonder what they do in Saskatchewan?

As quoted in an article by Sharon Kirkey in today's paper, University of Ottawa professor Amir Attaran is sharply critical of our prime minister for failing to implement a national COVID-19 strategy:

https://theworldnews.net/ca-news/as-covid-19-smoulders-in-multiple-regions-experts-question-why-canada-has-no-national-strategy

Maybe he has a point, but I'm not altogether convinced. He thinks the current Trudeau ought to be doing precisely what another Trudeau did fifty years ago - invoke the Emergencies Act (known back then as the War Measures Act) - and was widely criticized for. Well, fuddle-duddle to that, I say!

It all leads me to speculate what life would have been like in decades gone by, if the Covid-19 pandemic had hit us back then.

Covid-60: I was in a split grade 1-2 class here in Ottawa, at Vincent Massey school. They had split grades back then too, not because there were too few kids to have separate classes but because there were too MANY - and too few teachers available to teach them. As I recall, there were about 45 kids in the class. Some of us had to share desks. Can you imagine trying to do physical distancing under those conditions? Online schooling was definitely not an option. No one had home computers in those days! We did have telephones and radios and even TV - black and white, with only one or two channels that didn't begin their broadcasting day until around noon.

Okay, so let's talk about day-to-day life. Shopping could be done at what we now call "bricks and mortar" stores, or by leafing through the Simpsons-Sears or Eaton's catalogue, phoning in your order and getting it delivered. Well, delivery services are one thing that's definitely making a comeback these days, though I don't hold out much hope for the restoration of our six-day-a-week door-to-door mail deliveries! Online ordering? Nope, though mail-order catalogues were definitely a thing. They'd often do COD orders too!

What about health care? There were one or two positives. Doctors usually made house calls if the illness was serious enough. And there were plenty of serious illnesses you couldn't get vaccinated against in those days! Most schools also had a nurse on site full-time. As I recall, Medicare was in its infancy and not that many people had extended health care coverage through their employers. We worry now about "twindemics" and the co-existence of flu and Covid-19 but back then, there were several pandemic threats still lurking in the background: polio, tuberculosis and all the typical childhood diseases like measles, mumps and chicken pox.

Okay, enough of that. Maybe I'll do another Throwback Thursday next week and tackle Covid-70.

It seems to be almost sacrilege to say anything against La Machine - unless of course you're objecting to massive pagan icons perched atop the Notre Dame Basilica on Sussex Drive! Certainly, those who went downtown specifically to view the spectacle seem almost unanimously to agree that the show was totally awesome and, well, spectacular. Nevertheless, I do have a couple of major objections to the show which have nothing to do with graven images or eye popping price tags, so at the risk of coming across as a crotchety old curmudgeon, I'll outline them here.

First of all, the crowds, road closures and just plain general chaos that inevitably results when staging an event of this magnitude. If this had been Canada Day or even just a regular long weekend, I could maybe understand it. Everyone knows that on July 1, or Remembrance Day, or some other major occasion, it's going to be difficult to get around in the downtown core. But in this case, the event began on a regular summer weekday, when many folk had no choice but to show up for work, doctors' appointments or whatever. Many were also planning to go to things that one can normally expect to be able to do on a summer Thursday (and to which they may have had nonrefundable tickets purchased when they didn't know about La Machine) - say, visiting the Art Gallery, going to a Chamberfest concert or a play at the NAC. Many no doubt just needed to get their everyday shopping done at the Rideau Centre or in the By Ward Market. Surely the event could have been staged in some central area which we at least know and expect to be closed to traffic - Majors Hill Park? Parliament Hill? The Sparks Street Mall? Though come to think of it, it's pretty tough to avoid vehicle traffic on the Sparks Street Mall these days, even though it was always supposed to be a pedestrian mall! I've no problem with having a big event for those who actually want to go to it but the fact is that people were obliged to tolerate it whether they wanted to or not. Heck, maybe they could have done it somewhere that's still fairly central but outside the immediate downtown core. Lansdowne Park? Strathcona Park? That beautiful area behind the Library and Archives on Wellington Street? Compounding the whole problem was the fact that they weren't willing to divulge the full itinerary until it was actually happening. Ergo, MORE chaos!!!

Secondly, this was supposed to be a Canada 150 event. Does La Machine have anything to do with Canadian history and culture? Not really, as far as I can tell. It's an import from France and while we do indeed have some important historical, cultural, linguistic and diplomatic ties with France, surely it would have been better for this sort of event to showcase homegrown talent, ingenuity and creativity?

Am I just a lone voice in the great Canadian wilderness?