It's not possible not to feel grateful that we do not live in a part of the world where natural disasters overwhelm human agency, leaving huge populations victims to hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires, drought and flood. In this area where we live it is considered to be an earthquake zone, but the tremblors we experience here are relatively light for the most part and infrequent, though we have experienced several that were of sufficient strength to sound like a freight train nearby, shaking structures enough to dislodge items off shelves.

The untoward occurrences of flooding and their aftermath are serious enough when they happen, forcing people out of their homes, causing misery and upheaval when those homes become uninhabitable and suitable for nothing but dismantlement because they've been built in areas that are known to be susceptible to flooding. Yet even as this occurred in parts of Ontario and Quebec this spring and people still have not been accommodated, this is little in comparison to what others across the world, from our neighbours to south, and further east to India and Pakistan experience.

Powerful hurricanes have devastated islands in the Caribbean and have now entered the United States creating devastation where the voluminous rain inundates the landscape below, and the ocean's storm-incited waves wash over the land. A catastrophic earthquake in Mexico has devastated villages, killing 90 people. And these natural occurrences of such monumental consequence, shove off the front pages of newspapers other stories of tragedies wrought by human nature in conflicts and persecutions of minorities, making millions homeless and killing thousands in the process.

And we, in our secure corner of the world, enjoy life undisturbed by such dread events, able to go about our lives as though nothing unusual has happened because for us, it has not.