May 2009 newsletter

I'm hoping that my readers won't mind if I strike something of a personal note this month and allow me to share some thoughts that have been rattling around in my head of late.

But they have their roots in a heartwarming family occasion during the Victoria Day weekend when I went to Toronto to hug my great granddaughter (Emma) on her first birthday.

I try not to bore my family, friends, and acquaintances (too much, at least) with talk about the current market downturn. Rather, I save this for my newsletters and those who (I hope) read them!

But I must confess that, betweentimes, I couldn't help thinking about what lies ahead of us, as well as reflecting on where we now are and where we've come from.

This term emerged in the 60s and 70s, not long after my wife and I emigrated from the U.K. and watched our daughters and their like embrace a host of new ideas that had most parents wondering what we'd done wrong. The values we'd been brought up with, which had stood the test of time for centuries, were suddenly cast aside in favour of such concepts as Flower Power, Free Love, and L.S.D. It was all beyond our understanding, not to mention ready acceptance, and no one seemed to have any explanation.

In due course, though, we all settled down, and most of my age group came to realize that our children had simply moved the world forward. Established rules of behaviour had been replaced by the idea of people being free to do their own thing. Perhaps, as many parents thought, the baby was being thrown out with the bathwater, but the NOW generation proved to be composed of children who felt that a change in public proscriptions was long overdue.

Whatever the case, the unwillingness to blindly accept what the Establishment decided and said became widespread. There WERE alternatives and within the past fifty years we've seen a host of advances in numerous aspects of life, not the least being an attitude towards it. Moreover, I make no apology for thinking that we've all ended up the better for this.

Meanwhile, my family has grown until I now have four great grandchildren. To my immense sorrow, my dearly beloved wife (Mary) died just before the first of them was born, but I'm well aware of what pleasure she'd derive from them if she was still at my side.

Indeed, the thought was among many others that whirled around in my head when I went to Emma's birthday party. Included was my joy in her name, one that goes back to the Victorian era and implies that the values that Mary and I grew up with (and had inherited from our parents and their parents, not to mention several generations before them) hadn't, after all, been altogether lost.

Even more, though, I was struck by the approach to life that everyone had. It was full of confident expectations. No one seemed to be too bothered by the gloom and doom that the media has a fondness for. Sure, we're going through an economic meltdown that isn't going to be put to rights in the next week or so. Moreover, the future is being unduly heavily mortgaged and the deficit will be a burden that my great grandchildren are probably going to inherit and will have to whittle down to a managable limit. But alarm wasn't present in the conversations among family members and friends. Rather, the emphasis was on friendship and affection. The future would arrive and each successive generation would deal with it.

Maybe I'm blessed by a loving and caring family -- which I certainly am -- but my chitchats with all kinds of people in the outside world also rarely sound a fearful note. A positive frame of mind is more the norm than the exception.

There's certainly mention of a need for caution in more than one discussion and there's a general acceptance that things may get worse before they get better. Yet there's little sense of despair. Life WILL go on and, regardless of the form it takes, there's a consensus that it will NOT overcome those who have to face it.

Beyond these thoughts, I started to believe that the NOW generation triggered what has become a different view of governmental responsibility. A centuries-old dependance on charity gave way to a variety of public welfare programmes. Perhaps some cynics consider that increased levels of taxation pay for the handouts instead of letting the rich themselves decide who the recipients deserve to be, but the pattern is now too ingrained for it to be undone.

In any case, politicians of all stripes see the need for deficit financing as a necessary -- albeit not altogether acceptable -- part of the road to recovery. In fact, the opinion is held in the U.S., the U.K., and Canada itself, countries that each have a quite different political makeup and base.

After all, there's something of a parallel in the use of mortgages to help people buy houses, isn't there? If you don't have the cash yourself, then why not borrow it?

In contrast, for many generations the majority of people paid rent throughout their lifetimes. If the rich didn't always get richer, only a small number of the poor were able to buy a roof over their heads. Social mobility was something of a rarity and, however ironic the fact, it seemed to take two world wars for the percentage of home ownership to be significantly increased.

In addition, though, the NOW generation had gone through a major shift in relationships between classes of people. More than one military officer had exercised command over those who had hitherto employed them. A return to a reverse of it wasn't going to be easy and soon supported the view that everyone should be allowed to go their own way and, it was to be hoped, better themselves.

A notable example in this regard was the emergence of left wing thinking in England and, despite mistakes made along the way, what is to this day a less than unbridled trust in longtime British conservative principles of government.

While not an exact parallel, the overwhelming belief in Barack Obama's determination to move away from yesterday's habits is further evidence that change is considered to be not only essential but also inevitable.

One further line of thought came to me as Emma's presents were being opened: today's children are likely to enjoy more material goods than their forebears -- certainly in our modern developed democracies. We may be subjected to financial ups and downs but, on the whole, each generation is going to have a richer life. They'll be endowed with what their immediate parents have been able to accumulate, but this will include, I'm sure, the gift of enlightened thinking.

In my day, there were things no one talked about: contentious questions such as abortion, same-sex partnerships, and unwedded parenthood. They give rise to passionate arguments both for and against, with the differing views being all but irreconcilable. But nowadays there is discussion about them and, in my view, this will lead to growing recognition of the choices that people have a right to make. This doesn't, of course, mean that there's just a right and a wrong way. Instead, it could bring about a growing acceptance that the harm, if indeed there is any, is to the individuals involved as opposed to the public good. Like it or not, as far as I've become concerned, it's simply part and parcel of the concept of freedom for people to do their own thing.

But if mankind is to advance the way the NOW generation envisaged, we DO have to find a way that stops nations from fighting with nations. If my generation learned nothing else, it recognized that no one can win a war.

Of immediate concern is the threat of terrorism, much of it flowing out of distorted interpretations of the Koran. Yet there's no good reason to think that the Islamic community is in widespread agreement. Far from it. I can readily attest to the fact that my clients who hail from Pakistan and elsewhere are as much disturbed as anyone else by the hatred that's directed against those of us who are unreservedly viewed as infidels.

But in dwelling on what life will be for my great granddaughter (and her three cousins), I couldn't help feeling that there isn't a thing to worry about.

Duncan Pollock, Real Estate Broker,
427 Gate Street, Niagara-on-the-Lake,
Ontario, Canada L0S 1J0
Tel: 905-468-3154 Fax: 905-468-3812
Cellular: 905-704-9037
email: duncanpollock@sympatico.ca
Note: E-mail address changed as above on Nov 3 2007

website: http://www.duncanpollock.com

PS. One of my web pages provides a list of the other newsletters I've sent out. If you choose to go to it, you can click on any title to bring up its full text.
PPS. I've recently been invited and encouraged to create a second website, one that deals with my approach to the industrial, commercial, and investment real estate market. You can reach it, if you're so inclined, at http://www.iciniagara.com.