Who Has Seen the Wind

W. O. Mitchell, when he titled one of his books, ‘Who Has Seen the Wind’, may not have been the first to pose this question, but his prairie stories evoked many chuckles as the people of Crocus, Saskatchewan pondered the vagaries of life. Jake had all the answers for The Kid but even Jake would be shaking his head in wonder at the latest from Ovid Mercredi. The Manitoba First Nations wants revenue from cell phone and communications passing through their air space. Like the lines of gray geese flying over Crocus, there are files of data winging their way over Manitoba air space.

At first blush this air space claim may seem a little preposterous but when you realize that it follows on the heels of First Nations in Ontario seeking compensation for the wind, it is not too far fetched. It seems the wind-powered electricity generators along Lake Huron are stealing the wind, and the wind, some think, belongs to the native people who signed treaties giving them rights to the land, water, and by extension, the air above said land and water.

I am uncertain how a wind generator steals the wind, but it certainly may slow it down a tad as the unseen force passes by the whupping blades. Slowing or even accelerating the wind may affect the people and creatures living on the land or even affect the crops growing on the land. We may have to have a government-funded study to see just how far away this affect lasts, but that will keep a few university researchers busy for a decade or two.

They might also want to look at any affects that nearby tall buildings have, and for those researchers with a keen sense of duty, they might even revisit that old question of a butterfly flapping its wings somewhere. The University of Manitoba physicists will have a slightly different challenge as they try to measure the electrical impulses passing over Ovid’s land. How high above the earth does the claim extend? Certainly above the altitude or those aircraft flying so freely across the sky.

Whoops, for a moment I thought I had just opened another can of worms, but it has already been established that low-flying fighter planes did disturb and disrupt the wildlife near Goose Bay. Those training operations were mostly abandoned because the European NATO pilots could not bring themselves to train in a place named Cold Lake.

Nations guard their airspace quite seriously and it seems the Manitoba First Nations now want to do the same. We send up fighters to turn back Russian spy planes, and Uncle George is bent on having missiles that can reach into higher space to stop intruders who fly higher than manned vehicles can protect. But how high are those radio, television and cell transmissions? And how do you stop them or measure them? They are like the wind, unseen.

The wind, while unseen, can be felt and its effects noted on the trees and grasses or on dusty lands that turn the unseen into dust devils and whirlwinds. The effects of cell phone transmissions cannot be heard unless you have one of those little devices glued to your ear, but the effects, like the wind, can be seen. People receiving these ethereal messages walk into things, drive their vehicles erratically and disrupt others who may be dining or watching an important movie with their loud one-sided conversations.

How successful Ovid will be in his efforts to squeeze some money from a vague clause in a treaty remains to be seen. Yet there may be a message here for our local politicians. I refer not to the failed wind-farm study, nor the Hole in the Hill, neither to the lack of airplanes flying over the City during the Civic Holiday weekend, but to promises made and not kept. by our Provincial and Federal governments. Surely, there must have been a document stating what the upper levels of government promised to do for the lower municipal government.

Take, for instance, the sharing of the gasoline tax. Or the provision for health care and education for all the peoples of North Bay. Was there not some promise that the upper levels would give back or share equally in the funds collected by the whole for the benefit of all people, even those who reside in this remote northern town? Our MPP and Mayor may have already fired the first verbal shots in the dispute over promises made and not kept. However, as any politician knows, including our Mayor, promises are written on the wind of election bluster.

Perhaps our local leaders should use one of those cell phone things and make a call to Ovid to see if he would share some of his strategies for getting upper levels of government to cough up some cash. If Ovid can see the wind and hear those messages flying over his head, he may have some insights to share with the rest of us. I just hope it is not an extra tax on cell phones, radio and television. On second thought, that might be a good thing.