HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1998-05-06, Page 5A Final Thought
A mother is not a person to lean on, but a
person to make leaning unnecessary —
D orothy Canfield Fisher
THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, MAY 6, 1998. PAGE 5.
Up in the sky! It's a
bird! It's a plane!
It's amazing!
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights
But the queerest they ever did see...
....Was a bald, bearded guy in a borrowed
parka, shivering and squinting up at the night
sky from the shore of a wilderness lake
outside Yellowknife, surrounded by 250
Japanese tourists.
Well, I don't know if the Northern Lights
found it queer, but I certainly did. I was the
bald, bearded guy, in case you haven't guessed.
As for the Japanese.
Ah. Therein lies a story.
A love story, as a matter of fact. They don't
talk about it much, reserved and polite folks
that they are, but the fact is, the Japanese are
crazy about Canada.
Specifically, they love three things about
us. They love Anne of Green Gables in
Prince Edward Island. They love the
wilderness majesty of Banff National Park.
And they absolutely adore Aurora Borealis.
The Northern Lights — that spectacular ballet
of electrons and radioactive dust particles that
each winter, makes Canada's northern night
sky the stage for the Greatest Show on Earth.
Everybody who sees the shimmer and
dance of the Northern Lights comes away
impressed. But the Japanese? They are
absolutely nuts about them.
They have to be. First, they spend
Looking for a job
Every year it becomes increasingly
apparent that the world is becoming a smaller
place. This should not be taken to mean that
the planet is shrinking; simply that, as the
population increases, there becomes less
suitable space for people to inhabit.
It has not gone unnoticed that Canada is
one of the few wide-open spaces left; the fact
that we are the second largest country in the
world but only have 30 million inhabitants
acts as a magnet for people looking for a less
cramped existence.
However, for young people preparing
themselves.for the working world, or for
those considering a job change, any talk of
population density is academic. Their minds
are focused on the here and now of
employment possibilities and for that they
need all the help they can get.
For the purpose of this article, the
shrinking size of the world can be read to
mean the increased importance of a world
marketplace. In this regard two phenomena
have been taking place. One is the
downsizing for the expressed purpose of
becoming more efficient in a world of
increased competition, and the other is
globalization of industries where the whole
world becomes the marketplace.
Regardless of what we think of all this, and
there are undoubtedly negative aspects, it is
something that has swept the entire industrial
world.
But the moving force behind all this has
been the advent of free trade, due in part to
the last round of negotiations of the General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (now the
World Trade Organization) and the historic
free trade agreement between Canada and the
United States. The latter subsequently
thousands of dollars to fly from Japan to
Canada; then they spend more thousands to
fly all the way up from Vancouver up to the
shores of Great Slave Lake in the Arctic.
Once they get to Yellowknife (the usual stay
is three days), they lay out another whack of
yen to sign up for a special 'Northern Lights
Tour' which buses them, along with guides
and interpreters, 'way out past the
Yellowstone city lights to a remote camp
where they wait — sometimes all night — for
the Aurora Borealis to do its stuff.
Which it well may not do. If it's cloudy
(which it seldom is around Yellowknife)
nobody gets to see much. Same thing if it
snows.
And sometimes capricious, moody old
Aurora Borealis just simply doesn't show up
at all, for reasons unknown.
This is not a Walt Disney production. The
Northern Lights wax and wane according to
their own unwritten schedule.
But show or no show, the Japanese never
complain. Indeed, these people are in many
ways dream visitors for any tourist
destination. The Japanese that visit
Yellowknife, chasing the Northern Lights are
invariably polite, orderly, respectful, neat.
Not to mention rich.
Indeed they are so well-behaved it can be
unnerving. Shirley Saint, an interpreter and
guide for Raven Tours of Yellowknife, says
that the atmosphere on a busload of Japanese
tourists travelling out to the viewing area is
almost always eerily quiet ("You'd think that
they were all asleep") — until some passenger
spots the first hint of the Northern Lights out
blossomed into the North American Free
Trade Agreement, which included Canada,
the U.S. and Mexico.
Now comes the recently concluded
discussions in Chile which have as their goal
a free trade zone comprised of the entire
western hemisphere. Canada will be
responsible for chairing the discussions for
the first 18 months. Given that Jean Chretien
was dead set against free trade not too many
years ago, all this must rank as a Canadian
version of Saul on the road to Damascus.
This means that there is an increasing
chance of you finding a job in the
manufacturing sector which exports 60 per
cent of everything Canada produces (up from
25 per cent in 1980). Helped by a moribund
dollar and our increased ability to produce
quality goods in niche markets, we have
turned a declining sector of our economy into
a real winner. To cite one example, in less
than 10 years our country has risen from
almost nowhere to become the third largest
exporter of commercial aircraft.
You may think that university is the way to
go to higher earnings but don't sell the
community college system short. Check them
out as to courses they offer in fields of
international growth potential. For example,
you may never have heard of the animation
and computer graphics courses at Sheridan
College but Hollywood certainly has.
Students find jobs right after graduation and
the pay is not too bad either!
Keep one thing in mind. Canada is well
known in international circles for providing
certain goods and services of high quality
(such as the commercial aircraft I
mentioned). Take some time to determine
what those fields are and you may find one
of interest to you. One nearby possibility is
the University of Waterloo, whose
mathematics and computer courses are
the window.
"The first time it happened, I thought
someone had had a heart attack" she recalls.
"The whole bus erupted with shouts and
screams and oohs and aaahs of pure joy. We
had to stop the bus and let everybody off
right there."
Indeed, for the Japanese, seeing the
Northern Lights is an extremely moving
experience. Shirley recalls one regal-looking
80-year old woman who wept openly on
seeing the Northern Lights for her first — and
probably last — time.
Another Japanese mother said that for her,
seeing the Northern Lights was as emotional
an experience as giving birth.
It's a pretty big deal for the economy of
Yellowknife too. This city of 18,000 used to
pretty much close down for the winter as far
as tourism goes. Not any more. Last year,
more than 1,500 Japanese tourists flew in to
Yellowknife. This past winter, the numbers
were even higher.
Gotta seem weird though, to, say a Great
Snow Owl gliding across the night sky.
He glances down expecting to see
wilderness. Instead he sees a couple of
hundred Asiatic faces in designer parkas,
tripod-mounted cameras beside them,
looking up expectantly at the sky in the
middle of an Arctic night.
What was it Robert Service said a century
ago?
There are strange things done 'neath the
midnight sun...
Mister Service was more observant than he
knew.
internationally known.
The travel industry, which has been
growing at a rapid rate, is primed to grow
even more quickly. To meet that growth, the
major aircraft companies are designing
planes that will carry between 600 and 1,000
passengers; such planes should be a reality
before 2010. Some of the community
colleges have excellent travel and tourism
courses.
Finally it seems a shame that Canada still
has to import tool and die makers after all
these years. These are excellent paying jobs
and we certainly should not have to depend
on foreign labour for such high-skilled
professions.
The school system is in great turmoil but
how much of this is posturing? This should
not prevent you from picking the subjects
you need and working hard at them.
May I give you a few suggestions? As
someone who has taught thousands of
university and college students whose
English was something less than desirable,
one of the best investments you can make is
to develop a good command of written and
spoken English. Believe me, it will stand you
in good stead. Becoming fluent in another
language would not hurt either.
Also, learn as much history and geography
of Canada as possible. We are woefully
ignorant about our own country.
A few good work habits will also stand you
in good stead, but then they did in my
generation or any other one for that matter.
There are a lot of enjoyable jobs out there.
I hope you find one.
The
short
of it
By Bonnie Gropp
Nothing to sneeze at
It is too much to expect perfection_ That is,
I have always presumed why, for some of
us, spring comes with a price.
Bursting with life, this blossoming season
is a balm for the spirit after months of cold,
snow and darkness. Like animals from
hibernation we are drawn outdoors,
enchanted by the kaleidoscopic colours
awakening from their winter sleep. We
inhale pleasure from the heady scents that
are the essence of spring. But as our senses
are rejuvenated by these new beginnings,
they also suffer.
For the past several weeks, I, along with
many others, have been plagued by the first-
round of air-borne allergies. My head is
bursting, my scratchy eyes and throat
sandwich an itchy nose. Sneezing and
wiping I peer through misty eyes at spring's
loveliness and try to forgive its pollens.
It's been a lifetime of forgiveness. As a
child, my cold-like symptoms were treated
as such, with the consensus being that
because I was a finicky eater I was probably
not getting enough of the right stuff to fight
off infections. Thus I seemed to be the cold
virus's favourite victim.
It wasn't until after an asthma attack at 16,
that I was tested. Weeds, grass, rabbits,
dogs, feathers, molds and pyrethrum, a
chemical in fly spray, were the biggest
perpetrators of the assault on my body. For a
time, I made weekly visits to the doctor's
office, until an adolescent aversion to
structure made allergy shots too much of a
nuisance. A low tolerance to just about any
medication put most antihistamines out of
the question, too.
So I suffered then and now in sniffling,
sneezing misery.
It was with interest, then, that I read an
article recently on ways to break the cycle. It
states that toughing it out at the beginning of
the season, may mean a harder time later on,
because the already inflamed tissues are
particularly sensitive to subsequent irritation.
Taking an antihistamine before exposure to
allergens may actually work best. A low
level of drug in the bloodstream, before
exposure to an allergen, may make it
possible to manage the allergy with less
medication, these experts claim.
Using a low-dose antihistamine daily
throughout the spring, summer, and fall
allergy season they suggest, can provide
day-long relief.
The article also noted that with some
newer drugs showing no evidence of
tolerance interactions, taking them doesn't
mean being unable to function normally.
And yet, I hesitate. First, this info was, of
course, from a drug company. Secondly,
while I certainly hate feeling miserable, I
also have an almost obsessive indisposition
to ingesting chemicals. Swallowing
medication beyond the odd pain reliever, is,
to me, tantamount to taking poison. And so,
before doing so I like to be informed. How
does an antihistamine work? After an
airborn allergen is inhaled it attaches itself to
mast cells in the nose lining. Those cells
react with the allergen and break apart,
releasing the histamine, which tries to attach
to receptors in blood tissues or vessels. It is
blocked, however, by the antihistamine,
which halts the inflammation process.
Sounds fairly straightforward.
So, I wonder, am I being paranoid or
simply a martyr? After all, when you think
about it spring's near sensory perfection is
really nothing to sneeze at.
Arthur Black
International Scene