The Citizen, 1995-02-15, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1995. PAGE 5.
40 years of
dreaming
Hands up anybody out there who's old
enough to remember magazine called
Popular Mechanics?
I'm not sure that the magazine is actually
dead, but I haven't seen a copy for years.
And there was a time when copies of
Popular Mechanics were as common as ants
at a picnic.
This would be back in the 50s, the age of
brush-cuts and The Big Red Scare. An era
permeated by the rock-solid belief that a
man with a claw hammer and a mouthful of
nails could fix anything from a wobbly
banister to a back yard shelter.
Provided he also had a copy of Popular
Mechanics.
Popular Mechanics was aimed at Handy
Guys - and at guys who liked to pretend that
they too were Handy Guys. Which means
Popular Mechanics sucked in every male
over the age of 12 from Cape Spear to the-
Queen Charlottes, from Baton Rouge to
Baffin Island.
The magazine published blueprints and
diagrams that showed you how to build
everything from bird houses to ocean-going
yachts, but my favourite issues of Popular
Mechanics were the "futuristic" ones -
where the editors published page after page
of "artists conceptions" about what life
would be like in the impossibly far-off
Canada — a Third
World nation?
Some of you may have heard that a
columnist in no less a prestigious paper than
The Wall Street Journal turned thumbs down
on Canada by suggesting that it might
shortly become yet another third world
nation. He arrived., at this amazing .
conclusion ..by echoing the current
conventional wisdom that our debt is
dragging us down, down, down and there
doesn't seem to be anything we can do about
it. We are doomed, it seems, to join the
ranks of such countries as Mexico and others
which have, at one time or another, gone to
economic hell in a hand basket.
I have to be honest in saying that,
whenever I hear in American talking about
another country, I am a bit suspicious since
my experience has been that our friends to
the south have many theories about what is
wrong with another country and how it can
be fixed. It is not that .there are no
knowledgeable Americans; on the contrary,
there arc but there are a great number whose
estimation of their knowledge is exceeded
only by their ignorance. John Fund, the
writer of The Wall Street Journal's article
mentioned above, appears to be one of the
latter.
For openers he is nothing if not arrogant.
He assumes that Canada is somewhat alone
in its relation to a third world nation and that
the United States, heaven forbid, would
never think of committing the same fiscal
and monetary sins of which we arc, in his
words, so guilty. If he wanted to do a quality
piece, he might take, a look at a comparison
of the financial situation in which both
countries and find themselves.
The Americans, for example, spend three
future, say in...oh, 1985 or 1990.
What a rosy Brave New World those
Popular Mechanics soothsayers invisioned.
Mile-high cities covered with translucent
domes. Happy citizens hop scotching around
in anti-gravity belts. Vacations on Mars.
And of course the jetcar.
By 1985, everybody would be riding
around in jetcars according to the Popular
Mechanics viziers. The articles always
included sketches of what the jetcars would
look like. The drawings usually showed
what seemed to be a '56 Plymouth with
wings instead of wheels.
In the glass-bubble cockpit you could see
a smiling, Brady Bunchkin type family
wearing sunglasses and great big smiles as
they prepared to jet off into the ionosphere
for a weekend in Tahiti or Dublin - or
maybe both. The jetcar after all, would
easily crack the sound barrier if you put the
pedal to the metal.
Ah yes, the jetcar - when it comes to 20th
century fables, right up there with unicorns,
Sasquatch and the 10 cent cigar.
Or so I used to think.
The fact is, I've seen one of those jetcars -
and not in a mouldering copy of Popular
Mechanics. I saw it on the front page of the
business section of a recent copy of The
Globe and Mail.
Okay, I admit that it too, was an "artists
conception" drawing, but if the inventor is
right we could be seeing jetcars overhead as
early as this coming summer.
per cent more of their GDP on health care
than we do, even though they still have yet
to get a comprehensive one. If we have not
got our deficit under control, neither have
they. They are running a horrendous trade
deficit; we are not.
During the last six months the American
dollar has fallen against every major
currency, which says something about the
way they have been doing business. Mr.
Fund might also look at all the loving talk in
his country about the concept of free trade
and then examine all the areas where they
have tried to hammer Canada, their best
friend. They don't even give up even when
non-partisan panels find in our favour, as
anybody connected with the soft-wood
lumber industry can testify.
I don't think anybody but the most rabid
government supporter will argue that we
have no economic problems or that we have
been living beyond our means as a nation. I
have certainly been saying that for some
time.
However, it should, by no stretch of the
imagination, be interpreted to mean that we
are the only country of our stature engaged
in such an action; there are several others
that come to mind. I would, however,
remind The Wall Street Journal that, if you
are going ,to write something about another
country, you should at least get all your facts
straight. One would think that they, above.
all, would realize the importance of this.
I'm not sure what brought about the
second attack but at any rate The Wall Street
Journal came back at Canada again. Perhaps
stung by some of the negative comments on
the first editorial, the New York paper threw
another journalist into the fray.
Twice in such a short period and one
lecture similar to the other! What have we
done to offend the gurus of Wall Street? Is
the current TV hit prograin, Due South,
Paul Moller is the inventor's name. He's a
Canadian and he's spent 33 years and $25
million developing his baby. He calls it the
Volantor Skycar.
You want vehicle specs? Moller says his
buggy will have a cruising speed of 575
km/h. It'll be able to fly right over traffic
jams - five miles over them if necessary.
Moller calculates that his vehicle will be
able to dipsy-doodle at the same altitudes as
most commercial aircraft.
And the Volantor Skycar won't be burning
expensive airplane fuel or rocket elixir
either. Moller says it'll operate perfectly well
on run-of-the-gas pump Esso regular.
This is fantastic! This is like a dream come
true for all my fellow grizzled greybeards
who mooned over the drawings in those
pages of Popular Mechanics 40 years ago.
Imagine! A flying car - not only in our
lifetime - but by next summer!
Incredible! How much is it gonna cost me
to put a Volantor Skycar in my driveway?
Ah...yes, well...there is the small problem
of price.
• It looks like it's going to cost prospective
owners about $1.35 million to slide behind
the wheel of this number.
Still...that's cheap compared to a
helicopter, say. Or a personal Lear jet with
my initials monogrammed on the fuselage.
I guess it's fair. I've spent the past forty
years dreaming about owning a jetcar.
I can spend the next 40 years saving up the
down payment.
featuring a Canadian mountie, cutting too
close to the bone? Do they envy our social
welfare system?
Perhaps the next time they get around to
lecturing somebody on fiscal rectitude, or
the lack of it, they might like to zero in on
Orange County, California or even
Washington, D.C. both places which are, to
put it bluntly, bankrupt.
How about Italy, which is in far worse
shape than either Canada or the U.N.
Or is The Wall Street Journal still sulking
over the fact that Canada won out in the
dispute over the seizure of two American
fishing trawlers by the Canadian Coast
Guard?
The possibilities are endless!
Writer voices support
THE EDITOR,
I am writing in defence of the Hullett
Township council. The members of council
should be congratulated for the responsible
way„they conducted 'themselves at the
council meeting of Jan. 31. These elected
officials all remained calm and expressed . their mews quite clearly when asked to do
so.
Unfortunately the'same cannot be said for
some of the ratepayers in attendance.
Contrary to popular opinion everyone at
the meeting was not opposed to the decision
which was made. Some people can see that
we do need to progress. We should have a
township that we can be proud of instead of
one that everyone is laughing at.
We did recently have a municipal election
and these councillors were elected by the
majority and we should respect their
decisions. Where were those people who are
opposed at the time of the election?
We should all be truly thankful that we
still have a democratic country and arc
allowed to vote as we wish in elections.
It's time that some people stopped acting
like spoiled children who use threats to those
in authority in an attempt to make them
change their minds.
Marjorie Duizer.
The
Short
of it
By Bonnie Gropp
Waiting worse
than driving
You know you're getting old when a
winter storm keeps you from attending a
social engagerhent.
But rather than suggesting I have lost my
sense of adventure, have become stodgy and
tame, I prefer to put it down to just being a
whole lot more experienced and a little bit
smarter.
This past -ieekend's blast was not in the
least welcome as far as I was concerned.
Normally quite content to cocoon cozily
indoors while fluffy flakes, whirled by
winter winds, stir up a milky opaqueness
outdoors, this weekend I had plans. For the
first time in what seems like forever I was
going to indulge in some girl time. My
cousin, whose husband had gone away on
business for the weekend, had invited me
down to Kitchener for a change of pace from
my usual routine of getting the house in
order so it's clean for me to go back to work
on Monday.
By noon on Saturday, however, I was
resigned to the fact that I wasn't going
anywhere. A little bit of self-indulgence
wasn't worth it. My youngest son, who was
going along for the ride so he could visit his
older brother, didn't see it that way though.
"I have faith in you, Mom. You'll get us
there."
What I couldn't seem to make him
understand was that only i matter of life and
death, neither of which this applied to,
would make me try.
I wasn't always like this. My first real
tangle with that difficult, unpredictable Old
Man Winter occurred in January of 1971, the
weekend my brother picked to get married.
The bridal party had made it before the
storm struck, but my mother spent a good
part of the wedding morning in tears because
the highway was closed and she wasn't
going. to see her son married. With typical
adolescent bravado, I mocked her concerns,
saying that it couldn't be that bad. "Let's just
go. We'll get there."
Well, the gods must have been smiling on
us that day because we did get there, but
with more thrills than a roller coaster.
My next confrontation came the following
year, when, faced with the incomprehensible
situation of being stuck in Kitchener on a
weekend, I decided. that no closed highway
was going to keep me from my friends and
the parties. By the time I reached my
hometown, bug-eyed and terrified, I had
made a pact with myself that I would never
deliberately get into that kind of situation
again.
And I haven't. Though there have been
many times since, when I have really wished
I wasn't on the road, I have not knowingly
ventured into a squall if avoidable.
No, now I face a different problem. As a
parent I know that there will be many
occasions when, with the same bravado and
invincibility demonstrated by their mom
those decades ago, my kids will be out on
the road when I would rather have them
tucked away safely at home. Two of them
are young adults now, and like most parents
we've tried to raise them to be independent
and trust their own judgement.
The bottom line is, however, that we may
not always agree. And that isn't easy. On
Sunday, after my daughter decided to make
a break for it back to college, I found myself
wishing she were still a child and I could just
forbid her leaving. I'm discovering that
waiting anxiously by the phone is actually
tougher than driving through those
snowstorms.
Arthur Black
International Scene