URSABLOG: Spaced Out

“How was your stay with us, sir?”

“Very nice, thank you.”

“Everything ok with your room?”

“Yes, but it was massive. You could have fitted families in there. There was so much space.”

“Yes, this is a normal thing here, especially compared with Europe.”

“Well yes, I am a European, but I suppose I could get used to it quite quickly.”

I was checking out of my hotel in Montreal, about to head for the airport to fly to Vancouver.

I like Montreal very much: the buzz, the food, the bilingual vibe, the river and the sense – especially when high up in one of the taller buildings – of being surrounded by light and sky, even on gloomy, dull days. It is both metropolitan and cosmopolitan but with a provincial feel to it too, all at the same time, which is a beguiling combination. And everyone is very polite and friendly. To a fault.

But of course Canada is provincial: it is made up of provinces and they are huge. My flight from Montreal was at 13:30 and was due to arrive in Vancouver at 16:30. Simple European as I am, when I booked the flight I thought it would be a short hop across a continent, but I hadn’t taken into account the time zones, all three of them, that I would cross.

The flight was long, but not without interest. The first few hours was in cloud, but then – I think around Winnipeg – the clouds dispersed and underneath was a map of flat land, helpfully drawn out in grids below. At first it seemed I was looking at an actual map, with perfectly straight lines drawn from east to west, north to south. But then, as I looked closely, I realised that these lines were actual boundaries and definitively marked. Rivers ignored them; because they were there first I suppose. But in certain areas – I guess where the land was too rugged, or could not be easily parceled into mile-sized agricultural units – this wilder, untamed land was nonetheless trimmed at the edges into straight perpendicular lines where possible.

It was hard, from so high up to get the scale right. But I have since learned that the smallest squares – in the most fertile places I suppose – are a mile on each side. The larger ones – called townships – are six miles by six miles (containing 36 theoretical smaller square miles). Big or small, everything is perpendicular except where nature takes supremacy, or highways and railways take their own directions.

This was all strangely beguiling to the geographer in me. As it was the result of one of the greatest geographical mapping exercises ever undertaken, this is perhaps not a surprise. Before 1867, what we know as Canada today was made up of different British colonies: Canada (then split into Canada East and Canada West), New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. They all shared similar pressures:

–           Tensions and political deadlock between the French-speaking East and English-speaking West

–           Fear of American expansionism after the US Civil War

–           The need for a transcontinental railway and economic integration

–           Britain’s wish to devolve some responsibility and cost for colonial defence

It is arguable that many of these themes have not entirely disappeared. The solution, however,  was Confederation: the union of the colonies into a self-governing dominion within the British Empire. There were two basic layers to this federal system, dividing powers between:

–           The federal government (responsible for defence, trade, foreign affairs, etc.)

–           The provinces (responsible for education, property, civil rights, etc.)

After Confederation, Canada wanted to encourage settlement of the West, and as a tool created the Dominion Land Survey, to divide and record land systematically, enabling the orderly sale, settlement, and farming of the as yet untended land. Modelled partly on the US Public Land Survey System, it was adapted for the Canadian environment and began in what is now southern Manitoba.

The adaptation was made possible using two peculiarly British cartographic traditions from the late 18th century: the Ordnance Survey (founded 1791) and the Admiralty Hydrographic Office (established 1795). Both institutions – world class, then as now – created precise maps for military and civil use. The Ordnance Survey – beginning in southern England after fears of a French invasion – using triangulation, mathematical precision, and a hierarchical organisation of scale – was a rational, Enlightenment vision of landscape and order. Likewise the Admiralty Hydrographic Office produced nautical charts for navigation, mapping coastlines and sea routes to support British maritime dominance. Nonetheless seafarers everywhere respected and relied on them for their accuracy.

The impression I had of looking down on a huge map drawn on the land turned out to be correct. The east-west lines are true, but the north-south lines taper ever so gradually as they move north, adapting to the curvature of the earth: the squares on the ground are therefore not perfectly square. Everything is measured in degrees: north and south, east and west. It’s like GPS before satellites existed.

We flew on, leaving the prairies – and their squares – behind us and back into cloud, arriving in Vancouver, approaching the airport over the anchorage off English Bay – with a bunch of bulk carriers in ballast waiting to be called in to load – and landed amongst a rainy sunset.

Not knowing which time-zone I was really in, I was effortlessly carried by driverless metro from the airport to the Waterfront. It was now dark, and raining. I stumbled towards my hotel and after checking in with another amazingly polite and cheerful receptionist, I dumped my bags, cleared my emails and headed out for some food, and wine. Canadian food – on the coasts at least – is really very good.

I was in town to give a short presentation at the Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers Canada Branch’s 11th Dry Bulk and Commodities conference. Once again I was amazed by the space. The Vancouver Convention Centre is an enormous building, with spectacular views across the harbour towards the North Shore. It was still raining, but – as I was early – I enjoyed drinking my coffee and watching the seaplanes take off and land. Seaplanes – it turns out – are the easiest way to move up and down the coast. There is just too much space to cover quickly in an otherwise roadless environment. Otherwise you can go by sea…

The conference itself was excellent and I learnt a lot. But one of the biggest things I learnt was that even though the coastline is huge, it is on the edges of the massive landmass, and great swathes of that are in ice all or most of the time, the sea is not really that important. As such, Canada – resource rich though it is – does not really consider ships that much, at least until now.

Its largest trading partner remains the US, and indeed – until recently – didn’t have to worry too much about the ships that came and went to its Atlantic and Pacific ports. The east coast – no prizes for guessing why I stopped off in Montreal on the way to Vancouver – does have an international shipping presence. But the majority of the topics at the conference were on cargoes and infrastructure: growing and mining the stuff for export, and getting the stuff to port, on to ships, and on its way to somewhere else. Ships – except for my presentation, and another one on the freight markets – did not feature too much.

This makes sense. Ships arrive and take the stuff away. The cost of it (and the time it takes) is minimal compared to the time and cost it takes to get to the ports. The proportion of freight to the cost of the cargo is small, and although it – and the commission involved – is still significant enough for the energetic and knowledgeable shipbrokers there to compete hard for it, I felt that – as a shipping man so-to-speak – I had little of import to share with them.

But the world is changing. With the US becoming – let’s say – a little less consistent as a trading partner, Canada is looking further afield for markets for their exports. The potential for them to export huge amounts of different and valuable commodities to the rest of the world is enormous. I have the feeling that they haven’t even scratched the surface. But apart from on the eastern coast, I also got the feeling that ships – except for coastal, lake, ice and other domestic trades – do not feature so much in the greater scheme of things.

That is a shame, and – in my opinion – a missed opportunity. I think the Canadian shipbuilding industry is not ideally placed – forgive me for the irony – to fill any gaps in capacity for any types of ship – ice classed or otherwise – any time soon. But I do think that there is enough capacity and expertise – both technically and financially – for an exporting nation to get more into the business of actually owning and operating vessels. High taxes? So what? Look at Denmark. Oppressive, cumbersome and protective legislation? So what? Look at Japan. Lack of shipbuilding capacity? So what? Look at Greece. What Canada does have, and lots of it, is space, and space to grow.

When the status quo is no longer feasible, and new challenges come from without, sometimes the answer is not to copy what others – especially other stronger and more dynamic neighbours – try to do. The answer – I suspect – is to look within and see what you already have. What is that? Huge resources, both natural and human.

It is not my place to dictate, or even suggest, what countries, or companies, or even people, need to do to improve their place in the world. I was told enough of its problems when I was there. But Canada, with its huge – and hugely diverse – country and culture, is a dominion that without needing to dominate could become an increasingly attractive place to do business with and do business itself. I am looking forward to visiting again and investigating more.

Simon Ward