I just watched a piece on the telly this morning about helicopter logging on Vancouver Island, the continent unto itself off the wild west coast of Canada. One comment stuck in my mind that sent

my imagination off on many tangents at once. It was that the logging company owns the land that they were stripping of timber, mostly old growth cedar, hemlock and fir. I was taken aback by this comment and wondered how it was that what we consider Public Land could be owned by logging companys to do with as they please. When did this ownership begin and what was it that the people of this country got in return? Many of these mulitinational corporations are not even based in this country any more as they strip it bare with no thought for a sustainable future. This was one tangent my brain had to consider from the narators statement.

Another concerned the idea that the world is touted to be overpopulated by us humans and that there is not enough space to go around for the growth rate we are struggling with. It is to laugh!!!,

considering a few facts that most are unaware of. In the early 70's I read a piece on this idea that blew my mind. It was that all the worlds population then at around 5 billion could be comfortably placed, with breathing space, in ONE CUBIC MILE. Yes you read that correctly. That was 40 years ago and so with the population heading for double that old number it could be asumed that a 2 cubic mile space would be more than adequate. This is amazing to think that you could easily lose the entire worlds population of humans in any small part of the ocean or even any of the Great lakes or anywhere in the vastness of this beautifull planet and it would be impossible to find any trace without prior knowledge of their placement.

I have flown extensively about the planet when I was young and in the Navy and now that I am approaching geezer age I have a wonderfully engaging flight simulator that has the whole world in virtual reality. I have flown all over the world many times with it and it dosnt escape my attention that there is so much unpopulated country still to be explored that I can only shake my head in disbelief that anyone would think we are running out of space somehow. Its rediculous in the extreme.

I will make a point here shortly so bear with me please.

Back near the end of the 19th century and when the indian wars were all but done in the USof A a land rush into what had been the indian nations was organized. The land was given freely if you could stake it legaly in the right timing and it was yours to begin a farm and a family dynasty if possible, no money necessary apart from a pioneering spirit and a lot of grit and determination. this is what helped settle this country and it was not just the perogative of the Americans to try this but in the 1872s in Canada homesteading was initiated.

A person was given 160 acres of land money free and helped to start a life in whatever way they could, wrenching from the land their livelyhood with sweat, blood and tears. This was a Godsend to thousands of disenfanchized folks from the dirty smoky cities of the east and a way for the government to develope tax paying agricultural land. It is inevitably true that many did not survive this challenge because of the tremendous hardships involved and the lack of technology in those days gone by.

You may be getting a hint as to where I am going with this so I will cut to the chase and say what I want to say. Since I was a newcomer to the mountains of the west almost 40 years ago I have reveled in the size of this country and in those days there were alot of young folks taking flight from the nest for the first time. They had nothing much but their dreams and the clothes on their backs and a packsack, maybe a volkswagen bug or van and there seemed to be a lot of them in the hills and the small town bars back then. I was one of them. Into the Cariboo country after a failed marriage in Thunderbay in 73 and into a TP on 160 acres in the mountains with a bunch of seekers on the path through harsh winters and glorious summers surviving with relish that it could still be done that way, the way the natives did it before us. Of course we still had to rely on a little money and a lot of ingenuity and when we had full bellies and a roof over our heads we were full of respect for mother earth and our own power at having gone native from the subdivisions of civilization and we were OK. It made us strong and our sense of the greatness of the Human Spirit at such hardships was elevated far beyond what was possible to an urbanite caught up in the structured rules of a decadent, greedy, warlike society where things of the Spirit were hammered out of us by the mass media and the educational structures of that worlds apparatus. Well I guess I still havent made my point yet but I'm getting there.

This brings me to the present day where we as a nation can give away thousands and millions of square miles to a corporation that dosnt even reside within the nation and we have thousands of poor and dissenfrachised of our own people struggling on the streets to survive on next to nothing.

Then the crash of 08 which is not righting itself and has fallen further into the blackhole of gargantuaun debt, impossible to pay off in a hundred years due to the greed and ignorance of those we allow to rule over us with nary a whimper from us. I hundred years ago the people would have rizen up against such in your face evil as what is occuring to us today. The bankers and polititians to blame would be hanging from lamp posts and people with integrity would be sought to replace the bandits which is what they are. And now more to the point I am trying to get out. What this country and the USA needs is another Homestead act to give some of this empty landscape away freely to the people who rightly own it anyway. Another land rush. A lost youth with no possibility of getting a piece of the action could find itself aagin by chopping wood, carrying water and planting a garden.

If the banksters can get funding to keep their moneyplaypen active, funding to support the thousands of wouldbe farmers and artisans who would take up the challenge would not be for nothing. I know that some would succeed and make a go of it as has happened in the form of the Hippys who came to the mountains all those years ago. Many could not and left to populate the cities and start their communes on west Fourth in Kitsilano on the coast in Vancouver. But many are still there in the hills happy and strong spirits of the mountains secure in the knowledge that they have a fruitfull life through their efforts and ingenuity. The pioneering spirit is strong in BC and many places in North America and the need for a way out of the crush of the cities and of a failing society must come about. My proposal is for another Homestead Act and a great givaway to the poor who need it. In Canada it was called the Dominion Lands Act and was modeled after the Homestead Act in the US which was enacted in 1861. The ramifications of this can be read off Wikipedia.

I'm sure miles of red tape would be put in the way of such as is put forward but anyone with any common sense can see the immediate benefits of this strategy and I'm sure there would be more that would arise from it. Just a thought to mull over that could be good for the many as well as the few.

In service, Ron E Thorpe

adventuron@shaw.ca

Sept. 26, 2919