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Home My WebLink AboutThe Lucknow Sentinel, 2016-09-07, Page 16Wednesday, September 7, 2016 • Lucknow Sentinel 7 The grandiose — but failed —1960s plan by an Ontario war hero to settle a `second Canada' below the Arctic CONTINUED FROM > PAGE 6 Years before the term "global warming" entered mainstream discourse, the report even mentions the need to keep Canada's for- ests as a brake against rising carbon dioxide levels. A theme that keeps com- ing up in Mid -Canada litera- ture is the need for a "national purpose" to buck up the 100 -year-old nation. With the country being ripped apart by Quebec nationalism and Western alienation, optimists hope to stir the hearts of the domin- ion with an inspiring feat of continental engineering. "Wouldn't it be satisfying to know that we had a national goal, a national pur- pose for Canada? Such a goal exists in the creation of a second Canada" wrote Rohmer in The Green North, his 150 -page paperback pitch for the plan. The final report warned, "to be strong a nation needs a common cause:' Ultimately, though, Mid - Canada were kept intention- ally vague, with the idea that the region would ultimately be shaped by committees of plan- ners, locals and engineers "We weren't setting out to create plans, we stressed the need to have plans," said Rohmer. But an initial planning report did provide some clues as to how a developed Mid -Canada might have taken shape. There would be diagonal trans -continental railroad connecting Labrador ports to the Yukon. A highway to the Arctic. New growth cen- tres; Flin Flon, Whitehorse, Labrador City, Thunder Bay and High Level were all pegged as settlements that could reach Calgary-esque levels of size and influence by the year 2000. Strangely, Waterways, the precursor to Fort McMurray, was left off the list. It remains one of the few Mid -Canada cities that achieved any sem- blance of the growth envi- sioned by Rohmer. Final infrastructure cost for a full-blown 1970s incur- sion into Mid -Canada? Four to five billion dollars, about $35 billion in 2016 dollars. Governor General Roland Michener, a friend of Rohmer, arranged a meeting with Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. The idea was that Rohmer would show up, present the report, screen Courtesy of Richard Rohmer Richard Rohmer, Governor General Roland Michener and Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau pose for a photo after the presentation of the Mid -Canada final report at Rideau Hall. some slides and get the ball rolling on a Ministry of Mid - Canada or the like. Instead, he met the disinter- ested eyes of the Prime Minis- ter, who couldn't seem to escape Rideau Hall fast enough "The message was 'don't even bother,' but in any event we did our best," he said. Rohmer has long chalked up the failure to partisan considerations. The airman reeked of Tory blue, and whatever Trudeau planned to do with Canada in the 1970s, settling the North was not on the list. But to skeptics, even the most well-intentioned Mid - Canada plan could have become a disaster of aban- doned rail grades and planned communities turned into drug -ridden ghost towns. "If you just took a blank cheque of building commu- nities and hoping that the population would follow, the best you could end up with would be a patchwork of poverty and incomplete- ness," said Northern histo- rian Ken Coates. "There's very few places in the North where local resources will sustain a 30 or 50 year project." On Northern develop- ment, Coates is more of an incrementalist: Build a uni- versity here, a military base there and slowly Canada pushes settlers towards the tree line. But the persistent prob- lem, he notes, is that Canadi- ans are notoriously wussy in cold. They buy vacation houses in Florida. They spend Christmas in Puerto Vallarta. They build downtowns filled with underground tunnels just to avoid going outside. "If we had the Norwegian love of winter, it would be a different story," he said. But Rohmer holds firm to the original concept, and can even flirt with thoughts of "I told you so" whenever he looks at an overcrowded Toronto freeway or gazes at a warming north that is home to new tracts of farmable land each year. "My view of what should be done with Canada in terms of policies and plans ... hasn't changed at all," he said. Meanwhile, a modern-day group of planners have picked up the Mid -Canada torch. Earlier this year, Thunder Bay's Northern Policy Institute tried to reboot the Rohmer plan with a report decrying the anarchy of 21st century development in the region. "Activity along the corri- dor continues to grow at a rapid pace, pretty much ad hoc, with nothing and no one to determine how best to proceed," read the paper by John van Nostrand. Kent Fellows, a researcher with the University of Cal- gary, is part of a separate team working out the plan- ning and surveying on a northern transportation cor- ridor designed to connect boreal forest communities to the "South." Currently, most Mid - Canadians live in places accessible only by air or — like Fort McMurray — reached only by long, deadly highways. This is a large part of why Northern Alberta oil is some of the world's most expensive to extract. Anybody looking to set up a Mid -Canada resource egi RIP -LEY -HURON SKATING CLUB Saturday, September 17th at 11:00 am — 1:00 pm @ Ripley Arena LEARN TO SKATE Tues &Thurs 4:30 - 5:OOpm Tues & Thurs 4:50 - 5:20pm $165* • e. mt. 'One day per week rates available for all programs All programs begin in October For more information please contact: Jessica Yungblut - 395-0866 orjessc@live.ca CANSKATE Tues & Thurs 4:30 - 5:20pm $200* JUNIOR STARSKATE Tues & Thurs 5:30 - 6:30pm and Saturday 11:00-1:OOpm $370* SENIOR STARSKATE Tues & Thurs 6:00 - 7:20pm and Saturday 11:00-1:OOpm $370* **NEW** ADULT (16+) SKATE -all abilities- 10 wk program Sat 12-12:50 $100 Richard Rohmer in 2015. project, meanwhile, needs to factor in the exorbitant costs of work camps, private air strips and private power plants. As he's said in previous inter- views, the first step to filling Mid -Canada is "lowering the cost of everything in the North." Like all economists, Fel- lows naturally a bit more skeptical on grandiose nation -building schemes than your average nonage- narian WWII fighter pilot. But for anyone doubting the potential of giant, hare- brained mega schemes, the Calgary -based Fellows need only point out his window to a gleaming metropolis built in the middle of nowhere. "We wouldn't have a post office here if it hadn't been for the Canadian Pacific main line coming through town," he said. 2016-2017 KINCARDINE tiG 0 ROTARY v Poi4^gl TV Tuesdays at 7:00 P.M. September 20, 2016 to April 25, 2017 Rogers Cable TV CHANNEL 6 7 GAMES TICKETS Win $1,000 2 Cards / $5.00 Lic. #M756529 KINCARDINE LUCKNOW Jerome Flowers & Gifts Macs Kwik K Variety TEESWATER Macs Boomers Sobeys TIVERTON Trillium Court KwikWay AMBERLEY RIPLEY Amberley General Store MacAdams Mini Mart