THE SILENCING OF SILENCE.
In September 1975, now almost 50 years ago, our family moved from urban St. Catharines, Ontario, a city close to Niagara Falls, to rural Tweed, half-way between Toronto and Ottawa, both some 200km away. Several factors led to this radical move. I troubled. Not financially, fortunately. I was dissatisfied. Not in our marriage, thank God.
I moved because I was at odds with my life for three reasons: The church, the Club of Rome (Limits to growth), and fed up with my insurance business.
But first some background.
In 1962-3, I built our first house, 1,800 square feet, brick, on a large lot on one of the city’s main thoroughfares. It had 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, family room, dining room, fireplace, a roomy office: a comfortable place. In 1975, when I sold it, it’s value had increased by more than 150%. I also found a buyer for my insurance business at a good price, so when I moved, I had sufficient funds to buy 50 acres and build an energy-efficient 2 storey dwelling, into a southerly-sloping hill, with large windows facing south, passive-solar, in other words: environmentally friendly, and funds to take time off.
Why this drastic move?
My beefs: (1) The church.
One of my employees had given me a book which had opened my eyes to eternity. It was badly written, but with a relevant message: “Our future, after death, is not heaven, but a New Earth”. That for me, pious Egbert, was an eyeopener. The church I attended had a very conservative, traditional minister, totally inapproachable and closed to any dialogue and new thinking. It was easy to leave this church.
My second worry: The Club of Rome, and its publication, Limits to Growth.
A friend gave me the book. Now 50 years old. To me it was a revelation. I had never given it a thought, but it dawned on me that we live on a Finite Earth: there are limits to our resources. The book, especially in its graphs, showed what would happen – 50 years from now: today in other words – when we disregard these limits: A New Lifestyle is needed. Me, consequential me, acted.
Fed up with my insurance business.
I had a very good secretary. Smarter than me. She quit. This gave me the incentive to move, which we did.
2024, 50 years later.
Now it is 50 years later. In 1975-78 I built up a large garden, went back to school to qualify as a Professional (Real Estate) appraiser, taking courses at Queen’s, Trent and York Universities, and earned my designation upon completing three 100 pages theses, one on a single-family dwelling, one on a 12-unit apartment building, and one on a commercial building. In 1978 I gained my accreditation, and started Hastings – the county I lived in – Appraisal Services, which I sold to my senior employee in 1993, when I retired at 65.
The sounds of silence, then.
In 1975 I would wake up in our 2 storey house – living on the second floor – by the sounds of bullfrogs emanating from the large beaver pond, some 400 meters to the east, a sound compounded by the rapid hammering of whip-poor-wills, repeated for hours at the time. After a long rain, the highway on which we lived, 5 km north of the village, would literally be covered with thousands of frogs, taking the shiny road surface for a fast-moving stream.
Decades later, these sounds and those amphibians have disappeared: the natural world has falling silent. Had we lived in the city, I would never have noticed this.
These birds and those frogs are telling us that something serious is happening in the woods and in the waters. The same applies to wild life: Deer, pheasants, grouse, foxes: where are they? I read that 70 percent of wildlife world-wide has vanished.
God is concerned.
The book of Jonah ends with God’s concerns for the many cattle that roamed Nineveh, the aim of Jonah’s preaching. God, too, worries about the conditions of life stock. Today it is poultry.
An outbreak of H5N1 that began in 2020 has led to the deaths or killing of tens of millions of poultry. Most recently, the spread of the virus within several mammal species, including in domestic cattle in the US, has increased the risk of spillover to humans. The virus has caused large outbreaks in mink and foxes, and wiped away thousands of marine mammals, especially in South America. Scientists have tracked the virus along migratory routes and stopovers, among wild birds in rural areas and commercial poultry operations and, most recently, among cattle on dairy farms.
The foregoing reminds of “The Sound of Silence,” written by a 21-year-old Paul Simon in 1954!
“And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was formingAnd the sign said, “The words of the prophets
Are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sounds of silence”.
Now the whispering sounds of silence, no longer muted, have been silenced. Please, Lord: Come!