1969

On this day in 1969, apparently, man first walked on the moon. And at school, we were allowed to watch it. I remember, we were all in the hall at primary school, watching history on TV. I think it was unprecedented to watch TV at school then, but I may be wrong, we may have been assembled to watch the Queen or some such.

For those at Mayhem, and thus presumably Britain in general, today was the last day of term, the final day of the school year, whilst in our shops, all the 'back to school' displays are up.
It must have been getting close to the end back in 1969, who knows, but for Karen and me it was the end of an era, in September we'd be going to secondary school. I had left Portsmouth and wouldn't return for 32 years, but in the meantime I'd meet Di and Kerry and Eve and people who would be good friends.

And we've lived our lives since then, but what has happened to the space race? Why aren't we building on the moon? Why isn't there an international space programme putting someone on Mars? The thinking has all been left to science fiction.

Anyway, back to Earth and a couple of things that BC has got organised.
One is dogs. Now I didn't realise this until yesterday when I saw it on TV, but most municipalities have dog licences and wardens who can fine people if they can't show proof of having paid their $35. And the fines are huge.
Not only that, but the price of the licence goes up if the dog isn't neutered, and, you can't own more than two dogs.
I think that all of this is brilliant and yet bizarre, there is hardly any attempt to police the roads here, people are allowed to operate machines of death whilst talking on cell phones, having small children on their laps, they don't seem to go to gaol for drunken driving, it is just all quite extraordinary.

It has also only just occurred to me how well Canadians manage the school holidays. Although school breaks up at least a month earlier than in Britain, the city centres aren't packed with roaming packs of unpleasant youths all day long as back home.
Every Community Centre, Heritage site, Church, Mosque, Synagogue, Temple, all run summer schools, which pretty much not only wraps up school aged children all day, but university students too, for these are the squadrons who run all these programmes.

I find this all admirable, but again, odd. In Britain there would be no chance of having a programme run purely by university students, you'd have to have some qualified leader, some already overworked professional in charge.
At the Nature Park, we have two fantastic students running our summer programmes, and a team of high school pupils volunteering with them.
And why would secondary school pupils volunteer their time? Because it is part of what they HAVE to do. Somewhere along the line, to leave here or get good marks there, they have to have 'volunteer hours'.

Amazing, alien, amateurish. But still amazing.