[#2] Well Off in Canada — Clues to our collective resilience in the Quebec countryside.
[Excerpt from upcoming book — It’s Getting Hot in Here: Reflections of a climate hawk grappling with the inevitable]
Were I living elsewhere and in the enviable position of placing a pin in the globe to determine where I could raise a family in the face of the coming climate storms, I’ve no doubt where that would be: Canada. And within that complex federation of provinces, across that landscape of fields, mountains, coasts and rivers, I’d pin a spot in the rolling hills of southern Quebec. To refine that choice further, perhaps a farm near the Vermont border, high enough never to flood, with ancient apple orchards near a town with social roots as long and old as those of the trees.
Some mix of happenstance and forethought places me precisely on that Quebec farm. Sheer luck — and my mother’s efforts to escape the suffocating layers of glass ceilings that are the English class system — made me a Canadian. More good fortune brought me to Quebec. My move from Ontario was a choice, but predicated on a chance encounter with a pretty Quebecoise[1] on a grindingly slow VIA train. The farm itself, however, was a more deliberative process. Driven by long-standing climate anxiety and a new family, I felt drawn to build some sense of physical resilience — however incoherent[2] that idea was at the time. Like all parents I want to give my kid options for a good life. Perhaps the countryside is a better place to call home during a lifetime dominated by climate risk.
Why this place? Canada faces climate-related hardships. All countries do. There is no ‘safe’ place. But we have nothing like the catastrophic physical and structural instabilities those south of us do — including the US. We’ll weather the storm better than most. Within Canada, Quebec may be even more stable in uncertain times. Often to the exclusion and annoyance of others[3], Quebec looks after its own. Henri will benefit from that insularity as a native Quebecer. Places with a strong sense of identify look different from the inside (as long as you share that identity). An operating apple farm and cidery means he’ll know his neighbours, and be a contributing member of whatever resilient network arises in that town.
And finally, he’ll have a chance to build a healthy, happy relationship with nature — as I once did growing up in pre-wine-industry Niagara-on-the-Lake. He will feel its beauty and reflect on its subtle complexity. Childhood is always tinged with innocence, but for Henri and his peers it will be doubly so. These may be the last moments to sit in quiet wonder, held (however capriciously) by nature, before its inevitable violent reaction to what we’ve done to it overwhelms us and changes forever our position within the natural framework. The world around us, irrevocably engineered by our release of fossilized carbon, will no longer be ‘natural[4]’ at all.
Thinking about resilience. Living on a farm. Benefitting from a relatively closed and supportive society in a wealthy well-endowed country. Hoping my kid loves nature. Nailed it! Solved the Bad Warming problem! No so fast. This lifestyle choice in the guise of climate sensitivity, while personally defensible and quite natural to a climate-savvy dad, is a dead end.
It may feel comforting to recoil from this hot future, but we can’t. It’s easy to believe burrowing into a farmhouse is an answer to resilience, but it isn’t. Very few can live on big farm in the countryside, contemplating their kids’ relationship with nature. An insular approach to community where we ‘take care of our own’ is nothing more than shutting down empathy and putting on blinders. This farmhouse vision isn’t all that far from billionaires building off-grid mansions to live in isolated luxury as climate distopias play out around them. It just sounds better, because I’m motivated by a sensitivity to climate risk and am invoking nature and children. Much as we may want to use our resources to recoil, and build walls around our kids, we can’t. We’re in this together.
Real independence isn’t even possible, save some self-imposed primitivism. Even those billionaires in country castles will need medical treatment, food, physical security, connections to our shared industrial and intellectual legacy. Our lives will remain intertwined with those of others. Forever. Our farm, like those castles, remains embedded in humanity’s shared flow. The choice to retreat to the Canadian countryside is just the reflexive, self-interested considerations of a relatively well-off, climate savvy new father — and of little consequence to anyone else.
But that choice holds clues to our collective resilience: social fabric; food security; political stability; using our relative wealth in less self-interested ways; long-term thinking. But above all, love for our kids built on a foundation of empathy for others as the starting point of any reaction or preparation to Bad Warming. When I think about Henri growing up on this farm, he’s not a kid sitting under an apple tree in isolation, but an adult facing risks we can barely imagine. He and his peers will form a new social contract, one built for the age in which they grow up. They will decide what resilience means, not us. The best we can do — aside from mitigating emissions — is give them tools to negotiate their own fraught futures. And to warn them of what’s coming.
Our farm’s false sense of security lays bare the limits of what we can do on our own. The community in which it sits has many peers across the country, in all provinces. And while those communities matter, I think it’s primarily our national fabric — the physical geography on top of which our political norms and social networks sit — which will define each of these communities against the world around us. Our neighbours can help when a tree comes down, or we run out of beer, but only as a larger and cohesive political unit do we have the resources to deal with climate. And while I am one who has long believed in global systems, who always wished the UN had real teeth and a budget to rival the Pentagon, it’s naive to think what happens on the ground won’t be driven by local, provincial and national politics. We’re in this together, Canada.
People often take for granted what others view with great envy. Canadians are no exception. We tend to moan about daily grievances and mild irritations. Our taxes are too high, our politicians trite, our weather inclement. Beneath this chatter we know our collective good fortune. A stable political system, strong economy, tolerant social fabric combined with abundant space and natural resources has long made us the envy of the world. It’s routine to see ourselves ranked top of lists like “Best Countries in the World” or “Quality of Life”[5]. I’ve lived in many cities and towns in many countries, but never once thought of permanently leaving this place.
It won’t be an easy ride here, but Canada’s geography favours us over others. Heck, if property rights hold up, maybe Hudson’s Bay will be the next French Riviera. And the Indigenous communities there will finally turn up a couple of long-overdue aces. Shoreline real estate arbitrage aside, we have a lot of what others will want: food and water. Our vast landscape stretches across varied (if changing) ecosystems. Our agricultural lot may marginally improve, especially relative to others, as the world warms. That depends a lot on rain patterns, but we won’t turn to desert nearly as fast as the US — which is happening, in real time, before our eyes.
How we play those advantages matter. We need be wary of our neighbour, and its appetite for water. As theirs disappears, be sure they will come looking for ours. Best negotiate that transaction in advance (see Canada & US: Avoiding a Water War). With some exceptions, our agriculture industry sells into global markets. Highest bidder gets the plate. In the face of massive global food scarcity, beyond the cyclical droughts and local famines we’re become inured to (can’t UNICEF just deal with it?) we may rethink how those bids for grains play out. Distribution of some portion of output based on need seems smart and noble. Smart not just because it’s always good to make friends. Canada would do well to set a standard protocol for food as diplomatic tool, not military threat.
Food exporters, from Russia to Brazil and Australia, will face a similar dilemma. In 2016, Russia halted grain exports as a severe drought took its toll on production to favour domestic consumption. Food importers will use force to feed their populations if they have to. As military historian Gwyn Dyer pointed out in Climate Wars, no political leader in history has left military options on the table while their people starved. They are forced to act. His example is a warning about a nuclear-armed, but irrigation-stricken and starving, Pakistan : with their military tech, they may well hold London hostage to extract food. So the choices Canada will face are not fanciful, and the example we set might be a critical piece of geopolitical diplomacy. The noble act — feeding those who starve — becomes a necessary act. But I wouldn’t fancy Henri’s chances better elsewhere. However we distribute food to a hungry globe, we will feed ourselves first. As will others.
What about politics and culture? So far, we’ve managed to escape the worst of the neo-con cum MAGA-nuts of the US. That’s no guarantee we’ll stay out of its malicious reach. But our common cultural narratives (verging on mythologies) of universal healthcare, strong public education, multi-culturalism, courageous Blue Helmets — even the often-derided CBC — posits a coming-together, not a tearing apart. Compare these to the American mythological foundations of freedom, frontiers, guns, exceptionalism. We largely define ourselves against our super-sized American neighbours. Our softer edges matter. These are table stakes in Bad Warming world, but it’s a decent start.
[1] My soon-to-be-wife Sandrine Tremblay, mother to our boy Henri Rupert, is a Quebec climate superstar — Co-President of Krome/Kolostat, the most innovative energy efficiency specialist engineering firm in the country. Our chance encounter, which led to Henri, was shaped by a shared enthusiasm for all things energy and climate. She seduced me with technical talk about HVAC equipment and I wooed her with dreams of the large energy storage systems Canadian start-up Hydrostor was going to build. It was a very nerdy pickup.
[2] When I fell in love with the farm I tried — and failed — to explain to Sandrine what I meant by ‘resilience’. I was not going back to the land to grow my own food — super markets are where I will always get most of that. I was certainly not going all ‘Montana Militia’ and burying guns in the garden. The best I could do was to say: “Imagine there were a global pandemic. The farm is where we’d go to be safe.” That was August 2019.
[3] I count myself as sometimes annoyed by Quebec’s insularity. I was initially unable buy the farm in my own name, for example. As a non-resident of Quebec (but citizen of Canada) I am placed on the same footing as a Chinese national, US corporation or international conglomerate: no ‘foreigners’ can own Quebec commercial agricultural property. While I understand the principle of retaining local control of agricultural land over international conglomerates, it’s insulting to exclude ordinary fellow Canadians. Particularly one who will live on, and work, the land. The solution was to rush my QC residency at the cost of medical and tax complexities.
[4] In the Anthropocene, we are co-creators of Earth’s systems, not creatures living within it. Perhaps this role echoes that of our ancient relatives, as multi-cellular life shaped the original atmosphere. See Coming of Age in Lovelock’s Gaia.
[5] See Methodology: How the 2022 Best Countries Were Ranked [https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/methodology]
