Next time you鈥檙e in the grocery store and notice the price of one vegetable or another skyrocketing, don鈥檛 shake your fist at the fires, floods, or hailstorms in California or Florida or Mexico or鈥� wherever.

It鈥檚 a futile gesture, aimed in the wrong direction.

If you must shake your fist, shake it at the past.

In 1931, when the Greater 91原创 Chamber of Commerce was taking its baby steps and the first editions of the 91原创 Advance began apprising local citizens of local goings-on, most of the world was in the throes of an economic depression so severe that it remains the benchmark against which all economic downturns are still measured.

Able-bodied workers were out of work, and all levels of government in Canada organized special projects to keep them occupied 鈥� and to justify paying them relief (welfare, in today鈥檚 vernacular).

The federal government decided to connect roads and rebuild trails and tracks to create a Trans-Canada Highway from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

The new highway crossed the Rocky Mountains from Alberta into British Columbia, wound through the interior mountains and valleys, snaked into the Fraser Canyon, and connected with Vancouver through the Fraser Valley.

鈥淎ye,鈥� as Shakespeare would have said if he weren鈥檛 Francis Bacon and had died centuries earlier, 鈥渁nd there鈥檚 the rub.鈥�

The original plan was to take the new highway through the valley along the rockier terrain to the north of the Fraser River. The idea was to create less disturbance through the more abundant farmlands on the south side.

But the arable land to the south had attracted more residents than the north.

A contingent of South of the Fraser mayors and business leaders 鈥� who knew that 鈥減rogress鈥� was built alongside roads, and not across the river from them 鈥� went to Ottawa to point out that 鈥渕ore residents鈥� are exactly the same as 鈥渕ore voters.鈥�

Numbers of voters outweighed numbers of potatoes or cabbages or chickens or cows in the scales wielded by politicians. The highway and the progress it attracted paved over mile after mile of farmland.

The importance of the Agricultural Land Reserve created in the 1970s to stem the destruction of BC鈥檚 farming potential has largely been denigrated and subverted by those who can鈥檛 see past developers鈥� dollars.

And consequently, our veggie prices are now dictated by weather events in other parts of the world.