Surprises in th Media

I read a fair amount. I start every morning reading the online version of the CBC, the Globe and Mail  and CTV News. I also look at a variety of other websites and read a little bit of the current edition of the Walrus. While I would never want to assume that I know all that is happening, that I understand what is happening or that what I read is completely accurate or un biased, I think I have a basic handle on what is going on in the world. Of course if specific world events are not reported on - then there are gaps in my knowledge. I do rely on my Facebook "friends" to post the great secrets of the age that the mainstream media won't print (in case you can't tell, I am being more than a little bit facetious here).  I would like to think that I am not easily shocked by the news. Far too often the news makes me angry, frustrates me to the point that I just want to scream or occasionally causes me to almost weep in sheer despair over humanities inability to learn from our past mistakes.  But I am seldom surprised to the point where I need to re-read a bit of information a couple of times before it actually sinks in. Sometimes it takes a day or two before I can figure out why a specific bit of news surprised me.

An example of this was when I read (I don't remember where) that Calgary's electrical Ctrain system runs on energy derived from wind power. For those who have never been to Calgary, the Ctrain is a light rail system that connects the outlying areas to the downtown core. One can ride within the downtown area for free. It is run on a honour system and only once have I ever seen anyone asked to show their ticket. From my limited use of the system, it appears to work wonderfully well. What of course was somewhat mind boggling to me when I first heard about how it was powered, was the fact that Calgary - a city built by and on oil revenues, did not do the obvious and use diesel to run their trains, did not use oil to generate electricity but used a renewable resource to run their system.  It is wonderful but a bit counter intuitive.

This week I read in the November edition of the Walrus that Sault St. Marie, Ontario generates significantly more electricity than it uses. Sault St. Marie exports power to the rest of the province and they generate that power using the sun and the wind. I had to read the article a couple of times. It just did not feel like it could be possibly true.

I like Sault St. Marie. On my first trip out west, I met an individual named Reg who had a profound effect upon my life. Partially because of that experience, my life underwent a radical transformation.  But Sault St. Marie has never struck me as a particularly progressive city. Its economy was initially based on the selling of the natural resources that lay buried in the ground or grew on top of it and of course as a major port on the Great Lakes. Every time I have been through the city, it has had a general sense of being both financially and if cities can be - emotionally depressed. Parts of the city feel over used and worn out. Of all of the places that I spend time in my annual trips out to the west coast, I would never have thought that Sault St. Marie and the surrounding  would have managed to do something that most cities can't even dream off. It seems as if Sault St. Marie has managed to work together to achieve a viable vision of how the world can work and be self sustainable. They would have had to deal with the multitude of issues that can arise when First Nations communities, private enterprise, government bureaucracies and environmentalists all sit around the table.  And they did.

The purpose of this blog is to remind me that in all parts of life, there are hidden examples of how people working together can make a difference in the world. That sometimes, in spite of our best intentions, it is easier to accept the standard interpretation of how the world functions and to not look deeper. I need to remind myself that sometimes I need to stop being lazy about how I view the world around me. I need to dig just a little bit deeper. While it is fun to play the role of the cynical old curmudgeon, I may be missing things that could bring me joy.

 The fact that Sault St. Marie has managed to create a system that allows it to export power should not be taken as absolute proof that the world is changing - but only that it can.