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The Citizen, 2016-05-19, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, MAY 19, 2016. PAGE 5. Other Views Culling all cars, change is comin Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants. As long as it is black. — Henry Ford grew up believing that Henry Ford invented the automobile. Not true. A pair of gents, Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler, beat him by more than two decades. The two Germans independently produced `gas -powered carriages' in 1886, 22 years before Ford's inaugural Model T rolled off the line. If you really want to split hairs Leonardo da Vinci is the man who deserves top spot in the Automobile Hall of Fame. He sketched plans for a "self-propelled vehicle" in 1478, more than four centuries ahead of the competition. Whoever gets the nod for thinking up the car, it's a mixed blessing they left us. On one hand, the car has been utterly transformative for the human race. As an American writer by the name of John Keats puts it: "The automobile changed, our dress, manners, social customs, vacation habits, the shape of our cities, consumer purchasing patterns, common taste and positions in intercourse." But more than that, and eerily unnoticed, the Fleein 14140, Arthur Black automobile became one of the greatest serial killers mankind has ever known. In his book Door to Door Edward Humes writes, `Annual highway fatalities in the United States outnumber annual combat deaths throughout the Vietnam War (as well as the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Korea). Cars currently kill 3,000 people a month." The latest figures I could find for Canada show that in 2014 there were 1,834 fatalities nationwide. Modest by U.S. standards, but you'd think any device that snuffed out the lives of nearly 2,000 Canadians a year would be viewed with a certain amount of alarm. Want to see how much the car has changed our lives? Visit the Italian town of Lucca. It's surrounded by a high medieval wall punctuated with only a couple of gates too narrow to admit any vehicle wider than, well, a medieval wagon I guess. Ergo, no tankers, trucks or taxis. Once through the gates a visitor is met not with daisy chains of honking, stinking chrome and metal behemoths, but pedestrians. People walking, not driving to their destinations. This is how we used to live, before the car. And tomorrow? Cars for sure, but driverless cars. Cars that allow suddenly superfluous `drivers' to read a book, play the harmonica — even catch forty winks while their pre- programmed car delivers them to their destination. Some experts predict that by 2070, traditional cars will be illegal; only self - driving vehicles will be permitted on our roads. It seems unthinkable for people who grew up with freewheeling, hard driving, four -on -the - floor, stick -shift sedans and coupes and roadsters and hotrods. Driverless cars? Are you kidding me? Some folks might have foreseen it. Why, 'way back in the 1920s, some nutcase in Detroit was going around pitching personal airplanes for everyone. "A Model T of the Air" he called it. His name was Henry Ford. Trump to Canada isn'tfunny We've all heard the rhetoric surrounding the pending (possible) triumph of Donald Drumpf (or Trump, as his family name was changed to) in the United States presidential election and how it will make many of the residents of our southern neighbour head north. People think that leaving the United States is going to somehow stop them from being affected by Trump's presidency. Unfortunately for those folks, it won't. If Trump is elected, nowhere on earth will be safe from him. He will be put in charge of the world's largest military budget, hundreds of nuclear weapons and, if all the people who disagree with him leave, an entire nation who either thinks he isn't a bad leader or thinks he's the best thing that has happened to the United States since sliced bread. No border will stop the ramifications of his decisions and no bodies of water will offer much of a reprieve from the fallout that will undoubtedly follow his decisions. In the end, someone needs to tell these people who think they can escape Trump that, unless they have a skill or an idea or a business, Canada doesn't need them, nor does any other country in the world. That may sound a bit harsh but often times, that's the reality. Right now, Canada is dealing with actual refugees both externally from Syria and internally from the fires blazing across the mid -western parts of the country. We have people who have been chased out of their homes by armed conflict or by a beast made of fire and we don't need to add, when the election falls, more people seeking asylum, especially not from a political boogeyman that at least half the voting public would have to stand for. Sure, this isn't the first time the joke about moving to Canada has been made south of the border, but people are taking it further this time. They are actually looking at homes and investigating potentially moving and even looking for love in Canada to help them get across the border. You read that right — there are people from south of the border looking to hook up with a Canadian partner as a means of moving out of the country and legally landing in Canada. Beyond people looking, there is an actual site that will match up US citizens looking to flee t Denny Scott Denny's Den Trump to single Canadians willing to look south for love. Called Maple Match, and with the tagline "Make Dating Great Again" (okay, I'll give that to them, it's pretty funny), the site is currently working on a waiting list for both Canadian and US citizens looking for love. Recent reports have the site sitting at more than 20,000 people waiting with approximately a quarter of them being Canadian and that number continues to grow. The site is not a Canadian invention, in case you're wondering. Joe Goldman, a Texan, crafted the idea and linked it to his love of maple syrup. There is some debate about whether the site will ever go live, but, if a country's celebrities can be trusted to be a true measure of what the nation is feeling, then the site has definitely got a niche. Some celebs, like Cher and Miley Cyrus have made what appear to be tongue-in-cheek remarks about fleeing the country on Twitter while others, like Samuel L. Jackson (who plans to move to Africa if Trump wins), have made the joke on late-night television. Others, like Lena Dunham, seem to be serious about wanting to join us here in the cold north. Regardless of whether the site goes live or not, the numbers don't lie. There are many people who would legitimately consider "shacking up" with a Canadian to flee a Trump presidency. Heck, a couple from Cape Breton have sought to use the influx of Americans to bolster the population of the island which is dropping annually. The Calabrese family, represented by DJ Rob Calabrese who works at a radio station on the island, started welcoming disenfranchised US citizens to the island by touting the benefits of the locale. Calabrese launched a website showing how great his island is and the response was overwhelming at first. Within a week, there were more than 2,000 responses to the site, most of which he felt were serious. While Maple Match and Calabrese's antics may make for funny fodder for television shows and personalities, fortunately, people can't just move to Canada. With exceptions in certain fields, Canada isn't looking to adopt a bunch of politically frustrated individuals. First off, unless you're a doctor or a lawyer, you can't just head for the border (the former I understand, but do we really need more lawyers?) in the family sedan loaded with personal goods and expect to find a home. Usually, to move into Canada, you need sponsorship of some kind (typically familial) and, even with that, it's likely going to take a minimum of two years. Would -be -immigrants should also have some kind of training that would allow them to contribute to society. While I'm sure exceptions can be made for celebrities, I'm pretty sure, as a nation, we could fare just fine without Dunham. That is, of course, just my opinion. Regardless of how Cape Breton thinks US citizens could revitalize its population, Canada's doors aren't open to immediate migration. This isn't the founding of a country and tracts of land aren't just there for the taking. While I know I'm not going to reach many (any) US citizens looking to flee Trump with this, I hope I will reach Canadians who need to realize that, as funny as it is to watch Trump make the democrats flee like cockroaches when the lights turn on, there are actual migration problems in Canada that need to be dealt with. We need to find lodging for those fleeing the wildfires out west and they need support beyond that. As much as I love a good joke, this one is played out and I hope that, as a country, we can tell our southern neighbours we aren't laughing and they shouldn't be either. Trump as a president would be scary, but we're not going to be the bed under which those fleeing him can hide. Shawn 0051 Loughlin Shawn's Sense Face to face ear after year, as I interview people who travel from far and wide to work at the Blyth Festival, whether it be on the stage or behind the scenes, I always hear people talk about the feel of the community in Huron County. After sitting in on many discussions, many of them at the Huron County level as decisions regarding a new centralized office loom, that discuss the changing face of "the workplace" I find it refreshing to hear how important the identity and the fabric of a community is to those involved with the Blyth Festival. That's not to say that the community is only important to those at the Blyth Festival — of course our communities here in Blyth and Brussels and beyond are important to the vast majority of us, otherwise we wouldn't be here. But, going back to all this talk about the power of the internet and video -chat programs and how you don't need to be in the office to "be in the office" any longer, it's great to see how important it is to the folks coming to Blyth for this season's Festival to put the soles of their shoes on the ground, breathe some Huron County air and meet some of its people before speaking to me for a story. Especially in this season, where the play Our Beautiful Sons: Remembering Matthew Dinning tells the story of the Dinning family — people cherished in this area — I've been told repeatedly that actors want to be in Blyth and meet the Dinning family before they speak about the roles they'll play in this year's season of the Blyth Festival. Face-to-face contact, actual in-person conversations and getting a feel for a person and a community is still important to these people. Reading a few news stories or Googling a picture or even having a phone conversation just isn't the same as sitting down across a kitchen table from someone and hearing their story and year after year I feel the actors and writers and directors who come to the Blyth Festival understand that. As a friend of the Dinning family, it makes me happy to hear that there's a priority being given to meeting the people who lived the life before the actors will be asked to tell the story on stage. There's no denying that it's one of the most important stories Huron County has had over the last 10 years and one that has shaped many different things over that decade. So the weight of that situation is being felt not just by community members, but our temporary community members who make Blyth their home for a few months every year when they tell our stories on the Memorial Hall stage. Doing what I do for a living, there are a number of realities you have to deal with. You don't always have the time to sit across a kitchen table from the person you want to interview and spend a few hours getting to know them. Many times you have to be quick for one reason or another and you just don't have the time. It's the same reason Denny or I can't stay at events from start to finish, often there's another event going on that's just as important and we have to split our time between events throughout the community. However, as residents of Huron County, we should be happy that the actors who tell the stories of rural Ontario, and of Canada, on the Blyth stage care about getting to know our communities and our people, because there's no Google search in the world that can take the place of spending time with someone in a kitchen, a living room or a backyard deck, beer in hand or otherwise. And that's something the internet will never replace.