Sunday 31 May 2020

Seniors “just” rant.


 Seniors “just” rant.
Safety is very important to seniors and so are leisure activities. I am sitting at my window watching my pond. In the spring it is often filled with water from the Blairmore ski hill runoffs. This year it is overflowing and flooding the whole forest behind it and ducks are swimming, some nesting. Right next to it is my fireplace, as safe as humanly possible to make, but I can’t enjoy a fire since there is a fire ban. Someone in the establishment believes that we can’t have fires even if we practice all the rules of safety. It may be the same person who decided not to provide the usual training to the firefighters. Who knows?
Two years ago the pond didn’t fill in the spring. There were crews of firefighters paid by a government grant, clearing dead wood from the same forest in front of my place, and they were burning piles of branches right in the middle of the trees. What has changed?
I hope that my MLA is reading the Pass Herald and he will provide an answer. After all, nothing changed. The oil market was depressed than as it is now and Alberta had the same income. Why are we being punished? It is Seniors’ Week, and the community is honoring us. YEAH. Thanks for the praise but we are old enough to know that praise is cheap and action is valuable.
Now the Pandemic will be blamed for all economic ills, I am sure, but the dreaded Corona Virus didn’t change the big picture. It will kill a whole lot of us older folks, who become dependent on others towards the end of life.
We took care of the young and worked hard to build a good province and country. Many of us fought and died to provide for the future generations, trusting that towards the end we will be cared for.
What we failed to do is predict the level of greed that the future generations would develop and some did. Not here in this community but in the cities which filled up with people from other places who came to make money and leave. An example is the private nursing homes paid by the public. Look at the Army reports coming out of eastern Canada for details.
All of us contributed to our health care and pensions. Some of us, especially those unionized, paid sizeable sums towards additional pensions. We watched the funds privatized and governments take control over how to invest the money and use it or lose it for political reasons. The people who worked for Alberta towns just heard that their pension funds lost a third of its value by investing in oil companies who didn’t make it.

I am an old man now and I thank the Lord profusely for all the blessings, but I wonder. Why did we, the common people, have to fight for everything? Why did we have to win at great suffering, or lose ground? I was a child when we were fighting for a piece of ground to live on. When I was a young teen we, and others like us, fought for the right of colored people to be accepted as humans. Soon after, it was the fight against being sent to die in unjust wars. This we and our generation won, and we were fighting for equal pay for women and human rights for people to love each other without “guidance” from the state.
I was a young man when we gave up on fighting and tried to achieve social equality by working and studying hard. In thirty years we almost lost the middle class and all the previous gains.
Now we are seniors and should be resting from a life of hard work enjoying the fruits of our sacrifice and saving. There is no break. Greedy politicians go after our prepaid benefits, privatizing some aspects and cutting off our care. Should we be happy that there is a Seniors Week?
In my younger days, I and my friends worked hard to help our families. We did it on the farms and in the cities. No-one even considered complaining. When we got married, we labored even harder and raised families. None of my friends had their higher education paid by their parents. We bought starter homes, fixed them, and worked our way up.
Our work and ingenuity, saving, and volunteering caused the improvements we see today. Just look at a picture of Calgary or Edmonton fifty years ago compared to now and see the difference. Compare what we did it with what is available now after we contributed our share.
Now we are old and have no choice but to depend on those whom we brought up. We are happy that they did well and beam with pride, yet should we be expected to be tossed aside like useless garbage?
It is not what our kids or those around us are doing that I am complaining about. They are simply peaceful as we taught them to be. They don’t realize that you get nothing if you don’t fight for it. It is the political climate that changed.
Somehow we entered an age in which productivity increased, we built infrastructure, technology improved many times over, and there is no money for our needs. We are facing fewer doctors and nurses, fewer more distant hospitals, less public transportation, and dilapidated care in long-term facilities. If one in a couple that’s been married for fifty years falls ill, they separate us.
I hate sitting here and ranting, but I feel that the story must be told. It’s useless to praise people when they don’t do their homework or give participation trophies to those who don’t try. People who didn’t contribute as we did, organize events to honor us, give speeches, and benefit themselves and their friends out of our savings and the systems we set up. Governing is a difficult job.
Here is a link to my blog: https://thesimpleravenspost.blogspot.ca/  Feel free to check other articles and comment.

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