As Canadians we rarely consider how privileged we are to live in a politically and socially stable, wealthy country where social welfare programs like universal medicare, education and social supports are available to all residents of the country, enabling people to enjoy lives of decency of the kind that others around the globe can only dream of.

Failed countries where poverty and all the disadvantages and ills that accompany that endemic condition are bleeding people. These are desperate times for millions of people across the international community, from Latin America to Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and beyond, who make the wrenching decision to leave their homelands where they have experienced misery and want, and the fear and dislocation aligned with conflict.

From unaccompanied children in their tens of thousands leaving the drug-infested, gang-ridden areas of Latin America, hoping to leave crime, violence and poverty behind by trekking through Mexico to gain illegal entry to the United States, to the unprecedented streams of young singles and families taking leave of their failed countries flooding Greece, Italy, France, and Germany whose resources both human and practical, are incapable of either stemming the flow or coping with the needs of the haven seekers and migrants.

Let alone those Syrian nations who flee their own barrel-bombing government whose vendetta against its Sunni-citizen sector has demolished their homes, killed their hopes as well as their family members, and left them gasping for the air of freedom. In their desperation to escape their own deaths they have filtered through to Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, crowding themselves into refugee camps and there living an existence of mere 'moderate' deprivation as opposed to the terror they have left.

It's difficult to equate their shape-shifting lives of extremes and wretchedness with ours of contentment and plenty, but from time to time reading accounts of what is continuing to transpire throughout the rest of the world, empathizing with both the refugees and their reluctant yet compassionate hosts throughout Europe, we are reminded of the fragility of the world we have made for ourselves, and our immense failures as human beings.