The Rural Voice, 1988-08, Page 20SEEDSTOCK
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18 THE RURAL VOICE
THE LUXURIES WE
TAKE FOR GRANTED
The human animal is at once the
most adaptable and yet least flexible
of all God's creatures. It is the only
animal, as far as we know, that can
reason, yet is the most unreasonable,
the only one with a memory but the
one that forgets most quickly.
Only humans can get so used to
what they have that they take for
granted that they'll have it forever.
One hopes that by the time this
column reaches print we'll have had
plenty of rain, that the grass will be
green again and something will be
salvaged of the crop year for Ontario
farmers. But things don't look good.
Like most people lately, I've spent
a lot of time thinking about water, or
the lack thereof.
Like most North Americans, I've
come to take an endless supply of
fresh water for granted. On a farm
that had few luxuries when I was
growing up, we had a deep well.
During our years in the city and in
town, we didn't even have to wonder
where the water came from; we just
turned on the tap and there it was. In
the first years after we moved out to
Muddy Lane Manor, we never worried
about having water even though for
the first time in my life I could take
off the top of the well and see our
source of water.
But in recent years, as the water
table has dropped, the level of water in
our well has receded and once or twice
the pump has been gasping air instead
of water. So as the snowless winter
became a rainless spring and the
drought set in with a vengeance, we
started thinking more about water.
And, like most humans, we didn't
realize until faced with a crisis just
how wasteful we had become. A chart
published recently shows that the
average home uses 34 cubic metres of
water a month (for us oldtimcrs, that
means about 7,500 gallons). Of that,
50 per cent goes to water lawns; 25
per cent gets flushed down the toilet;
12 per cent is for personal use and
bathing; 11 per cent goes to laundry
use, and 2 per cent is used for drinking
and cooking. Of the 7,500 gallons,
150 are used for essential things and
the rest is more or less a luxury. If
we, like our pioneer ancestors, had to
draw and haul our water by buckets,
you can bet the proportions would
change quickly.
Which brings me to what I've said
before: Canadians have had cheap,
plentiful food for so long that they
take it for granted and will never
appreciate the job farmers do for them
until they have to do without. It was
brought home to me a few years back
when the push to aid starving people
in Ethiopia was on. Probably the
community that gave the most aid on a
per person basis was an Inuit commu-
nity in the far north. These people,
who had a first-hand memory of star-
vation, wanted to do what they could
to help people half a world away.
Ordinary Canadians are generous
too. They even say good things about
farmers, but they can't possibly know
the terror of worrying that food might
not come in time for their children to
survive. Like water comes plentifully
from the tap, they know they just have
to get to the nearest Beckers or
Loblaws. There has not been a famine
for the general Canadian population in
the history of the continent, not since
the coming of the white settlers. Until
there is, Canadians will continue to
waste food as they have water, never
thinking of where it comes from or
how much it costs and, most of all,
never really appreciating the people
who have provided the abundant food
they enjoy()
Keith Roulston, a newspaper publisher
and playwright who lives near Blyth, is
the originator and past publisher of
The Rural Voice.