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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1996-07-24, Page 5Arthur Black International Scene By Raymond Canon THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JULY 24, 1996 PAGE 5. Not pretty, but to Mr. Hamelin it's a home The doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his client to plant vines. Frank Lloyd Wright That's what the city fathers of Hull, Quebec fervently wish Jean-Guy Hamelin would do — plant vines. Lots of them. They would also settle for a wrecker's ball, a grenade attack or a giant brown paper bag — anything to cover up Jean-Guy Hamelin's house. Actually, it's only nominally a house. It started off as a garage. Then Mr. Hamelin, a carpenter by trade, added a second storey. And a balcony. And an outside staircase. And a lot of other gew gaws, doo dads and architectural thing gummies. The end result is ... not pretty. But to Mr. Hamelin, it's home. Alas, it does not conform to residential regulations. The City of Hull has demanded the addition of a peaked roof, removal of the outside staircase and installation of a main entrance at the front of the house, presently God must have really loved Canada Many Canadians are concerned about the future and those concerned come from all age groups. It seems that the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow turned out to be filled with unpaid credit card balances, heavy debt loads in the government sector and the fact that even gold may not be worth what it used to be. In short we are suffering from what the Germans call "Angst" a word that has been taken over into English to describe a potpourri of anxieties and worries, financial and otherwise. Every time I leave this country for a while and look at it in a rather detached manner, I see this angst displayed in all the forms of the media. Many of the letters to the editor take the 'going to hell in a hand-basket approach' with the result that most of our 30 million citizens are not happy unless they are deeply unhappy about one or more things. Well, when the universe is not unfolding the way it should, I suppose that a bit of anxiety is justified. We worry about this or that and, if most of our worries never come to pass, that is par for the course. However, must we turn our worrying into a national pastime? Most assuredly not! In the detached manner to which I referred above, it is easy to get a much rosier picture of the second largest nation in the world and the one judged recently by the United graced by two large garage doors. Mister Hamelin figures it would cost him $25,000 to please the city and he's not going to do it. "It's stupid" he says. The mayor of Hull says huffily that Mister Hamelin has to learn that "you can't build whatever you want". Well not if you're a mere retired carpenter like Mr. Hamelin perhaps. But if you happen to be a rich corporation, architectural restrictions fly right out the window. If you've got the bucks, then the sky, quite literally is the limit. Consider the mine's-bigger-than-your's schoolboy game that's blighted the Toronto landscape for the past 20 or 30 years. Companies like Toronto-Dominion, Bank of Montreal and Canadian National spend hundreds of millions of dollars erecting taller and taller office buildings. Did anybody in Toronto's city hall think to ask the neighbours if they'd mind a 60-storey glass box in their backyard blotting out the sun? Not bloody likely. And all for what? The clutter of exaggerated refrigerator cartons that dominate the Toronto skyline is strictly in the weenie class, world-wide. Chicagoans risk whiplash looking up at the 1,450 foot Sears Tower. In Kuala Lumpur, steel workers are putting the finishing touches on the Petronias Complex, Nations as having the highest standard of living in the world. My first comment must be that God really loved Canada when he created the world since he gave us as much if not more natural wealth than any other country on this planet. It seems that every time you dig a hole in the ground you come up with something valuable. We have enough oil in the tar sands to last for 250 years. The two countries that come to mind which can rival Canada in this area are Russia and South Africa. However, I wouldn't want to claim even for a minute that either can rival Canada as a place to invest money for mineral development. In Russia the rules change from one minute to the next, not to mention the corruption that exists while South Africa has still to find the political stability that it craves since the demise of apartheid. We may look askance at times at our immigration policies but it must be admitted that as a result we have an excellent range of talents on which to draw. From an economic point of view, immigrants have a net positive contribution to our country. We hear of those who exploit our welfare system, and there are some, but we hear all too seldom of those who create bilsinesses which provide employment for other Canadians and who contribute to the rosy picture painted by our current surplus in the balance of trade. This surplus has done more than anything else to get our country back on the right track and out of the bad books of the international banking community. If we are having concerns about our social welfare net, so is every other major industrial nation on this planet. The fact is which will feature twin spires 33 feet higher than that. And next year, construction will begin on the Shanghai Financial Centre which, when finished will stand 1,509 feet high. And who, aside from a few business executives with an advanced case of Edifice Complex, gives a damn? Certainly not Jean-Guy Hamelin. He's too busy going mano a mano with the Hull Beautification bureaucrats. (Have you ever been to Hull? They have lots more to worry about than Mr. Hamelin's little non- conforming duplex.) Were he still with us, Frank Lloyd Wright, the famous architect I quoted at the beginning, would have a huge chuckle over the games people play with architecture these days. Wright was an architectural genius, but he wasn't some Ivory Tower abstractionist who lived above the clouds. Wright once designed a house for a famous industrialist by the name of Hibbard Johnson. Late one night, Wright got a call from the apoplectic Hibbard. The voice on the telephone wailed, "Frank, you built this beautiful house for me, and I enjoy it very much. But right now, even as I speak, I am with some friends and distinguished guests and it is leaking on my head." Wright paused thoughtfully for a moment, then murmured into the phone "Well Hib, why don't you move your chair?" that each nation chose to have an unrealistically optimistic look at the growth of its economy and each nation has now had to take steps to bring its revenues in line with its expenditures. The Germans and the French, to name two countries, have discovered rather late in the day that they cannot continue to offer their citizens the level of services to which they had become accustomed. The answer for all of us lies not in protecting our own little turf to the detriment of all others, but in determining what is the best level of service we can offer with the money that is available. The picture may not turn out to be as bad as we expected. Finally, we still have an unexcelled level of political freedom. We can vote in governments we like, and just as quickly vote them out when they fall out of favour. We don't need visas to leave or enter the country; the courts bend over backwards, (some would say too far) to protect the rights that are ours under the constitution. And for one who has lived in many countries, from those who are as free as Canada, to those which were downright dictatorships, this political freedom is the most refreshing breath of political air than I can find anywhere. Let's appreciate and enjoy it! Got a beef? Write a letter to the editor The Short of it By Bonnie Gropp The human touch Oh, yes. I Forgot. You're the family that hugs. This remark came from an attendee at my brother's 50th birthday bash this weekend when my sister-in-law embraced her in farewell and gratitude. Hellos and goodbyes at an Ott gathering may appear to be mushy affairs for outsiders, with back-patting, arms encircling bodies, cheek bussing and lip smacking. And I admit, while it took me many years to become comfortable with such overt displays of affection, the importance of human contact has smothered my inhibitions. Something I heard awhile ago, stuck with me — to maintain emotional well-being a person needs four hugs a day. As babies we are nestled, nurtured, played with and coohed at interminably. By the time we reach adulthood, however, such constant cuddling is obviously ludicrous. Yet, I think that we occasionally forget the million dollar value of one little snuggle. This is probably no more true than in the 90s, when human contact has become almost extinct. Actually to get technical, in this compu-age we can almost avoid it. Conversation has taken a back seat to television. We can, and are encouraged to, do virtually almost all our banking through an instant teller machine. There are fax machines and e-mail for messages. No doubt, technology has allowed us to get things done quickly. But has it made us cold? Are we forgetting the value of that personal touch? These questions came to me on Friday evening while watching an American tabloid show. The lead story gave an account of the tragic TWA plane crash last week near Long Island. Human sadness is a poultice that draws sympathy from our soul. I do not understand how anyone with a shred of compassion could not be deeply pained when they think of the people dealing with such misery and want to reach out to them. Many of the victim's friends and families, however, felt that the airline had dealt with them in a callous manner. And apprently it's not a first. The show moved to a scene of a 1989 PanAm crash, the opening sentence of which left me slack-jawed, dumbfounded. The news of this particular air accident, which had claimed many, many lives, was delivered to the victims' families via telephone. If there was no answer, the horrific message was left on answering machines. Expedience in delivering this type of news is certainly important. In our technical age people can be tracked down quickly, and fortunately can, and should, be told before television or radio brings it home to them, particularly with the doubt regarding survivors of air disasters. And of course, there is absolutely no good way to tell someone they have lost a loved one. But, difficult a job as it may be for the messenger, it is one far more painful for the receiver. Sometimes with modern society making it easier to shy from unpleasant contact, we overlook that some things should be handled with the voice and presence of human compassion. It's a cold, cold world out here; there arc times we need the warmth of human contact.