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The Hertz office happens to be at the Fairmont, Banff Springs.

This turns out to be, unexpectedly, relevant to me and my successors, as, after getting out their Canadian photo album after the trip, it turns out that my parents were here, at this hotel in 1943.

I'm not sure if they stayed here but there's a picture of my mother leaning against an archway here and two photos of the hotel at a distance, taken by my father. 

They were newly married and living in Calgary at the time and as the album reveals, came to Banff when my father was on leave from the Royal Air Force, Empire Air Training Scheme, where he was a flying instructor.

My mother became pregnant but lost the baby in Canada. This exact history is how I came to be born; when I was; how I came to live in Australia; and how my children and grandchildren exist at all.

Under the Empire Air Training Scheme (EATS) tens of thousands aircrew were trained to fight in Europe. Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, etc recruited suitable young men to undertake elementary training, after which promising candidates were sent to Canada for advanced training, before being deployed to the UK.

Like Australia, Canada was, at the time, a Dominion of the British Empire. Canada also had suitable training space, beyond the range of enemy aircraft, as well as excellent climatic conditions for flying. It was also adjacent to American industry and had its own aircraft building capacity. Unlike Australia, it was close enough to Britain to quickly transport men and aircraft, using established North Atlantic shipping lanes.

As a result, my parents met many Australians and liked them.

Then, in Canada, my father suffered a second back injury, when another aircraft smashed into his on the runway. He'd previously been injured in a combat related a 'prang' in England. This second injury, which plagued him for the rest of his life, caused my parents to look for a warmer climate, and Australia here we came.

I knew they had been to Banff. Yet, I was not aware of the importance of this place to my very existence when we came here.

It was thanks to Hertz that we discovered that the Fairmont has an excellent coffee shop, open to the public. So, it was from yet a different hotel in Banff, that we all came here again, after our trip up to Jasper.

 

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Travel

Southern England

 

 

 

In mid July 2016 Wendy and I took flight again to Europe.  Those who follow these travel diaries will note that part of out trip last year was cut when Wendy's mum took ill.  In particular we missed out on a planned trip to Romania and eastern Germany.  This time our British sojourn would be interrupted for a few days by a side-trip to Copenhagen and Roskilde in Denmark.

Read more: Southern England

Fiction, Recollections & News

The Book of Mormon

 

 

 

 

Back in the mid 1960's when I was at university and still living at home with my parents in Thornleigh, two dark suited, white shirted, dark tied, earnest young men, fresh from the United States, appeared at our door.

Having discovered that they weren't from IBM my mother was all for shooing them away.  But I was taking an interest in philosophy and psychology and here were two interesting examples of religious fervour.

As I often have with similar missionaries (see: Daniel, the Jehovah’s Witness in Easter on this Website), I invited them in and they were very pleased to tell me about their book.  I remember them poised on the front of our couch, not daring or willing to sit back in comfort, as they eagerly told me about their revelation.  

And so it came to pass that a week ago when we travelled to Melbourne to stay with my step-son Lachlan and his family and to see the musical: The Book of Mormon I was immediately taken back to 1964.

Read more: The Book of Mormon

Opinions and Philosophy

Electric Cars revisited (again)

  

Electric vehicles like: trams; trains; and electric: cars; vans; and busses; all assist in achieving better air quality in our cities. Yet, to the extent that the energy they consume is derived from our oldest energy source, fire: the potential toxic emissions and greenhouse gasses simply enter the atmosphere somewhere else.

Back in 2005 I calculated that in Australia, due to our burning coal, oil and sometimes rural waste and garbage, to generate electricity, grid-charged all-electric electric cars had a higher carbon footprint than conventional cars.

In 2019, with a lot of water under the bridge; more renewables in the mix; and much improved batteries; I thought it was worth a revisit. I ran the numbers, using more real-world data, including those published by car companies themselves. Yet I got the same result: In Australia, grid-charged all-electric cars produce more greenhouse gasses than many conventional cars for the same distance travelled.

Now, in the wake of COP26, (November 2021), with even more water under the bridge, the promotion of electric cars is back on the political agenda.  Has anything changed?

 

Read more: Electric Cars revisited (again)

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