FTLComm - Saskatoon - January 4, 2000 By: Timothy W. Shire |
Some idiot might put a bomb on a plane, capture hostages and hold them for ransom and it will not always be in India or Siberia but in fact the first bomb on a plane occurred right here in Canada. We have learned to handle stop signs and seat belts and all those other measures that have developed to protect us from ourselves but there is something down right offensive about barbed wire and security fences. Just as there is with bars on convenience store windows in the ghetto areas of Regina and Saskatoon. All of these |
"in your face" reminders that we live in a less the perfect world are tremendously
unsettling. For a very long time North Americans have learned to cherish the freedom that comes with an endless sky and the right and freedom to go and do what you want provided it did not endanger others. We even cherish some restrictions like having to file a flight plan because we know that if we are late some of us will go looking for a missing aircraft. MOT (ministry of transport) was always sort of a gentle friendly guardian giving us the weather and alerting us of danger but even that has changed as the Mulroney government "privatised" aviation weather and air traffic control and "NAV Canada" now is the company that pilots must give the trust and passengers pay $7.00 an airplane ticket to support. If this is progress then we must instill some civility into it all and perhaps camouflage that barbed wire somehow so that we don't feel like we have moved to some dangerous "other place." As I was doing these pictures I clicked one of the area that passengers pass through and are gone over with metal detectors and their luggage x-rayed. A security person spotted me and shouted at me, telling me I could not take pictures as this was "a security area" to which I replied, but is this not also a "public place". Though another guard snickered he was not amused. His bad vibes must have been effective because the picture was blurred. Of course he is right because we need that security and that protection from evil but no doubt we all wish it were not so. |