Corporate Interests

This week, I have had two meetings with local politicians: Stephen McNeil on Monday and Gregory Heming on Tuesday. My general intent was to make the case for citizen input into the planned Innovation Hub at COGS in Lawrencetown.

For the meeting with McNeil, I took the 8:11am bus to Middleton, had a half-hour meeting, then bussed and walked home by lunchtime. For the meeting with Heming, I drove to Annapolis Royal, had a one-hour meeting at the Sissiboo Cafe, again returning home for lunch.

From the two meetings, I gained the impression that the focus of the Innovation Hub would be on corporate, business interests. This realization coincided with my recent discovery (see previous blog post) of Powe’s book Towards a Canada of Light.

He offers three meditations.

First meditation: In a Communication State
Second meditation: Alternative Current
Third meditation: Towards a Canada of Light

From the book, the following quotations seemed relevant.

“ We can see the corporate state of mind, conditioned by financial structures and their compulsions of time, appears to have lost its soul-root in the imagination. What I mean by this is the loss of the ability to sympathize with suffering and confusion, weakness and fear – that awful fear that may stall the movements of spirit and mind – to feel for people and what they do and can’t do … “ p100.

“So in Canada, without a visionary inkling, a breakthrough, we will be without strangeness, little more than another greedy place …” p.101.

There is much more to the book. It was pure happenstance that I was reading it this week. Many of his ideas apply equally well, today, to Canada, and Annapolis County, Nova Scotia.

Acknowledgements

To Stephen McNeil and Gregory Heming for agreeing to meet with me on the subject of citizen input to the Innovation Hub in Lawrencetown. Edward Wedler for his graphics input.

Reference

B.W.Powe. 2006. Towards a Canada of Light. Thomas Allen Publishers.