As many of you are aware, I recently returned from a 6,000 km trip to dog shows in Arizona. We left Saskatchewan on February 25, drove south through Cheyenne, Denver and Albuquerque, NM to Phoenix, then home via Las Vegas and Salt Lake City to Butte, Montana, turning east on I-94 to North Dakota before heading north to cross back into Canada late on Wednesday night.
| It’s my third such extended road trip in the past 12 months. I drove to Charlotte, NC and back last March, while in October another show circuit took me through Montana, Michigan and Philadelphia. That doesn’t include several shorter weekend jaunts. I put 30,000 km on my minivan in the past 10 months and I drove the pickup to North Carolina. |
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Unless you’re a long haul truck driver, it’s unlikely that you’ve seen as much of North America by road as I have – or as frequently. On this latest jaunt, I was reminded of a piece I wrote during the coverage of Hurricane Katrina that I think applies equally to many who are utterly convinced of man’s impact on global warming. It’s titled An Appreciation For Scale, from September 2005.
As someone who has transversed the continent on several occasions by road, I have come to believe that many in politics, government and media fly too much.
Like the “destination oriented” urban business or leisure traveller who generally lives and works within a relatively confined geographical area, their excursions to far flung locales are experienced almost exclusively through airport terminals.
Flying distorts one’s sense of scale. There is an unreality about the little images on the ground and the vast distances they represent. Imagine the experience becoming so routine that the window seat ceases to be your first preference. Imagine not looking down from a cloudless sky to try to identify geographical features and places you once stopped for coffee in. Imagine napping over the vastness of South Dakota, Nebraska and Iowa – and awaking a couple of hours later to ready your tray for landing.
Of course, many of you don’t have to imagine anything of the sort. It’s your normal flying experience.
Flying from Saskatoon into Los Angeles for the first time, there is a sense of astonishment at the endlessness of the great, smoggy city and her suburbs. Landing at night, the sense is even greater, as the lights of the city flood out into the Pacific, carried by boats.
Yet, make the same journey by road (ideally, with windows open and air-conditioning off) and the City of Angels appears as a mere oasis at the edge of a dry, rolling ocean of emptiness.
The second perception is accurate and appropriate, while the first is a distortion created by a sudden burst of speed.
So many people have so little appreciation for how large their country is, no realization that their great metropolitan areas are just miniscule dots on the map when placed within the great expanse of the continent. They have little understanding that there are hundreds of thousands of miles of infrastructure that connect us to each other in fragile threads of asphalt and cable and that their very urban lives depend on them.
As capsulized as the world becomes to the habitual air traveller, even more so is that of those who seldom travel at all. I know of Canadians who have never been south of Minot who can tell you with utter authority all about that great country – based on the flickering images that come over their television sets.
Returning to Katrina – some of the unthinking and uninformed criticism by media punditry of relief efforts may be due, in part, to this phenomenon. The size of the area devastated by Katrina and the subsequent flooding, relative to the size of those assets that are struggling to respond, is difficult for them to scale.
And virtually impossible for those whose view is contained within a 36″ screen.
This sounds like what Marshall McLuhan would say about viewing the world through television altering our perception of reality.
One small act taking place in a remote corner of the world broadcast on television suddenly takes on an omnipresence and enormity on a global scale.
Is this the way we really want to see things? is it wise and proper? Of course not.
If you study what McLuhan actually said (not accounts of what others THOUGHT he said) later in his career he was advocating shutting television down for an extended period. Most moonbats could also never fathom that he was a staunch Catholic and very conservative, even though he advised that enemy of civilization, Turdeau.
Just be safe out there driving Kate.
Lots of drivers NOT paying attention and are responsible for accidents invovling inocent people.
Your dog is one good looking pooch.
I’ve done that drive a couple times myself from Minnesota to Phoenix.
The thing that impresses itself on me every time is that America is BIG. Its friggin’ huge geographically, there’s a huge population, and they are all busy beavering away producing stuff a mile a minute.
You pretty much drive through a city the size of Hamilton about every two hours, and dodge one major urban area as big as Toronto every four or five hours depending on your route.
You’re right on, Kate. There’s no substitute for driving across is a few times. A back roads tour would be even better.
Great post Kate, I wish more urban dwellers would read it.
Most people form their opinions based on the environment that surrounds them and like you say, too often their window to the outside world is TV.
It’s not surprising that so many in the developed world have been bamboozled by the “People are wrecking the Earth” nonsense.
My Swiss brother in-law was visiting the family farm at Christmas and was raving about how we must adopt a “Green” lifestyle. (A nice change from raving about George W) He comes from a world where everything in sight, including the tops of the mountains, has been modified by man’s actions. We took a short drive around the farm and within minutes counted 15 deer in the field plus one in the freezer. For a short time he understood that the world is much vaster than and not as trampled as he believed. But it was only a temporary reprieve. Upon returning to Europe the delusions reappeared.
Great post KATE !! As always.
When looking down from 35000ft, I always have had a humbling experience. In the ‘whole world’ scheme of things, man is insignifigant. It is just the Gore’s and Suzuki’s and Maurice Weak’s of the world that think they are all important and so Messiah-like. I bet they do not even look out the Boeing window. just watch on-board fictional movies like Unconvenient Untruth and re-runs of the Nature of Things.
Within reason, the solution to polution is dilution. That’s how mother nature herself does it.
It is so telling that sda has archives that any one, even Warren Kinsella, can look up. Kate went back almost two years to augment her case.
Mussings ?? Ahaaw, well, no more than a few days archive, no comments, a real joke. But then, can you imagine the stack of ‘humble pies’, contradictions, ironies he would have staring at him !!???
Excellent insights Kate! Unless you actually traverse the territory by car or truck, there is no appreciation of the numerous people and places in between where “you are” and where “you are going.”
A few years back I did the 900 miles between the centre of the universe [Toronto] and the capital of Iowa [Des Moines] 5 times by car and 20 times by air within a 3 month period.
It’s the car rides that reside so indelibly in my mind. Crossing the Mississippi 5 times was enough for my 5 year old to by the landmarks that he was near it, and he doesn’t want to do it again!
And that is but a jaunt compared to driving the length of an interstate or your most recent trek Kate.
Our continent makes me humble and helps me understand how we have built great countries and why we need to fight for our freedom to roam them.
That was a truly nice post to read.
Have you ever noticed that people from the prairies seem to be the ones most likely to have driven the long miles?
I like to choose a destination, but travel a road I’ve never driven before.
The journey is often the favourite part of the trip.
There are places few hear about, postcard views yet on the market.
We drove extensively around Calif this winter. The way the media plays it, CA is over crowded. The State is mostly empty. It is just that Urbanites ‘hudle in a corner’.
Anyone got a link to a picture from space of ‘mans lights on a dark earth’ ??
Mark my words,you will see some that will want internal passports for security but it will really be to limit this type of travel.
That was beautifully written, Kate.
True too.
Exactly how I take holidays. Only no dog shows lol.
Nothing like road trips to make one appreciate the wonders of this continent. As well as a big appeciation for its many different inhabitants. Our variousforms of community all linked by a commonality of culture, freedom & law,as well as language.
I love going to Texas or NM. I kinnda stear away from LA though.
Great post Kate, BUT I do take exception to the following…Unless you’re a long haul truck driver, it’s unlikely that you’ve seen as much of North America by road as I have – or as frequently.
I know I have seen more of this continent,and world,then any truck driver will ever see.And more frequently.It is called serving with the CAF. Showing your pups does not in any iota compare with serving the country…somebody slip Libber Kool-aid into your latte in Denver??
Kate, that is a thoughtful and evocative piece.
Because the topic of Canadian-American relationships come up so often, I have a question.
When you’re making trips such as this one, what kind of reaction do you get from Americans when they find out you are Canadian?
Great post, Kate, with wonderful insights.
I often take the train or bus in Europe – for the basic reason that I want to see what the country is really like. It’s fascinating to see how the agricultural and settled mode changes from country to country, area to area.
The erasure of space and time that is achieved by air travel and TV images magnifies the miniscule and irrelevant and buries the actual reality of time, distance and the extensive diversity of the environment.
By the way, a major difference I’ve noticed when travelling in the US, is the plethora of US flags, not merely on the official buildings, but on homes and stores. You don’t see that pride of country in Canada (apart from my own view that Canada has one of the world’s ugliest flags..but that’s another issue).
The myopia is not restricted to journalists and pundits – I would also point to newish immigrant families, and, yes, products of our woeful educational system over the last 20 years.
When I went to public school in the ’50s we learned about the breadth and scale of Canada. About the majesty of the mountains and the north. About Eskimos, about Quebec, and our french alter ego. About Ukrainians on the prairies, United Empire Loyalists, Upper and Lower Canada, the Metis and Louis Riel – in short, we learned what it was to be a Canadian. It was to be a part of all of these, to call all these places and people “home”. I will never likely get to see all of “home”, but I have been around, and at 60, I remain in awe of this land (or at least what hasn’t been despoiled in the rampage of “development”).
I can forgive the innocent if somewhat arrogant German tourist who arrives in Toronto and demands to see bears. I can forgive the naive Englishman who thinks it would be nice to “drive to Vancouver ” on the weekend from TO during his week long stay in Canada. I can forgive the odd American who still thinks there should be snow in July.
But I have a problem with many new (and not so new) Canadians who would presume to tell me how my country should be run, when, though they’ve been here 20 years living in Toronto, they don’t know where Oakville is, or understand what I mean by “the maritimes”, and have made twice annual trips to Mumbai, or Trinidad, but have never seen the Rockies, Peggy’s Cove, or Saskatoon, or Bowmanville. Native born Canadians have no excuse, either, if they’ve never taken the time to know this land.
Neither group has a right to preach about “global warming”, the “environment”,my SUV or “Canadian values”, until and unless they’ve at least done me, and all true Canadians, the courtesy of taking some time to know who, and what, and where, Canada is.
One thing Canada most certainly is not – is an arrival destination from London, or Hamburg, or Atlanta.
The earth is one big ball. The Suzukis and the Dions think mankind should repent and give it all up to other animals.
Total surface of the Earth, 197 million sq miles
Canada, our share of the globe 3.5 million sq mi
Dion’s beloved France 0.2 million sq mi
People per sq mi;
Fwance 289
Canada only 9
Dion’s “homeland” is ’32 TIMES WORSE’ than Canada’s when it comes to man “taking-up-space” on mother Earth.
“Man Made Global Warming repentance” ?? You first Chirac !!
There is something existential about the great American road trip. In a way, it helps us re-connect with our ancestral roots as travellers who packed up from where we were, and moved on to a new land and new hopes. To travel by car across that great land ocean that is the Great Plains, whether it’s from Edmonton to Chicago, or Winnipeg to Denver, or Calgary to Oklahoma City is something that every North American should experience. It’s something to be drunk in, and savored for the grandeur that it encompasses. Sometimes, you really have to look: look with your heart, not your eyes and see the rolling waves of grassland dotted with buffalo. Other times it’s just there, hills and prairie appearing much as they did long before we fenced it off and ploughed it for wheat. Even then, the roadsides are dotted with greying, broken down houses and farmsites filled as they are with the broken dreams of those who lost the fight with hail, or the drought, or the loneliness. There’s another west, too. It’s the west of the imagination. It appears more often as the plains rise to meet the Rockies. It’s the west that formed the backdrop of the movies, and the paintings of Russell and Remington. We see it in the Black Hills of South Dakota and the Sweetgrass Hills of northern Montana. Drive just a few minutes out of Great Falls towards Salt Lake City, and anyone who has been moved by the artwork of Charles Russell will find their heartstrings tugged by the appearance of the square butte that figures so prominently in several paintings, because you are suddenly in the very heart of the west that Russell loved and shared with us through his art. Drive towards Billings, and you will pass through the valley where the grizzly was roped, and you will feel it in your heart that this is the place, and you’ll smile. Carry on past Billings, and you’ll come to the site of the great tragedy that was the Little Bighorn. Stop, and look around and you’ll again realize that you’re in the west as we imagine it to have been. There are still places across the plains that let you imagine the crop duster scene in “North By Northwest”. There are still roads where you can drift back to the time when big Caddies and Imperials came with big lunged engines so that on the wide, lonely stretches of Wyoming, and Utah, and Nevada, a few hundred miles meant a few hours, and you still can loosen the reins of your ride and let your hemi drink in the rarefied air and swallow the miles as you imagine the pony express riders and the sadness of the ill-fated Donner party as they travelled this very same route. It has to be driven, and if you don’t drive it, you’ll never truly embrace the west, or the people who live it. You’re dead right Kate, far too many progenitors of North American thought simply fly over it and never feel it.
I travel much by car often between large centres. Two years ago I drove from Edmonton to Mexico City. The approx. 40 hour drive tour took me from Edmonton 600,000 people to 30 million people but in between was only three fairly sizable cities that took less than an hour to drive through each; Denver, San Antonio and Monterrey MX. There was lots of green space inbetween. On returning, during a moment of weekness, in Milk River Alberta, I turned on the CBC radio where they were interviewing a professor complaning about the environmental hazards of urban sprawl. The guy had clearly never set foot outside his campus. Scale is real world perspective. My next trip is to Panama City Panama…by car.
One of the best experiences of my life was driving from Eastern Ontario to BC some years ago. When it takes you two days plus just to get out of your home province, you begin to understand how vast our country is. Friends who’d never done it couldn’t understand why we’d want to drive all that distance through nothing (Northern Ontario & the Prairies)and why we didn’t just fly to Calgary and rent a car from there.
Seeing the Prairies was something I’ll never forget. It has a weird beauty all its own with an ever changing landscape. Mind, we drove it in August. I’m not sure I’d feel quite the same way in January!
Passing through the different time zones heading west, we felt we could drive straight through from Kenora to Alberta if we didn’t want to stop for gas or food from time to time. We had to force ourselves to stop for the night.
Different story coming home, however. It was like we were on a treadmill driving endlessly and not getting any closer to home.
Anyone who thinks Canada’s running out of trees just has to take the Northern Route (through Kapuskasing & Hearst) when driving through Ontario. Same thing driving through New Brunswick from Plaster Rock east through Carlisle (can’t remember the road #). Just endless.
I have driven throughout North America for over 40 years and the scenery in the countryside is magnificent. Away from the human habitation there is peacefulness and tranquility that all of us need.
One of my favourite memories is driving up southern California in 1965 when towns like San Diego and San Clemente were small seperate places whereas now they are solid development all the way up the coast. Other than cities with personality like San Francisco, Quebec City or Vancouver there is a sameness and abandonment to the car of North American cities and I avoid their sprawl. Canada still has interesting towns away from most of central southern Ontario which is being paved over where it is not being built on and the sprawl is endless.
I just returned from New Zealand where we drove a good part of it. It is like stepping back in time, small towns made for walking surrounded by scenery of mountains, valleys and lakes that rival our Rockies. 100 kilometre beaches with almost no people. Even Auckland with over a million people was easy to drive in. No one seemed to be in a rush.
Years ago in New Orleans I was standing near one of the levies and then turned around and looked at the below sea level city and wondered what would happen if it broke.
Driving gives a perspective and time to wonder and observe things in this huge country.
Irb.
The Capital of Iowa is not Des Moines, it is Iowa City.
A beautiful drive from S. Ontario however.
Another GREAT post, Kate. How true! Nothing clears the mind or feeds the soul like the view thru the windshield of pavement, stretching off to the horizon. I would like to say that happiness is a full tank of gas, a burger on the seat, a roadmap on the dash and a beer between the knees, but I won’t because I know that MADD will be all over me.
I will gladly substitute an airline ticket for three of the above four anytime. (Water will do.)
I agree that the land is immense and aircraft do have that ability to reduce the scale unreasonably, but it is the vehicle that bring things back into perspective, and I believe that is why God placed so much crude right beneath out feet.
Perhaps this is why Liberals hate SUVs, etc. so much. Hmmmmm…
Just thinking!
CRB
the fact skuzballzuki forgets is that Canada is truly unique; all that distance requires a greater per capita use of fuel to go from A to B. even in poorly utilized busses sirrah!!! plus a LOT of this great country is @ near freezing temperature 4 or 5 months of the year.
but somehow we thrive, not because of his ilk but despite.
Rattfuc,
That’s actually not true, the state capital of Iowa is now Des Moines.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iowa
Iowa City however was the first capital of the state before 1857.
Just don’t go there during an Iowa Hawkeyes gameday or you’ll think it really is the capital.
TRIVIA: What is the tallest building in Iowa?
The Hawkeyes football stadium of course which can house 60,000 spectators(that’s bigger than the SkyDome in IOWA!).
🙂
I myself feel quite fortunate to have taken several road-trips across N. America as it has informed my redneck-ish, conservative sensibilities 🙂
> Anyone got a link to a picture from space of ‘mans lights on a dark earth’ ??
Posted by: B. Hoax Awarre at March 10, 2007 1:12 PM
That’s been a matter of study for quite a while now.
Some historical images are available at:
http://www.darksky.org/images/sat.html
This is interesting on many points. Check out places you know, then look at Africa, and particularly Asia. Try to find North Korea.
Just think how many tonnes of GHG you’ve spewed into the air with all this travelling to dog shows and all!
Maybe you can arrange to purchase some credits from Al’s company.
Next time, try a bicycle, save the earth. Or get the dogs to pull a wagon, or sled.
Wonderful post, Kate.
This Spring I’ll be driving for the third time in two years from Calgary to Santa Fe. Without doubt this is the most awesome (in the very strict definition of that word) journey to be had in North America, I think. The emptiness of the southern Foothills; Montana and Wyoming’s high plains; the Colorado ruggedness, broken momentarily by Denver; and the long run through into New Mexico. Just typing these place-names makes the hair on my arms stand up. And the utter empitiness, so captured in your description of driving toward Los Angeles.
Only those who grasp the essential truth of our largely empty continent can, I believe, develop the necessary perspective on this world of ours. The moral hubris of the self-proclaimed “environmentalists” is a direct offshoot of the cramped urban experience they have. When they say they’ve been to the wild they probably mean Muskoka, or a two-day drop-in on Yellowknife, or perhaps a weekend in Sudbury(!).
Make them drive the MacKenzie Highway; make them cycle from Winnipeg to St. Louis; make them spend a winter in Montana. Then we might get less BS and more respect for the reality of the world.
When you write something original, Kate, it is always good.
I am one of those who doesn’t reach for the window seat: been there, done that.
I agree with what you say 100%. At 35,000 feet, one can see 100 miles in each direction. Most air travellers do not realise this. And, travelling at 600 mph, every 10 minutes, they see completely new ground.
So, travel 10 hours over the Pacific Ocean. Do you really think our measly little power stations are even a hill of beans in god’s eye? (Hey, and I’m atheist). Do you realize how massive, and yet how shallow, the Oceans are?
You bring out the vastness of the planet. Hey, guys, we live on a PLANET. It’s not some suburb or airport taxi-way. It’s humungous. Earth is even larger than Mars, and you must have seen the pics of Mars – the VASTNESS of it???
Eco-weenies: GROW UP!!
I prefer the window seat of a single engine Cessna. You get appreciation for much that way.
“Eco-weenies: GROW UP!!”????
Maybe you should reach for the window seat once in a while. When you do, take a good look at the ground and see how little land is untouched by some sort of human activity. The earth may be vast, but we have managed to either dig it up, cut it down, poison it, or pave a very large part of it.
The lax nature with which humans generally treat the matter of scale is one of the biggest problems we face in dealing with technological, methodological, and risk assessment matters as we move towards ever more advanced modes of societal and thus (for a social animal) species advancement. I’ve written at length here about this problem, regular readers may recall my essay on the remarkably large scale of waste in the spending on the gun registry, and my analysis of the remarkably small scale of our contribution to global warming.
In the most excellent essay anchoring this thread (thank you Kate), those of us who have driven across this continent, and/or from its top to bottom, appreciate again just how large our earth is. I’ve done Ottawa to Edmonton in 44 hours non-stop (with a friend, two hours on, two off), Edmonton to Vancouver for a four-day weekend (multiple times, 14 hours each way non-stop, mountain), Los Angeles to Vancouver (coastal) to Edmonton, Edmonton to Phoenix and back (inland), et cetera.
Yet, those who travel on aircraft around our globe also see how small our earth is, in another sense (around the world in only 2 days, but crossing 80 social cultures). It doesn’t matter whether or not we change the planet, or the environment, or our social systems (we always have and always will), what matters is the ratio of the value accrued to the cost incurred. It is, as all pragmatic issues are, a matter of axiology, of value function. The reasonable man aims for the middle, even as he leans toward a preference.
> dig it up, cut it down, poison it, or pave a very large part of it.
Posted by: albatros39a at March 10, 2007 7:00 PM
Simple remedy: Lead us all by example – stop working, eating, and breathing.
Otherwise, you take up too much space for the rest of those who are busy making a living.
Greg asks: When you’re making trips such as this one, what kind of reaction do you get from Americans when they find out you are Canadian?
I’m not Kate, but I make similar trips to the U.S. on business and pleasure very often. Just this week I spent a few days skiing at Lake Placid, NY.
I can say the reaction I get is almost universally courteous and respectful, and this doesn’t vary much from NY to San Diego, or Chicago to Dallas. There are the occassional good-natured comments about my accent or our harsh winters, but I’ve never experienced any kind of anti-Canadianism. America is generally a welcoming place for us.
To Doug: Concerning Marshall McLuhan and how we see things.
First of all, pictures or television, never do justice to the real thing. Sometimes for the good and sometimes for the bad. (I am always amazed when my relatives – from Ireland – come to visit – we take them to Niagara Falls – and they are in complete shock at the grandeur and size – their expectations are based on TV and pictures. I’ve seen Niagara Falls tons of times and I’m bored stiff – but when I see the look in their faces my view completely changes – it is pretty good.)
“The medium is the message” is the big quote from Marshall McLuhan. I’ve always had a hard time understanding this stuff. One day, in Doolin, Co. Clare, with a bunch of knuckleheads, drinkin’ and thinkin’, I realized that the medium is not necessarily the phyisical medium (of newspaper, radio, TV, Internet) that drives a message – but rather – the medium is really the person/entity presenting the information (whether it be newspaper, radio, TV, Internet, etc.) and their agenda (political, profit driven, religious) is the message. So from a mathematical point of view, the message is convolved by the messenger and not so much by the physical media.
thanks for the post Kate…
Your experience with surface travel reminds me of when I travelled by car to come home to Manitoba after being away for 15 years. Travelling from the west, I was greated with the most fantastic display of northern lights I have experienced in my life. It was as if Manitoba was telling me welcome back to your home.
I also am reminded about a bgger concept that I esperienced in Northern Ontario. There is a community along the norhter route that has a newspaper that publishes news in English and French (not translated). They assume their readers canread either language. With my limite high school education in French, I too could undertand the news printed in either language.
I sometimes wonder if this backwood community in Northern Ontario holds the secret to unifying our nation.
The realization of the size and scale of our country came to me way back in the ’60s when I traveled from Port Arthur to Victoria by rail. Nothing emphasizes the size of Canada than watching the country roll by for three or four days. Rail trip to Montreal (for Expo 67) just added to my amazement. When I served in the military I also made more than my fair share of road trips. However, the immensity of Canada was brought home when I spent a whole day flying north and still landed in Canada (Alert to be specific). Incredible to say the least.
My wife and I always used to laugh at the locals where we were posted. Their world was so limited. When we were in Atlantic Canada they always talked about heading west. This was usually a cousin’s place in Toronto. Westerners talked about heading east and… you guessed it: east was Ontario. There is absolutely nothing like a mile by mile exploration of the entire countryside to opens one’s eyes. Of course these days unless you are a fruit fly tree hugger, you are probably not supposed to travel anywhere and use up that gas.
Nothing emphasizes the size of Canada than watching the country roll by for three or four days.
Or six. When my wife and I moved from Fairbanks to our present home in metro Atlanta, we drove tandem and thus couldn’t trade off driving, so we took it easy. Six days of the fourteen were spent in Canada, most of that north of Edmonton of course. Beautiful.
When I had moved to Fairbanks I had shipped what meager set of belongings I couldn’t take on the plane and got there from Sacramento in a few hours. The two experiences simply cannot compare; I much preferred the drive.
asiliveandbreathe, the point being that it was suggested that the earth is so vast that man couldn’t have an effect on the planet. The fact is when you fly over almost any land on the planted at 35,000 feet, it is rare not to see some sort of evidence of man altering the landscape one way or another. I’m sorry if you don’t like facts, but that’s simply the way it is.
Kevin, I’m very pleased to know that America is welcoming.
I’m still disappointed that I never had an opportunity to buy you a beer.
Here’s another question for you and Kate, or any other Canadian travellers.
If you wish to travel in the United States and never mention that you’re Canadian, how likely is it that you won’t simply pass for another American?
albatros has apparently never traveled anywhere north of the 52nd parallel.
I remember hearing one wag commenting on the case of a dog who’d been accidently taken 1000 miles from its home after being trapped in a boxcar, and then found its way back home over the course of several months.
He said (I paraphrase) “It’s hard to grasp just how far a thousand miles is. Well, think of it this way: If the Sahara desert was one mile across, you’d have to cross it a thousand times.”
Encourage people to see the video “The Great Global Warming Swindle”.
Here is an easy URL to remember to see the program. Pass it along to friends and family.
http://gorelied.notlong.com
Well said Kate. I emigrated to Canada in 1968 arriving by ship from England. We came in through strait of Belle Isle so my first view of Canada was the Labrador coast and the stunted spruce, we cleared Immigrstion in Quebec city and disembarked in Montreal. We delivered a car to Toronto seeing the fall colours and spent 3 nights in the centre of the Universe before taking the train to Vancouver. We even shared an upper berth, were we ever skinny in those far off days. We sure appreciated the size of Canada in that trip.
Many summers since we have explored Western Canada, Yukon and Alaska by road and ferry, camping and cabining. I could never understand why BC ers vacation out of the Province in the summer.
Last October, November we did Vancouver to Bisbee
Arizona. Our friends thought we were mad to drive, but the grandeur of spots like Death Valley have to be appreciated from the ground. Pack the cooler, take a kettle and one burner propane stove and take your tea in the wild, nothing better.
Encourage people to see the video “The Great Global Warming Swindle”.
Here is an easy URL to remember to see the program. Pass it along to friends and family.
http://gorelied.notlong.com
If you wish to travel in the United States and never mention that you’re Canadian, how likely is it that you won’t simply pass for another American?
It depends. In Texas, for example, the Canadian accent is different enough that people immediately know you’re not from Texas and it usually doesn’t take too much small talk before they ask where you’re from. But they may not immediately know a Canadian accent from an Nebraskan one.
I would say in that in the black and Hispanic neighbourhoods I’ve been in people rarely ask where I’m from – so I assume they take me for an American from somewhere else.
Love your dog’s picture!
Ah, road trips, just luv em.
Canada is vast and beautiful. And since we are so vast and varied, we should have more provincial student exchange programs with each other.
My American friends sometimes tease me about using the word “eh”, which I inadvertantly do from time to time. Other than that, I’ve never experienced any hostility or rudeness when in the US that is outside the realm of someone just having a bad day.
Of course, they do have comments about those “damned Canadians” when we show up at dog shows with the Bearded Ribbon Bandits in tow…
Yukon Gold: “… anywhere north of the 52nd parallel”
I have found, in general, the distances between the “No Gas or Services for xyz Kilometers/miles” signs is greater when you head North.
To Greg in Dallas:
People know right away that you are not from a certain place as soon as you speak – but there is also be a difference in attitude or approach to things that is detected – and I don’t know what it is. I recently returned from Brasil, and I was asked many times where I was from – they knew right away that I was not American – but they didn’t know where I was from and they were curious because I stood out.
I too, like many here, have travelled all over North America by car – and I love this – I just love driving and seeing the changing beauty – and the freedom you have (I’ve also driven all over Australia, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Britain, etc.).
I find that there are 2 parts to travelling: the actual greatness of travel, and the greatness of meeting the people and experiencing their cultures.
When you travel by car, you sometimes miss the opportunity of meeting people – because meeting people takes time – and often times you’re just passing through.
Travelling by train or bus (and even a city bus or subway) is a completely different experience because you are forced to be disciplined in travel and you are actually forced to meet alot of people and talk – to arrange travel – and just to meet the people on the train or bus – possibly learn the language a bit – and this is great.
(The experience of flying is also great – but different – maybe the travel medium is the message.)
We’ve put 30,000 mi. on our Caravan since last July, travelling with six kids on the I95 from Fort Lauderdale to Charlottetown. On the way north we have time on our side (not catching a flight to Cayman) so we choose a detour along the way. Perhaps because of our numbers, we usually draw the interest of friendly Americans, who quiz the kids about Canada, Cayman, and our freedom to travel. As homeschoolers, the tedious neccessity of this year’s travels has been mitigated by the adventure of meeting people where they live and participating in some of their experiences. Favourites were the zoo in Brevard, Florida, and our detour along the coast of Maine this fall. We also especially enjoyed meeting up with cousins in Princeton for a Sunday afternoon.
Earlier days we used to make the north-of- Winnipeg to Halifax road trip each summer, and nothing is as beautiful as Canada.(I love Lake Surperior!)
(family crisis permitting) we’re hoping for a cross-Canada camping adventure to see all the cousins and western relations, not to mention the Rockies.
Beats flying. (Admittedly our choice of travel has more to do with saving money, than environment.)