A brief history of the Kildonans

A recent visitor to my blog, who is no doubt a proud Kildonanite, took pains to inform me as to the history of his fine neighborhood after having read my post about whether or not Kildonan was a separate entity from the city of Winnipeg. Here is his comment:

You are wrong in saying that Kildonan was not a separate area from Winnipeg. There was a municipality of Kildonan from 1875 to 1914. In 1914 this divided into East and West Kildonan in 1914, two separate municipalities. In 1922 Old Kildonan separated from West Kildonan becoming a separate municipality. In 1925 North Kildonan separated from East Kildonan becoming a municipality. In 1957 East Kildonan became a city while West Kildonan became a city in 1961. In 1972 the four Kildonan’s became part of Winnipeg along with the cities of St. Boniface, St. Vital, Transcona and St James Assinobia with the municipalities of Fort Garry and Charleswood along with the town of Tuxedo and the old city of Winnipeg. -Jim Smith

The Virtues of Ethanol

Yesterday on ALFA I posted a silly little GIF animation that was a lot of fun to make (if a bit time consuming). Today I tackled an even longer project.

Instant Loan Article

There’s a world of bad choices out there for anyone with a bit of credit. Everywhere you look someone is encouraging you to lay out your hard earned money for a bit of instant gratification. And with the explosion of loan shops and once-in-a-lifetime credit offers it’s easier than ever for consumers to get their hands on borrowed cash.

Bill C-26 was tabled in Ottawa earlier this month to allow provinces to cap the amount payday lenders can charge for their services. It’s a measure intended to bring a bit of sanity back to the feeding frenzy creditors have made of our enjoy now, pay later consumer culture. But the proliferation of these despicable loan companies is a built on a popularity of their services, and despite any cap that may be imposed their unsavory practices will continue as long as customers demand it.

According to Statistics Canada a near majority of Canadians (47 per cent) spent more than their pre-tax income in 2001. A 2004 Industry Canada report described consumer bankruptcies as being on a “long-run upward trend” stating that there were “more than two-and-a-half times as many consumer bankruptcies in the 1990’s than during the previous decade.” This same report says that from the beginning of 1989 to the end of 2003 the debt-to-income ratio increased from 73.8 to 103.2 per cent, while the savings rate declined from 14.1 to 1.3 per cent.

In isolation any number of conclusions can be drawn from these numbers: that real earnings are down since the end of the 1980’s, that the cost of living is higher, or that taxation and economic policy have become a greater burden. For example decreases in post-secondary education funding in the early ‘90’s have seen today’s students take on a greater financial burden for the same amount of education a student in the 1980’s would face.

However one cannot simply blame government policy for this epidemic of personal debt. Equal partners in the decline of prudent and reasonable spending habits are the increasing ease of acquiring consumer credit, and a growing lack in the good judgment of the loan seeker.

In many cases the public has simply allowed savvy advertising firms and finance companies to take control of their financial decisions, forgoing an educated and balanced approach in the face of easy credit. In essence they have placed a great deal of trust in people who’s primary goal is to separate them from their money. There is no public education strategy or meaningful political action to counter the voodoo-like lure of modern marketing, and so the cycle of debt continues to grow unchecked.

There is another way. Despite having lived near the poverty-line for the balance of my adult life I have never found myself in dire financial straights. Having made a conscious decision to live within my limited means has enabled me to discover a path to living that avoids the trap of becoming a slave to creditors and the notions of class and convenience instilled by advertisers.

I am certain that my near asceticism won’t appeal to most, and I’m not advocating for a monastic life for the masses. But I do believe there is a lot more to be gained from practicing some prudence than any television commercial or payday loan agent would have you believe.

While it is true that many of my clothes were once someone else’s and that I’m not very up-to-date on the city’s finer dining establishments I do retain the freedom to make choices for myself without having to consult with my bankers, and am comfortable in the knowledge that my purpose in life has not become to my next car payment. I take the time to think, to breathe, and to be thankful for the things I have rather than run up another hill of debt when the next must-have item saunters past in a coat of shiny cellophane.

Having one’s thumbs screwed by unhappy collection agents and getting gouged at the instant loan shops is no way to get by. The true path to financial freedom is to balance what is truly needed against unnecessary wants disguised in a cloak of affordable monthly installments.

Evolution of the Middle West

The core of the continent
after a hundred years of explosive growth
when entrepreneurial Europeans
bought off the native people
with glass beads and Bay blankets
is dying-off like old star.

Where once energetic pioneers
surveyed the windswept plains
huddled near the fire
in rustic sod huts
and languished in the humidity
of their vibrant young cities
today they wander off west
to the new capitals of capital.

Oh, how we bemoan our fate!
Mystified we beat the bushes
looking for a solution
to the ennui and economic despair
that teaches our young and educated
to fly away.

“We can be great again”
the optimists opine
the right mix of policy and publicity
can recapture the spirited energy
that made our cities the envy of the world
in the year 1908
just build some bus lanes
and turn empty warehouses
into condos
all will be well again.

But wide open skies
and clean water
are not the draws they once were
prosperity depends on how much bacon
one brings home,
in today’s world
the workers are not tied to agriculture
or the modest industries of the middle-west.

The big cities capture excitement
romance and adventure
like ours once did
they have mountains, money
and movie stars
we have winter, urban decay
and entire neighborhoods
full of dismal poverty.

Let your children go
into that brave New West
ours is a land of opportunity spent
where our very existence
depends on generous payments
from the national coffers
like a once glorious sub-Saharan state
our wealth has dried up and withered
there are not enough natural reasons
to fuel future growth,
let it be so.

Maintaining the Status Quo: A Classic Disclaimer Rant

Economics is a minefield for the uninitiated. Posing as a science it is in fact a more mystical pursuit whose main objective is to hold power for those who keep the money. We the ordinary, un-enshrined members of society: the artists, the students, the workaday types are at the mercy of a system that keeps our thumbs screwed tight and does not allow for dissent. No matter what your feeling on the matter rent must be paid and work must be done to accommodate the idea that we all must earn a wage and therefore “contribute” to the economic wealth of our nation.

In the absence of a truly pan-national ethos Economics is the closest we can come to agreeing on what the purpose of life might be. Various theorists and political enterprises have tried to shape how this modern creed is practiced, those with an interest in social justice and the working class tried to infuse economic policies with a collectivist flair, but for the most part the weakness and wickedness in man (sexist pronoun intended), his desire to seize power and dictate, won over the more noble ideals of Bolshevism, leaving a bitter taste in the mouth of those who would wish to organize economies for the benefit of all.

What is left is the trickle-down theory, the grossly unfair policies of the powerful that insist that individual wealth is the greatest thing to which we can aspire, a right that is enshrined in tax and corporate law to ensure that it continues indefinitely. The real victory of the Cold War in this context was the victory of billionaire industrialists (i.e. war makers) over every day people. The “winning” system of economics did not end up helping its poor, in fact it barely felt the need to pay them lip service. Its goal was to crush the idea that wealth should be shared, that its methods should be questioned, that “progress” should be measured by any other standard than profit.

Now we see that those who control this system lie to us outright and arrogantly send their armies out to die for an ideology and/or faith they do not wholly understand. The philosophy that guides these leaders is one of privilege and isolation. They believe that the fibs they tell are for the greater good, not really understanding that “the greater good” means anything other than what is best for their own cabal of friends and associates.

Granted it is difficult for anyone to become enlightened enough to see beyond one’s own ego. Their are monumental questions to ponder before one can contemplate with sobriety the shaping of human history. But these questions are never asked. The brains of the masses are subdued by toxic images and ideas—taught to conform, rather than to think. Thus those who attain power are much like the majority: absorbed in self-interest, and holding true to unquestioned ideologies even in the face of evidence that these beliefs are a tremendous failure in practice.

The basic truth, that modern representational democracy is generally a huge failure, is masked by creating a middle-class that can succeed despite the odds and can be lulled into believing that their success can be shared by everyone; that their success should be the goal of everyone. The gross unfairness, the inhumanity of the engine that generates wealth for the great Northern nations is effectively hidden in dreams of making it big and in the struggle for personal economic security. When necessary wars are engineered to keep the public imagination from straying too far.

No-one is encouraged to envision a society that has every basic need met, so that the purpose of work is really just to maintain a sustainable and healthy slow or no growth model of human existence. We must grow, grow, grow, more like a cancer than anything. We must progress at all costs. Everything this year needs to be smaller, faster and more cunningly designed than the things we needed so badly last year. Everyone must be kept busy, busy, busy. So much to gather up and exploit before we expire. When we are idle the guilt and worry can consume us, so thoroughly programmed we have become to be “productive.”

Even our gods are explained in absolute terms, and their wishes spelled out in ancient texts which cannot be questioned. Real lives are destroyed, and Earth herself condemned on the basis of archaic prophecy. No one believes that religion can or should be reformed by anyone but God’s own representatives; however the age of mysticism and prophecy is over so we live with impractical dogma that cannot be re-written, and unimaginative leaders who use this dogma as a power structure rather than an instructional model to free people of their worldly constraints. Heaven is a place where nothing happens, Earth is only the way station to this eternal nothingness, and what we do here matters little as long as it is done in the name of God.

What is wrong with us, do we truly need catastrophe to change how we govern ourselves? Is Armageddon the only way to open the door to a new understanding?

Ode to an Autumn Night

This is a short poem about a beautiful autumn night I wrote last night after walking home from Osborne Village.

fall dapples
the waters of the assinaboine
in reverse
dark water, bright leaves
perfect calm
middle of the bridge

trees are every colour
lit by streetlight
afire of orange, yellow
red and brown
breathing in
mysterious night

glorious decay
life giving into itself
for another season
changes in the stars
as Earth
prepares to sleep