Tag: news

Exploring North Carolina: Vineyards, Memories, and Family

May 15, 2024

Sitting in the sun, shaded partly by an umbrella at Shelton’s vineyard in North Carolina, was hugely relaxing. Helping the relaxation was the Cabernet Sauvignon that we sipped. The food was average: pulled pork on an open sandwich base, or perhaps it was a pizza. I am not sure, but it tasted like pub food, appropriate in the setting.

Driving away from the lush meadows of the Yadkin Valley where Shelton’s grows its grapes, my thoughts turned towards the many times we visited North Carolina over the last few decades, and my memory lane took me back to the first time I drove to Chapel Hill, NC.

That was when the Dean of the Graduate School of City Planning welcomed me with an open smile; Jack Parker welcomed each planning student. His intimate reception touched me, and he generated a feeling that I’d succeed in my studies. It was a competitive program, but I have known no one who failed. The UNC Planning School admitted me for the January session; I applied to many other Ivy League schools, but UNC took me mid-year, and I accepted the offer, not waiting for the other schools to respond. But let me explain how I decided to attend planning school.

After graduating from the School of Architecture at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, I worked with a small architectural firm in Vancouver. I lasted six months before getting bored with mundane designs of lobbies for high-rise buildings put up by developers. Another job with an even smaller firm was more interesting: designing a recreation center for a specific location in Vancouver. This project came about as a request for proposals for a competition our firm did not win.

After my brief experience with two architectural firms, I decided that I did not fit the mold of an architect. Architecture envisions plenty of attractive and well-appointed living spaces unavailable for most people worldwide. Architecture is irrelevant to people who have no choice but to tolerate less attractive environments. So, that was the impetus for me to search for a new field of endeavor. City planning appeared to be a related field, so I started applying to graduate planning schools in the fall, which is how I ended up in Chapel Hill in January.

When I arrived, I felt I was in paradise, experiencing southern hospitality and the positive energy generated by, and friendships made with, the planning students. Living at a campus-type university was another positive for me; UBC was a city university where moststudents lived off-campus. In contrast, campus life at UNC was rich with lectures and performances I could attend. For example, at the annual Jubilee Music Festival in the spring, I listened to Johnny Cash while sitting with thousands of students on the ground of the quadrangle. It was a memorable concert. 

Another primary reason North Carolina holds deep memories is that I spent considerable time with my future wife during our second year there. Although we met in Washington, DC, where we both had summer jobs, upon returning to UNC for our second year, we saw each other daily, starting with breakfast in thestudent dining room,Lenoir Hall, when it cost forty cents. And we spent many evenings talking late into the night at the Rathskeller, a student pub in Chapel Hill. We married at year’s end at the Anglican Church on the campus with family and all my classmates in attendance. The audience had a big laugh when the newlyweds left in the car with a colossal ruckus created by the rocks my friends put into the hubcaps of our vehicle.

A career launch and meeting my lifelong partner provide deep roots in North Carolina. But there is more to it. Our three children applied to US universities after finishing high school in Ontario. Although they did get into Canadian universities, they thought going to American schools would be more adventurous, perhaps influenced by their parent’s experience there. The upshot of their leaving Canada was that Tony and David attended UNC in Chapel Hill, while Megan graduated from Duke University in Durham.

They married after graduating from university; the two boys married North Carolina girls and settled in Charlotte and Durham. Further, Kathy’s brother, Huw, retired from Washington, DC to Winston-Salem, near where his wife had grown up. Our recent visits to North Carolina span from Charlotte to Winston-Salem to Durham, all of these locations along Interstate 40, within three hours of driving time.

Innumerable opportunities have existed to visit our children and their growing families in North Carolina, share a vacation, help them move, or see them. Over the years, I wore out several car tires along Interstate 81, driving from Ottawa to North Carolina. However, the visits have also provided opportunities to see the state and enjoy what it offers.

Huw and Judy introduced us to vineyards while driving around Wiinston-Salem. With the decay of the tobacco industry, growing grapes had taken over the rich agricultural soil. My attraction to visiting vineyards goes beyond sipping wines; they happen in areas with lush vegetation on rolling hills, with a lake and a fountain facing the tasting room.

Having visited Shelton’s vineyard, where the wine was tasty, but the food was not the best, we decided to visit Shadow Springs Vineyards with Huw and Judy on our last visit before returning to Ottawa. They do not have a restaurant, and since we do not sip wine without some food at lunchtime, we stopped at the Shiloh General Store in Hammondville to pick up a sandwich.

Amish people run the store, and the owner, Phil Graber, was on cash. I learned from him that the area has over fifty Amish families. Phil and his wife Mary established the store in the early 2000s and expanded it to over thirty-five hundred square feet. The store sells homemade products with fresh ingredients, such as pickled vegetables, dry soup mixes, Amish noodles, pretzels, and crackers.

They made a tasty sandwich for us. I found their order-taking fascinating. You choose on a piece of paper the type of bread, meat, spread, vegetables, and sides you want and place it in a window. Then, they prepare the sandwich and call your name. There was no limit on what you could ask for, and I thought, why not order pulled pork and chicken under meats? And low and behold, my sandwich had both meats!

Armed with our sandwich, we entered Shadow Springs’ tasting room. Judy selected a 2022 Seyval Blancand a2022 Chardonnay while we settled at a table on the lakefront, cranking up the umbrella to provide shade from the sun’s heat at midday. The chatty hostess in the tasting room described how Chuck Johnson, the owner, decided to retire from his corporate job to his home state and look for another career opportunity after missing too many of his son’s ball games. Chuck and his wife Mary went winetasting upon their return to NC and decided that winemaking might be an excellent opportunity for starting a new life. They looked at dozens of farms for sale until they found this piece of land with the proper orientation and soil qualities to make wine. They started making wine in 2005.

And we were not disappointed with their wines. We spent the two-hour lunch sipping wine in sunny weather, sitting outside with a huge fountain making a bubbling sound in the middle of the lake next to us. What a way to spend our last day in North Carolina before returning to Ottawa, where the trees were getting leafy.  

Zooming with Cottage Neighbors

April 2, 2024

I push the join button on Zoom and face 18 somber people on the screen, members of our cottagers’ association. Nobody speaks. With a look of expectation on their faces, they appear serious. I ask: can you hear me? Some say yes. I grab my glass of wine while Kathy brings our dinner at 7 pm. We decided to eat our dinner during the Zoom call.

Looking at the Zoom participants, I ask who is from Ottawa. A woman says she is 100 km from Ottawa in Madoc. Then I recognize Kit joining us from Florida, Ry, who lives in New Hampshire, and a few from Toronto. The association’s President lives in Toronto and called the Zoom meeting to discuss issues concerning the group.

A revised constitution and the transfer of land used as pathways from the island’s original owners to our cottagers’ association are on the agenda. These topics leave me cold; I have never been interested in constitutions, and the land transfer has no impact on our enjoyment of the island. We already have legal access to walk on the pathways with all other cottagers, so who owns it is irrelevant.

I would have been more interested in the Zoom call if the agenda had proposed some new activities and developments for the upcoming summer. Bureaucratic matters, especially constitutions, leave me cold, but I looked forward to seeing some cottage neighbors.

After tent camping and trailering, we bought the cottage a few decades ago, envisioning a permanent summer venue we could visit every weekend. It never involved Robert’s Rules and land transfers. It was “getting away” from urbanization and work. It had to do with living on a lakefront with all the lake’s benefits, like swimming, canoeing, kayaking, sailboarding, and even walking on the pathways in the back.

But here we are, having dinner with a glass of wine when the President puts the revised constitution on the screen and explains proposed changes. What a bore, except for a few quirky items. He says we could have more than the current membership class, consisting of property owners on the island.

Less than half of the current cottage owners belong to the association, and the President suggests we could have the non-paying cottagers become another class of members. Huh? What does that mean? Why should you be a member if you do not pay the membership fee and cannot vote? Some people on the island may not even be aware of the association, but we make them members?

But wait. The President also suggests another member class: people who do not even live on the island. Who could these people be? Relatives, potential cottage property buyers? I think we do not need these artificial membership classes.

Another peculiar suggestion the President makes to include in the constitution is that only people with no history of bankruptcy can serve on the association’s executive. Someone asks how we can filter these individuals out of consideration. How can we ascertain that the individual volunteering to serve on the Executive Committee has no bankruptcy history?

Concerning the pathways, I ask: Why transfer the land to the association when we have the legal right to walk on them? What are the benefits? I do not get a response to my question or to the other question, whether owning the land would require liability insurance, which would cost dearly and increase the membership fee.  

However, there seems to be momentum to proceed with the land transfer, mainly from the executive members. There appears to be wind in their sails; I am unsure what drives their motivation. They promise to follow up on suggestions from the 19 members of the association logging in.

I leave the Zoom meeting with mixed feelings. When we bought a cottage on an island, we thought we had left bureaucracy behind in the city. But bureaucracy follows us today and is burgeoning, with big-city people coming to our island and developing big-city organizations with rules and regulations. I may have to reconsider joining the association for next year.

Housing and Homelessness

February 4, 2024

My local city Councilor jolted me with the following statement in his late January 2024 newsletter: “The issue that I want to focus on for this newsletter is Housing & Homelessness. If ever there was a time in recent memory when this issue was front and centre in the minds of pretty much everyone, this is it. Whether you’re homeless yourself, whether you can’t afford to buy a home, refinance your home, or rent an apartment, or whether you’re worried about challenges that will be faced by the next generation, our current crisis is affecting a majority of Ottawa residents”. Sixty-four percent of Ottawa households own a home! So, how could these issues affect the majority of residents? This statement did not resonate with me on several levels!

On one level, it is not front and center in my mind or my friends’ or neighbors’ minds. It is in the newspapers, on TV channels, and on the radio, but people I know do not discuss and are not interested in those subjects. It is infrequent if they talk about it, and when they do, they mention parts of downtown where people experiencing homelessness congregate. But people I know avoid downtown for lack of parking or the cost, especially since we find all our needs met in the suburbs. In our neighborhood, I have yet to see homeless people. I go out daily, know my neighborhood well, and have not seen homeless people to date. I believe it is a non-issue in my community.

When I talk with my friends, subjects of our discussions relate to the amazingly mild climate this year, the current popularity of hybrid cars, how they function, and whether we should get one, a hip replacement facing a neighbor, a trip by a friend visiting the Abu Simbel Temple in Egypt, and when Trudeau may resign. When nine men met to form a book club, we discussed the need for a men’s book club, the schools we attended, and how we should run our new-fangled book club; for example, should we have lunch before discussing books? Homelessness was never mentioned.

On another level, if my local city Councilor were serious about doing something about homelessness, he should have had some statistics on how many homeless are in our community. All I hear today is “evidence-based” policymaking. So, how about some numbers to substantiate the homelessness issue in general terms and as it exists in our community?

The other subject the Councilor mentions is housing and its affordability. These are current political challenges to satisfying the massive demand for housing created by the influx of newcomers to Canada. The various levels of government blame each other for the housing shortage. One reads that local governments take too long to approve applications for development proposals and charge hefty development fees. Both are disincentives for speedy housing construction. Recent federal government policy let too many students, refugees, and immigrants into Canada, which combined to create a high demand for housing that the construction industry has been unable to cope with. Beyond general curiosity, my friends and I ignore this subject; we all have a house, mortgage-free.

Unless the Councilor can identify homelessness as an issue in our community, I would suggest he focus on our local problems, such as poor road conditions, through traffic, and traffic congestion on surrounding major roads. Many streets are in an abysmal state with potholes. People traversing our community to avoid traffic tie-ups at major intersections endanger our walkers on the streets. The construction of sidewalks and additional streetlights would enhance safety. I believe road maintenance, safety, and traffic control are the real issues in our community. The Councilor could survey residents on what they perceive to be the problems in setting his priorities.

My Rant for Today: Immigration Overload?

January 13, 2024

Driving to have coffee with my friend at Timmies, I listened to the daily talk show with a panel on immigration. One said the Canadian public is sympathetic to (and has an enviable record), welcoming immigrants. Based on that attitude and arguing that the economy needs immigrants for its continued growth, the government doubled immigration targets to the 500,000 range. In addition, another million people arrive in Canada annually as foreign students and temporary workers, many of these becoming permanent residents over time.

The combination of immigration and temporary workers and foreign students have coalesced into a momentous problem in Canada, resulting in an acute shortage of housing and a precipitous decline in healthcare (lack of nurses, doctors, unacceptable emergency department waiting times). Without question, the huge number of recent immigrants, foreign students and temporary workers are a major contributing factor to these problems. 

Up until a few years ago, with half the number of arrivals into Canada compared to the recent year, assimilation into Canadian society had occurred seamlessly without impacting housing and healthcare. Services provided paralleled demand. (In fact, it has just been revealed that the Canadian cabinet minister responsible for immigration was warned two years ago that we were facing a housing crunch, even before immigration levels were increased this past year!  This warning was ignored for political purposes!)

Now, Canadians are becoming aware of what the massively increased number of newcomers has wrought, and anecdotal evidence points to a shrinking welcome mat.

One panelist on the talk show said that we need immigrants for our economy to grow. OK. How many do we need? I’m not too fond of loose talk. Provide some metrics. Arguments with no evidence to back them up are useless. The bottom line is: how many immigrants, foreign students and temporary workers do we need for the economy?

People with skills required in Canada would be a great addition to the economy, but how many immigrants are skilled in occupations we need?  We are told that we need them for house construction; however, we are also told that only about 5% of immigrants work in the housing industry….

I’d like to know how many of the half million immigrants we allow to enter Canada qualify for the needed skilled categories. Equally importantly, how many of these needed people would be allowed to practice their trade in Canada without certification (medical licensing, trade licensing)? And how long would it take to get their licenses to be productive in Canada?

Without data to back up the justifications for even more immigrants, we, the Canadian public, are left with only anecdotal information and our own experiences of worsening health care access, inability to find family doctors, long wait times for emergency care and rapidly increasing housing and rents which all will translate into reversing Canadians’ goodwill towards immigration.