Author: andrasthehun

A Futile Assault on the Automobile

January 8, 2024

The Ottawa City Council approved a 4-storey, 18-unit residential building on a quarter-acre lot, in the middle of a residential area, without requiring parking. Yes, that is what they did, and I scratched my head, who is going to rent these units with no parking where there are no commercial facilities nearby? Oh yes, there is a bus, I think every half hour, that goes by the proposed development. But unless you are a hermit, happy to read books, and stay home, living without a car in this development will be a challenge.

What further upset me was that our local Councilor voted for the project and said in his newsletter that ‘we need more of this”. Does he not know that cars are part of the Canadian DNA? That cars are an integral part of our cities?

A key element of the official plan for the city is “densification” to permit population growth. Otherwise, the plan claims that “urban sprawl” will result. I guess, the planners never heard of “smart growth” or “planned growth” to alleviate the undesirable effects of urban sprawl (reduction of agricultural land, expensive infrastructure build, loss of wildlife, and pollution by increased car traffic).

A key justification for the approval was its location on a future “major transportation corridor”. The trouble is that the “corridor” has not been funded and the future may be decades away. These projects take decades to materialize while the construction of the building may take a year or two so the units would be rented without parking. Improved public transportation may be years away.

I cannot help thinking that the Council is also “social engineering” by encouraging the use of public transit.

But people have cars: statistics show that every 1000 people own 750 cars in Canada. And a building with 19 units will have at least 19 people living there or more likely, double, or triple that number. That translates into 14 or more cars. Since there is no parking on the major road fronting the proposed development, people renting there with cars will have to park on the side streets. I am sure neighbors will not like that and with the snowfall during the harsh Ottawa winters, it will create headaches for the snowplows. 

Canadians like their cars for the freedom they provide to go anywhere, anytime. Yes, mobility via the automobile does encourage urban sprawl. And yes, there are costs for this freedom (the public costs of infrastructure and private costs for fuel, insurance, etc.). However, Canadians decided that the costs are worth the freedom the car provides to get around (there are thirty million cars in Canada with a population of forty million).

As a result, the ubiquitous use of cars has left a huge imprint on the Canadian landscape. On a recent drive from Ottawa to Collingwood, we traveled on four-lane highways, the 401, and then north on the 400, crowded during the holiday travel season. We slowed down driving through Toronto, on six-lane highways in each direction. We saw a tremendous amount of pavement.

The number of highway construction projects indicates the huge public investments to improve the highway system. As well, governments attracted a fifteen-billion-dollar investment by Stellantis in Windsor and a similar investment by Volkswagen in St. Thomas, both in the EV battery business. Let’s face it, cars are not going away much as the Ottawa City Council would like to pretend.

The long drive allowed me to think that besides highways, the car industry includes innumerable gas stations and repair shops. And one cannot forget the outsized number of jobs the industry provides. Even with Amazon today, the retail industry thrives on huge shopping centers surrounded by mammoth parking lots for cars.

To my way of thinking, to assume that not providing parking will reduce the use of cars is illogical. Ottawa and other Canadian cities rely on cars for transportation. But the Ottawa City Council decided to not require any parking in a 19-unit residential building, rationalizing their decision on the availability of public transit—some system. OCTranspo, the Ottawa public transportation agency decided to cut service and increase fares given the financial losses suffered last year.

Advice for Seniors

December 20, 2023

Most people look forward to retirement as a time when they think that they can do whatever they wish to do, whenever they want to do it. I am retired and reflected on whether it is true. What I found is that I settled into a routine that expands the time available in a day for doing just sustaining activities, having less time for many things I’d like to do. Why? 

Perhaps I take longer to do things than I used to. For example: I may be less efficient when going grocery shopping. Or, perhaps, I enjoy shopping more now than before and spend more time in the stores. The adage about activities expand to fill the time available is true. Let me describe a typical day. 

Since I have no daily obligations or commitments, the first thing that crosses my mind when waking up is, why get up today? I need a purpose or task to motivate me to roll out of bed. Once I identify what I am going to do, I feel ready to get up. But first, I need to loosen up my joints, the calf muscles are tight, so I begin to rotate my foot around my ankle and then pull up my knees to my chest to loosen up the hamstrings. Still sleepy, I roll out of bed and stumble into the kitchen to make coffee, decaf, a slow start is fine in the morning.

I remember friends who used to reach for a cigarette waking up; I reach for my cellphone. While I do not get newsprint papers anymore, I subscribe to many online news sources.

With coffee in hand, I must catch up on the news, right? I want to know what is going on at home and around the world. Often, the headlines of myonline sourcesprovide sufficient info for me while other times I immerse myself in a detailed account of a news item such as the article on how Hamas accumulated an $11 billion war chest.

In other repetitive news, I learn that: the Ukraine war is still on, the Hamas/Israeli war is still on, COP28 produced an agreement, Congress is still stumbling around with the new Speaker and the Canadian Prime Minister, who prefers to globetrot than stay home, is out of the country again on some worldwide trip.

I prefer reading news that upsets me, such as about the woman, pregnant with her third child and facing death without an abortion, having to leave the State of Texas to get an abortion in another state where abortion is allowed. I get upset at the Attorney General of Texas who brought in the legislation making abortion illegal for any reason.

Or I read about the Premier of Quebec bashing the Anglos again via French language policies, trying to bolster his low political standing in the province, an always sure-winning strategy in Quebec. Disgusting. The Premier raised university fees for out-of-province students at Montreal’s English language universities creating serious financial hardship for their survival. And by centralizing healthcare, services in English may be reduced in the future. French language policies in Quebec have always upset me: when will Quebecors realize that outside Quebec, most Canadians do not give a fig about French?

Now that upsetting news woke me up and got my adrenalin flowing, it is time for breakfast. An important activity: fix eggs, sunny side up, to perfection, with toast and jam on the side and more coffee, this time full-strength. 

Following breakfast, my routine is to make the bed and do bathroom duties that have increased in complexity with the arrival of a Waterpik. I thought the Pik would replace the toothbrush, but I discovered that it is a flossing device only and brushing teeth is still a go, followed up with the Waterpik.

It could be 10 am by now and it is time to start exercising. Do not miss exercises; as you age, it is important to keep fit and I have a variety of options: get on the floor and do my yoga poses I learned from attending classes and from TV yoga gurus; or I can turn on the TV and follow walking exercises, Pilates, or warmups. The ten-minute warmup I like is with music by the BeeGees, which gets me sweaty.

Some days, when I feel energetic (or when Kathy “encourages” me), I follow up my in-house exercise routine by going to the gym as well where I mostly use the machines.  On occasion, I have even signed up for a private lesson where they have encouraged me to use more free weights. But, honestly, I am quite happy with the treadmill, stair climber, bicycle, and various machines challenging my leg muscles. even though I know that the free weights would be useful for my upper body.

You see by now where I am going with this?

After the gym, it is time for lunch, which I never miss.  And, of course, after all the exercise, I take a siesta after lunch, followed by coffee to wake me up.  That makes the afternoon short with little time for chores if I am to leave time for my blogging before dinner.

I could go on describing how I spend my timeeating, having coffee, exercising, and napping. I  think I am quite wasteful with my time just to sustain my existence. Although my days are enjoyable, and relaxing, I am convinced that retired people, including myself, need a goal, a project, a mission, or a purpose such as authoring a book, traveling to far-flung places, working at a soup kitchen, or taking courses on subjects of interest. Otherwise, life is meaningless.

Are We Panicking About Housing?

November 27, 2023

Current headline news bombards us with titles like: “housing shortage”, “unaffordable housing”, and “people die on the streets for lack of housing”. These housing-related issues have materialized since 2015; we did not have these topics at that time.

However, all of these headlines spawn questions. For example, what is affordable housing? One metric the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC, the Canadian mortgage insurance company) uses is that no more than forty percent of after-tax family income should be used for housing. But does this metric apply today?

The median family income in Ottawa is just over $100,000 today, and the average house price is slightly over $600,000. The minimum downpayment is five percent for the first half million dollars, ten percent for the next half million, which translates into $35,000 for the average house in Ottawa. So, with this downpayment one needs a mortgage of $565,000 that would cost today circa $4.000 per month. The annual cost, $48,000, would therefore be over forty percent of the annual income of the average Ottawa family income. Which means housing is, in fact, unaffordable, unless one has a larger downpayment to reduce the monthly mortgage payment.

One way to look at housing issues is to identify factors creating demand for, and supply of, housing. Either decreasing demand, increasing the supply of housing, or doing both, would alleviate the current housing problem.

The major factors on the demand side are immigration and the entry of foreign students. Canada let in 430,000 immigrants and 550,000 foreign students in 2022. All of the housing demand can be attributed to these two classes of newcomers to Canada: there are 424 housing units per 1000 people in Canada, so the close to one million newcomers alone needed 400,000 units in 2022 when Canada builds only 250,000 units per annum (Census and CMHC statistics).

While the last two classes of newcomers are beneficial to Canada, they create a huge stress on the housing markets. They are beneficial in that Canadian fertility rates are below replacement rate, hence the rationale for increased immigration. Similarly, Canada is short of skilled construction workers, and therefore welcomes immigrants with such skills. And foreign students pay two or three times the university fees Canadian students pay and therefore contribute to the universities’ bottom line. But we must balance our priorities and perhaps providing housing is more important today than other objectives.

Most of the supply issues can be attributed to the shortage of skilled workers and the lack of land for development. Land is especially a major issue in some of our large cities. Vancouver is surrounded by water and mountains. Toronto’s expansion is limited on one side by water.

Densification has become the key word today to accommodate the increasing population. Densification requires rezoning by municipalities, that takes years. And vacant land development, where available, also takes years for approval.

Are there any solutions? On the demand side, the federal government could reduce the flow of immigration and the intake of foreign students to alleviate demand and pressure on housing. And municipalities could accelerate the approval process to increase the supply of housing.

The two levels of government, working in tandem, could alleviate the housing problem. However, both initiatives would also create negative consequences; Canada needs skilled people and universities favor foreign students. And an acceleration of municipal approvals may weaken environmental reviews and public engagement – both important review elements in the development process and expected by Canadians.  

The bottom line is that increased coordination between the different levels of government would go a long way to streamline the process of welcoming immigrants and foreign students entering Canada by making sure that housing is available.

The danger I see is that a panicky response today encouraging a hugely accelerated house construction program could result in an oversupply of housing in the next few years during which the federal government may change its priorities and reduce targets for immigration and the entry of foreign students.

Exploring the Art and Wine at Chateau La Coste

November 1, 2023

A jazz trio played forties tunes on the deck of a vineyard, where we sat down after a tiring bicycle ride in the finger-lakes area of New York State. We relaxed by sampling the wine and listening to the music. It was a fall afternoon with the sun going down, illuminating the vinifera below us. Before leaving, we bought some wine for the night to enjoy at our hotel. These are the type of situations my lasting memories are made of.

The first such memory was when I finished university and helped my younger brother learn to drive when he turned sixteen. When he passed the driving test, I convinced him to drive with me from Vancouver to California. I explained to him that he’d do the driving for practice, and I’d do some wine-tasting on the way. He did not need much convincing. And it was a memorable trip.

More recent memories were at vineyards in North Carolina, where after a warm welcome, the hosts offered lunch in addition to the tasting session. What I liked about these visits were driving into an attractive estate with lush vinifera surrounding us, entering an ornate Italianate building or a large historic mansion where the winemaking took place, and partaking in a guided tour of winemaking before sitting down for the tasting session.

So, when we visited Provence in France a month ago and discovered that Chateau La Coste, a well-known vineyard was on our route, I jumped at the opportunity to visit it and bought entry tickets. Chateau La Coste is famous for art, architecture, and wine. The owner, Paddy McKillen, an Irishman, who bought the estate in 2001, commissioned artists to create artwork in the garden and hired world-famous architects to design the buildings (Frank Gehry, Oscar Niemeyer, and others). So my expectations were high only to be disappointed after the visit. Let me explain.

We approached the Chateau driving through fields of vinifera only to arrive at a large, open, unpaved parking lot, with recently planted trees. By talking to other tourists and asking questions, we found our way to the building where our tour started. Nobody welcomed us, nobody provided directions. It was not a promising beginning.

Our group of eleven people was taken on a guided tour of the wine-making plant. Well, production took place in a building that looked like half a barrel on its side, with interesting finishes, mostly aluminum, but nothing else (designed by Jean Nouvel). To me, it looked like any commercial building, like a Quonset hut, huge, but still only a simple shape, a half-barrel sitting on its side. Is this good architecture? The shape conjured up winemaking barrels, was that the idea?

We pondered the front of the building, listening to the guide, standing on a gravelly field, next to a massive excavation, which, I gathered, was going to be the location for a hotel. The surrounding for the hotel and the plant was not what I expected to be a campus-like atmosphere with attractive landscaping.

Once inside the half-barrel, though, the guide gave a detailed tour of the wine-making process and equipment. Surprising to me were the huge metal barrels holding the fermenting wine; I had seen wooden barrels in other vineyards previously (although, admittedly, the other vineyards were smaller than this one).

Wine tasting, the event we all looked forward to, was next and we entered a small nondescript building. We gathered around a U-shaped table, sitting on bar stools. At the open end of the U was the guide and at the bottom of the U were six bottles of the Chateaus brand.

Talking about the qualities of the first bottle, the guide poured a couple of ounces of wine into a wine glass placed in front of each of us. If you did not like it, you could pour it into a tumbler sitting next to the wine glass. The purpose of the tumbler became more obvious as we tasted the next few wines and became a bit tipsy. I began to pour half of my samples into the tumbler, I wanted to walk out at the end, although I did not drive, Kathy drove in Provence.

The two young Australian couples facing us across the U loved their wine and peppered the guide with questions. The three Israeli tourists next to us enjoyed their wine quietly. The two young women from New  York City talked to each other about the wines. Kathy and I practiced our wine-tasting skills by swirling the wine around the glass, smelling it, and observing the prominence of legs in the samples indicating alcoholic content.

During our discussion with the guide, we learned that Le Chateau produces excellent roses because of the soil in the area. And the wines are not scored for sweetness like we do in Canada. We also found out that of the million liters of wine produced annually, a third goes to North America, a third to Europe, and a third is sold domestically. The guide even mentioned some of the best years for each sample we tasted, should we decide to purchase some.

When we discovered, after sampling all six wines, that the fourth was the most expensive, many of us looked ruefully into the tumbler into which we poured some of it; we were all becoming a bit mellow after tasting four samples. But the sampling was a success indicated by how our conversation had become loud and animated, and as a result, in the end, we all tipped the guide. On the way out I bought a bottle of wine that we liked during the tasting, to enjoy at night at the hotel.

By now it was getting late in the afternoon, and we had to drive to Aix-en-Provence for our accommodation that night. We felt it prudent to eat before driving after consuming so much wine and tried one of the restaurants, set in a lovely garden. We were not disappointed with the quality of the food.

On leaving, we went by the gardens and noticed some of the artwork in the distance. When we tried to walk closer, a guard snapped at us and asked for our tickets. We did not know that we had to pay, we saw nothing indicating that on the way in and assumed that our wine-tasting ticket covered the whole vineyard. It was too late to go back to the entrance to buy tickets, so we left without seeing all the artwork. I understood it would take a few hours to see the artwork and the buildings designed by renowned architects, spread across the large estate. I was disappointed; we had seen parts of the vineyard, much of it under development but missed some of the finished areas with the work of famous artists and architects. Next time we come by, I’ll make sure we have sufficient time to fully explore Chateau La Coste.

Exploring Corsica’s Abandoned Homes and Ghost Towns

October 24, 2023

The Alfa Romeo climbed the winding road effortlessly. Kathy drove and I admired the landscape, occasionally grabbing the door handle when rounding a 180-degree turn with a drop into a valley on my side. But I kept my mouth shut. I spoke up only when Kathy stopped at a viewpoint, the front of the car facing a huge drop into a valley in front of us, pressing only the brake instead of putting the gearshift into park.

The GPS in the car showed the curves in the road ahead. Driving was slow because of the turns every few hundred feet, the narrowness of the road, and the traffic punctuated by numerous cyclists going almost at our speed. Turnouts helped us to stop and let faster drivers go by us. Overall, the drivers showed restraint; we could not go faster than fifty kilometers per hour.

We rented the Alfa at Figari Airport and drove to Porto Vecchio to shop for supplies to last us four days in the mountains where our daughter and son-in-law rented a house. The mountains began just when we left Porto Vecchio. Although we drove only just over sixty kilometers, it took us two hours to reach our destination. The scenery along the trip got my iPhone camera busy; the jagged mountains were stunning, reminding me of the Rockies. We drove through small towns like Levie, Zonza, and Quenza to reach Sorbonella, a town of 68 people, where our house was; the speed limit through the towns was thirty kilometers.

It surprised me to see all the boarded-up houses in the towns; shutters covered windows and doors. Where were the inhabitants? People sitting in street cafes were tourists, many had bikes leaning against their chairs. I decided to walk around Quenza the next day to check out the boarded-up houses. And what I saw confirmed what I had seen, most of the homes, even along the main street were tightly shut; the gardens were unkempt, and gates shut tight with a chain and lock on them. So, what gives?

I searched the internet and found one answer: there were 613 houses in Quenza (population of 235), of which 110 were occupied; 494 were secondary units (this is the expression used by the local statistical agency) and 9 vacant units, in 2007 (I discovered the French government keeps detailed statistics). The secondary units were mostly owned by native Corsicans who left for career or other reasons and kept their family home, according to some people I talked with in Quenza.

The next day we drove to Aulene (population 179), where we found houses boarded up similar to those in Quenza. According to French statistics, there were 421 houses in 2007, of which 81 were occupied; 333 were secondary units, and 7 were vacant. After a short walk around town, we settled into a small café for the traditional café allonge, next to tourists.

Holiday homes owned by people living in France and foreigners represent forty percent of all real estate in Corsica, according to local authorities. And, according to INSEE, the French statistics collection agency, there were 7000 holiday homes in Corsica in 1968, ratcheting up to over 71,000 holiday homes in 2007. Looking at holiday homes for sales ads in Corsica indicated that the desirable units are along the ocean, where, I assume, the foreigners bought. In the mountains, where we were, I assume that most of the boarded-up homes were owned by Corsicans.

The Mediterranean climate has attracted people to buy real estate in Corsica thereby elevating real estate prices. That made purchasing property by local people difficult. In response, the local government brought in legislation in 2014 to require five years of residency in Corsica for outside purchasers except for native Corsicans living abroad.

Talking with some French people from outside Corsica, we understood that the French people are not welcome to buy Corsican real estate, except when they are tourists and spend money locally. Corsicans are proud people and consider themselves different from the French people; their feelings towards the French have been demonstrated by setting fire to French-owned holiday homes. But the island remains a popular destination for vacationers.

Seasonal homes are shut down most of the time and there was an overabundance of them in the small towns driving through the mountains. With their shutters, they gave me a feeling of abandoned places, like ghost towns (similar to abandoned mining towns in British Columbia, Canada). It was a bit eery. Not only were there the shuttered homes but also the abandoned gardens and very few people on the streets except for cycling tourists. But we enjoyed the serenity of the quiet streets, punctuated by the occasional cafe along the sidewalk. The one grocery store in Quenza, one room, shut down between the hours of 12:30 to 4 p.m. There was no other commercial establishment here, we had to look up where the nearest gas station was seven kilometers away.