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.