From Sea To Sea

While most folks know that Canada is the world's second largest country by landmass, not everyone appreciates that it also has the world's largest coastline by a wide margin. Bounded by the Pacific, Atlantic, and Arctic Oceans, the total coastline measures over 202,000 km. That's a lot of territory to keep an eye on though, to be fair, there isn't much going on in most of it. Still, each coastline has its own attractions and activities and together they make up a large part of the Canadian identity.

The Pacific northwest coast from Vancouver to Alaska has played host to the most successful groups of Indigenous peoples for thousands of years. Nourished by an environment rich in natural resources, particularly salmon and shellfish for food and cedar trees for home construction, dug-out canoes and artwork, this abundance of resources allowed them to build permanent settlements and flourish. It became the most densely populated First Nations area in Canada. Nowadays the coast is a playground for recreational boaters while thousands of others flock to Vancouver to board giant cruiseships and follow the coastline to the glaciers of Alaska while admiring the wildlife, rainforest, and rugged, snow capped, mountain ranges along the way.

The Atlantic coast on the other hand has a much different history, as it is here where Europeans first encountered the First Nations people a few hundred years before they did on the west coast. It was also the scene of many battles between the French and English and their respective native allies. The coastline is sprinkled with lighthouses, beautiful beaches, historic battlements, and lobster fishing fleets. It also boasts the highest tides in the world.

The Arctic Ocean is completely different from the Pacific and Atlantic. Not only is it much colder, it also serves as the highway to connect the few communities that exist in the North. The waters surround many islands that have weathered thousands of years of ice ages and glaciers, and the wildlife that exist are highly evolved to survive in this extremely harsh environment. The Inuit who live here have also managed to adapt and survive over several thousand years. But as unforgiving as the environment is it also has a certain beauty and each of the icebergs floating past are a unique work of art.

While the Arctic Ocean provides the greatest challenge to patrol, the Canadian government has outlined a large multi-billion dollar vessel shipbuilding program that will see up to 50 combat and non-combat vessels constructed for all of Canada's waterways. Half of them will be for the navy and the other half for the coast guard and they include 18 icebreakers. The ships promise to be best in class and in addition to security and protection will provide search and rescue services, emergency response, and a year round presence in the North in support of Indigenous Peoples.  200,000+ km of coastline is a lot of ocean to cover but if we want to ensure our sovereignty from sea to sea, it's probably our most important investment.

Censorship

 

Once upon a time when black & white television ruled the land, families would huddle around the TV to watch one of the few programs being offered on the three or four networks available. When the day's broadcasting was over (sometime around midnight) an Indian-head test pattern would appear and last until dawn when it would all start again. This was the 1950's and some of the most popular shows were; I Love Lucy, Leave It To Beaver, Father Knows Best, Lassie, Gunsmoke, Perry Mason, The Lone Ranger, and the Ed Sullivan Show.

In the beginning of the 1950's less than 10% of the population owned a black & white TV but by the end of the decade more than 85% of households had a TV and it had completely taken over home entertainment from radio. Radio would go on to be the primary medium for music. In the 1960's colour TV came into being and the top shows were; Andy Griffith, Beverly Hillbillies, Bewitched, Green Acres, Gilligan's Island, Dick Van Dyke, Bonanza, Gunsmoke, and Star Trek.

The one thing all these programs had in common was their white wholesomeness. Yes, they perpetuated certain stereotypes and were corny but they didn't try or mean to offend in any way. Their purpose was to promote the American way and to entertain with mostly humour. Of course the good guy always won, and there was no swearing of any kind.

By the 1970's things were rapidly changing and social awareness along with a certain edginess was being reflected in the TV programs with titles like; All In The Family, MASH, Happy Days, Kojak, The Jeffersons, Charlie's Angels, Ironside, Dallas, Saturday Night Live, and The Streets of San Francisco. It took until 1972 before sales of colour TV sets surpassed those of black and white ones and it was also the first year all network programming was done in colour. But in the U.S. there were still only three TV networks; ABC, NBC, and CBS that carried all the shows which made it easy for the advertisers to censor and control the programming. 

However, by the end of the 70's the tight control of network TV was blown open with cable TV and an explosion of channels catering to every possible audience. Up until then, whether you watched the evening news on CBS, ABC, or NBC the message was essentially the same and there was an unofficial national consensus on how to view world events. That was now rapidly changing and, alongside with Talk Radio, the discourse was becoming more and more fragmented, extreme, and profane.

Fast forward to the present day with the Internet now connecting every part of Earth and every user a potential broadcast network or content creator, and there is no longer any control of the message. Foul language is the least of anyone's worries when the Internet is filled with hate, fake news, and misinformation. Organizations like Google, Twitter, and Facebook provide an uncensored platform for anyone to say whatever they want, whenever they want.

While we in the democratic "West" allow our society to become bullied, slandered, and fractured under the guise of "free speech" the autocratic "East" has seen the danger and moved swiftly to clamp down on it by outlawing and blocking these same organizations behind a state firewall. By blocking certain websites and/or filtering the content they consider to not be in the best interest of the government or the people, countries like China are acknowledging it's impossible to control the people if they can't control the message. Looking back at the 50's and 60's it really wasn't that much different in the West.

The difference between then and now is how the networks controlled things. In Canada the government used "community standards" and the CRTC to determine whether programming could be censored, but in the U.S., which forbids government censorship, it was left up to corporations to do the censoring and the FCC to do the monitoring for indecent broadcasting. With only three networks offering programming, that was dependant on advertising, a corporate sponser had to approve of the content or it wouldn't be broadcast. With such close competition it was easy to maintain a standard of acceptable content that everyone could agree on.

Why can't the top 10 apps do the same thing today? After all, it's advertising that's driving the business model behind all of them. The governments of each country should put together a set of guidelines on what is considered unacceptable and leave the apps to do their own self-censoring. Corporations should also have to sign off on the sort of things they want their brand associated or not associated with and it should be made public. We certainly have the technology to make this happen.

Free speech doesn't mean you can say "fire" in a movie house and it doesn't mean you can spread lies, incite riots, or promote hatred and sedition. Just because the Internet is worldwide doesn't mean community standards won't vary from country to country, and they should be respected, because there will never be universal agreement on anything. We don't need to go back to the 50's & 60's where there was a totally distorted white centred construct in place, but platform providers and applications need to find a way to censor themselves or more and more governments will start doing it for them.

Down To The Waterline

The broken water main in Calgary this past month quickly brought home how much big city dwellers take the supply of fresh water and their sewage systems for granted.  Without clean water a lot of things come to a screeching halt including eating, cleaning, and bathing. Pity this didn't spur further action on repairing the water and sewage systems of all the First Nations communities in Canada that still don't have clean water after all these years.

The Metro Vancouver area apparently uses 400 billion litres of water per year and, as the population expands, this is expected to grow to 600 billion litres per year by the turn of the next century. To prepare for this, new infrastructure at the Coquitlam Lake watershed is being planned at a cost of over $1 billion dollars. The possibility of expanding capacity at both the Capilano and Seymour watersheds is also being reviewed.

But securing an adequate water supply is only half of the problem, the other is handling the wastewater and sewage. It's also a very expensive proposition. The cost for the North Shore sewage treatment plant currently under construction has ballooned from an original estimate of $700 million to $4 billion dollars. How this has occured is something for the courts to ultimately decide but in the meantime the taxpayers are on the hook.

The North Shore treatment plant will be the first in the Lower Mainland to offer secondary treatment for wastewater as per federal government regulations. Until now there has only been primary treatment of the wastewater which is still the case at the Iona Island wastewater treatment plant. The estimate for upgrading the Iona wastewater plant is close to $10 billion dollars. There are 3 other wastewater treatment plants in the Lower Mainland and together these five treat over a billion litres of wastewater every day.

Canadians can be forgiven for thinking they have an almost unlimited supply of fresh water, given that we hold 20% of the world's fresh water. In actual fact less than half of this is renewable with the rest stored in lakes, underground aquifiers and glaciers. Furthermore half of the renewable water flows into the Arctic Ocean and Hudson Bay which is unavailable to the vast majority of the Canadian population since they mostly live near the 49th parallel. With global warming and lower snowpacks the water that is accessible is dwindling, and this spring in Southern Alberta the Bow, Oldman, and Saskatchewan Rivers were all at dangerously low levels.

Recently a broken sewer pipe leaked sewage into False Creek and the nearby beaches prompting a water quality advisory and closure. It doesn't take much to contaminate a fresh water supply, or the ocean itself, and we go about our daily activities without a thought or care for the billion litres of wastewater flowing through the city's pipes, unless of course we come across a road being dug up.

As we approach the 8 billion mark for people living on Earth you have to wonder if there is truly enough water to go around. While the vast majority of water is used for agriculture, the per capita consumption is not equally distributed. Millions of people are facing water scarcity and this in turn leads to poor sanitation, disease, and death. Without water nothing can survive and perhaps it's time we focused more attention on how we use it instead of taking it for granted. It all comes down to the waterline.

What Once Was And Will Never Be

 

Existing Waterfront

Proposed Redevelopment

This month the Vancouver Council (which still is responsible for funding the Parks Board) rejected the Parks board's vision for the West End waterfront redevelopment and called it a Fantasyland dream that was tone deaf to the city's financial constraints. It was a $300 million 30 year plan that would have tidied up the shoreline to protect it from rising sea levels and storm surges, added a dog park and skate park, and new washrooms and changerooms, as well as a more permanent solution for the bike and car lanes along Beach Avenue. Considering the Parks Board spent $1.5 million putting in and taking out a bike lane in Stanley Park, $10 million a year to upgrade the beach area from Stanley Park to the Burrard Street Bridge seems like a bargain.

What the City of Vancouver doesn't really spend much time explaining is where all the money goes that they collect from developers for rezonings in a special tax called Community Amenity Contributions or CACs. According to the City these charges can range anywhere from $11.49/sq. ft. to $122.32/sq. ft. for City approval to increase density and/or make changes to zoning. This is in addition to the development cost levies that developers have to pay when a building permit is issued. The total sum of all these fees is supposed to be used for things like social housing, community centres, childcare, and parks.

As the charts above illustrate the City collected more than $300 million in fees that could be used to improve public spaces and facilities but where did it get spent? In the downtown there haven't been any improvements to the bus service, there aren't any new community centres, and the Aquatic Centre is falling apart. It also goes without saying there hasn't been a penny spent on upgrading the beach area either.

For example every time it rains, the seawall around English Bay floods and washes away part of the beach. A simple fix would be to install a retaining wall that maybe doubled as a flower bed and use it to brighten up a dreary and sad looking stretch of beach. Some drainage would also help. Hard to believe how neglected the beach is considering it's supposed to be a tourist attraction.

Of course if one takes a look at some old photos of English Bay you can see we once had it all and somehow it disappeared. We had bathhouses and changerooms, a raft with a slide, and a pier with a dance hall. Everything was well manicured, the buildings and streets were well above the tide line, and the crowds were well behaved. And it was all paid for. Wouldn't it be nice if we could just go back to what we once had.