TRANSCENDENCE IN MOTION

My first ever crossing of the border into the United States took place when I was nine years old. I had never crossed any geo-political border before outside of that of the District of Temiskaming in Northern Ontario where my home town was into the District of Nippissing and the town of North Bay where summer vacations were spent at the cottage across a road from the beaches of Lake Nippissing belonging to my maternal grandmother, Lillian Harris (nee. Davis).

My father and I were continuing what had developed into to a family tradition of visiting my paternal grandmother. This was one on one time with one and only one at a time of his sons of which he had five.  I was the third son to take this trip.  My paternal grand mother, Helen Williams (nee. McFadden) still lived in the town of my father’s birth; Niagara Falls, Ontario. 

Our home and starting place of this trip and the place of my birth was about five hundred miles north of Toronto, the capital city of the Province of Ontario. 

We lived in Kirkland Lake a center of gold mining which was nicknamed “The Mile of Gold” a name that referenced the several gold producing mines stretched along a section of a rift valley paralleling the main street of Kirkland Lake, Government Road East and West. 

Unconfirmed stories floated about the mythology of this northern community providing a romantic back story to this nickname “The Mile of Gold” which suggested that a blunder had occurred when paving the main road and instead of simple gravel and crushed stone from underground being used in the road construction, gold bearing high-grade ore was used by accident thus providing at least one street paved with gold. 

In other words our main street was miraculously connected to those gold paved streets in heaven referred to in the popular spiritual “O Dem Golden Slippers” written by the Afro American composer who is said to have broken down the doors to white dominated music publishing; James Alan Bland.

None of this hidden wealth was ever dislodged from beneath our feet. In fact, in the time I spent working a jack-leg as an underground gold miner a mile beneath the surface at one of these mines named Macassa which is still producing gold, I never once saw gold. I did, however, hear stories about nuggets too large to carry being extracted from working places that had been sealed off for security reasons.

My father had emigrated to Kirkland Lake with Sir Harry Oakes who owned one of the mines and was at one time alleged to be the wealthiest man in the world who mingled with and hosted the who-is-who of his time. 

Before he died, my paternal grandfather had worked and lived on the Oakes Estate in Niagara Falls in a house provided for him by Sir Harry. Stories about Oakes have taken on a mythical quality that can be grafted onto other tales of wealth gain and loss.

The children, siblings of my father, once grown, had spread out on both sides of the Niagra River designating the border between The United States of America and Canada and they had families. 

There were relatives to be visited on both ends of the bridge and it was for such a visit that I first crossed the border to the United States on the Rainbow Bridge just downstream from the falls. 

The crossing was a simple uncomplicated event. It was a beautiful sunny summer day when I was nine years old.  I was excited at the thought of meeting all these relatives in one area. 

Back in Kirkland Lake my maternal grandmother and uncle on my mother’s side and his family of three children lived and a second cousin once removed or something like that was there also but contact was minimal. I knew this second cousin, not as a relative but as a fellow student attending the same school and church.

Transportation to Niagara Falls was by thumb better known as hitch-hiking. Here I had my introduction to my father’s family. Most of them were Americans. My wife’s family straddles the border in similar fashion.

In later years, while visiting another of my cousins on my father’s side in Florida he related the story of his emigration from Niagara Falls to the Miami area where he attended school, served in the navy, married and had kids and discovered as he neared retirement that he was still a Canadian citizen and was required to apply for citizenship. 

There was an informality around movement across the border in those days. Even later in my life the border was not tightly surveilled.

As a teenager living in Toronto it was not unusual to gather friends in a car and head for Niagara Falls where we were accommodated by their more lenient drinking laws.

Times have changed since then when the officer on the American side of the bridge simply asked questions about who we were, where we going and why and how long we would be and we continued on.

My latest crossing was over the bridge near Ogdensburg, New York, reflected the changes that have occurred over the past half century or so. 

I was in the company of my wife of twenty nine years. We were returning to our very favourite place to vacation which was in Orlando, Florida where we went for our honeymoon. That was the last time I ventured forth anywhere in an airplane. Already a white knuckle flier, the flight was exceptionally turbulent and ended up parked on a New York runway or airport parking lot while repairs were made to a faulty engine. 

Every other visit to Florida was by car. To Key West and our Time Share Condominium we drove visiting relatives in Hallendale Florida on the way. 

To Disney Land we drove on one occasion meeting both our mothers at the airport after driving ourselves. To Universal Studios Theme Park we drove. To Temple Terrace near Tampa we drove with our son to visit with my wife’s cousin and her son a priest in the Episcopalian Church. Busch Gardens we drove. The Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral we drove.

We were able to do so because of the enormous bounty of public wealth that is offered free of charge to anyone who wishes to enjoy it: the system of interstate and state highways connecting north south east and west to each other and beyond. 

The United States of America has shared this staggeringly enormous stock of public wealth with me and I am profoundly grateful for its generosity.

Thank You.

Our last trip to Florida started out in Ottawa, Canada’s capital and our home. From here we headed south to the Ogdensburg border crossing.

At the customs booth we encountered an officer who was all business. Not the slightest hint of a smile of welcome.

This latest crossing began with a flash which I took to mean we were being photographed. Then we were required to present our passports and answer a rigorous barrage of questions. There were the usual. Going where? Why? How long? Citizenship? Residence? Bringing anything in to be left? Gifts?

And additional ones. Are you carrying and citrus fruits?  “No.” in unison. Do you own any property? Again “No”.

Then a smile and “Have a safe trip.”

Our journey continued on, heading, I hoped, to a New Paradigm for economic understanding.

One day, during the housing crisis that devastated the American Economy and jostled in one way or another every other world economy we took a drive along Irlo Bronson Boulevard heading westward past the Disney main gate and through part of the Disney property or at least it seemed so. On we went exploring the area. We filled with gas and purchased drinks to refresh ourselves on this outing. 

It was one of those million dollar days that Florida provides its citizens and tourists from around the world with on a regular basis.

At the end of Irlo Bronson we took several other roads and highways. We enjoyed the sights of miles and miles of orange groves and were impressed by the fact that in some areas orange trees laden with fruit grew wildly beside the road.

Being aware of the housing crisis in Florida and others of the United States we were surprised and bewildered to see so many construction projects building new homes. Land was being cleared of overgrowth. Foundations were being dug and poured. Frames of houses being put in place. Signs announcing what the particular project was peppered the road sides. From low 200’s to over one million dollars read the several signs so that passers-by could see where their personal finances and budgets would place them in the hierarchy of this emporium of home purchasing.

Obviously there was a disconnect between the building frenzy of the industry and the popped bubble of the market. 

One scene drew my mind to thoughts about the economy and an alternate paradigm. Years of collected snippets of thoughts and ideas and conversations and readings and understandings congealed around the image I was viewing. It was a simple scene. There in an open flat field was a very yellow front end loader attacking a mound of sand that seemed to have been poured from above. The mound was, to my recollection, twice as high as the front hoe. From the side of the mound scoups were being taken by the back hoe rendering the pile of sand the image of an apple with a bite taken out of it. 

The mound that had initially been in the shape of what statisticians call a “bell curve” or “normal curve” or “Gaussian curve” named after Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss who lived in what is now Germany from 1777 to 1798, collapsed and formed another though shorter mound in the shape of a skewed remnant of a bell-normal-Gaussian distribution of sand. Was this not exactly what was taking place in economies the world over with wealth?

The ideas and concepts that we have inherited allow us to begin our thought processes where others have managed to arrive at. These ideas constitute a public wealth of knowledge that we are enriched by.

The entire incident was for me a perfect illustration of certain of my thoughts about the economy. My ideas are based on the distribution of wealth in the economy: all wealth. Wealth in a pile which is what the pile of sand was. It had value and its value has been added to other ingredients of value to produce a new stock of wealth that has value between the mid to low 100s, the dollars being implied, to the millions.

Wealth is distributed in neighbourhoods and in states, among individuals and among countries. Some of it is public such as the system of highways that are accessible to all free of charge and some are semi-private such as the toll roads that Helen and I decided to forgo the use of and some are private like those within the Disney or Universal theme parks.

The thing is: what happened to that pile of sand also happens to the economy. A bite was taken out of the side of the mound that distorted its shape temporarily and that is the operative word that I repeat, “temporarily“.  

Economies function in much the same way even if experts in economics and academics teaching the craft and Nobel Laureates and book and Op Ed writers maintain that the economy is, as John Maynard Keynes is alleged to have held, a Market. 

It is not. 

An economy is a distribution of wealth in its stock, pile of sand, and flow, back hoe scoop resulting in collapse and redistribution of the pile, forms.

On our journey to Paradigm we have seen an enormously incalculably immense amount of wealth and seen signs of other stocks of enormously incalculably immense amount of wealth.

On our journey we witnessed the use of the English language on road signs and billboards. We read menus and newspapers and maps. A language is a form of public wealth that is initially inherited and invested in in the school system. Depending on the ability of the teaching profession the amount of this wealth varies and is distributed. 

The roads were numbered and mathematics is another form of public wealth shared by a vast percentage of the population. We used numbers in making choices of purchases and accommodations in making phone calls home to our son who was still in school studying to be a journalist and working part-time. 

Numbers and language and how to use them offer careers and a flow of wealth.

Economics is about wealth and how it is created and shared, distributed and collected. It is about how it is stocked, the learning of math and reading and how it flows, the teaching and writing of wealth.