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Location: Sustain and Retain: A short history based on the Upper Harbour
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| Anonymous | KeyPlanet | 1 | Jul 21 2006, 11:29 AM EDT by Yule | ||||
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Thread started: Jul 21 2006, 12:15 AM EDT
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Victoria is a Terminal City, in more ways than one. It used to represent the brief end of one's life - retirement and death - and still does, but now, people have an extended semi-retirement (at socially acceptable earlier ages) and, lingering seniorhood, well subsidized.
But it also The End for many other aspirations and endevours, especially in the arts, acutely because of the perpetual small population. It's the end of style, of grace, of form, including bodily form. Think of a body type and universal "dress code" for the City. I apologize for causing that thought. Is there ever a place where the rule of grump and frump still reigns. Even provincial governments are borne and formed elsewhere in the ridings of the province, but die here in the Legislature. Career professionals find themselves lying in the Velvet Rut, that soft swale in the their local lawns that prevents them from getting up and re-establishing - even a few kms to Vancouver - to successfully ply their talents. They're half-way into a grave. Many in the City live on inheritances, the repitive legacy of terminality. Don't dare begin to skip travel to other urbs, because the that terminal grip pulls you like a bony hand. And you find yourself not leaving for an entire year. If it weren't for the gardens, the little City would've turned into a suicide capital like Venezia. In Victoria, it's the end, but a pleasant one. Spring is five months long, and winters are cool monsoons. It's a soft landing, the end, real soft. But it is, terminal. Terminal City.
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| Yule | Mercantilism, punitive taxes, colonial policies | 0 | Jul 6 2006, 12:53 AM EDT by Yule | ||||
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Thread started: Jul 6 2006, 12:53 AM EDT
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On July 1 (Canada Day), the Downtown Victoria Business Association sponsored the first-ever behind-the-scenes tour of historical buildings in the downtown core. We learned that a rice mill, which was the original business in the Capital Iron building (http://www.capitaliron.net/), was put out of business in 1907 when the Canadian government levied a heavy tax on rice refined here, in Canada, vs. rice refined elsewhere, but then imported into Canada. (In other words, producing our own rice became more expensive than just importing "finished" rice from abroad.) At one stroke, a local rice mill, which provided jobs and entrepreneurial spirit, went out of business.
Likewise, Victorians used to build substantial buildings in locally quarried stone, which was fashioned by local skilled masons. But England decided that it needed a market for its plentiful (and English job producing) British bricks, so it made exporting these to "the colonies" artificially cheap, which put the local, indigenous stone-building industry at a disadvantage. It withered accordingly. One could argue that this stunting of local economy is the fruit of a colonial policy, planted in a country with not enough sovereignty. Canada still doesn't do enough to nurture its homegrown manufacturing and business ventures, instead encouraging the whole-sale export of resources. We still have a ways to go toward 'sustain & retain,' it seems... |
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