The Cobbler's Children

We need to start re-skilling.

Now.

Not 5 years from now, once the price of gas has doubled, or a UK Bond Default has left the economy reeling, and the urge to repair vs. replace, and quality over quantity finally takes hold in North American markets.

Now.

For many years, I have had a bit of a shoe fetish. Not an ‘Imelda Marcos' kind of acquisition fetish, but a fascination with footwear; how it was designed, how it was made, and how it was repaired. It probably came from the 5 years or so after University where the only job I could seem to find was in shoe sales, but the curiosity has stayed with me for some time.

So for the first time ever, I finally had the convergence of time and resources needed to give shoemaking a try first-hand.

The teacher in question was none other than Robert Land. An institution if you’re at all into the historical re-enactment scene, he’s been making civil war/battle of 1812 reproduction shoes in his workshop near Guelph for years. His shipping terms are no-nonsense, but his commitment to quality is well known.

I made it to the workshop for just after 9:00 on a Saturday morning, and without even pausing for me to take my jacket off, Robert launched into a brief description of how we would be spending the day, and we were off to his shed looking for lasts (the moulds shoes are based on).

Over the course of the next 8 hours I stopped three times: Twice to pee, and once to eat a muffin. The rest of the time I was moving non-stop; cutting leather, sewing the uppers, gluing the uppers to the midsole, nailing, stretching, grinding and polishing.

In that time, I made one pair.

To be fair, Robert tells me that once he gets going, he and his helper can complete 15 pairs a day each – pretty good turnout for a small operation.

Here’s the catch: Robert is not an old fashioned ‘Pinocchio’ cobbler bent over his workbench with nothing but a sharp knife and pair of needles. No, he has what would probably be $250,000 worth of industrial equipment at his disposal. That is to say if he were to buy it new, and not at close out auctions as shoemaker after shoemaker in Ontario systematically fell under the weight of cheap overseas imports flooding the market.

With all of that equipment, and an unlimited supply of propane and electricity, Robert's two person shop can turn out 30 pairs a day. One piece of equipment in his workshop was rated for 400 pairs a day, but was so fiddly that neither of us could imagine such a high rate of production while using it.

Now imagine what it would be like if that equipment wasn’t there, or if it were prohibitively expensive to run, or if the parts simply weren’t available?

After a day of steep learning curves, the finished product you can see for yourself above, and I like to think I took to it fairly well.

Not bad handiwork considering it was the first time I had used a sewing machine, much less a double needled machine sewing through leather. Also, to be perfectly honest, he completed several of the most difficult tasks, including grinding the heel, and stitching on the sole using a McKay Stitcher - a large sewing machine that looked like something my Junior High Shop Teacher would have called 'the widow maker.'

I asked him though, based on what he had seen me do, if he thought it would be possible for me to sew a pair of shoes entirely by hand. No machinery.

His reply was ‘no’, he didn’t think so, because I (or at least most people) would give up in frustration.

“It’s possible, in theory, to make a pair of shoes with no tools other than a knife and some leather needles.” Robert explained. “The question is, would it look anything like what we currently think of as a ‘shoe’?”

So now, of course, my next challenge is to sew a pair entirely by hand. I’m going to start with a nice easy pair of moccasin style shoes (like a Topsider style), and work my way up from there.

In the meantime, I will repeat my call for an increased return in Hamilton to learning those skills we will need in the near future. Not in a hobbyist’s context, although that is an important first step, but an industrial one.

If some enterprising handyperson who had a good knowledge of bicycles were to combine Kenneth Moyle’s article about the pleasures of commuting on a Dutch style Bicycle, with Undustrial’s ideas about making those bikes right here in Hamilton, some pretty exciting things might just happen.

I nominate Sean.

Unfortunately, if Robert's experience is one to judge by, governments and banks won't exactly be beating down the doors to help these new manufacturers get underway. That is a serious oversight that needs to be remedied while capital is still (relatively) abundant. Securing local sources of financing and expertise will be crucial to helping Hamilton find it's feet quickly should the ground underneath the global economy start to tremble.

As for you, is there an ‘old fashioned’ skill you have always been curious about? Have you jumped on the knitting bandwagon yet, or maybe even something more esoteric like spinning your own yarn, or marquetry, or herbal remedies? Perhaps the time to start learning is now, because if shoe-making is any indication, the ramp-up time for these skills may be uncomfortably long, and our leisure to learn them surprisingly short.

Hardy to Zone 6

I have been reading Eliot Coleman’s fantastic Four Season Harvest recently, and his wonderful instructions about how to harvest fresh veggies all year ‘round. It has me thinking quite a bit about the hardiness of various plants – especially with Coleman’s assertion that with simple protection from the wind and bitterest cold, we can grow many vegetables that are popular in the south of France.

Hardiness is an interesting term in the agricultural world. It speaks not to whether or not a plant will survive in a given climate, but whether or not it will thrive. That’s the discussion I feel we need to be having in Hamilton right now: With all of the changes that are certain to come, how will we escape the bunker mentality that is so prevalent in peak oil/climate change thought, and turn our attention to how we can thrive, and become a desirable and attractive community in the face of the ‘trifecta?’

The first step is, perhaps, to list our assets. It is widely acknowledged that as fossil fuels increase in price, and decrease in availability, certain forms of transport will quickly trump the current method of loading everything worth moving into Transport trucks. When it comes to rail and water transportation, Hamilton is almost uniquely suited in Canada in terms of not only access to the largest market in Canada, but relatively easy access to the largest markets in the U.S.

And make no mistake, even if stock indexes take a serious tumble, and the price of gas shoots up, and all manor of calamaties are made manifest, we will still be trading. We will still be producing goods and services of real value, in fact if Jeff Rubin is at all correct, we may be producing more of them. People have been trading between communities in some form or another for the better part of 10,000 years. No matter how bad you think things will get, it is foolish to think that every community will suddenly have to become totally self-sufficient.

So then what can we produce for these markets to which we will have almost uniquely easy access?

The first, and most obvious, is food. We live in the heart of one of the greatest agricultural areas in North America, and yet many of the ‘local’ food manufacturers – Kraft, Smuckers, etc, source virtually all of their raw materials from Mexico or California. Don’t even get me started on the ripping up of Peach Orchards after the biggest cannery in Niagara closed.

Local food, in an era of an unreliable power grid, and high transport prices, may not necessarily mean local fresh produce, and we need to start thinking about how we can preserve, can, and otherwise process all of our local produce for consumption over our long, cold winters, and those of our nearest neighbors. Some producers nearby are doing a great job of this, others are hamstrung by contracts with local grocery stores that demand prices lower than what Canadian labour laws will permit.

Even Mayor Bratina recognizes that food processing is a large, and largely neglected part of Hamilton's economy, and yet the list of tangible wins for helping home grown producers to develop those opportunities is rather short.

City Hall needs to be working closely with local farmers and growers to help them find local processors for their products, to get them into Hamiltonian’s cupboards, and not just their crispers.

Next, Hamilton has an enormous amount of built infrastructure that we need to keep in good repair. The steady decline of our electrical infrastructure, and the ongoing problems with waste water and sewage in the East End are glaring examples of what happens when we don’t maintain what we have. It is always important to maintain the infrastructure that supplies the services on which your citizens depend. But to neglect their repair at a time when the cost of repairs could double or triple in the next 10-15 years is worse than irresponsible, it’s reckless.

Finally, Hamilton’s leaders need to stop spending so much of their time and energy on attracting big employers and large factories to our city, who’s loyalty expires minutes after the tax breaks are amortized. The focus of our economic development team needs to be on supporting local companies that produce things people really want and need – and in the process re-skilling our community to be prepared for when those things are no longer available for $1.99 from Thailand.

Retail businesses and consulting firms are all fine and good, but there needs to be a renewed focus on small businesses that are producing tangible goods, and in the process relearning skills that will be vital in the near future.

This focus on the big 'front page' hit of employment opportunities is probably the first thing that needs to change.

I guess it’s the comment stream in my last post on Raise the Hammer that set this whole little rant in motion. The bunker mentality for dealing with the future – how will we survive – isn’t a very big tent, and not many people want to huddle under it. And I know that many people think that WTSHTF everybody will come running to them for help, but Millenarians have an atrocious track record of accuracy. While things will certainly be difficult, the comparison of what is to come with a Zombie invasion is not helpful at best, and alienating at worst.

So instead of focusing our efforts on how to hunker down and just ‘survive’ the challenges we know are ahead, can we please have a conversation about how we can prosper; how we can thrive; how we can be the best place to live, work, and raise a child? Even in the face of triple digit oil?

Nature fights back.

With all of the talk in Hamilton recently of Snowmageddon, SNOMG, or Snowzilla, my thoughts were naturally turning to disaster planning and personal resilience... or as I like to think of it, 'hardiness'.

Taking a step back from the relatively minor effects of a snowstorm in winter in Canada, one needs only to look at the latest drubbing an increasingly enraged Gaia has been laying on the people of Queensland to see the enormous disruption that can be caused by a planet steadily warming towards the tipping point.

So what kind of preparations have been made here at home? Well, in Hamilton, there has been a fairly standard urban disaster plan on the books in it's most recent form since 2006. It outlines how various civic agencies will work together to coordinate the response to the 10 most likely disaster situations in Hamilton:

1. Chemical Spill – Fixed Site
2. Chemical Spill – En Route
3. Water (health) Emergencies
4. Health Emergencies
5. Terrorism
6. Civil Disorder
7. Violent Wind Event
8. Explosion / Fire
9. Transportation Accidents
10. Special Events

Now those of us who spend our precious free time reading about how the biggest challenges of our age will come from either sovereign debt default, global warming, or energy shortages may be somewhat surprised to see that two of the most serious threats as seen by City Hall are in fact industrial accidents. And these are no small threat. Indeed it was just such an incident that secured a young Hazel McCallion's place in history, and job prospects for years to come.

And what are we to think of this at the most basic unit of hardiness, the household? Well, the federal gov't has some great resouces on their site dedicated to the subject. It's a great place to start.

I think, though, that the most vital preparation a household could do would not be gathering flashlights, candles, and canned goods, but instead to start having conversations about 'what would we do if?' Sensible conversations around the dinner table, away from the hyperbolic warnings of Snowpocalypse on the TV are probably the best place to start.

Tune out all the yelling in the background, and hash out what you would do as a family/household if there were a chemical spill from a derailment while you were scattered at home, school, and work. Where would you meet? What numbers would you call? How would you communicate if an ice storm disabled the cell towers? What would you bring if you had to leave quickly due to an explosion, or high wind event?

Really the best preparation you can make is psychological, because if you have at least some sense of what you're going to do when disaster strikes, it's much easier to recall your plan, than to make one up on the spot.

The next step, is to start the conversation with your neighbors. Not in an 'are you ready for the rapture?" kind of way, but just so it's understood that you'll be looking out for each other.

For a few months over the summer, my retired next door neighbor was having me over two or three times a week to fix his TV reception, or his cordless phones, or his wifi. He and his wife lead a very frugal life, and part of me was concerned about what would happen to them in the event of a major disruption.

Then one day he took me downstairs to show me something in the basement, and on a shelf down there he had what must have been 3 months worth of canned goods. It occurred to me that he would probably have been a child during WWII, on the wrong side of Hitler's 'Bombs not Bread' campaign. He has been through hardships worse than I hope I will ever have to endure, and in the end it will probably be me coming to him for help if the lights go out for more than a couple of days.

So yes, have your canned goods, and your candles, and your source of heat, but more importantly, have the conversation, while it's easy to have it in a calm, rational way. "What would we do if?" And if you're having the conversation in the run-up to a fairly minor 15cm snowstorm, make sure you have it with the TV off.