Skip to contentPosts
With many in Canada looking for ways to stay active and keep cool during the surprisingly hot summer, sailing fills that roll for many. Sailing schools across the country run programs for children as young as 6, all the way up to teenagers on the race team, many who look forward to taking part on a variety of regattas both at their home club and across the country.
Unfortunately, the sense of competition, sportsmanship, and fun being fostered by sailing schools does’t always carry over to events at the national level. Over the past month, while trying to purchase a variety of obscure items (security nuts and marine VHF cable connectors) I experienced for the first time the outdated nature of many small businesses on the internet.
While the likes of Amazon and The Source have an extensive online presence, where browsing and purchasing their products is a breeze, there are thousands of other, mainly smaller businesses that have little to no online presence. Canada, like many developed countries, has fallen victim to a pattern of disregard towards voting. In the 2011 federal election only 14 of the 24 million registered voters (61%) actually cast a ballot. These numbers are even worse at the provincial level, where the 2011 Ontario General Election saw a 49% voter turnout.
It is extremely sad to see something as fundamental to a democracy as voting being disregarded by so many people. With fuel prices ever on the rise, customers are always looking for cheaper ways to get around by car. While hybrid, battery-electric, and hydrogen fuel cell cars are considered to be the long term solution for powering motor vehicles, there is the need for a more short-term solution. Europe has already realized that diesel is this solution, and has implemented it with wide-spread success. North America has been much more reluctant to adopt this technology for various reasons, chief among them the negative association between the diesel used in cars versus that of trucks. While many in Ottawa are fixated on the failed pedestrian bridge project over the Airport Parkway, they tend to forget about the parkways other serious issues, such as it being one lane for much of its length, the lack of highway access, and the roads use as a commuter thoroughfare.
The Airport Parkway, as its name might suggest, was intended to be used to access the Ottawa International Airport. And while there are other issues with layout of the road (which I will get to), the main problem is congestion during rush hour.