In skimming this review of the JRS book mentioned in the previous post, I stumbled on this amusing passage on the effects of globalization on the American west, from a British perspective;
The modern world has sucked the populations out of such rural, pre-industrial and pre-high-tech communes. The same is true in the broad plains of Nebraska, where only the two cities of Omaha and Lincoln survive …
and where rural folk are resigned to driving 75 miles to a supermarket.
As though supermarkets abounded in the pre-globalization rural American plains states.
If they can pay for the petrol.
To our intrepid British book reviewer – if one lives 75 miles from the closest grocery store in this part of the world, there’s a pretty good chance that your “petrol” is purchased 500 gallons at a time and stored in tanks in the same yard alongside a million bucks worth of farm equipment. (46% of Nebraska is rangeland).
At current fuel prices in the US, a 150 mile round trip to the “supermarket” in a diesel 3/4 ton pickup will cost around $25, and you’re probably hauling cattle or picking up parts anyway, in which case the cost is tax deductable.
These are not pleasant sights and, so far, only a few regions have found a way to cope with this implosion. And the Wal-Mart revolution marches on.
Oddly enough, there are 5 Wal-Mart’s in rural Nebraska – apparently parked out in the bald prairie, with no population to support them.
Five Wal-Marts with no customers is odd enough, but five Wal-Marts with no employees?
Hmmmmmm. Reading this reality detached drek was a little like reading a bagatelle on Grizzly bear migration and management in Alberta from pre pioneer era to date….emminating from the same cloistered foreign environs.
I’m sure these fairie tail have a market with some people who want to believe romantic notions of places they’ve never been.
Some of Canada’s fastest growing communities are in Northern Alberta – High Level, La Crete, Peace River, Manning not to mention the one everyone talks about in Ft. McMurray.
Many of these communities don’t even have adequate highways to get there or to get in and out. There are some smaller communities that have to depend on ice roads in the winter and some with small ferries to help them cross rivers or there is no other way.
There are few and far gas stops in between long stretches of unpopulated roads frequented by a steady stream of vehicles from servicing this exploding northern economy.
Sure would be nice if all those gas taxes all of these people pay could go to actual roads and bridges in rural areas where they live and work instead of just to buses in big cities.
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Ha! Someone mentioned La Crete! The town of 6 last names!
I was in High Level one summer and happened to glance at a phone book. Try it! Take a look at how many last names there are in that town of… what? 2000?
But yeah. The north is booming… and it is not nearly as inhospitable as many people think. It gets bloomin’ hot in High Level in the summer! Something to do with 20 hours of daylight I think….
Jesus H. Christ… Where to begin?
Yeah, my wife and I are moving to an acreage which is 45 minutes drive from the nearest decent place to shop. So what? As Kate pointed out, we’re having a petrol tank installed in the yard (complete with lock and anxious guard dog that bites strangers).
We’re also going to have this miraculous thing called a ‘garden’ (already planted and the fruit trees are going in next week or thereabouts). We’re growing enough to last us through the winter and I anticipate a couple of weeks busily spent canning goods this fall.
Next year we’ll have chickens and learn how to slaughter our own (not looking forward to it, but it’s gotta be done).
Given that I’ll be mortage/rent free and not having to pay a ridiculous markup for my groceries, I’ll probably be in a better position than most city dwellers to afford petrol.
It’s amazing how f***ing stupid you can be and still get published, isn’t it? (Says the guy writing a book on digital photography techniques…)
Forgot to mention: why do I need a store for most items in the first place? I can just order it online and have it shipped to me by Crapada Post.
“only the two cities of Omaha and Lincoln survive”
Wait a minute, I thought the elites had determined the greatest problem in North America were those rural, uncouth hicks who are too backward to accept the “urban agenda.”
Therefore, wouldn’t Saul et al find rural depopulation a good thing?
“Some of Canada’s fastest growing communities are in Northern Alberta – High Level, La Crete, Peace River, Manning not to mention the one everyone talks about in Ft. McMurray.”
Right on the head, Happy! But these “frontier boom towns” have as little notice from the cloistered bureaucratic elite, ensconced in their sothern urban shell, as it has from cloisered foreign elite experts on everything.
The mentality in Ednmonton is these towns are moder machinations of 19th century gold towns….prove me wrong…what sort of infrastructure help have these exploding northern communities had from Edmonton????
“The mentality in Ednmonton is these towns are moder machinations of 19th century gold towns….prove me wrong…what sort of infrastructure help have these exploding northern communities had from Edmonton????”
They don’t get any. Edmonton is an enormous money sucking hole that goes after any money earmarked for surrounding smaller centres. For example, Edmonton keeps demanding more than its share of health care dollars because of the ‘extra load’ the Capital Health Region absorbs from surrounding centres. The reason it has to absorb their load is because it managed to steal some of their funding in the first place. Talk about self-fulfilling prophecy.
I so can’t wait to move out of this urban shithole.
We were involved with Alberta’s North – the number one problem in fact throughout Canada’s North is Transportation. Roads. Bridges. Air links. Train links. The industry up there drives the economy of not only Alberta but it makes Paul Martin’s balance sheet and emplopyment figures look a lot better than it would without this industry.
So what do we see in the Budget??? Billions in Gas taxes just for the big cities and only if they buy buses!!!
Is there something wrong with this picture?? Anybody?
Ya there’s something wrong Happy…..you don’t allow the urban-centraic fallicies and errant ideologies to trash the nation’s economic engines…..placating the neurotic urban marxist mentality is killing this huge nation’s potention…if it hasn’t already killed its unity.
I’m damn sure the PQ is aware of the billions locked up in northern development…but not the sleazy butt figging Liberal Cabal in Ottawa…oh well, their loss is a free west’s gain.
There’s a LOT wrong with that picture! But the PMPM is always right, so suck it up…
Sean, re: killing your own chickens. After you’ve killed the first one or two, fire me off an email and I’ll get the name of the butcher that my cousin uses – $5/chicken and they come back vacuum-sealed and flash-frozen.
My grandmother used to raise chickens & turkeys & geese and I remember to this day the gross feeling of wet feathers. And the mess. And the smell. Good luck!
The problem with Edmonton has been people like Jan Riemer and other mayors along the road, which were guess what, Librano$, and closed down the city center airport, built bicycle paths, and tried to make the city some sort of cultural utopia, which is the typical librano way. As a result these same advocates of this ideology all hover around the central core and make constant attempts at advancing there self righteous agendas, but there finding it awful hard lately to even mention the name “liberal” in public without being torn apart.
As for Northern Alberta, I used to live in Peace River, what are you talking about, no roads, etc. etc. The roads are just fine, even to High Level, and Hay River, NWT. I mean we had running water, cable you name it. You make it sound like everyone’s still riding horses and pulling wagons. It’s not much different the living in any of the cities, you just have idiocy on a smaller scale.
Since there are a number of Albertans on this site you might find this one interesting: A breakdown of Paul Martin and his henchmen’s cross country 26 billion vote buying spree.
If you look really really close you will find that out of the $26 billion, of which every man, woman and child in Alberta will be paying thousands per year for Alberta was “promised” a grand total of $1.6 million. That’s Million with an MMMM Not Billion with a Capital BBBB for the rest of the country.
Have a read- if you want to see who they bought off:
http://www.taxpayer.com/pdf/Liberal_Pre-Election_Spending_2005.pdf
Be prepared to gag – and then watch the various media for the voices of these interest groups saying they don’t want an election now, wait for gomery, Liberals good, Conservatives scary.
Rob – I lived in Peace River as well. That’s the most southern end of the Northern Development. Talk to people in Rainbow Lake about their access road. Or just say Highway 88 and you will get an earfull.
If you go to the Northern Alberta Development (NASDC) you will find a transportation strategy that keeps getting ignored. And every Northern Development Minister is screaming for money for roads and bridges and air links and transportation solutions.
I’ve been to Rainbow lake, it’s paved all the way as well. Up there they don’t bother asking the gov anymore, the oil companies just come in and build it themselves. It’s only the main highway from the border to Edmonton that gets a little neglected.
There is still a plan on the board to build a rail line to Ft Mac. as well, but there holding up a bit till they see what’s going to happen with Kyoto. The traffic on that highway is crazy.
You want bad roads, etc, remote locations, go to Northern Sk. and all the little towns up around Meadow Lake, Good Soil comes to mind, and is there still a day during the week were you can’t buy anything cause there all shut down. I was desperate for a beer and all the damn stores were closed the last time I went through.
I guess this isn’t the topic of this discussion really Rob but the Rainbow Lake road has no shoulders and is too narrow for the indistrial traffic on it. It is a death trap in winter.
zI guess the point really is – the gas tax was initially brought in by the PC’s (didn’t Joe Clark lose the election over it because the Libs demonized his for it- like the GST) and it was for roads and infrastructure.
Instead this tax has been used for everything else in general revenue and NOW as a bribe for the big cities to buy buses.
Still something wrong with this picture.
Guess my point is, there’s a lot worse, or more remote then what’s being presented. There are other provinces, not to name names, were the roads are far far worse, and more dangerous then these ones. I guess I’m just used to them, and don’t find them any different then driving down the Yellowhead or Whitemud drives.
Maybe Paul Kennedy’s analysis of life in Nebraska is based on the assumption that gas prices there are like those in the UK: C$1.84/litre. Yikes. They must be glad–UK–to live in a small country.
Mark
Ottawa
What’s with all this whining from Albertans? Our federal government allows you to remain a part of Canada and enjoy our world-renouned medicare system, their goodies doled out from Ottawa to each province (that’s goodies X 3 for Quebec) etc etc and all of this under the protection of our elite armed forces. And what does it cost Alberta in equalization payments to ride on the Canadian gravy train? Only a lousy $1 million dollars per hour for each and every hour of the year. Eight billion dollars per bloody year, folks. That’s 8,000,000,000 Alberta dollars going for equalization per year. No wonder the folks Atlantic Canada would rather die than change.
Rural communities have a different mindset, and tend to help one another, including coming in to town with the big old grain truck, and buying enough to last them, and there friends around them, a couple weeks. So if you calculate that they maybe go into town once a week and don’t drive the rest of the week, accept to go visit the neighbor a mile down the road, versus you driving to and from work everyday, and going shopping three times a week. There’s not much difference in fuel consumption, and because of the bulk buying, there probably saving money, were most of us couldn’t be bothered.
BC Con,
Funny you should bring that up, we do more then our part per capita to help and were still called knuckle dragging whining westerners. Then they wonder how we can relate to the Americans so much, who are also doing more then there part…. nough said.
“After you’ve killed the first one or two, fire me off an email and I’ll get the name of the butcher that my cousin uses – $5/chicken and they come back vacuum-sealed and flash-frozen.”
Erk! At $5/bird I can just buy the flippin’ things in the store. Ouch! Or go vegetarian. Ew.
Jeez rob:
there = see that shathed over there?
they’re = contraction of “they are” shatheds
their = possessive: those shatheds are their kids
Ya, my grammar kind of sucks, sorry …. just a lowly grunt so to speak, trying to remember what english 30 was about many years ago. I’ll try to be more careful in the future.
As a Canadian living in the UK, let me tell you, the Brits are great folks but they’re utterly incapable of imagining the size and scope of the North American West.
Occasionally you’ll meet someone who has done a road trip from Toronto to Vancouver or Chicago to Las Vegas. They’re usually still bubbling with amazement about that drive – even if it was twenty years ago!
rob: your grammar is fine; it’s your spelling that sucks.
When my cousin from England came over, we drove him around. In Saskatchewan he had us stop in the middle of nowhere to take pictures. We asked him what he was shooting, saying there’s nothing to see. He replied “in England, we don’t have this much nothing.” Europeans are moving to Canada to enjoy the clean air, the space and the freedom. Their understanding of the Prairies far exceeds that of JRS