A few years ago I read the science fiction classic Dune. It's set on a planet that's entirely desert (hence the name, "Dune.") And this planet is inhabited by people called Fremen, who have adapted their lifestyles to the extreme environment they live in. They treat water with religious reverence, they have a system of underground hideouts, and they have clothes that recapture the moisture from their bodies and turn it into drinkable water (and the less you think about that concept the better.)
It occurred to me that we Canadians are sort of like the Fremen, only with a different environmental extreme to deal with. Sparsely populated, in a land most people wouldn't choose.
Except that, really we're not. It's actually surprising how little Canadians alter the basic North American lifestyle to suit our climate extremes. We haven't shaped our roads, streets and sidewalks to reduce the amount of snow that accumulates, we just shovel a lot. We think nothing of commuting hours to our jobs, even though it's hard to drive for a third of the year. Heck, we haven't even adapted Roomba technology to snowblowers yet.
Maybe it'll just take a while. After all, Dune did take place 10,000 years in the future. Maybe, given that much time, Canadians would develop a more sensible approach to winter, with underground, geothermally-heated cities, cars that convert into snowmobiles on command, and genetically-engineered crops that grow year-round.
No comments:
Post a Comment