'sA-dE . com

There and back again

It's nice to be home. San Francisco was a nice place to visit, one I hope to travel to again some day, but I am glad to be back in the land of snow and ice.

I think the thing that struck me most about the city was the massive divide between rich and poor. The contrast was really quite startling. Within a five-block radius of my hotel, there was a Saks Fith Avenue, Tiffany's, Emporio Armani, Burberry, and a myriad of small, one-off, high-end boutiques. Outside of that 5-block radius, it was pretty much Crackton. There didn't seem to be the same sort of "middle class" that there is here. Granted, I didn't get to see much outside of the downtown area, but it was definitely very different from a comparably sized Canadian city, like Ottawa (SF population estimate for 2004: 751 682; Ottawa population 2005: 774 072). The biggest visible difference was definitely the level of poverty and homelessness. Even in Toronto, a city more than twice the size of SF (and that is not counting the GTA), I have never seen so many visibly disturbed, addicted, violent, or physically disabled people forced out onto the streets.

I know that Canada's got a lot of problems, most of which are being used as talking points during the leadership debates as we gear up for our January election. But I can't reconcile how a country who has left so many of its own citizens behind and without access to basic human necessities is at all qualified to be telling other sovereign nations how to install responsible governments.