"Cowardice asks the question...is it safe? Expediency asks the question...is it politic? Vanity asks the question...is it popular? But conscience asks the question...is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because it is right." ~Dr. Martin Luther King

Tuesday 11 October 2011

Sudbury

Last week's drive to and from Sudbury was spectacular.  For several reasons. The  sky was azure . The temperature simply divine. The air was balmy.  Fall colours were breathtaking.

But that wasn't all. Sudbury  exists  because of the mining industry. It is literally carved out of rock . Rock of every hue. Houses sit on ledges of rock.Ravines are everywhere.Wet lands abound.

The highway is a joy to behold. Clean and curving ,to be seen for miles,with rock formations on every side and a procession  of little anuktuks atop,  bidding welcome to all who pass.

Golf courses are being created.

Every modern amenity is available to  citizens of Sudbury. Two universities, three community colleges, Science Centre north  and a state of the art hospital just completed.

One hundred and fifty seven thousand people lived in  Greater Sudbury at the time of the last census. Aurora and Newmarket have a hundred and twenty five thousand people. Driving to Green Party candidate  Pat Robertson's, house on Thursday evening it  seemed like the entire population and more, were out and about.

After the election returns were in, there was  a discussion, of course, about the state of politics. I met a small woman of eighty-nine years. She had canvassed  every dayof the campaign.. She asked  if I watched Global and what did I think of Anne Mozkowski, anchor woman. We agreed she does an excellent job.

Driving home on Friday, seeing what had been wrought, which had to have been wrought over years by numbers of governments of various stripes, when the mining industry went flat and the Region of Sudbury was created in the early seventies, one  is bound to conclude;  My God, some things are done spectacularly well  in our Province.

And some things are not.

The  incumbent Liberal  for Sudbury was losing for a bit to the New Democrat. The vote ended with five hundred votes separating the two.Considering  Conservatives have been the government  probably the longest, what we see in Sudbury is what government has wrought.

Whether in the long run it will prove to have been sound investment, remains to be seen. For now it is certainly impressive.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

NASA trained lunar astronauts in the '60s in Sudbury because it was the closest example on earth as to what it looked like on the moon.

I guess beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

Walt said...

Yeah, I'd rather stay in landlocked Aurora than have a nice house on Ramsey Lake, in Sudbury.

You've obviously never been there.

And no, that's not true about NASA. They chose the Sudbury area for its geological features which they anticipated were closer to what astronaut would encounter on the moon, not its looks.

Walt said...

Yeah, I'd rather stay in landlocked Aurora than have a nice house on Ramsey Lake, in Sudbury.

You've obviously never been there.

And no, that's not true about NASA. They chose the Sudbury area for its geological features which they anticipated were closer to what astronaut would encounter on the moon, not its looks.