MARCH 16 2019

OUR MOVE AWAY FROM THE CITY.

In 1951, freshly discharged as a sergeant in the Dutch Army, having served 18 months of conscripted military service, including an 8 months stint at a training school, I emigrated to Canada.

Army life did not suit me: being too much of an anti-disciplinarian. So I, city-born and bred in the Netherlands, was off to Canada, officially as a farmhand. And, indeed, for 2 months I worked on a grain farm, living with the farm family, the very best training to get a good grasp of the language, of which I already had a better than average understanding. It also was a great help that the farm woman was a former teacher, while the farmer husband taught me a lot of swearwords.

In the late 1940’s and early 1950’s a sudden mania to emigrate engulfed the Netherlands, with Canada being the destination of choice for the bulk of those wanting to leave. It seems to me that there were a number of reasons why this happened.

• There was the Russia scare. After having endured 5 years of German occupation, many were afraid that a similar situation could develop if Russia were to attack the West.
• In the army I was trained to go to the Dutch East Indies, where a war of liberation was waged. Many feared that the loss of these colonies would impoverish the Netherlands.
• The rising popularity of the automobile and the mechanization of agriculture drastically changed the economic landscape threatening the livelihood of small storeowners and farmers.
• Conflicts in the Protestant church were a factor as well.

So people emigrated by the thousands, my younger brother and I among them. My reason? Canada was seen as a land of greater opportunities.

After leaving the farm I settled in Hamilton, Ontario, where I started selling life insurance. I got married to my fiancé in 1953, (we had been engaged since 1950 and she came over in 1952). In 1955 we moved our small family to St. Catharines. Once there I branched out to include fire and car insurance. In 1963 I became a Real Estate Broker as well.

We lived in the Garden City, as the place was called, for 20 years, expanding our family to include five children. In 1963 we had an 1800 square feet new house built to my specifications, on a main thoroughfare, also housing my insurance and real estate office.

A turning point.

The years 1971-3 were a turning point in my life. Two books came my way via two friends, one who gave me, THE LIMITS OF GROWTH, written for and by the Club of Rome, and another, AFTER DEATH… WHAT?, was by a Dutch theologian.

The first book convinced me that we live in a FINITE WORLD, and the second brought home to me that Jesus did not come to save me from my sins – that too – but primarily to bring back upon his return, THE RENEWED WORLD.

In 1971 the Real Estate Institute of Canada of which I was a member, issued a call for articles relating to its field. With my recent readings fresh in mind, my thinking was focused on energy and ecology. I decided to begin exploring an article featuring these facets, and the result was my essay, THE CITY, KEY TO SURVIVAL, with as subtitle, An Essay on Ecology and Urban Living.

To my pleasant surprise it was chosen from a Canada-wide field, including University Professors. It was published in its Journal in November 1972.  A substantial cash prize was presented to me at the institute’s annual convention – all prepaid – in Vancouver.

I concluded my contribution with, “The city is the key to the future. Let’s hope that the people of the city will find the door – the key is not enough.”

This 5000 word article was meant for ‘secular’ consumption. It was impossible to express my secret thoughts. By “The City” I actually meant “The City of God, the New Jerusalem”, and “The Door” really pointed to Christ.

Through my readings and thinking, I started to realize that the City as it had developed, especially in recent times, had become the new Tower of Babel, a place where God is hard to find. I basically had come to the conclusion that the CITY really revolved around money – the desire of which is the root of all evil – and almost entirely embodied the human aim to reject God and become autonomous. This constituted a turning point in my life.

Me: the idealist.

So, idealist as I was, and still am, my thinking started to change, and my thoughts turned to different ways of living, not in the city, but somewhere in Ontario where I could incorporate a more responsible way of life, based on the laws of ecology, formulated by Dr. Barry Commoner:

• Everything is connected to everything else.
• There is no waste.
• Nature knows best.
• Nothing comes free.

I always have been a person who believed in action, and ready for a radical change. I was tired of my insurance business, partly because my so efficient secretary left. Also, having for two decades lived in the Niagara Peninsula, I twice had run into trouble with the church. I had been an elder in the Christian Reformed Church, had a disagreement with my minister, resigned as an elder and switched to a sister church in the same city. When, after a few years, a new minister came, a real dogmatist, I chose to leave the church and become part of a house church.

The 1973 Energy Crisis.

Then, in 1973, there was the energy crisis. Because the United States and other industrialized nations in Europe supported Israel during the Yom Kippur War, the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) declared an oil embargo against those countries. This included a 25% decrease in production of oil, causing an energy crisis, which drove up the cost per barrel from $3 to $12 by 1974, the equivalent of $100 per barrel in today’s money. In 1973, the US’ daily consumption then was 18 million barrels of oil, so its total daily spending jumped from $54 million to $216 million, quadrupling its total outlay.

Emergency 

Because of the massive shortage of oil, the United States and other countries began rationing oil consumption, limiting the amount of gas that could be pumped at gas stations, restricted what days cars could fill their tanks based on license plate numbers, and closed stations on Sundays. European countries instilled similar restrictions, including a three-day workweek as well as curtailing non-essential Sunday driving.  

Had these cuts been maintained, Climate Change could have been avoided.

However, not all of the effects of the oil embargo were negative. To conserve oil, more energy-efficient appliances and cars were designed, buildings were constructed with better insulation leading to reduced use of heating and air-conditioning, mass transit was slowly expanded, and alternative energy sources were explored.

My efforts.

That was the situation in 1973. I became increasingly convinced that hard times were coming, that perhaps the entire economy could collapse. So in 1974 I made the decision to move. Friends had bought a 200 acre farm in Tweed. From them I acquired a 50 acre parcel, sold my insurance portfolio, and in June of 1975 started to build a house I had designed.

Tweed itself is situated midway between Toronto and Ottawa, Ontario’s biggest cities, both some 200 km away, too far to walk in case cities were to become uninhabitable. Our new location was some 5km from the tiny village of some 1800 inhabitants, with a large proportion of seniors.

The topography of the land we bought was typically Canadian Shield, open sections interspersed with rock outcroppings, tree covering and wetlands. After deciding on the precise location of our new home, partly into a hill, a well ‘witcher’ was found who advised us to drill where two underground streams crossed, some 70 feet underground. Indeed, after drilling at that exact point, an abundance of pure well water gushed up – 150 liters per minute – sufficient to provide 10 households.

Being totally unskilled, I hired a good friend, a jack of all trades, and master of all, under whose direction and action the house was constructed in three months.

What sort of dwelling did I design?

With energy in mind, and guided by the laws of ecology my design was a two storey building, facing south, without a basement. I insulated the foundation with 4 feet of solid Styrofoam and erected the dwelling with 2×6 studs, filled with R20 insulation, R40 in the ceiling.  

Large windows catching the low south sun in the winter did indeed warm the house, even with 40 below weather. On the north and west side insulated window shutters helped to keep the cold from penetrating the bedrooms there. A masonry chimney with two flues was placed at the center and so was the bathroom so that heat emitted from these two sources would spread to the surrounding spaces. The side door on the East side was provided with a slightly lower airlock while the outside door, mostly insulated glass, faced south. Our living quarters were on the top floor – as heat rises- while the ground floor had two extra bedrooms, a bathroom, my office and a utility area with a woodstove and cool-heat pump.

Recent developments.

In 1975 I was 47 years old, with our oldest son away in Dordt College and 4 children of various ages, the youngest being 10 years old. Two were of high school age and attended school in a nearby village. The two youngest learned by reading and receiving art lessons.

I set out to retrain for professional real estate appraiser. I took my missing courses at York (leases and mortgages) and Trent Universities (urban geography) and a correspondence course at Queen’s (economics), all needed to complete the academic requirements for becoming an Accredited Appraiser of the Canadian Institute (AACI). To prove my skills I had to submit three 100 page appraisal reports, written according to the prescribed methods: a single family dwelling, an apartment building and an industrial property. These three ‘master’ appraisals, earned me, in 1978, my professional accreditation.  

With my business rapidly expanding, I had a separate building constructed to accommodate an office manager and three residential appraisers, each specializing in South, Central and North Hastings County, while I valuated commercial properties in that vast 200 km long area, among them river dams, a former RAF Spitfire training base, summer resorts, an uranium mine in the Bancroft area, as well as the entire Bruce Peninsula for a First Nation land claim: 500,000 acres!

Immense blessings.

Our move away from the city proved to be a real blessing.

The collapse of the economy did not occur. I still believe a much larger collapse is in the offing, with Climate Change becoming more real by the day. To safeguard our water supply, I installed a hand pump on the well.

Over the years I developed a 2,000 square feet vegetable garden, planted 4,000 trees, as well as 3 apple trees, and so attained a degree of self-sufficiency, including solar panels to defray the high cost of rural hydro and provide lights when there is a power outage, expected to become more frequent as the weather become more violent.

Oh yes, I quit smoking in 1959 and started running. I still do this 3 x per week, indoors in the winter, of course. I also bike a lot, also both inside and outdoors. All these actions keep me mentally and physically in good shape.

I sold my business in 1993, when I turned 65, but stayed on as a consultant. With more time available I wrote a couple of books, translated 4 manuscripts – all published – and started a weekly column for the regional daily. Cost cutting in 2010 cost me my column which I then expanded from 800 words to 2000, appearing weekly on my blog, www.hielema.ca with readers all over the world, as seen below showing the 10 top countries:

Rank	Flag	Country	Visitor Count
1		United States	369
2		Canada	46
3		China	40
4		United Kingdom	25
5		France	18
6		Germany	16
7		Netherlands	12
8		Japan	9
9		Russian Federation	7
10		Italy	6

Yes, our move away from the city proved to be a real blessing and steered me into interesting ventures.