[pf] Ds reasons for leaving North America.

At 11:39 7/7/2001 -0700, Dale Corlew wrote to PF:
>David,
>Would you be willing to share the other four reasons why you and your wife
decided to leave North America for New Zealand----if they aren't too personal.
>
>Thanks---djc
>
>P.S.  Along a similiar vein I've often heard it said that New Zealand is
like the states in the 50's and that they would soon "catch up" with us. I
hope they have better sense but is the general way of life one of rampant
consumerism such as is the case in most of America?
>

· Not too personal, but rather fading with time - uncertain now.

· In no particular order:

1 - A pesticide/fertilizer scare in Michigan (we lived just across the St
Clair River in Ontario), following-on reading Rachel Carson's "Silent
Spring". {Almost gone now, but am guessing there was dioxin contamination}

2 - The knowledge that the USA and the USSR were explicitly targetting
cities with their nuclear ICBMs (are there any on this list now that don't
know what those are?), and with Southern Ontario nearly surrounded by the
USA we'd get not only the fallout but some knocked-off-course rockets, if
the Cold War changed to "I'll take out one of your cities if you take out
one of mine!". (I never believed it would go further than that. But that,
with nuclear weapons particularly, is bad enough.)

3 - My wife and I, having worked for a couple of years in the late '60s in
an African country (Ghana, with CUSO), were totally convinced of the need
to live minimal-consuming lives (e.g. we were reluctant to buy a car on our
return, so we agreed it would just be "four wheels and an engine!"), and so
the cultural pollution coming into Canada from the USA was offensive to us.
It still is; and yes, Dale, NZ has been racing to "catch up" with the USA
under both Labour and National Governments in the last 2 decades. 
  Fortunately, not very successfully - our rate of economic growth has
decreased under those neo-liberal economic policies ("hands-off business
and industry") until now we're ~26/30 in the OECD, instead of ~4th.

4 - I looked hard at moving up the west coast from Vancouver, to attain our
above goals without leaving Canada (my father was Canadian, mother New
Zealander, me: born in Cambridge {father getting his PhD there} just before
the War), but with my wife's family back in north Wales (& a cousin in NZ)
I felt she should have some support from her and my family in case she
found it almost intolerable being married to me. It wasn't easy, living in
the same house with me; I can be overbearing, scary and domineering if I
choose; I called it "making sure they did things the right way".

5 - After going to school in Canada in the 1940s in Nova Scotia and Ontario
(up to Grade 5), my parents broke up & me and my 2 sisters got most (or for
the youngest, all) of our schooling in New Zealand after we moved there in
1946. (We three returned to Canada to live with my father in 1959.) I have
been critical most of my life, yet I found the NZ school system quite good,
even in retrospect, and wanted our kids to grow up in such a system.

6 - Additionally, the freedom to spend time outdoors year-round on your
own, in the bush/forests, in the cities, on the ocean, with only minimal
risks (weather, wildlife, people), was and is a great attraction for living
in NZ. I wanted our kids to call such a place "home".


· A paean of praise? You asked for reasons for settling there, not for
reasons _not_ to stay! There are some of those, but generally less important.

David.
(David MacClement) davd@ihug.co.nz 
http://www.geocities.com/davd.geo/index.html#top
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