Fifty years in Canada.

  Fifty years in Canada.

The captain announced that we will be landing in Calgary in so many minutes and I was glued to the window. Clouds hid my future home as we descended to a level from which I could see Calgary, my new home. It was the reason I traveled around half of the world. The year was 1967, and below were mountains on one side, a little strip of land with buildings, and a lot of flat lands on three sides. We landed and began a new life. No one said welcome, but a month later someone told me to go back to where I came from.

When after months of hardship I eventually saw the countryside, I was disappointed. In the old country, there were orchards, vineyards, and little attractive farms, here I saw grain fields and cow pastures to the horizon with little black oil drills pumping non-stop. It took time to see the beauty in it.

Calgary extended from Chinook mall to North Hill mall with rail lines going east and west to take our products to the world markets. Mostly we exported food, grain, beef, etc., and oil in long black tanker rail cars. Alberta didn’t have a caste system, but whatever social order there was, we immigrants were at the bottom of it. Canada wanted us, but the surrounding people didn’t. They thought we came to steal their homes and jobs. I hope Danielle Smith hears about it when she talks about discrimination.

True to the American (or Canadian) dream, at that time, we could work hard, study, and get ahead. Even better, we had some choices about what to do and how to do it. The road was full of turns and hidden obstacles, but if you kept at it, you got somewhere. Most people wanted a steady full-time union job with set hours, holidays, and a chance for improvement. Negotiated cost-of-living raise in pay was nice, with medical insurance, a pension at 65, and sometimes even new coveralls for dirty jobs. Paid lunch and coffee breaks, no harassment by egotistic bosses, and a big item at the time, two days off a week. The people before us already got us the 40-hour work week, no child labor, 8-hour days with overtime, and so on. The stories about always having strikes are just stories. Most of us have never been on strike. Those of us who wanted to, opened or bought little businesses and some did very well. Taking higher risks could finish you off or be a shortcut to prosperity.

One thing that I learned in this life is that everything is cyclical. Nothing stays the same, especially where the economy is concerned. In the eighties the US elected President Reagan, who changed the balance and destroyed the competitive equality that workers enjoyed. Now people don’t get to own their own homes, don’t have a pension at the end of a career, and don’t display loyalty to their employers. The social contract has been discarded and we are seeing the outcome.

Since 1967, Calgary spread over much of the adjoining landscape with concrete and pavement. What was at one time little towns on the outskirts became cities that hardly serve as a reminder of the West that people used to start a new life in. A noticeable portion of the farming and ranching communities are dilapidated or simply gone. Those that remain are trying hard to look like the city and no longer appear to be self-sufficient communities with a character of their own.

The world changed as well. Cities and smaller communities used to own the most needed services, like power generation, water supply, major transportation, and sewage facilities. It was all broken up and privatized, tossed to the mercy of the markets. People believed that the efficiency of the markets will provide the best deal. They didn’t read the first line in corporate goals stating that making a profit for shareholders is the primary goal. Now it came to the surface.

The poor countries are facing starvation and we here are told to find the money for the rising prices of energy and all the other commodities tied into it. The billions of people here and in Europe can only borrow without the hope of ever paying it back. Not on my pension.

I worked, studied, and saved money from 1967 till retirement age, investing in a promise to have a good situation in my later years. I watched my children trying but failing to do the same. Now it’s falling apart. Freeze or eat are the choices. I watch intently, seeing wars and social discontent while politicians of all colors are competing for a share of the mess, and I know what may come next. I am a historian.

When people freeze, drown and go hungry, the ugly side of human nature rises to the surface. Corporations, like Putin’s army, hire soldiers to do their dirty work. The people rebel when there are no good choices. I don’t want to be like the Ukrainian seniors I see on TV. I hope and pray that we will come to our senses. We have a beautiful province, country, and world.

This morning in Australia there are floods and in North America, we are cleaning up after hurricanes. Here we can’t afford the oil and gas that we own and we face a cold winter.

 

Something is dreadfully wrong.