DDGM Messages for 2007-2008

I got thinking about the pioneer families of this country.

It is mind-boggling to imagine the difficulties and hardships they surely encountered. In Canada, our past is not so long that their adventure is cold in the porridge pot of a distant history.

Some of the lodges in this district pre-date the formation of this country, the great Indian wars of our southern neighbours and the gold rushes that ultimately opened the West.

A generation is said to be eighty years and so our country of 140 years is less than two generations old. About 100 years passed from my great grandfather arriving in this country and my birth.

In the bush country where I was born, mechanization arrived gradually after the second World War. Logging, primarily, used horses and was our main industry. Lumber mills ran the power gamut from waterwheel, to steam, to diesel and the sawyer’s hand was turned from band saw to circular saw. The quiet of the bush echoed the change from trees being felled by hand to the jarring roar of chain saws. Decking lines and canthooks gave away to hydraulically operated grapplers and the horse sleighs and wagons gradually disappeared as the trucks rolled in on bulldozed roads.

Where we are today is a long way from cutting, splitting and piling wood for winter. It’s a long way from the fall chores of picking, canning and preserving food for the family. It’s a long way from hanging out the laundry on a line to freeze instantly on a Mother’s hand and, later, to pry it off the line and bend it into a basket to be hung inside to defrost. We forget the boiler, the scrub board and the lye soap that not only removed the grime, but also the skin from every knuckle of the scrub hand.

Today, the bread comes sliced from the store. The milk is sterilized and neatly packaged and the butter is measured and wrapped for our convenient purchase with no cows to milk, no separator to wash, no cream to churn, salt and mix, press into molds and keep cool in the well.

We have come a long way.

We have reduced our labour, lightened our load and freed our time.

Now, life experience says that we do get something without giving something up. What have we lost for what we have gained? Is it good enough to ask , “Can we do it?”, without asking, “Should we do it?”.

Shall we allow technology to be “the Greek bearing gifts” of which we should be wary or shall we be the masters and not give way to its allure while enjoying its benefits?

Masons are encouraged to look beyond the possible to its moral and ethical impact and to judge with prudence. Our remarkable pioneering ancestors and those who have come to this country more recently have gambled what they knew for what they hoped to find here.

So often, it seems they have translated the need for security into a life of easy materialism for their children and grandchildren.

Their greatest gifts were courage, perseverance, hope, faith, labour and love.

Perhaps, we may repay them by honouring those gifts, by placing material worth in its proper place in our lives and by sharing the most useful gift of their legacy by giving of ourselves to others.