I am, naturally, sad. Sad for Parisians. Sad for the officials who looked after the building. Sad for the history lost.This beautiful structure survived through countless wars and changes in regimes. It is an extraordinary feat of architecture to have survived for as long as it has and thus a testament to the people who built it so many generations ago. It is also woven into the cultural fabric of French identity.
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| Via the BBC |
It is important. It also doesn't matter.
The flames had barely gone out and millionaires were already pledging hundreds of thousands for its restoration. It was the financial equivalent of thoughts and prayers or facebook profile picture filters.
Never mind how the church who owns (runs?) Notre Dame is one of the richest institutions on earth.
Never mind the homeless of Paris, apparently. Or refugees making their way through Europe being processed by overloaded and under-financed systems.
Where are the pledges of millionaires to end world hunger? If they had this expendable cash to throw at a building (which, again, did not need it), then they definitely have enough to help feed thousands of people or house countless more.
One might say the financial priorities of our world are wickedly askew.
Somewhat hilariously, according to this article in The Guardian, they haven't ponied up much to match their eager pledges. Go figure.
Now, let's localise the scale a bit more to Newfoundland and Labrador, and everybody's favourite scandal du jour for this week. The Fence.
It went up, and then it came down. Taxpayer dollars were spent on a cedar fence -- which actually might have looked quite nice under any other circumstances -- and people didn't like it. The messaging was mixed depending on who spoke for Parks Canada on the issue, but the theme seemed to be trying to formalise a barrier between the road and performances in the valley.
Is the fence overkill? Sure. Signage and staff might have achieved the exact same goal. It apparently cost 65k. You could almost build a house for that much. But, if you ask me, the response was also heavy-handed and really speaks to what priorities we hold dear to our hearts.
— Rick Mercer (@rickmercer) July 16, 2019Half way up Signal Hill in St. John’s - @ParksCanada @ParksCanadaNL have built a fence designed to block the view. Welcome to NL nothing to see here. pic.twitter.com/f8xnHo3R4I
After Rick Mercer's tweet (because, of course) on the 16th, the retribution was swift. By 6 a.m. on the 18th, a whole lot of cedar was being shipped off of signal hill.
An aside for this is that the blocked "view" is accessible almost literally anywhere else on this national historic site. Apparently people seeing The Tattoo historical recreation as well as Shakespeare By The Sea productions for free was a real issue. But to feel so collectively offended about something which was, at its worst, a minor inconvenience, is privileged.
This is a position I'll stand by.
Imagine if the people of St. John's just took half of their collective outrage and influence and applied it to issues like homelessness. Or climate change, as some people joked. Newfoundland and Labrador would be a helluva place to live.
Relating this back to the millionaires of Notre Dame, I certainly concede that the solutions to our social issues are harder to tackle than simply taking down some wood shortly after putting it up. It takes a lot of time and money that people don't necessarily have an abundance of.
Let me tell you a story in closing, though.
A couple weeks ago I was downtown walking my dog. A woman and her two daughters stopped and asked to pet him. We were on Water St and they were carrying bags of Subway soup. We made some small talk, and the woman told me she takes her daughters down whenever she can and they buy food for the homeless of the street. She's a single mother, she said, who can't afford $5 for every person she passes every day. But she does what she can, when she can.
Imagine for a moment if we shifted our priories from monuments and views, and turned them instead to social issues. What if companies invested less in hostile architecture and instead put the money into community shelters. The world would be a better place. And the most important word here is collective. No one person should be shouldered with solving everyone's problems. We're not all millionaires with oodles of time cash and time, but if there are enough of us pooling our resources then suddenly $10 between 10 people becomes $100. Twenty people providing an hour of volunteer time becomes 20 hours. The fence issue proves we're more than capable of coming together and solving problems, so let's send that in the right direction.
