I got stuck in the snow one week in February, trying to make a three point turn outside of Beachburg.
Trying to make my way to Grant Settlement Road rather than traveling to Forester’s Falls and back along it, I missed my turn and, in a moment of what was probably ill-conceived self-correction, attempted to to turn back around, only to realize that the roadside curb were, in fact, much deeper snowdrifts than the road around them.
Spinning my tires ineffectually, turning my wheel with even less effect, I sat there, as no less than three people stopped to ask if I was alright. A woman in a van, a man suggesting I ask one of the farmers nearby for the aid of a tractor, and finally an eighteen wheeler who offered to pull me free with his chain, which I accepted, and he successfully pulled my Jeep Patriot free from the snowdrift, caked in dripping brown slop from the spray of snow.
I did not ask his name, though I thanked him for his effort. I felt it was perhaps not appropriate for a journalist to praise someone using their platform in this manner, nor was it a healthy presumption to make an analogy to a mouse pulling a thorn from a lion’s paw, in no small part because anyone who has pulled a cow free of a fence, as my father had in my youth, knows that they are far less grateful.
Such good samaritanism is not, in my experience, particularly rare – I get people informing me of my tires going flat and offering to help, or asking if I’m alright if I look like I’m in pain. Nor is it universal – many others simply wander past, avoiding getting involved. I’ve also been openly mocked or shouted at in areas around. The breadth of human encounters.
But it does make me think back to the flooding of 2019. We’ve been seeing a lot of Council planning regarding the potential for another such devastating flood this year, with reports heard at Council for the potential solutions to prevent another such disaster. Only three years past, we’ve once again slipping towards the spring that promises potential swelling rivers and melting snow looking to find its way into a waterway.
As Bob points out in this column this week, extreme weather comes even to the poles of our world; with climate change being a reality and, based on some of the wildfires and extreme conditions in the last few years, a rather misleading euphemism for what is a rather dangerous chain of disasters. Weather extremes are becoming more common.
In the report by JP2G consulting, many of the solutions presented were on the individual property owners and communities to implement – higher foundations can be set as a standard by the Township, but properties grandfathered in can’t be forced to change them.
However, if these renovations will help the community protect against damage, it becomes a different issue. There’s a whole argument about community benefit versus individual that gets heated and leads to a lot of rhetoric about rights, but ultimately when it comes to safety and well-being of the community, we’re better off helping out or going along if it means someone else benefits. A sandbag wall, for example, does little if one property refuses to put one up and leaves a hole in the line.
The random strangers who helped me out didn’t know if I was local, and didn’t recognize me – in truth, I’m not strictly local, in the sense that I’m not from Beachburg. But they helped out. We have this sense of community, despite whatever individual rights we have or think we have.
With climate change, perhaps the same principle applies? Though it’s on a much higher scale, where large-scale companies and industries are directly impacting it. No matter how much you cut out your coffee cups or such, it’s not going to make a huge impact against, say, a coal company’s emissions directly affecting the air. So considering that, we’d have to band together, and at least talk about the problem.
