Tag: switzerland

• Villages and mountains (in Switzerland)

  I went snowboarding today and so I’ve got it on the brain right now. It’s one of my passions. But besides the actual act of riding down the mountain on a flexible board, there’s something much more about the sport to me.

  First, I love the small villages that develop – ideally organically – at the base of ski mountains. Here’s a neat video of Zermatt, Switzerland that makes it look like a “miniature" town. Click here if you can’t see it below.

  //player.vimeo.com/video/28956652?portrait=0&color=ff001a

  And second, I love the vistas that you get. I don’t know exactly how to describe it, but I find that they really pull you away from your everyday life. Here’s a stunning time-lapse video called the Mountains of Valais (Valais is the Swiss canton that Zermatt is located in). You need to watch it. Click here if you can’t see it below.

  //player.vimeo.com/video/81082164?portrait=0&color=a3e5ff

  The town of Zermatt is almost completely surrounded by high mountains and is home to Switzerland’s highest peak at 15,203 feet above sea level. I think it’s time I added it to my bucket list.

  2015.01.04

• Ed Hung

  This morning I’m going to a memorial service for a close family friend. His name was Ed Hung. You may have read about him in the Toronto Star, because on March 16th, 2014 at 11:00AM Central European Time he died by way of an assisted suicide. He was in Switzerland.

  And the reason he was in Switzerland was because, in Canada, you’re not allowed to do what he did. You’re not allowed to seek help and decide when it’s your time to go. That’s supposed to be left up to some greater being.

  But what if you’re like Ed? What if you have Lou Gehrig’s Disease and your body noticeably deteriorates within the span of a few months? What if you’ve just lost the ability to do what you love most: play the guitar?

  Ed was a lawyer. And a successful one at that. But he loved music. The first time I met him was at my mother’s house one Christmas where he was playing the guitar and singing songs all night. He had a band and that’s what he loved to do.

  Sometimes I think it’s a shame that people often don’t get the chance to just do what they love; they have to do other things in order to make enough money. But I suppose that’s life.

  Nonetheless, it is somebody’s life. And I agree with Ed in that quality of life is a subjective concept. If you’ve just lost all ability to move your left hand, then it’s you who are going to have to deal with that new reality—not anybody else.

  Which is why I fully support Ed’s decision. I didn’t know him as well as I would have liked, but I have a lot of respect for what he did. He took matters into his own hands and did it his way—as he beautifully expressed in his farewell YouTube video.

  I know that my family will miss Ed dearly, but he’s left us with something important to think about. Before he passed he wrote a letter called Approaching Death. You can read it here. And in that letter, he delivers a powerful set of lines about the laws in our country:

  “…my pride as a Canadian has somewhat diminished after having been on my knees begging to die in another country. This is not fair and I certainly do not wish it upon any of my fellow Canadians.”

  I know that this may not sit well with some of you, but I believe in a country built on personal freedoms. And this, to me, is a case of personal freedom. I’m not sure what I would do if I were in Ed’s position, but I know with certainty that I would want the ability to do whatever I decide.

  2014.03.29

• Who is worried about Canada’s housing market?

  Atlantic Cities just posted an article on the world’s 5 largest housing bubbles. In descending order of real growth, they are:

  1. Israel
  2. Norway
  3. Switzerland
  4. Canada
  5. Germany

  Not surprisingly, Canada is on the list. There is, of course, lots of talk both locally and abroad about the stability and sustainability of our housing market. Here’s what the article had to say about Canada:

  “With real home price appreciation near 20 percent, Canada’s home price growth has been raising eyebrows. Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz doesn’t see a bubble, but others aren’t so sure. Climbing alongside housing prices have been levels of household debt, which surmounted 165 percent of income in the second quarter of 2013. (That’s not too far from where they were in the U.S. before it suffered its housing crisis.) And the Bank of Canada itself has even warned about risks posed by frothy condo sectors in big cities like Toronto. A few hedge funds, such as San Francisco-based Hyphen Partners, have even made high-profile bets on a Canadian housing bust. They haven’t paid off, yet.”

  And here’s the full list of countries:

  

  Overall, it’s not surprising to see that Canadian home prices have risen so dramatically since Q1-2009. As the US sank into deep recession (2008-2009), Canadian credit became cheap in order to stave off a recession of our own. This fuelled the housing market, which is an asset class that’s inextricably linked to financing costs.

  The same thing happened in Ireland, which today sits at the bottom of the above list. It has seen real prices drop roughly 40% since Q1-2009. By adopting the euro currency, Ireland no longer had control over its own monetary policy (this is one of the downfalls of a centralized currency). So when the economies of the larger continental countries stuttered, interest rates were dropped. For the strong Irish economy, it ended up creating a housing bubble.

  I worked in Ireland in the summer of 2007 and I remember people telling me about this. Already at this point there was concern that the market had become overheated. There are obvious parallels to what has happened in Canada, even though we don’t share a common currency. The Canadian and US economies are inextricably linked.

  So will the same thing that happened to Ireland happen here in Canada? Nobody knows for sure, but I think we can take comfort in the actions taken by the feds to tighten up lending. They’re acutely aware of what easy credit has done to the housing market and they’re trying to temper it. And it’s certainly had an impact.

  Early this week when I was on the panel about investing in condominiums, I asked a lot of the realtors about what they were seeing in the residential marketplace. A great number of them told me that their clients were struggling to obtain financing. A lot of deals were falling through because of it.

  If you’re worried about our housing market, this should be taken as great news. Choke off credit and you choke off real estate.

  2013.10.26