Perhaps more than a pipe dream

Well, this Blog was always supposed to be promoting life with Multiple Sclerosis  Part of it is dreaming.  Dreams always have a chance of coming true I've found, fantasies fool you into thinking they can be real and often bring a facsimile of reality but leave you broken after you figure it out.  Hopefully before you die trying to make it a true dream of reality.  Such is life with this condition.  Anyway my dream beyond "cures" is accessibility focuses and independent free travel.  I'm willing to wait for free.

I live in Northern British Columbia, Canada.  It's a wild remote land bordered on the south by Via Rail and the Highway of Tears aka Highway 16 West.  I actually live now on that highway,  There are 2 routes between Prince Rupert (PR) BC and Prince George (PG).  PG sits on the southeast corner of Northern BC and is known as the Hub for British Columbia, the gateway to and from Northern BC by water, land and air travel.  All through it's history through before the European invasion.  Settlements discovered in Northern BC may be the oldest on earth, as humans migrated across the Bearing Sea on a land bridge and headed south along the then known as "Turtle Island"'s western shores!    Scattered through all that remoteness north of Highway 16 are diverse communities where the "simple" lives are led.  Well, those of us living in the urban life in PG or PR perhaps next to a busy highway full of noise, it's often a throwback to the simpler life of our youths.  I grew up in a community in Northern BC in the 1970's and 80's.  A community of around 2,000 individuals, 60 Km north of Highway 16 from Vanderhoof  BC.  Up till 2018, Rail and Greyhound Canada serviced our intercity needs.  Transportation for people and goods with costly inaccessible routes between PR and PG and PG to the nation to the east along 2 routes globally.  Prior to 2006 I think, BC Rail went to Vancouver for passenger service and North past my home town.  Also prior to 2006 in Northern BC we were a lot healthier overall, public intercity accessibility wasn't an issue for so many as no one travels to those communities with disabilities. They all had private rides out of those communities for diagnoses, and often treatment aging and eventually settled where they could find housing for their disabling conditions closer to the community housing their individual treatment.  This saves travel costs and time.  Some blessing.  We're the healthiest province in the nation and 3rd Healthiest on the globe.  Woot.  That means the rest of the globe is a lot sicker than the worst ones here. Whoohoo.  Access for all is being recognized all over BC, barrier free design denies no one and helps so many.  Canada is beginning to think so, down to individuals like you who hopefully has realized before you need it.

Civic accessibility is but one part of it.  Communities all over BC are trying to become inclusive and barrier free, however standards for intercity transportation need to be improved all across the nation. That is the responsibility of Transport Canada.  As I imagine they would all be connected with each provincial entity and civic resources within our individual local government agendas.  It includes a definition of independent inclusive and barrier free travel across Canada between the communities, by commercial and private vehicles and the transportation of people, goods & services.  It is amplified by Provincial regulations and Municipal government communities concerning safety and recommendations for improvements within the areas of responsibility.

How has it improved in Northern BC? The change began when Greyhound pulled their lines from Western Canada due to low ridership.  For years, they reduced their services in Northern BC.  They appeared to ignore the Canadian mandate to become inclusive and accessible and physically denied many persons needing travel, with every ride they made.  Some are of the mind they actually caused some of the Highway 16 mysteries along that "Highway of Tears" sensation, indirectly. Their denial of a safe passage between the communities that not everyone can use and that cost.  Not real affordable for most, particularly the ones that needed it most who disappeared.  Meh.  Compassion goes a long way to protect fragile individuals, allow low income persons with afflictions the freedom of intercity transportation with everyone.  People in other areas who had missing people may be like minded but those of us reading got by in our own special way or died, trying to disappear for a shorter time from home life.  The closure of the service left other transportation services to take up and slowly evolve to those standards.  New services across Northern BC since 2017 among the rest of Canada West provide services for some, but so far not complete to connect to the rest of the provinces inclusively within their provincial boundaries.  I personally ran into a few "MSed up" people in that life of hitchhiking. It brought me to PG several times, in my youth.  My personal vision in that National "Transit Future" it would be connecting every community in Canada via inclusive community transits going inter-community between larger centres, connecting that to inter provincial transits on communities closer to the borders separating.  National lines, done in multiple short jumps.  It can only evolve to cover "Turtle Island" aka North America as lines in the US and lines in Canada run close too and through little parts of both our nations now.  But that is in the future.

Today, early springtime  2019 in Northern BC, MS Life is focused on the MS Walks in our region.  This year we are one step closer to stepping on the cure and last year we found out we  (*That's you too-Start here* use this link to look at "FlipGive", a way to get and give at the same time- PG Walk has a Team and I'll report how it's doing in further posts or as a widget below the countdown!!) could be citizen scientists actively working towards finding that cure, in part because of your funds contributed to the MS Walk in our collective community nationally.  Researchers and their studies I've met and looked at  are funded in part by MS Society funds.  Read on here to focus on Northern BC as we see it primarily from Prince George's walk.  Look on top of the page to see the number of days and hours in real time to our local walk (perhaps in your Canadian Community too), it will be updated to the new day in May 2020, shortly after the event in 2019).