Incredible answer and I appreciate your expedient response as it represents your own continuous research as you make these conscious life decisions! There were tears slipping down my face, some in such absolute joy for Europe, in particularly France. This backs up all that I have seen amidst my friends that live there. The remainder of my tears were in travesty for Canada. We live in a place where climates create complications such as frost and snow, increasing the maintenance and building costs for public transit such as overhead, on land or even underground trains. The costs for tickets would be excruciating in order to build and maintain unless they could guarantee daily long distance travel numbers akin to Asia's city numbers. We couldn't even sustain a public bus transport system any longer as years grew, fears grew, weather and distance created delays and it would take 18 hours and a few transitions to get someplace that would take 5 hours by vehicle. Even then, people were willing to complete the 18 hour sojourn for environmental footprint reductions had it not meant an additional 3 days round trip being required off work for the purpose of travel. There is a great deal of logic in the why certain things DON'T work here that DO work there. Engineers are planners are constantly working on the conundrum, dedicated to "one day". Perhaps other countries in similar elevation locals, similar Northern townships ... perhaps our next generation will resolve the complications we ourselves have yet to.
Still, I weep as we have local farmers that could become far more independently affluent if everyone would shop local. Would we still have to import lettuce and fruit, etc.? Grandma and Grandpa didn't. They ate fresh in summer, harvested with joy and relish in Autumn and lived from preserves and freshly hunted game through winter. Clothing was most often second hand or homemade. Cooking and baking was done at home. Jobs were filled by the locals. People had credit at the grocer or perhaps at the blacksmith or the mill for a handshake in a pinch. You built your own homes, homes of wood or sod as stone wasn't plentiful in the west for proper Mason work. A fireplace, sure. An entire home? Go East, young man. Here in the West, trees were more plentiful than stone. A necessary home could be put up in a couple of days by a homeowner and their neighbours. Wooden homes were easier to heat on less. It made sense.
Yet I also weep for what you say about abandoned buildings put up quickly in construction and industry booms, outgrown and moved out of, left empty to grow rusty in metals and rotten in woods. Regular maintenance in our weather a must. It causes my heart to sorrow every time I walk or bike past a building left empty or being torn down. Its walls speak of a day when it once shone and its purpose, just like every man, woman and child's, was clear, now grown cold, neglected, unused, not as good as the next thing.
I wish politics and finance weren't such complex issues for the world to agree upon. I dare say we have all the answers and all the proper financing for every country, every neighbourhood, every community be as wondrous as what you're seeing there, every solution at our noses ... if we could all stop fighting over every penny, whether it be mine or yours.
Ahhhh, but I suppose mankind wasn't every made to be so easy.
I appreciate your efforts. You're making a difference. Carry on. As always, carry on.
Incredible answer and I appreciate your expedient response as it represents your own continuous research as you make these conscious life decisions! There were tears slipping down my face, some in such absolute joy for Europe, in particularly France. This backs up all that I have seen amidst my friends that live there. The remainder of my tears were in travesty for Canada. We live in a place where climates create complications such as frost and snow, increasing the maintenance and building costs for public transit such as overhead, on land or even underground trains. The costs for tickets would be excruciating in order to build and maintain unless they could guarantee daily long distance travel numbers akin to Asia's city numbers. We couldn't even sustain a public bus transport system any longer as years grew, fears grew, weather and distance created delays and it would take 18 hours and a few transitions to get someplace that would take 5 hours by vehicle. Even then, people were willing to complete the 18 hour sojourn for environmental footprint reductions had it not meant an additional 3 days round trip being required off work for the purpose of travel. There is a great deal of logic in the why certain things DON'T work here that DO work there. Engineers are planners are constantly working on the conundrum, dedicated to "one day". Perhaps other countries in similar elevation locals, similar Northern townships ... perhaps our next generation will resolve the complications we ourselves have yet to.
Still, I weep as we have local farmers that could become far more independently affluent if everyone would shop local. Would we still have to import lettuce and fruit, etc.? Grandma and Grandpa didn't. They ate fresh in summer, harvested with joy and relish in Autumn and lived from preserves and freshly hunted game through winter. Clothing was most often second hand or homemade. Cooking and baking was done at home. Jobs were filled by the locals. People had credit at the grocer or perhaps at the blacksmith or the mill for a handshake in a pinch. You built your own homes, homes of wood or sod as stone wasn't plentiful in the west for proper Mason work. A fireplace, sure. An entire home? Go East, young man. Here in the West, trees were more plentiful than stone. A necessary home could be put up in a couple of days by a homeowner and their neighbours. Wooden homes were easier to heat on less. It made sense.
Yet I also weep for what you say about abandoned buildings put up quickly in construction and industry booms, outgrown and moved out of, left empty to grow rusty in metals and rotten in woods. Regular maintenance in our weather a must. It causes my heart to sorrow every time I walk or bike past a building left empty or being torn down. Its walls speak of a day when it once shone and its purpose, just like every man, woman and child's, was clear, now grown cold, neglected, unused, not as good as the next thing.
I wish politics and finance weren't such complex issues for the world to agree upon. I dare say we have all the answers and all the proper financing for every country, every neighbourhood, every community be as wondrous as what you're seeing there, every solution at our noses ... if we could all stop fighting over every penny, whether it be mine or yours.
Ahhhh, but I suppose mankind wasn't every made to be so easy.
I appreciate your efforts. You're making a difference. Carry on. As always, carry on.