For many of us, the weekend is our time of freedom. Sure we have small amounts of time during the week to cook, exercise, spend time with loved ones, and relax. But Friday night through Sunday night is our time to really get things done.
Use the weekend wisely and you will be well on your way to personal sovereignty. Use it poorly and you are at least one more week behind your goals.
I highly recommend that you listen to podcasts whenever you doing something that allows you to. Turn your daily commute into ‘Drivetime University’, listen while cooking or doing dishes, and definitely turn your workouts into podcast time. With time, you will learn which podcast tends to be best for what activity.
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I grew up on a farm in the country, spending my early summers in the bush or by the creek: building forts and catching frogs, snakes, or crayfish. Later, when I was a bit older, I spent a lot of time working in the garden, doing chores with the chickens & livestock, throwing hay bales, and working on our machinery and vehicles. This is how I spent my youth up until I was 19 and went away to university.
Knowledge, experience, and attitude are the most valuable assets you can have when it comes to being self sufficient. However, owning some equipment or stocking up on some supplies can speed up the process and makes things a lot more enjoyable for you.
This list is a live document and I will make additions from time to time.
Here are some good lists of equipment, tools, and other supplies that I have found online:
Intermediate Information on a Basic Tool Kit Part 1 / Tool Kit Part 2
There are many components of personal sovereignty that will help lead you to the freedom and independence that you desire.
The four Pillars are:
Thought Sovereignty – You have to think for yourself. Most everything you read contains a hidden agenda, marketing spin, or an outright misdirection. Being able to research and then analyze the facts, coming up with your own conclusion, is an absolute requirement for individual thinking. As Canadians, we do like to assume that people have the best of intentions when dealing with us. We don’t have to become cynics, but we should consider what people’s agendas are and what’s in it for them.
People without thought sovereignty are called Sheeple – they walk around like sheep thinking and doing exactly what the TV networks, fashion retailers, and government want them to.
Food Sovereignty – Nothing in our lives makes us as dependent on others as our food supply. The typical Canadian these days buys almost 100% of their food at a Supermarket (and unfortunately I have to count myself in there as well). Growing a garden is one of the best steps you can make in your path to individual liberty. From there, the sky is the limit with what you can produce. This allows you to escape the ever decreasing nutritional value of the foods in the grocery store (which seem to have prices going up at the same time). Food sovereignty is tightly relatedly to the other three pillars; the food you eat is affected by the level of thought independence that you have, and it is turn affects your finances and health.
Financial Sovereignty – Debt is financial cancer. It destroys marriages and leads to modern day slavery in the form of being stuck to a job just to pay your debt. When it comes to debt, Just Say No. You also want to maintain control of your finances – don’t put every dollar of your savings into RRSP plans. Sure there are times to make use of this program, especially when employers are matching contributions, but it is the most visible and controlled form of money in Canada. Resist the movement to a cashless society where money can be controlled or shut off. Hold cash in your home or safe deposit box, own silver & gold, buy long term capital goods that will save you money in the long run (i.e. high efficiency refrigerators, solar water heaters, etc.), invest in farms, houses, land, or your own businesses. Essentially, think for yourself and what is important to you financially, not what the talking heads on TV, the puppets at your bank, or the bureaucrats in Ottawa say.
Health Sovereignty – Being Canadians, we are aware of nothing but being reliant on the government for health care. I’m neither a hater or a lover of the Canadian health care system. It’s not wonderful and it’s not terrible – it’s adequate. And by adequate, I mean it is only adequate at testing, detection, and treatment. Prevention of sickness and promotion of healthy living is not a goal of the medical industry in Canada. The pharmaceutical companies don’t promote healthy living and disease prevention, they promote the Standard Canadian Diet (SCD aka SAD – Standard American Diet) and then controlling sickness and disease through the use of drugs. The only reason they want us to live longer is so that we consume their drugs for longer.
These four pillars are very important components of personal sovereignty and should be goals you have. I am nowhere near perfect myself and have to work on all four on a daily basis.
A great discussion on personal sovereignty can be had at Jack Spirko’s The Survival Podcast Episode 985: From Pawn to Personal Sovereignty
I listened to it this morning after writing half of this post and was extremely inspired.
Do you agree or disagree with these recommendations? Are you working towards them yourselves? I would love to hear your comments.
I live in the Vancouver area and recently viewed the video that takes a deep look at vehicle speeds, road safety, police ticketing, and how the media puts a spin on a story.
A major conclusion that is reached is that people drive with a speed that is reasonable for the road’s design, the weather and light conditions, and the capability of themselves and their vehicle. The only reason that the white speed limit signs play a role at all is because they are afraid of being ticketed. I have always been of the opinion that people are better off concentrating on the people and traffic around them, and having to watch their speed while looking out for the cops is dangerously distracting. While reading this you will notice that I also agree that speed kills your pocketbook.
As pointed out in the video, there are times where some of the speed limits make sense.
School zones, tight urban streets, narrow residential streets with children nearby, and downtown access routes with heavy rush hour congestion. Speed bumps are effective at this as well though.
It also makes sense that the speed limit could be higher for a dry road in day time, and then changed for nighttime, fog, rain, or other dangerous conditions. Say a speed limit of 130, 140, or 150 km/h on the freeway during a dry day, but dropping to 120 at night, 110 when wet, or 80 when it is foggy. You don’t have to have fancy digital signs to accomplish this – all it takes is some static signs and education.
The example in the video is a perfect one. Marine Drive is a well engineered and constructed road. Three lanes in each direction, smooth surface, and wide curves – sounds like a 70 or 80 road right? Nope its speed limit is 50 km/h in Vancouver, exactly the same as many narrow, crowded routes heading to and from downtown. There is no comparison between the speeds I drive and my safety on the tow roads. I don’t remember driving under 70 on Marine, unless weather and traffic dictate that it would be smart to do so. But Main St is a different story, with cross roads, traffic lights, cross walks, merging busses, right turners, left turners, parallel parkers, pedestrians, and probably a dozen other road hazards. My speeds on this street vary from 30 to 60 for the most part – hitting 80 on here would be reckless unless it was closed off to the public as part of a movie set.
I have worked hard in my life and am blessed to have purchased a nice car. I have also owned old pickup trucks, rented cheaper cars, and driven heavier shop vehicles.
There is no comparison between these vehicles when it comes to brakes and stopping distance, handling, tire quality, weight distribution, or all around effect on the safety of myself, my passengers, or drivers and pedestrians around me.
Why then, should I drive them at the same speed or have the same speed limit enforced. My sports sedan can stop in 1/2 or 1/3 of the distance that my old pickup or shop trucks can. Conversely I could probably drive 40km/h faster in my car than in the truck, and still stop in the same distance.
Some roads do have different speed limits for cars and transport trucks, and I applaud this. But these are typically on freeways where stopping distance is less of a worry than on city streets, biways, or highways. The practicality of different speeds for different vehicles is, admittedly, difficult to enact – but in this day of traffic police knowing everything about us from their laptops anyways, this is certainly worth discussing.
I can’t be the only one who thinks that some speed limits are enforced to help fill the gaps in police budgets. A sort of involuntary user funding. This is the most likely reason I can think of for the continued existence of the Marine Drive 50km/h zone. In fact, in the video you will see how the Vancouver Police Department brags about the number of people it catches on Marine Drive during speed blitzes. During the creator’s research, not a single car was going 50, in fact I believe that the average speed was around 70. So when then does it seem that the speed is more intensely enforced on Marine than on Main? Is it to dissuade speeders or is it to generate revenue? A police car sitting by the road is just as effective at slowing down cars if traffic safety is their real desire.
I have lived and driven in Germany and other parts of the world. Travelling at 180 on the AutoBahn is not a big deal there. The cars are made for it, the drivers are trained and experienced with it, and the roads are properly designed and constructed. Oh and 180 is just a suggestion, some will drive at 150, some at 200. People drive within their ability, their car’s capability, the traffic, and the weather conditions. Signs slow people down when necessary, and this condition-induced limit is enforced. Did I mention that the accident and fatalilty rate is much lower there than here? The video presents the specifics figures – and they are significant. My personal experience is that I feel much safer on a two lane Autobahn at 170 than I don on the #1 or 401 at 120 – because I am paying attention to my driving, as are others, and none of us are bored out of our minds and daydreaming due to the artificially low speed for the driving conditions. In fact, I find that the only thing I am looking out for on those highways is a police car, because I really don’t feel like contributing to their slush fund.
Read the engineers’ speed recommendations, they are unilaterally more capable at setting them than politicians, civil servants, and others who just happen to find themselves in that position. The recommendation that I saw was to set the speed at the 85th percentile speed of a large sample group. Well I think that’s a reasonable place to start. Just try it and watch the results, debating and predicting does little compared to real world results. If the traffic is going to drive that speed anyways, then this is the prudent thing to do. If this equates to 70 on Marine, then so be it. In fact, removing the 50 signs and changing to 70 would increase the safety on the road, since it would limit the possibility of people driving 20km/h below the flow of traffic in fear of the police enforced driving tax. Irrationally slow traffic is one of the most dangerous obstacles that I encounter on the road – especially when they stay in the left lane. This causes other drivers to step on their brakes, pass on the right “undertake”, tailgate, or perform a number of other driving maneuvers that are much, much more dangerous that ‘speeding’
Germany’s “No Speed Limit” Sign
In support of the movement to raise speed limits on some roads, there are education & petition websites for BC and Ontario – please visit them if you want to learn more or to let this voice be heard.
Sign the BC Petition
Sign the Ontario Petition
Do you have an opinion on speed limits? Have you received a ticket due to an unreasonable speed limit? Are police in your area hiding to try and catch ‘speeders’ just in the name of revenue generation? Or is your opinion different – I’d like to hear it as well. Please comment below.
Below is a list of skills the help to promote self sufficiency. This isn’t a post for reading, but it is more of notes that I make as I think of things, hear a suggestion on a podcast, or read of something interesting on the web.
This list will be ongoing and I will add to it regularly.
Of interest are occupational skills, survival & bushcraft skills, homesteading skills, etc.
What is a self sufficient Canadian? What does it mean to be self sufficient?
It is the ability to fully take care of you and your family while taking total responsibility for yourself and your life at the same time. The life you are living is a result of your choices, and only you can alter its course and strive for goals that move it forward.
I believe in having the skills and experience to produce your own food, providing protection for yourself and your loved ones, not being in debt or being tied to a particular job just for the money, and of accepting that your are responsible for your own health & well being. You should not be dependent on the government or others for social welfare, ignorant of the food and drink you put into your bodies, or the steady erosion of your personal freedom & liberty.
Self reliance and self sufficiency are terms that are commonly thrown around when talking about personal independence. They are essentially the same idea except that you are self-reliant for only a definite period of time, while complete self-sufficiency means that you can sustain your family’s life for an indefinite amount of time. Disaster preparedness, survival skills, and bushcraft are other terms that you should become familiar with.
Production of your own food is a major theme in self sufficiency. Gardening, permaculture, aquaponics, raising chickens & ducks, and keeping livestock are all possible ways of attaining this goal. The sooner you start to experiment with food production, the faster you can get your learning and mistakes behind you. Hunting, fishing, and foraging for wild edibles can be good additions to your food skills. Nothing is more satisfying than sitting down to a tasty meal with your family, completely made up of food that you produced and prepared yourself. This is also the most addictive aspect of self sufficiency.
Understanding that you are responsible for the protection of your family and your own self defence.
Own firearms, be proficient in their use, have sufficient amounts of ammo, and know the laws surrounding their use. But guns are only a small part of self defence; practise being aware of your surroundings, carry a knife or blunt instrument (flashlight or kubotan), and take classes in martial arts (MMA, Kickboxing, Judo, Jiu Jitsu, Krav Maga, etc.). The best advice that I have heard is: Don’t go stupid places and do stupid things with stupid people.
Storage of food, water, and other essential items is a major part of self reliance and self sufficiency. Weather in Canada can be very unreliable, especially in the winter, and we should be able to survive at least a few weeks without having to go to the store. The ultimate goal of this is to store a number of months worth of supplies. Also know as preparedness, this allows you to weather any storm, flu or disease pandemic, a loss of your job, or even some of the far-fetched breakdowns in society that some of the people on TV seem to be preparing for.
You just wouldn’t be self-sufficient if you relied on the infrastructure grid 100% for your electricity, water, communications, or natural gas supply. Have backup generators, knowing how to use your car as a generator, making use of renewable energy on your land (solar, wind, water), storing fuels, and having an alternate source of water. I am an engineer by training and by mentality, so optimizing your home energy system is a true passion of mine. Heat some water with solar panels on your roof, have propane grills or charcoal BBQs, be able to heat your home with wood when necessary, and have the ability to generate enough electricity to run your chest freezer and refrigerator when the power is out.
Health, fitness, and wellness are important aspects of self sufficiency. It is essential that you are physically fit enough to do your household chores, go hunting, pull yourself up over a wall, chop a cord of firewood, walk 20km to town, or protect yourself from physical attack. Health is also important, with many modern diseases being caused by our diet, pollution, inactivity, and stress. Eating a variety of natural foods encourages health. Our modern medicine has wonderful capabilities when we have traumatic injury, require surgery, or need to treat a disease. However, prevention is not a strong point for the medical industry since they don’t make any money from people who are healthy. They much prefer treating sickness with drugs over prevention. Take your health into your own hands since it is your own responsibility anyways.
Education on money, finance, government, politics, banking, and debt is important. You have to understand that debt is a cancer, that big government is bad in the long run, that politics are mostly wasteful, and that RRSPs in the banks are not the only way to save for your future. Exploration of alternate sources of income is recommended: whether handyman jobs on the weekend, consulting on the side, running an internet business, or selling your own products you make at home (eggs, milk, meat, vegetables, clothing, furniture, leather goods, or artwork). I also recommend learning about various ways of keeping some of your money outside of Canada, off-shore incorporation, and ways of minimizing your risk in any one single country.
This is my view of what a self sufficient Canadian is. You do not have to be a tinfoil hat wearing doomsday prepper or a hippie living on a commune. All you have to do is recognize that you are responsible for yourself and your family. Once you have done that you will naturally begin to build that life to not be reliant on others – especially the government.