December 10, 2015

Dear Division 16,

For your assignment this week, please read the article below about a British Columbia community who lost their internet provider.

For your assignment, please consider the effects on a change like this upon a small, remote community and think about what it would be like if that happened in Vancouver.

In what ways do you think that the experience of losing internet service in Vancouver would be different than the experience of those in a small, Northern town losing their internet service? Give reasons for your answers. 

Dig deep in your answer.  You’ll need to think about how life is different for people who live in a city vs people who live in rural areas of BC and why.

I look forward to your responses!




  1. den10@sea43

    So I think that it is harder for them because they don’t have much to do either then being on a computer. But also screens are not the hole world so they need to find something else to do. But I heard that it snows also there so there is not much more of an option. Where as in Vancouver there is tons to do.

  2. Amythest

    I think that it would be terrible if it were to happen here because well the first thing I thought of is we wouldn’t be able to do the blog posts. Also even if you don’t realize it but everyone is going on the internet at least once everyday, even if you just like to play games most games need Internet. Going on this blog needs wifi/ internet so all the people who look at this blog and at everyone’s posts you look at you are using the Internet, so basically 37, 995 people in the world have looked at this blog which is A LOT of people going on the internet.( that many people as I’m tipping this) Mostly all the things people know is from the Internet even from books because all that knowledge that is in those books the authors probably learned some of that stuff from the Internet. If that did happen in Vancouver it wouldn’t be so good because of all the stuff I listed above.

  3. DancingPorcupine

    I think that people would be more mad if we lost our internet in Vancouver because there are more people so it would be harder to communicate with your friends that live in other parts of vancouver but if you live in a smaller place your friends would all probably live closer to you.For the people living in a small remote town it might not be as bad because they might have more to do outside than people living in the city.

    • dickensdiv16

      Great point, DancingPorcupine – small towns may have less distance between people, which may help people stay connected, but you’re right, nature and the outdoors provide a great deal of possibility for entertainment. Nice work!

  4. crazymemeslol123

    If we were those people who did not live in big citys like Vancouver I think it will be heathy for them because we use electronic products to do most of our work and other stuff like playing games and listening to good muisc I think some of the things electronic products can be very entertaining to do when your bored and maybe you can go outside to play or read a good book.

  5. The Dude

    i think that it would be a lot easier to have this happen in Vancouver because there’s a lot more activities to in a city but when your in a small town the internet can really give you something to do. for instance in Vancouver you could go to science world or catch a movie but in a small town you cant do that. not having the internet would be really hard because you wouldn’t be in touch with friends or family over seas which i think would be tough. i know that if Vancouver had a problem like this people would go nuts.

    • dickensdiv16

      Great examples, the DUDE! You’re right that there are more places to go in a city, but I wonder whether places like Science World also rely on the internet to function…?

  6. TechNerd

    I think losing internet in a remote rural town in BC is bad but not that bad. Even though people are mad and sad of losing their internet it isn’t that bad because the population of that town may not be so big, That means that less people will be mad. If Vancouver lost internet (which is highly unlikely) There wouldn’t be many people who would be mad, there would be hundreds and thousands of people angry and mad. Vancouver’s Population is huge and theres a lot more people who use internet and data in Vancouver. If we were to lose Internet there would be a lot of people angry. Also Vancouver Internet Provider companies make quite a lot of money so it would be very unlikely that they would shutdown. Even if one company shutdown there are still another couple still in business (Telus, Shaw, Bell, Rogers, ETC)

    • dickensdiv16

      Ah, I see your point, TechNerd – you’re concerned about the greatest number of people having access. I like how you picked up on the stability of the internet provider – an important factor in Stewart!

  7. super cheese cake

    If Vancouver loses its internet people will probably feel like nothing just happened because Vancouver is a big city and everyone can go outside. They can play with somebody else and ask information from others. In a small town, no internet is like end of the life for someone using internet a lot because the town is small and they couldn’t play with their neighbours. Maybe their neighbours are completely strangers because they are on the internet and had never played with their neighbours before. Or maybe they play with their neighbours so often that they want to talk to somebody else. They could just go on to the internet and find friends to talk to. So without internet they will be feeling so doomed because they lose the connection with others.

    • dickensdiv16

      Great points, super cheese cake! I agree that there can be some real need for the internet in small towns – and you’re right, the internet has both benefits and problems for our interactions with others. Can you say more about the way that the two experiences would be different?

  8. Rouge

    I think that losing internet in a remote town would not be good. Because in small remote towns it is extremely important to stay in touch with faraway family and friends, losing access to the internet makes it harder to communicate with people you love living faraway. Without the internet you can’t; skype, text, call or email which are primary uses of long distance communication (you can send letters but sometimes that method isn’t ideal.) I think that in Vancouver you have access to lots of people and our city is in a convenient spot to see and meet up with friends and family (unlike being isolated from faraway friends.) Vancouver also has lots of activities to do inside including: galleries, shows, malls and indoor public places to enjoy during the snowy winter. In remote towns they may not have as much to do as we do living in the city so they may rely on internet to provide entertainment when winter hits. If we lost internet here I think that it would be good and bad, bad because it will take people out of their isolated comfort zone (which makes some people unsecure), and good because we can truly enjoy everything in Vancouver that is unrelated and not dependant on the internet. People who live in rural areas probably have less entertainment and communication then we do in the city so it would be harder for them to lose a big and accessible provider of pleasure and communication with family and friends.

    • dickensdiv16

      Rouge, you’ve made some excellent points here and have answered the question fully. You’re right, in isolated or remote places, people have likely become dependent on the internet for communication, especially over long distances. Great work, and very clearly written!

  9. smeagaleater10

    I think that the affects of internet loss in Vancouver will be much more upsetting because of the larger population of internet users. Also if you can’t use the phone and you are in the city you cannot contact friends but if you are living in a small city your friend will not be far away. Or in a big city if you don’t have internet, you can’t schedule appointments or renew books or pay bills etc… But if you live on a small city you can do those things manually. Overall I think that the smaller city will cause less chaos.

    • dickensdiv16

      Ah! So you’re saying you think that in small towns it’s easier to maintain our relationships and do our business face-to-face. I wonder if there is good transit in this town or if people can also be dependent on cars for this face-to-face work.


    I think that if Vancouver had an internet shut down than that could be problem because Vancouver is a big part of Canada’s ability and access to sending oil to Oceania and Asia and because there will be no internet in Vancouver has no internet there would be from no to little chance that Canada will be able to import the oil. That would hurt Canada’s economy. No internet would mean no social media causing no ability to connect by texting or Email. People wouldn’t be able to talk to each other causing a large social breakdown. If a scientist had a good idea and he wanted to make a power point to present his idea and inform other people he wouldn’t be able to because the internet would be shut down. Then again, the article did say that the ONE internet system that was shut down was the ONLY one there. But since Vancouver is and established city it does have more than one internet company. Eg. (Telus, Shaw, Verizon, Virgin mobile, T-mobile ETC.

    • dickensdiv16

      Wow, you’re right, THEMANGO404, you’re the first person to bring up the economic effects of an internet shutdown and effects on education. Sharing ideas is such an important part of our culture, regardless of whether you live in a city or a small town. I wonder if you think that people in small towns rely on the internet (even if in smaller numbers) for economic reasons as well. Can you think of some ways that rural small towns might rely on the internet for economic reasons?

  11. Gretchen

    This is a great question for wondering. How would humans respond? I think in the short term, we could imagine the chaos of industry and the personal angst without having mobile devices. In the long run, there is the possibility for some pretty cool effects. People might talk to each other more and depend on each other in ways that could be really powerful. I can’t say I truly could imagine what it would be like to live in a rural community and lose internet, but I imagine it would force people to really live local–with the goods and resources they use and their social contacts. As far as news and entertainment, they would be cut off–and giving the quality of media these days, that might not be such a terrible thing. For people who work remotely or take online classes, it would be pretty disruptive.

    • dickensdiv16

      Thank you, Gretchen, for bringing up the idea of “living local” – choosing to use local resources – but do you think this difficulty would be comparable for people in small towns vs. people in big cities? I can see advantages to each! I wonder about the overall effect of media loss as well, and I wonder which aspect of news would be the most challenging to lose: world events? politics? weather reports?

  12. Joaquin

    I think if something like that were to happen in Vancouver we would lose money as a city because of the the problem with communicating, I think people who depend on the internet for everything like banking, working, social media, communicating with one another etc… would lose their minds; it would cause chaos. I really don’t think that telus would let the problem get to that point because they would not want to have upset customers and be blamed for such a big thing. Unlike in a small town, there they would be able to communicate easier with one another because it is smaller and people would not freak out as much as here. But then again, they need to import goods to supply for their communities- that would be really bad actually.I think that people depend on there smartphones too much, people have lost the power to communicate with one another in person, face to face because of their phones.

  13. Soccerboy123ABC

    i think that it would cause a lot of problems because a lot of people use the internet in there every day lives so there would be a lot less jobs if this were to happen in Vancouver and if we didn’t have internet there would be less transportation because you are not able to communicate so there would be less oil and food because we import a lot of food and if the grocerie stores weren’t able to supply certain food there would be less food for everyone we would also lose a lot of money as a city because of those problems for transporting food in and out of B.C. if this were to happen to a small town there would be a bigger affect because they would depend on it more for communication with family or friends that live out of the town. life would be a lot harder for people there because there wouldn’t be very good education and a lot of history and other education isn’t written down in books so if there was no internet it would be much harder for every day life out in that town.

    (I wouldn’t be able to leave this reply if we didn’t have internet)

  14. A.ayewthelegend

    I think in Vancouver if we lost our internet a lot of businesses would lose money and coders would lose their jobs. If it happened in a more rural area however because their dependence on the internet is a lot smaller than ours the effects would be more mild, such as not being able to communicate with friends and family by Skype or hangouts also they could not do what I am doing now. Our dependence on the internet is probably a bad thing because if something like this did happen here we would be without a key component of our society and we would need to learn and teach new skills so we could cope without the internet. We could just learn those skills now and try to come away from the Internet.

  15. iron lanturn

    if Vancouver lost internet it would be very bad first of all we wouldn’t be able to do blogs like this one
    we wouldn’t be doing any thing technology related. movie theatres would shut down. schools wouldn’t be able to get info from any computers but it would effect how we as humans communicate say you wanted to show your friend a picture on Facebook nope not anymore play world wide video games no.
    but it will are city much more it will no longer be a city just a town because people from different centuries wouldn’t come to a nice city like van cover because they couldn’t Skype there family. so basically Vancouver would shut down with out internet.

  16. The Baconator

    I think that it would effect a small town because small places don’t exactly have unlimited resources and if you take away the only thing that they have to communicate they won’t have anything to help them. Or sometimes people in small towns can’t get what they need from a normal store so they have to go on the internet to find the stuff that they need.
    But big towns also will have problem and it would be much, much, much more because we wouldn’t be able to tell someone something really important. Sure we have phones but some people don’t pick up but if you send someone an email it will be there forever. Schools in large towns and in small towns would fail because they couldn’t research or BLOG like us and that would push them behind schedule.
    If we lost internet in Vancouver we will have a HUGE problem!

  17. Ginger

    I think that people in Stewart will have a challenging time without internet, but so would people in Vancouver. People in Stewart rely on the internet immensely, grocery stores order food on the internet, and people see the weather forecast on the internet. Because Stewart is very remote people might take online classes, and without internet there is no cable TV or Netflix. All of these issues would exist in Vancouver, however there are more grocery stores and supermarkets and instead of watching Netflix we could attend a play or a movie theater, which Stewart likely doesn’t have. Many people in Vancouver have internet-dependent jobs, so if internet were lost, thousands of people might temporarily lose their jobs and suffer from poverty. Although internet loss will affect individual people more in Stewart, it will affect a larger number of people in Vancouver.

  18. baconguy

    In a small town like Stewart, losing the internet would be bad because, like the artical said businesses could be affected, but more importantly the people won’t be able to know the weather which could be potentially dangerous if you live near Alaska where the weather can be a bit unpredictable. In a big city like Vancouver, it’s much worse because you get lots of tourists in the summer and they would be absolutely lost. People also use the internet to communicate. What’s much different between a big city to Stewart is obviously that there are not nearly as many people, but that also means that there would be more businesses lost, more people unable to communicate with others, ect. The internet has a big impact on our lifestyle.

  19. Shadow145

    I think that people in Vancouver would be furious if they never had internet service people can lose their job if they never had internet service because they would not be able to type anything on their computers if they had jobs that required the use of computers.

  20. Arctic owl

    I think both town and city need them . The city needs them because internet is something we all use in are daily life what if your lost and there’s no internet you could not see what time it is nor call anyone for help . The town would need internet because if there a town then they don’t really have many stores near them so they would have to drive out to get something . But what if they got lost they wouldn’t have any internet so they wouldn’t know where to go .

  21. balloongirl123

    I think if Vancouver loose internet it could affect how how people need to do there important business for work. And the city needs internet because it is something important that everyone needs. People need to call email or text to help anyone that need help.

  22. Sr.Fruitcake

    I think that the affects of the internet would be very different here from there, we would be much more panicked and I think it would make life much more difficult. There would be lots of distance between people and you would have a hard time communicating with people. In a small town like Stewart it would all more clumped together and you would not need to use the phone as much unless you were calling someone outside of Stewart. I think in Vancouver a lot of people would have a hard time getting anywhere and knowing when to be there. It would affect all sorts of things including the E-mail and that would not allow for any notifications for work school, and sports teams to get through. It would be a really ruff thing we would just have to adapt and get through until it was fixed. Which I think after all the human race has been through we’d fully capable.


    I think that if this were to happen in Vancouver. Some people would lose there job or some companies would get far far behind in work that they would start losing lot’s of money and then get bankrupted. A lot of high school students would be far behind in some class’s that require there work using the internet and would soon start failing. I think that in a small town people would also lose there job’s and kid’s would also fall behind in school work as well. In a small town it would be easier to get everyone together and try to work together and help then it would be to get 600,000 people to work together and to not be upset about it.

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