Business Recovery How the USA and Canada Are Setting the Standard

Lanes became forgotten trails between the lines on the map as roads were paved and enlarged. They became synonymous with rural backwardness. George Eliot reminds us in Middlemarch that Lowick "was not a parish of muddy lanes and poor tenants." Exactly a century later, Larkin listed lanes as an endangered property of the fading English countryside. His poem "Going, Going" was commissioned as a verse introduction to the 1972 U.K. government report on human habitat, "How do you want to live?" The poem envisions a future England as the "First Slum of Europe," paved over and bricked in by developers with "spectacled grins." Those British motorways, like the varicose roads that are growing around Toronto as the bloated megacity strains its greenbelt, are a new type of route appropriate for a high-speed age. Bus lanes, bike lanes, slow and fast lanes, HOV lanes, lane changes, and staying in one's lane.These new lanes are essentially anti-lanes. Not pleasant routes between locations, but ribbons of asphalt laid out mechanically side by side, racing stripes propelling us across the country. Modern lanes are not worn out from use over time. Lanes are now infrastructure, planned and plotted, the subject of local budgets and federal funding, and agreements between cities and the developers that operate them. In his book The Geography of Nowhere, James Kunstler identified the problem 30 years ago. Everyone nodded attentively.Then they went on and built more concrete sprawl, which was entwined in more concrete freeways.

My boyhood lanes were decidedly older, scarred. 

gravel tracks with selvages crumbling into long grass. They were out of sight and generally out of mind, secluded locations where we rode quickly side by side, not looking for automobiles. In the summer, we left behind white dust clouds, and when it rained after a dry month, the fine powder dust swallowed fat raindrops, creating a perfume of grass clippings and delicious gasoline.Not much has changed in Oak Bay since then, but I've seen that the small houses that once housed middle-class families and seniors are gradually being replaced by larger modern flats. Peaked roofs and gables are out, while square lines and flat roofs are popular. When done effectively with excellent wood or stone, the modern style can be appealing. Unfortunately, the majority of new homes are neither rich nor tasteful. My coastal road's elegant curve is gradually being bordered with square boxes, as if it were drawn by a very uninspired or dumb child. At the moment, there are no tall condos, but I believe they will be built soon. They are absolutely growing up downtown at an alarming rate.One of the best things about returning to Oak Bay is the near-complete lack of politics. In contrast to Alberta, where rage at Ottawa has dominated provincial politics since at least the first Trudeau, British Columbians' attitude toward Ottawa is one of indifference and ignorance. The Rocky Mountains are a formidable psychological barrier, and anything that makes it over them drowns in the Salish Sea before reaching us. 

If Vancouver is Lotus Land, as Allan Fotheringham described it.

Oak Bay is the Shire: a verdant suburban refuge blissfully unaware of the outside world's whispers. Even municipal politics is virtually non-existent—the mayor ran unopposed in 2022, and the most heated subject in the previous two elections was the local deer slaughter. Don't get me wrong: there is value in active civic politics, but there are also benefits to quiescence. And as I strive to extract as much comfort as I can from the final days of August, I know which I prefer.As The Hub's Geoff Russ reported last month, the Liberal plan for $10-a-day child care across Canada is now permanent after the House of Commons unanimously approved legislation establishing the program."With a single vote… the Conservative Party seemed to end two decades of opposition to a national child care program," said Russ. Russ said that abolishing national child care is no longer a "credible" option for Conservatives. With $10-a-day child care all but imminent, provincial governments would be well to investigate the documented flaws of the universal, 

flat-fee model of child care and plan appropriately.

Quebec's universal child care program, which has been in place in La Belle province for the past 25 years, has dominated the national discourse around child care. While the program has some positive aspects, it has also been widely criticized for perpetuating socioeconomic inequities in access to adequate childcare. A recent audit done by the province's auditor general discovered that nearly half of the children enrolled in Montreal's highly coveted Centres de la Petite Enfance (CPEs) were from homes earning $200,000 or more per year. The same study discovered that there was one CPE place for every three eligible children in the affluent district of Westmount, but only one space for every seven children in the working-class suburb of Montréal-Nord.