July 4, 2006: Series on the North

Diamonds in the rough -- Mining cuts deep into natives' traditions
www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060704.
wnwtseries0704/BNStory/National/home

IMHO

So get over it! Grandmother churned butter and spun her own wool, the churn is gone and the spinning wheel to a cousin ... my traditional way of life ... gone ... along with every household having pigs, chickens, dairy cows and kids walking miles through the woods to bring the cattle home to the barn from the back forty ... gone too, mostly, are the lone farmhouses, the wheelwright, the forge, the water mill, the spittoon and granddad's aim ... along with the ice-cold pot under the bed, the fire low in the stove and the kitchen out of wood ... mostly gone the way of the dodo. So what! Get with the 21st century. Apply for a job. Incidentally, if anyone's hiring, leave a message. I'll pass it on ... Come to think of it, maybe I'll work for money for a change ... Sometimes, I get the strangest ideas ...

Related: John Ibbitson: Ottawa's next big job: managing national labour shortage -- IMHO, if successions of governments hadn't been so busy gerrymandering jobs and pork, votes and pogey, we wouldn't be in this pickle with jobs needing workers.

More of the series on the North: Part I: 'The next Alberta'
Part II: Pipeline splits families