Village Squire, 1977-09, Page 42P. S.
Inflation is killing the last freedom in our Canadian way of life
BY KEITH ROULSTON
Inflation is the dirty word of the 1970's.
We've all come to hate it. It's talked about
almost as much as the weather. We've
come to expect the cost of living to go
steadily upward and we've come to expect
people to moan and groan.
Generally I don't shed too many tears for
i the complainers. I'm rather unsympathetic
when somebody wails about milk going up.
two cents a quart or bread another cent a
loaf. I tend instead to look at their weekly
pay cheque and see that in the last few
years while the price of milk has gone up 50
per cent, the weekly salary has gone up 100
per cent. Xou can't have it both ways:
expecting the cost of living to stay the same
but everybody to earn twice as much.
Utopia has not yet been discovered.
But inflation does concern me because it
is slowly sapping the last freedom from life
in Canada. There was a time when, if you
didn't like the life you had to live, you
could buy a bit of land, build a cabin and
hide away from the world. Nowadays,
unless you happen to discover an oil well
on the property, you won't be able to last
very long before you have to take a job just
like before.
We hear much about the plight of the
elderly when it comes to inflation and they
are hard hit to be sure. The savings they
have been able to put together over the
years are being eaten up fast by the higher
costs. Still there are some benefits such as
the fact the pension is hitched to the cost of
living and in some cases 'seniors have
harvested a pretty good crop from
inflation. Take for instance the farmer who
has just retired from farming. He probably
bought his farm back after World War II
for four or five thousand dollars. He may
sell that farm this summer for in the
neighbourhood of $100,000, just for the
land and buildings. One thing sure, he'll
live a heck of a lot easier and better from
the money he made selling the land than in
the money he made trying to farm it.
I know everyone isn't so lucky, but then
that's part of the whole problem of inflation
taking away freedom. It costs so much just
to live these days that you're locked into
having to have a regular job to get by.
This lack of freedom comes to mind tor
me because I have so many friends who are
directly effected. There are so many people
I know who are writers, artists, actors or
musicians who find it increasingly hard to
get along in this inflation -wracked country.
The nature of art and the realities of the
1970's are simply incompatible. It's ironic
40, VILLAGE SQUIRE/SEPTEMBER 1977.
that Canada has probably never had such a
vibrant and exciting cultural life as in the
past five years but at the same time. 1
wonder how much longer it can last.
The generation that matured in the
1960's • and early 1970's brought a new
awareness of the importance of the arts to
the country. They were people who were
looking for a way to express themselves
best. A certain portion of that generation,
the ones with artistic talents, decided not
to make the compromise of the potentially
artistic in generations before them and to
take a stab at devoting themselves to what
they were best at. So today you have
thousands of men and women in their 20's
and 30's working hard to make use of their
skills.
But how much longer can it go on? Take
for example the case of the young actors.
They work long hard hours when in
rehearsal and production and may earn
from $130 to 5200 a week. But to earn that
money they must almost certainly live in
Toronto or some large centre of the like
where rents can eat up a huge bill every
year and where you simply can't afford a
luxury like a car without a hefty salary. On
top of that, it's the nature of acting that
you're likely to have unemployed gaps
between shows so that at best an actor may
work 30 to 40 weeks a year. There is no
unemployment insurance for actors, so
how does an actor pay the rent between
shows when he hasn't earned enough
during working periods to save any money?
Acting salaries are going up each year, but
not nearly enough to stave off the
onslaught of inflation. And the theatres
can't afford to pay more because they too
are being hit hard by inflation in every
sector.
How about the young writer, the young
man or woman who is fixed in the vicious
circle of needing time to be able to write a
story or play but not being able to take time
without a regular pay cheque coming in to
do that writing. He can't make money from
his writing until he has produced
something and can't produce until he can
have time to do it. And even once he has
produced the money paid isn't enough to
pay the bills until he can write and pay
something else. It's the same situation
with the painter or sculptor or anyone else
involved in art. And it gets worse as the
days go by because there's no cost of living
clause built into fees for writers or the cost
of a painting at an art gallery.
Canada's been getting by lucky, so far.
but 1 wonder how much longer the luck
will hold out. The burst of artistic energy
has been carried out largely by young
people whose ideals have' gone ahead of
their common sense. But these young
people will get older. They'll want to raise
families or find a more settled, more
comfortable way of life than their present
gypsy -like existence. What happens then?
How many will decide that they can no
longer afford their idealism, that they must
sacrifice their talents to reality and take a P
job as button-down office workers or truck
drivers?
It's ironic that just when we're
discovering in Canada how interesting it
can be to have artists and writers and
actors •and other artistic characters in our
midst, . we're also finding our we can't
afford them. We can't even afford the
image of the starving artist in the garret
anymore because he can't afford to pay the
rent on the garret.
I don't know what the answer is, I only
see the tragic problem. I hope we soon find
the solution because I know a lot of fine
artists who make damned poor truck
drivers.
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