For the average person, a road trip somewhere is part of the summer events. Many of us have relatives across the country – brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles, grandparents and the long days of summer are a great time to visit. That coupled with the end of school, many companies encourage summer holidays (in the old days some shut down for a couple of weeks in the summer) and with warm weather, the summer trip is forecasted. Did you ever wonder about the road or highway you will be driving on? Most of are more concerned with the destination and the people and places we will see and as long as the road is smooth and the trip is safe, we tend not to worry about the road. Peter Unwin concerned himself with the road and wrote the book Hard Surface, Key Porter, Toronto, 2009. The book tells the story from a time when there were over 14 million horses to a time of horsepower in the engine. Transportation in North America was shaped first by the waterways, then by horses, next by the train and finally by the car. Each time, society had to change and each time there were naysayers because that is what people were use to. For the most part society did change and Mr. Unwin’s book is about how we changed, in some ways it is better, in other ways not so. One method it has changed was at the turn of the century, many people had a month or two of vacation time, now it takes a number of years of working for an employer to have close to a month of vacations. People would escape the hot dirty city to the cooler cleaner country and come back in last August. Now we escape for a weekend or long weekend.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, as society changed with the use of car and our desire for the government to pay for good roads, companies had to change. Many of uses of the roads were advantageous to the companies or it was easy to change. Similarly communications has changed in the last 15 years, for your company to continue to pay their dividends is a strength of the people and how they have adapted to changes. On your road trip enjoy the road and the people you will meet along the way.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions