I don’t know about you, but I often think of the North Shore as a sanctuary from the madness of the world.
The world is a pretty ferocious place, and every day, it just seems to get nastier. This week, the UN Refugee Agency said there are now 65.3-million people driven from their homes by the forces of chaos. A world record!
That’s 24 people a minute; 98,000 are “unaccompanied” children, homeless and alone.
While I’m sitting pretty on my balcony with a steaming mug of morning coffee and a newspaper, listening to the birds sing, I think about those 24 people a minute for a minute, and then turn the page.
It’s not the noblest feeling; if I’m being honest, it’s like “I’m safe and I’d like to stay that way, thank you.”
When some lunatic slaughters the patrons in a bar in Orlando, I shake my head and mutter thanks that I’m about as far away from there as you can be and still be on the same continent.
Of course, just south of the Peace Arch is a nation where everyone has a gun. That’s not an exaggeration. There are 300 million firearms in the U.S. for a population of 319 million people, making it the number one gun-owning nation on earth.
According to StatsCan, Canadians have about seven million guns, still lots if you pile them in a heap. But if you do a little figuring, that comes to 0.2 guns per person, so it would take at least five people to put together one gun, and as the prospect of getting five people to work together on anything is slim, I feel relatively safe.
Add to the fact that anyone who wants to buy a gun in Canada must have a valid licence under the Firearms Act and to get that, you have to take a safety course, submit to criminal history and background checks, provide personal references, and undergo a mandatory waiting period. If you still want a gun after all that, you’re one dedicated shootist.
In the U.S., you can buy the same assault rifle used by the Orlando murderer in seven minutes. At least that’s what a reporter for the Philadelphia Daily News was able to do - even in the wake of the Orlando outrage. Will those people never learn?
Yes, if you go through all that background rigmarole, you can actually buy an AR-15 assault rifle, which is the weapon of choice for American mass murderers, right here in Vancouver. But in Canada, they come with a five-round clip, one shot at a time. The Orlando murder weapon has a 30-round clip; at one point the assassin fired 20 shots in nine seconds.
My point is, and I do have one, is that right down to the details, it’s safer here. If we’re smart, maybe we can talk Donald Trump into building a wall between us and the U.S. and get them to pay for it.
As for those 65-million homeless people, we’re doing our bit. We’re opening our arms to 25,000 refugees, and here on the North Shore, because of the shortage of affordable rental housing, we’re making room for less than a dozen. Aspiring Canadians in a Turkish refugee camp have a greater chance of winning Lotto 64/9 than actually boarding a plane and ending up on the North Shore.
Sanctuary is a fragile thing. One man’s sanctuary is another fool’s paradise. The number one reason Americans cite for owning a gun is self-defense. And in a nation that recorded nearly 37,000 deaths and injuries from shootings in 2015, it’s not just stinkin’ thinkin’. Canada, by the way, had 172 gun-related homicides in 2012. And that’s too many!
But is this haven on the Pacific a fool’s paradise? Many would argue that it is. A hotbed of “first world problems”: real estate is expensive because everyone wants to live here; the health-care system is overburdened because here, more people survive to old age, when the wheels fall off at once.
Yet the real problems, which seem so far away as I enjoy a cup of coffee on my leafy balcony, are always lurking nearby, just waiting for the opportunity to disrupt our happy little lives.
Just ask the people of Fort McMurray.
Journalist and communications consultant Paul Sullivan has been a North Vancouver resident since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of Madonna. He can be reached via email at [email protected].
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