Letter: It’s the aggregate efforts of us all that moves mountains

By Letter to the Editor on February 12, 2025.

Dear editor,

I read a fascinating online article this week about New York. After one month of their new congestion pricing for vehicles driving into Manhattan (daytime fees of $9 with a monthly pass, $15 without the pass), it’s doing exactly what it was designed to do; reducing traffic, getting more people onto public transit and dramatically cutting travel times for those cars that remain on the road, as well as taxis and buses.

One million fewer cars have travelled into Manhattan, in one month. The revenues will go into maintaining and expanding public transit.

But then my thoughts turned away from that giant city, which I have never been to, and I thought about the first quote outside of the Bible that ever stuck with me.

At age 11, I read that Helen Keller said, “The world is not moved primarily by the mighty shoves of great heroes, but by the aggregate push of each small worker.”

And so I find myself thinking of my friends in Medicine Hat, far from the Big Apple where my childhood comic books showed Spider Man swinging from skyscrapers.

I think of their extensive and thoughtful Transition Medicine Hat project, and I think of the impressive Climate Action Heroes podcast that comes out weekly from a couple of Hatters.

They inspire me to get back to work right here in my home province to protect clean air, healthy watersheds, abundant wildlife and a stable climate for our kids.

Sincerely yours,

Roger Gagne

Calgary

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