Forecasting year 2001 -- anything's possible.

• Position: Northern Ontario - Brief Article

And so the official new millennium begins for those of us who believe 2000 is the last year of the previous millennium not the first of the next.

Just doesn't have the buzz. No counting down the minutes to a return to the dark ages. No extra food and candles in the pantry for emergencies. No waiting by the phone to see if my office computers have died and planes are falling out of the sky.

Neither will there be that once in a lifetime feeling of community around the world as we watch country after country celebrate the dawn of the new millennium.

Like most exciting moments in history, they pale when placed next to the personal highpoints like the birth of a baby, the health or death of loved ones or the achievement of a long planned personal goal.

The new millennium seems pretty much like the last millennium now that we are here except I have to keep crossing out that 19 part on my old checks.

Lots is different too.

Most of the fake money in the stock market is gone and so people are no longer planning to spend what they don't have which inevitably slows things down.

The energy cartel is back in business which is good for Alberta but a little expensive for the rest of us. Southern Ontario is on its way to a recession (medium hard landing I would say) but few have acknowledged it as yet. It always starts with cars and cascades through steel and services..

I'm constantly amazed how quickly we forget our history.

The good news for Northern Ontario is that I doubt we'll much notice. With the possible exception of North Bay and Kenora we have been in an economic hard landing for most of the last decade if you count population, incomes and job creation.

So far innovation means a lose of jobs not an increase. I think we have bottomed out in Northern Ontario. As is often the case we move in the opposite direction of the rest of Ontario.

I don't know how much more the resource sector companies can squeeze and not effect output, but the answer is not much.

As for the provincial government there are no more airlines to close down, most of the downsizing has been done and the pain dutifully endured. In healthcare there is actually going to be more money.

Perhaps a few box stores here and there but frankly we've seen the worst of it. There...