Boom or Bust: What can we learn about the Great Recession from 1925?

The Subsidized Mineowner-Poor Beggar! From "The Trade Union Unity" Magazine (1925)

The headlines in The Cansobreeze and Guysboro County Advocate, a rural newspaper in Nova Scotia, from June 20th 1925 appear to have some useful lessons for us as the country faces what has now been dubbed as The Great Recession, the most difficult economic crisis since The Great Depression, (1929-mid 1930s.)

Glancing through the news of the 1920’s you might imagine that we would be turning back the clock. Apparently not so; if you look more closely at the column headlines in the newspaper here and see what issues preoccupied the columnists, the electorate and the politicians. A snapshot in time, the 1925 Cansobreeze newspaper was for me, until this year, an amusing relic of the past, a source of anecdotal information about life in rural Nova Scotia. Scanning through my photo files on my laptop I came across some of the photos I had taken of the newspaper last year for a different project. Back then I seem to remember, I was unaware of what would soon show itself to be a close similarity between our current news media of today and the headlines in the old newspapers from 1925 when the political campaign for the provincial government elections in Nova Scotia was in full steam.

The Cansobreeze andGuysboro County Advocate

 

With 43 years of Liberal government in Nova Scotia, the Liberal party under pressure from the Conservatives was warning the Guysborough electorate in June 1925 not to be carried away with the catchwords, “Time for a change.” So while the Conservative party was citing misappropriation of public funds for the need for an independent audit of Provincial finances in its party manifesto, the headlines in The Cansobreeze and Guysboro County Advocate (June 20th 1925), read, “Justice for Nova Scotia: Are YOU satisfied with the present state of affairs in Nova Scotia?” The Liberal party, on the other hand, were citing their achievements over 43 continuous years of provincial government. 

None of this would have made quite such an impact on me had I not glanced at the 1925 article on “Some of the political Issues,” from The Cansobreeze and Guysboro County Advocate which provides some of the numbers for the then Liberal Armstrong government spending: “The Armstrong government has gone wild with extravagancies, have paid piles of money to Road Contractors which cannot be accounted for, have added more to Nova Scotia’s debt in the last seven years than her total debt had amounted to in her whole lifetime up to then…have increased our burden of debt for approximately $13,000,000 in 1917 to nearly $55,000,000 today…and yet they refuse to grant the ratepayer and electors an independent audit of their accounts.”

As one of the major proposals for spending ourselves out of this current recession, infrastructure spending, it would seem, has become the mantra for all political parties. The Nova Scotia Provincial Conservative Party is now planning massive road construction spending as is the Provincial Labour government of Ontario. Unfortunately the coffers in both provinces are already bare. Now trying to get some fix on the historical context, I spoke to my mother on the issue. For her, the year 1926 was noteworthy. Two years before she was born, the year 1926 was etched in the collective consciousness of her father’s generation as the year of The 1926 General Strike in the United Kingdom. The general strike was precipitated by the strife in the coal mining industry. As the British mineowners announced their intention to reduce miner’s wages and increase working hours based on a strategy of getting more for less, opposition united under the Trades Union Congrss, TUC. Led by the coal miners and other TUC workers, the 1926 Great March united workers from John o’ Groats in the north of Scotland to Landsend in the south of England as the TUC workers converged on London. “Not a penny off the pay, not a second on the day,” was the mantra in 1926 for the TUC workers.

The caricature of “the subsidized mineowner,” which appeared in Trade Union Unity Magazine (1925) is not unlike the effigies of bankers being portrayed in the  news, (CTV News April 1st 2009 ): G20 protesters were carrying a similar effigy dressed in top hat and a button hole, with the words, “Eat the Bankers” hung around his neck. While in 1926 the Mine owners wanted to normalisep rofits even though these were times of economic instability, today it appears that role is being taken up by the Banking industry.

The bailout of the banking industry by governments and the subsequent payout of large bonuses to banking executives despite the fact that these bailouts were made with tax payers’ money has given rise to an unprecedented outpouring of angry sentiment across the world. A move against the wealthy at the G20 Summit (April 1st
2009) is apparent as France and Germany crackdown against tax havens which allow the wealthy to avoid paying a fair share of tax particularly in a climate of economic hardship.
If we look at the sheer transfer of wealth in the current economic crisis from the middle classes to the wealthy it would appear to be unprecedented in our life time; while homeowner’s are facing the loss of their homes through foreclosure and the loss of their pensions through the collapse of their investment savings, the wealthy continue to be in a position of advantage to capitalize on the misfortunes of the many.

The deepening global financial crisis is expected to become the worst financial crisis since World War Two. It is the impact on the world’s poor which is building
into what is being described by aid agencies as a “humanitarian catastrophe,” which is most troubling.
“Ruined countries strike out,” says activist Bob Geldorf at the Excel Centre in London, during the G20 Summit, (BBC World News April 2nd 2009). The impending humanitarian crisis is beginning to sound the alarm bells of hunger and the potential for massive social unrest.

Thinking of getting a (tourism) website makeover?

 

The competitive wooing of online visitors has suddenly changed the need for an online presence from a necessity to an essential.

Three years ago, as the owner of a bed and breakfast, Whitman Wharf House Bed and Breakfast, at the edge of the world in Canso, Nova Scotia, I started business with the premise that I expected most of my business to come from online bookings.  

Despite being an online advocate for the tourism industry, even I have been astonished at how quickly it is evolving and also the increased competitiveness of tourism sites. The knock-on effect of constantly creating content for my own site is that I now have zero tolerance for poorly maintained sites, or sites that are difficult to navigate when I am the customer.

What am I looking for on a tourism website?

1. I am looking for websites that deliver not just the usual information on room, rates, etc. but are visually enticing and give a glimpse into what’s going on there, who’s doing what and what’s new.
2. I am definitely on the hunt for interesting photographs and this is what is sadly missing on a lot of websites. 
3. What I am not looking for is uniformity. I have checked out a number of websites lately that have clearly just come away from having an expensive makeover only to find that the same two Adirondack chairs are sitting there on the home page!
4. Authenticity is critical. My answer in creating an “authentic feel” to a tourism website is to take the photos myself rather than relying on a web designer’s selection from a stock photo file.
5. The other thing is that I want the photos to tell the story, convey the emotion and describe the experience. Even in the past year I have noticed a real shift in the way websites are becoming much more visually oriented with more photos and graphics and much less text.

How do I create photos for my website?

 

1. I use a free download, “IrfanView” from www.irfanview.com for simple cropping, colour and light adjustments, and for resizing images.
2. I find that photos look better on the website if they are lighter rather than darker, and I increase the color saturation levels by about +50 for more colorful images.
3. More recently I have experimented with banner style photo cropping, as above. If you like the look of a photo on a website and want to use that size, in pixels or inches, then right click on it, go to “properties” on the drop menu, and it will display the image information. You can then use this information in the Irfanview program to customize your photos, by going to “Image” on the tool bar, and select the  resize/resample on the drop down menu. Now you can resize your photo to the preferred size, entering the number of pixels or inches to give you a banner size or a square, or a more traditional shape.

Getting the (web design) help I need!

Heather Holm from HolmPage Productions, http://www.holmpage.com has been my web designer for the past two years. During that time we have established a wonderful working relationship as well as friendship. I value her advice on design and graphics but it is a mutual relationship of educating each other in the areas that we each have expertise in that has made it such a valuable partnership. I craft the content and Heather artfully displays it, enhances the graphics, gives technical advice on new ideas, and generally ensures that my website looks the way it does.

I have also been dabbling in blogging software since last year with www.cansoBreeze.com, an e-zine on “wordpress,” a blogging platform, from www.wordpress.com.

Switching from an e-zine style to blogging in “Elizabeth’s blog on the ocean,” is teaching me how to adapt my writing style, but in both cases I am using all those image editing skills on Irfanview.

Photos are not just a great way to entice visitors to convert from a “browser” to a “purchaser” they are also a great way of introducing new content onto your website providing that all the alt and meta tags are put in- something that the webcrawlers love and keep coming back for, which of course translates into greater exposure for your website by the web search engines and more web traffic.

Tourist “spotting” now a nationwide phenomenon

Tourism operators wondering how the 2008 season may be shaping up may have seen the reports below from the CBC and The Canadian Press. 

The reports show that the March 2008 figures for foreign visitors to Canada are 12.4% lower than a year ago.

While visitors from the US make up a large proportion of this decline, there are declining numbers from Germany,  but gains from Italy and the Netherlands. The number of overseas visits to Canada fell by 3 per cent in March 2008 to 384,000.

With one in ten jobs related to the tourism sector in Canada, the tourism figures are beginning to make national headlines. Operators, on the other hand, have experienced the challenges of doing business in an ever increasingly competitive market ever since 9/11. 

“Tourist spotting,” rather like bird spotting, has been a local phenomenon in small coastal communities, like Canso in Nova Scotia, for some time. This sport is now apparently becoming a national phenomenon as gas prices and our exchange rate relative to European currencies and to the US dollar have changed foreign visitors’ perception of their purchasing power.

After SARS, Toronto’s tourism sector was decimated. With that hardened 20-20 vision of the SARS experience, Toronto has re-emerged as an industry leader in the tourism sector, positioning itself at the luxury end of the spectrum and being unabashed that their hotel rates now have the eighth highest ADR (average daily rate) worldwide.

In Nova Scotia, our learning curve may be a little flatter. Operators are confronted with the anomaly of having to position themselves between two much more divergent markets than Toronto experiences, the domestic and the foreign.

Despite the tourism research findings that pricing is apparently the fifth or sixth consideration in selecting a tourism destination, experienced market researchers in other industries make allowances for the mismatch between what consumers say they do and what they actually do.

So although people may answer a questionnaire with answers that indicate that a number of other factors are more important than price, when it actually comes to making their reservations, price may suddenly take a flying leap towards the top of the list.

This discrepancy is much more likely to have a direct impact on the domestic than on the foreign market: the domestic market is essentially a fixed entity while the foreign market comprises a constantly changing profile of various countries depending on their relative economic success in any given year.

The domestic market may just turn out to be a whole lot more price sensitive than we have been led to believe it is, just at a time when the tourism marketing mantra is “go luxury, go niche.’

The “propensity to spend,” issue is also a little more nuanced. While the propensity to spend may depend more on the visitor’s experiential rating than on the visitor’s gross income, it does assume that you have already managed to lure the visitor to your destination.

 

Referenced articles:

CBC – The number of foreign visitors to Canada in March was the lowest since record-keeping began in 1972, Statistics Canada said Tuesday.

About 2.26 million visits to this country were recorded that month, down 12.6 per cent from the same month a year earlier.

A big drop in American visitors was behind the decline. Only 730,000 same-day car trips were made by U.S. motorists in March. That was down 2.5 per cent from the month before and a 24 per cent plunge from a year ago as the price of gas, a high Canadian dollar and a weak U.S. economy kept Americans close to home.

The number of overseas visits fell by 3 per cent to 384,000.

“Travel declined in eight of Canada’s top 12 overseas markets, with the strongest decreases in travel from Mexico, Germany and Hong Kong,” said Statistics Canada.

Canadians, on the other hand, were showing no reluctance to travel, as the number of out-of-country trips rose in every category.

Canadians made 2.1 million same-day car trips to the U.S. in March, up 1.5 per cent from February and an increase of 9.5 per cent from year-ago levels.

The total number of trips to the U.S. rose to 3.8 million.

 ”The level of Canadian travel to the United States observed in the past six months has been the highest since 1998,” Statistics Canada reported.

 Overnight plane trips to the U.S. hit a new record high for the fourth month in a row.

 Travel by Canadians to countries other than the U.S. also hit a record high

 

The Canadian Press – OTTAWA – Travel to Canada hit a record low for the fifth straight month in March, following big declines in both same-day car trips from the United States and the number of visitors from overseas nations.

Statistics Canada reports foreign visitors made 2.3 million trips to Canada in March, the lowest since record keeping started in 1972.

That’s a one per cent decline from February, and a 12.4 per cent drop from a year earlier.

Meanwhile, the number of Canadian trips abroad rose 1.4 per cent to almost 4.5 million, the vast majority (85 per cent) to the United States.

U.S. residents made only 730,000 same-day car trips to Canada in March, down 2.5 per cent from the previous month.

Same-day car travel to Canada has fallen by 41.1 per cent in two years.

Overseas travellers to Canada made 384,000 trips in March, down three per cent.

Travel declined in eight of Canada’s top 12 overseas markets, with the strongest decreases in travel from Mexico, Germany and Hong Kong.

There were gains in visitors from India, Italy and the Netherlands.

Overall, Canadians made 3.8 million trips to the United States in March, up 1.6 per cent from February. Canadian travel to the United States in the past six months has been the highest since 1998.

Same-day car travel to the United States increased 1.5 per cent to 2.1 million trips, while overnight car travel rose 1.9 per cent to 991,000 trips.

Overnight plane trips to the United States set a new record high for the fourth straight month.

Canadian travel to countries other than the United States increased 0.4 per cent to a record 670,000 – the 10th month in the past year in which a new record high was set.

Talk to the Birds

One of the things that I love about living here in Canso, Nova Scotia is waking up to the sounds of the gulls crying overhead. The early morning hours are also sometimes marked by the rhythm of the foghorn and the horn of the lobster boats reversing out from their moorings at dawn.

The breaking of dawn along the waterfront is often quite magical as the softest pinkish tones mark the first rays of sunlight to hit the North American continent on this easterly peninsula.

Last summer my son Josh came down for a visit. Over a period of several week, he fed the gulls from our Bed & Breakfast leftovers, toast and bread. The gulls were a rather hungry mob once the lobster season finished and there were few other fishing boats coming into the harbour. They were suprisingly adept at learning how to jump for food; at least that is how it looked from where I was standing. As Josh threw the bread into the air, the gulls caught it on the wing a few feet off the ground. Those that “jumped” had the advantage over those that couldn’t as they caught the food mid-air before it hit the ground when a melee erupted.

The antics of the gulls and their various characters gradually emerged over the weeks that Josh talked to them as he fed them. So this is the story of Josh.  

 

 

Stan Rogers Folk Festival- a pilgrimage of sorts.

This year the Stan Rogers Folk Festival is being held on July 4th, 5th and 6th July 2008. 

This is a week-end to really experience the Atlantic music culture as well as to discover some surprising new music from various parts of the world. It is a smorgasborg of music from folk to jazz and everything in between. This year is the eleventh year the festival has been running.

 The Stan Rogers Folk Festival is now for many people a well established pilgrimage that transforms Canso from a small town to one which hosts thousands of visitors. Rain or shine, snow or hail the music plays on.

Road trip from Toronto to Canso, Nova Scotia

We followed the Downeast signs on route #1 hoping for ocean views!

View of ocean at Trenton Maine

Trenton, Maine

Bar Harbour Waterfront

The Cat High Speed Car Ferry to Nova Scotia Sign

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So finally I am back in Nova Scotia after the long drive from Toronto, Ontario through Quebec and this time a detour through Maine with a quick visit to Bar Harbour! The weather was amazing the entire trip and the long winter seemed sudddenly to give way to babbling brooks and rivers and almost green fields.

In southern Quebec maple syrup collection was ongoing in the numerous sugar bush that we passed.

Now one of the amusing things that happened along the trip which we planned using Google trip planner was at Sherbrooke, where the Google directions sent us down  unpaved roads to bypass the town of Sherbrooke. So we are travelling a total of two thousand kilometers across four provinces. You can imagine our surprise then when the Google directions take us on a detour of the Sherbrook area sugar bush. Fortunately for us the snow was all but melted, except occasionally in the deep shade of trees. Clearly though, that list of Google directions that you print out and nurse along the route needs to be carefully vetted before you start your journey.

Our Google directions list from Holland Landing, about 45 kms north of Toronto, to Canso, Nova Scotia, had fifty individual steps and of these three consecutive short steps, covering about eight kilometers, were on unpaved roads. Now we have since done what we should have done in the first place, we have actually looked at the map very closely to see where those directions were directing us. This has failed to provide a reason though for the quirky turns through farm fields that Google routed us. In fact when you look at the map you are left wondering if Google wasn’t having a bit of fun at our expense. And yes, I even checked to make sure that we didn’t download those directions on April 1st!

Our reason for this route, (through the Sherbrooke area sugarbush), on this particular road trip from Toronto to Nova Scotia, was to travel through Maine. It seemed like an interesting alternative to going through northern New Brunswick where the weather can still be a little bleak and unpredictable at this time of year. We were not disappointed; the towering white pines were no-longer clad in white but stood in sunshine.

We spent the night in Bangor, Maine, and to our complete amazement arrived to find that every hotel/motel was fully booked for a Spring event! The following morning, we elected to travel the coastal route, Route #1, otherwise known as “Down East and Acadian Route.” Though the mildness of the weather continued to charm us we were disapponted that there were in fact very few coastal views, with the exception of at Trenton and the Bar Harbour Island.

 

Bar Harbour Island was nothing short of breathtaking. Fringed by the Acadia National Park, the area is uncommonly beautiful and the climate temperate, protected as it is from the coastal winds by the gently undulating hills on the surrounding islands. It wasn’t at all what I was expecting, reminiscent instead of the West coast in fact. Bar Harbour itself was a well-heeled resort community with trendy boutiques and lots of waterfront dining. Despite our early arrival there was already a sense that the tourism season was about to open.

From the waterfront The Cat, the high speed ferry from Bar Harbour to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia was visible across the water and cars were already lined up for the next sailing to Nova Scotia when we passed by the entrance to the ferry terminal. With hindsight, I rather wished that we had taken the ferry but still hopeful of those ocean views from route #1 we continued by car through to New Brunswick and then to Nova Scotia.

Our advice for anyone thinking about doing this roadtrip is to take the ferry, in spite of the relatively high ferry cost.

The ferry terminal in Bar Harbour is only one hour from Bangor and the high speed ferry crossing to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia is three hours.

 

Alternatively, take the detour from Bangor down to Bar Harbour, then retrace your route to Bangor. From Bangor take Hwy #9 to Calais and then Hwy #1 to St. John, New Brunswick, which is about a two and a half hour drive.

We found little to recommend along Route #1, the “Down East and Acadian Route,” between Bar Harbour and Calais. An occasional glimpse of the water, one particular scenic picnic area and the rather reddish coloured blueberry fields heralding Cherryfield, the blueberry capital of the world. The big payoff though was to come after crossing at Calais into New Brunswick: Once we were in New Brunswick we detoured to St. Andrews. Now this is the quaintest seaside town! I loved it. None of the photographs I took do it justice!