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magazine / apr08
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April 2008 issue |
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EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK
Seeing the light
Twenty-five years ago, futurists
were telling us that we’d all have
solar panels on the roofs of our
houses by now. Not quite. Yet photovoltaics
are widely used today to power,
of all the cursed things, street parking
meters. And highway traffic-diversion
signs, buoys marking lanes for ship traffic,
camping lanterns, satellite telephones and,
now, iPod chargers.
New technology never quite enters
our lives in the way that its developers or
proselytizers believe it will. In the case of
solar energy, cost and consumer hesitancy
to experiment with anything other than
grid-delivered power meant the industry
had to improvise and convince us of the
reliability of the panels.
“There are many myths out there that
we still need to counter,” says Elizabeth
McDonald, executive director of the
Canadian Solar Industries Association.
“That there isn’t enough sun in Canada, for example.” Not
true. That it’s too cold here. Solar panels need sunlight and
function regardless of the temperature. That the panels don’t
last. In fact, they’ll work for 30 years, which means they’ll likely
still be in service long after your furnace has burned itself out.
Consumers are finally catching on, though, and solar power
is coming to your neighbourhood, writer John Lorinc tells us
in our cover story. Not only is the technology improving, says
McDonald, but prices should start dropping in 2009. Even
more critically, Ontario has opened
its energy market and has
begun buying all the solar power homeowners can generate on
their rooftops. The new policy marks a profound change and is
fuelling the rapid growth of solar-energy production across the
province. Will others follow Ontario’s smart lead?
I’d like a little place in the country with a woodlot, a
hayfield, a cow or two, a half-dozen chickens running around
the yard, a big garden and a cozy little house I could heat with
a wood stove and a couple of solar panels. Of course, I’d like to
come into town to see a hockey game from time to time and
maybe a play or two every fall. So I guess I’d need a car and
some way to earn a bit of cash to pay for my other indulgences.
And that’s generally when I wake from my fantasy life and get
back to fixing our leaky kitchen sink or trudging off to the
grocery store.
The dream of a self-sufficient
homestead has enduring appeal.
Back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, thousands of young people across the continent tried to make it a reality. While
millions of North Americans were abandoning the countryside
for urban life, back-to-the-landers like writer Ray Conlogue
were heading in the opposite direction. In Conlogue’s case,
he found his retreat on 100 acres of farmland he bought in
New Brunswick’s Fundy Hills. More than 30 years after he
gave up on his geodesic dome and the vision of living off the
grid, we asked Conlogue to return to the hills and tell us what
happened to the like-minded urban refugees who stayed on
after he left. The stories of the friends he tracked down reveal
how much they were changed by the communities they entered
- and how much they changed those places. They injected a
great deal of energy and imagination into rural Canada and, in
turn, were taught survival skills by those who had generations
of experience on the land.
We’d like to hear your back-to-the-land
stories about the
experiences you or your friends or relatives have had attempting
to live a self-sufficient country life. Or if you have lived in the
country all your life, tell
us about your memories of all those
young people who arrived in the 1960s with a plan to change
the world. You can write to us at 39 McArthur Ave., Ottawa,
ON K1L 8L7, e-mail editor@canadiangeographic.ca or post
your stories on our website.
— Rick Boychuk
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