Safety

During the Great Depression it was common for people to get together to can up large amounts of food - many hands make light work. While the driving factor was simply a matter of survival, it had a really great side-effect of bringing communities together and forming bonds that would far outlive the economic troubles.

Today we find ourselves once again in the midst of economic troubles, and it may or may not be a coincidence that canning is becoming more-and-more popular. Just last week the New York Times newspaper did a feature article on this new trend - which is not really so new for many of us - that seems to be getting a lot of coverage in the alternative blogosphere. I think it would be a stretch to suggest that it is a matter of survival for most folks this time around, but I do think that people in general are becoming more concerned with their food chain, and are wanting to become more directly connected with it.

This is a good thing.

There is a reason why talking on a cellphone while driving is illegal in Ontario, and I just got to witness it first-hand, as I do many times a week now that I'm unemployed and walk the kids back-and-forth to school a lot. There is one set of lights on their walk to school, and we were waiting at it about 10 minutes ago waiting for the crossing light to go green. I noticed the signal for the cars went yellow, then red. A guy in a crossover stationwagon / minivan with cellphone clearly held up to his left ear with his left hand, initially stops at the red light as I enter the crosswalk with my kids, but then calmly proceeds through it!

Ever since I was a kid, my dad taught me the importance of being a responsible citizen, and of being a part of the solution, not the problem. This will prove to be the most important part of his lasting legacy to me and eventually my kids, when he eventually passes on to the next world. In his day this need to get involved was expressed primarily through his life-long involvement with labour unions, though it was also expressed in a multitude of other ways. I recall once when I was about 11 or 12 finding a 20 dollar bill in a parking lot in Antigonish. As I was about to pocket the money, my pop suggested that it could possibly be the last 20 dollars of some poor person, and now they'd go without food for a while. Of course he was right - this could very-well have been the case. So we took it to the police station and turned it in there. Of course, when pop called them back a month later to see if anyone had claimed it, it seemed that someone on the police force wasn't as honest as pop and I because the money had not been claimed, but it was missing. But that's a story for another day. I also recall the time my brother bought a new pair of CCM Tacks (skates) at Canadian Tire. When he got home he realised the clerk had accidentally given him SuperTacks, but charged him the price of the less-expensive Tacks. Of course he went back and reported the problem, and exchanged the SuperTacks for Tacks.