Irony on the eve of an election
Here's a shot of my community, Cape Ray, on the eve of a Provincial Election. Last population count,343. Elections come and go, governments change but for the most of it, Cape Ray remains the same. We know eventually it'll only consist of a few seniors and the retired American that drops by each summer after picking up a bit of cheap property. A few election posters dot the landscape, the two candidates took the time to go house to house to give their pitch to the few votes available here. I doubt if the turnout here this time around will be 50%. Most know it won't make a difference who forms the next government for our community. A few years back i took the time to serve on the community council and at that time we actually thought we would get a shot at clean drinking water for the community. Here most have a few wells and there is a local spring where residents fill buckets to use as drinking water. Back around 2002 under a Canada/NL Infrastructure Agreement where the governments would pay 2/3 of the cost we actually thought it was possible. Of course we hit a snag when $30,000 was needed for a study. We couldn't come up with $10,000 on our end. The irony of it all was at the time our country was giving Afghanistan $100,000,000.00 to help them develop, to give villagers clean drinking water. This past summer at our community celebrations several of our young people could not attend. They were serving their country in Afghanistan! Our young people of Cape Ray are helping to bring democracy to a foreign land and even better, a bit of clean drinking water while back on the home front their parents still go to streams to fill up buckets.
3 comments:
Your community looks like a beautiful place. How could any government not try and help find a way to make such communities more viable - they are indeed the character of this place Newfoundland. Just as Labrador's communities are the very character here - rather than just being thought of as 'energy' or 'resource' warehouses and watch all these go by their door to make bigger and richer towns even bigger and richer. Imagine not being able to get clean water into the houses, shocking. There is one community where there is a central place to pick up water from a tap, price $2.00 a bucket. Yep 2.00 a bucket. That is one of the places without water... And when those towns disappear - well, I guess we'll have urban centres that are no different that urban centres everywhere else - nothing to distinguish them really, just more shopping centres, more pavement, more sprawl across what was once also pretty landscape. Success!
Nice picture of a beautiful town in a beautiful part of the country Wayne.
Very poignant pros too.
Wish I had the answers; it seems its all about jobs, while jobs are fine it has to be about preserving the natural beauty of areas such as yours.
There is a way, it just is not on the radar screen while we have the cooperate agenda being passed off as government by and for the people.
Maybe an appeal to the drug lords of Afghanistan for aid in drilling extra wells in your community??? At least it would embarrass the Canadian Government for about 5 minutes.
i like your blog and i can see the irony clearly. never been in cape ray but next summer we will try and visit the area on our drives.
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