Hi Im Eric Ford for Made Here, For several years.

Made Here has featured a selection of current work from students in the broadcast media production and filmmaking programs at Champlain College.

This season we've got four films, Deadlift about a weightlifter in competition, Steep Slope, about climate and Vermont ski areas, Raising for Progress, about the history of urban renewal in Burlington and Rescues a short fictional film.

You can watch the Champlain College showcase and other great Made Here films streaming on vermontpublic.org and through the PBS app.

Enjoy the films and thanks for watching.

Last slip of the morning session at all.

We got Gordon here with £600 as far as lawn for Jordan.

Hello, I'm Jordan Bordo and I'm a sophomore computer and data science double major at the University of Vermont.

And I compete competitively in the US.

EPO Powerlifting Federation as a 100 AKG lifter.

So I got into competitive lifting sort of as a result of my family's gym that we owned in St Albans, Vermont.

So we had opened up the gym in January of 2019, and then I worked there and I worked out there for a couple of years, but over time I kind of just grew to enjoy going to the gym for the sake of going to the gym.

I just really enjoyed.

I like going in and lifting.

Yeah.

So powerlifting is a competition of the squat bench and deadlift.

So this floor is the one where you put the barbell on the back and spot down.

Hips have to go past your knees after count.

The bench is the one where you lay down on a flat bench and you bring it down to your chest and push it up and down.

It's just the one where the barbell is on the floor and you pick it off the floor.

So you walk out your hips.

Our personalities mesh well, our goals mesh well.

And this is someone who actually want to put a lot of effort into and they're willing to go through the standard that I want people to.

But she has done a good job of it.

From like a macro perspective, Jordan's progress has been very good, but there's been times on a micro scale where it has been or and that's going to be something that everyone faces because it's hard to get stronger.

You know, we're not like guerrillas.

And we we don't just have, like, unlimited muscle strength security sign for what works and what will be the right stimulus to make sure that you, you know, continue to progress someone without breaking them, so to speak, then I found that I really just like pushing myself on like squat bench in particular.

And so then I just really started pursuing that and believe it was March 20, 21 was the first powerlifting me I competed in.

And from that point on I just kind of really fell in love with the sport and just the process of trying to get stronger.

So from there I just kept training with that.

I really want to just keep lifting and keep pursuing it until I win some kind of national championship.

Whether that happens my twenties, thirties, forties, onwards, I really just want to stick with it until I reach some kind of high level like that look like, okay, it's not easy to four years on and like make sure that you're getting enough sleep, make sure you're eating enough, like tracking your food or eating enough like every single day, sometimes forcing yourself to eat when you don't want to just because you know you need to eat more to get stronger.

And then like in the gym, like you might be exhausted, like dead tired, but you still have to go in there and go hard because you know that if you don't, then you're not going to be getting anything out of it.

You just yeah, I would definitely say it's kind of like a second family in some ways, like the group of people that we always see at left.

Between we go, me and my girlfriend Ella started calling them the Kilo Firm.

And so we're always looking forward to getting there and like, Oh, who's who from the kilo?

Kira is going to be there tonight.

Oh, that's the part you can take out of that ice.

My name is Ella.

I have just barely kind of gotten into powerlifting, but I've been lifting for a little while.

Jordan is my coach and he's also my boyfriend.

I just had really for a while just wanted to get stronger.

I grew up dancing.

I started dancing when I was three and I danced for 15 years and I really I really enjoyed it.

But one thing I wanted was to just get stronger.

And for a while like that, I hope to better my dance technique and just better like my control and stuff.

But I once I got into lifting, I found like, that's just really what I wanted to do.

And it was something I found really fun.

And then powerlifting, specifically, I saw Jordan compete a little bit and I really didn't know much about the sport of powerlifting before I started.

Like even just lifting at the gym and talking to Jordan about it because it was an interest of his a little bit before is an interest of my currently I'm lifting five days a week.

Like I have to really make sure that I'm efficiently utilizing my time so that I can attend all my schoolwork and then also have time to go to the gym for like 2 to 3 hours we're going to target.

So right now we're going to restock on milk and Oreos and a couple of protein shakes essentials.

So for someone who is a competitive powerlifter because their focus is going to be more on endurance and it's going to be lifting heavy and typically lifting maximal or new maximum, we often you're going to need a lot of carbs, predominantly because carbs have unique attributes.

When you look at macronutrients, so predominantly when looking at repetitive lifters, you typically typically see a high carbohydrate diet in a high protein diet.

Not to say that that's not important, but for this population, high carbs, high protein going to be very common issue.

The mega stuff is it's almost too big.

And so like even though there's a lot of cream and that goes below the milk, there's not quite enough like the cookie to cream ratios all off.

So a lot of the times it does fall in the milk and then you have to like retrieve it with a spoon or something.

That's really tough.

It's unfortunate.

Huge Oreo fan love Oreos.

A lot of the times my little snack runs will be something along the lines of like Oreos and some fairlife milk, higher protein, protein shakes and just a couple other like high carb snacks which I can use before the gym pop Tarts are favorite.

Yeah, I'm signed up to do my first meet on April 22nd in Agawam, Massachusetts, and I'm going with a group of friends and Jordan is also part of that group, so I'm really excited to just get on the platform, really just see how strong I am.

Like, This is the first time I'm ever doing a meet like this.

So it's just really exciting to see what that's going to be like.

She made it look a little harder this time with the computers when I was to go to live.

So I'm going down to Agawam Mass for my third full power, me and for me overall going down with a bunch of friends.

And so it should be a pretty fun time with all of us competing together.

I've been looking forward to competing at this meet for a little while now because this is by far the best prep I've ever had.

Going into a meet a few milestone lists, I'm looking to hit a 551 squat, a junior plus bench and a 600 deadlift.

The objective of the ME is to get the highest possible good lift, which is two or more white lights out of three possible white lights for each lift and secure the best possible total.

You're always going to have those nerves running through you.

And so it's easy if you feed into that to just sort of like lose yourself and lose a lot of the form that you practice like every day and forget some of the cues that you do to keep your technique as crisp as possible.

And training hours for Jordan, £275.

There are back to the top of the order of Josh for the battery and well on bench.

I started with 275.

I've hit the way a ton of times before in training and so on paper should have been a pretty effortless first attempt.

That being said, my first shot at it was a pretty rough, missed groove.

I slid on the bench on my right side quite a bit and it definitely threw me off low.

On my second attempt.

I was able to bench the weight pretty easily, but I still a little shaken up by missing my first attempt and just ended up jumping the rack command, which resulted in me getting to red lights.

The fear spot, the renewed desire for the wait time makes it look easy for my final attempt.

I took the same way a third time, dialed in and headed to secure a total and managed to hit sideways.

And it makes the flash and see some of it until Jordan this is still a tense easy Jordan Myers And for Jordan £496.

I started with 496 on the squat.

I got it and it moved pretty well.

So I felt confident going up to the top end range for my second attempt at 529.

Come on, Jordan, you've got to hit that way.

And it still felt like it was moving pretty well.

And whenever a squat feels like it's moving well, I know I have quite a bit left in me since I tend to have a very slow and grind is what we got.

Jordan at £562, a teenager squatted 562 Oh, I was very nervous about loading 562 since it was still heavier than anything I'd ever had in my back before and was definitely one of the hardest squats I've ever done in 12.

But I got it and I was super happy about being able to scrape out every single possible kilo that I had in me on the day.

That's a good enough job.

All right, Jordan, your turn.

Last question of the day was deadlifts and looks are always a bit of a challenge on me day since you're still tired from the first to lift.

And it can be tough to really get back in the zone going into the meet.

The best left I've managed to complete in training and hold on to was 579 and I felt confident with our tapering strategy that I'll be good for 600 on the day I started with 529 for my first attempt and moves super well, he pushed away in the back and lifted it up.

So I felt very solid about going up to the top end range for my second attempt at five, six, £568.

And as you take that, no issue.

It's time for me to take it easy all day today.

And I felt confident that I was good for 600 on the day.

So for my last attempt, I loaded 601 with £600.

As far as one for Jordan, the more we're going to get to tournaments, one is in the bird and one it all rides up and that's you got to lift and manage to make it.

Perhaps even with another five or seven and a half cage in the tank.

I'm going to kind of take a step back from this a little bit.

My dad would always tell me, like every day walking out the door just like be all you can be.

And that sort of became ingrained into my psyche.

And that's sort of like my own personal mantra.

And so for me, it's like, I love the sport, I love training in it and I love competing.

And so I really feel driven to like be as good as I possibly can.

And it was the goal of I want to be a national champion.

And in first place, Jordan And a number of variables we see that winter has gotten about 10% worse in the last ten years.

I think that climate change is real and it's happening.

You know, operations kind of swung left and right.

So absolutely we're 100% impacted by global warming.

I'm working with Mother Nature year round, and I would do anything to, you know, shape the sport.

But who knows?

Maybe we'll just put a dome over the area.

Vermont ski industry represents big money, about $1.6 billion in the 2022 season.

350,000 skiers hit the slopes and around 13,000 people are employed.

But that industry is facing some major challenges because of warm weather.

Some resorts had to close temporarily and stockpile manmade snow for colder conditions.

I think there has definitely been differences.

You know, I remember when I was a kid, you know, we would always say, oh, there's like a February thaw and it might get warm for a couple of days, you know, in February or or, you know, sometime in the winter.

But what I've noticed is it seems like that just happens more frequently.

This sparked the question what happened to Vermont's snowy climate?

Many experts believe the answer is clear.

Climate change is in Denver.

It's usually your teaching of Yeah, I've taught skiing for 45 years.

I started at age 15 as a junior instructor, and I've gone all through the whole ranks of the instructing world.

I've worked at Bolton for 20 years and here for 23 now.

So I just enjoy the teaching aspect.

That's the impact for me.

I love watching the people get it and from age to on up, we've got kids out here at a year and a half old at this point that are sliding with their mom and dad.

Cochranes is a tiny ski hill in Richmond that's historic, producing six Olympians.

And it's time for this legendary training ground is going through some change.

We didn't get snow until about three weeks ago.

You know, appreciable snow this winter on Bagram.

We're not up on a mountain here either.

You know, we're right down here at the river level.

The Winooski is 100 yards away there.

So those are very hard year right here for us because it was when you were in a place like this, we're not we don't have the elevation of most other ski areas.

So the beginning of this year was a little rough.

This year has been better.

But, you know, we're lucky.

We're lucky for that.

Yeah.

Thank God for snowmaking.

Meteorologists see a broader change in the weather patterns.

Haley Belay Forecast weather for my Champlain 2244 because it's it's such a cold cold wind and combine that with the snow well climate change is definitely put a stop to a lot of our wintertime activities, not just the ski industry, but, you know, snowmobiling, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, all things that people come up here for the snow to, you know, pump our local economy.

And if we don't have snow, people aren't coming.

The National Weather Service has an office in the Burlington Airport.

NWS staff track weather patterns and say they've noticed a change in snowfall over the past couple of years.

I think the one thing that's kind of the most obvious to me is a lot more kind of marginal events.

So this year specifically, I'm sure you have seen there's been a lot of events where we're saying is it going to be rain or is it going to be snow even in December, January and February?

We're having this conversation and that wasn't a conversation we had 20 years ago, 20 years ago, when we had these big storms, they were all snow.

Yes.

Vermont has seen a rise in temperatures over the past few years in a variety of different ways.

We're finding shorter cold snaps and less days below 32 degrees, which, you know, obviously can impact the snowpack.

Boland Valley Resort is a midsize ski area with 5000 acres of high mountain forest, 71 trails and 165 acres of ski of all terrain.

Like many other areas, Bolton is feeling the pressure of climate change.

We're all investing more and more in snowmaking, including little old Bullock Valley.

We're certainly putting much more onus on snowmaking.

So places like Killington will be skiing and riding until the end of March.

That's on snowmaking.

That's not on natural snow patterns are not patterns anymore, if you will.

So, you know, in order for us to keep consistent with our opening day, it's definitely very reliant on snowmaking.

Can't afford.

We don't have the resources to blow that much snow.

It's wildly expensive.

If you want to extend your season and start earlier and later, the 90% of the winters, you're going to be on snowmaking.

So the changes are happening.

You can almost see them happening kind of season to season, which feels like it's in real time.

So it's pretty urgent.

Even though the number of ski visitors to Vermont increased a little bit in 2022 compared to the previous year, the trend over the last ten years has been down meaningfully when it comes to snow reporting trying to predict future forecasts in a mountain mount Mansfield is our reference point for all all things.

Now, Mount Mansfield has been Vermont indicator for snow at 4395 feet.

Mt.

Mansfield is the highest mountain in the state.

So on top of Mount Mansfield, there's about 50 inches of snow right now.

Normally for this time of year, we have about 66 inches of snow.

So we're running at about 16 inches below where we should be.

And again, then if you look at Mount Mansfield, which is at 3900 feet, tells a similar story there.

The snow stays a lot longer.

It's like May 25th.

They tend to lose their snowpack again.

It's a couple of days earlier, in the last several years due to the height of Mansfield, various elevations are measured to see how much snowfall they get.

This data helps ski resorts figure out how much snow will be at a given elevation.

Given the snow on Mansfield has been about 16 inches below average.

That's been bad news for corresponding elevations at Bolton Valley.

Ultimately, it's hard to predict what we'll see next year when the gears are just not kind of having a consistent pattern.

So definitely a little troubling for many in the Vermont ski industry.

What's troubling is the cost.

Smaller resorts shoulder a heavier burden when making snow.

Its production is tougher on the bottom line.

Yes, some reports have shown that the 2020 122 season experienced a $100 million decline in revenue.

As the weather continues to be erratic, how will ski areas thrive?

Some places are turning their facilities into event spaces are summertime destinations.

We've also read, you know, purchased the Palms wedding venue and did a renovation of Timberline Lodge to make both of those really first class group sales events and weddings destinations.

There is no more waiting.

Like to make this a viable business, it really needs to be a year round resort business and a lot of that has to do with just winter getting a little shorter at the Vermont ski industry is is definitely looking at a period of significant decline, unfortunately.

And so the urgency is is really high.

You know, again, if we have 13 million visitors per year, certainly many people come here during the summer.

The future of the industry is changing now that there's weather unpredictability.

That uncertainty has many worried about what would happen if skiing and boarding were to melt away.

We carry this victory of the season, you know, with a grain of salt, knowing that it's not necessarily going to be the same trend next year.

So, yeah, it's definitely something to worry about for sure.

The issue is, is urgent.

A significant portion of those tourists come in the winter.

And if the the key winter sport of skiing, downhill skiing, alpine skiing is declining because of these environmental factors, then, you know, we really haven't need to to identify ways to replace that revenue in the economy.

Skiing has been a big part of my life for, as I said, much of my life.

So it would be it would be really sad.

I mean, it would be unfortunate.

And I think it's a great thing that a place like this exists for the community around here.

And I just love outdoors and I love being one with with the world.

Right.

And that's what you're doing when you're skiing and you get on the mountain and you just see how huge it is and what kind of geological consequences have forced that over the millennia.

And to be part of that is just really special for me.

Thank you.

So one thing I look back, we'll hope for the best.

And we're still in Vermont.

Right.

And I look and you want me looking at you about that earlier, about the home, even just hearing the word can flood the mind with memories.

Children playing in the street, backyard, vegetable gardens that creaky screen door ever so slightly tilted off its hinges.

It radiates warmth and gives us a sense of safety and belonging.

But what if your home neighborhood, your entire community was taken away and destroyed, all in the name of progress?

The promise of not just a better tomorrow, but a completely different way of life.

This was the reality for those living in Burlington, Vermont, in the 1960s, four Main Streets, located in the heart of downtown Burlington, Vermont, South Champlain Battery, Cherry and Bank, became a vibrant, thriving community known today as Burlington's Little Italy.

It was populated by Irish, French, Canadian and towards the latter half of the 20th century, Italian, Lebanese and Greek immigrants.

Today there is barely any evidence the neighborhood ever existed.

My grandmother owned all of the property, which was a big house at 82 South Champlain Street with a little cottage in the back, which was 84, a third generation immigrant.

Monica's grandparents came to Vermont in the 1880s from the Mount Lebanon area of Syria.

My mother was born in Barre in 1915.

My father's parents had also come from Lebanon and he was born in Winooski.

The neighborhood was once densely populated with multigenerational family dwellings.

John's grandfather came to Burlington from Chair Venera, Italy at the invitation of the Mirallas, a prominent family in the Little Italy community.

Everybody was friendly, had a lot of relatives around, maybe too many, you know, call it too many hands in the stove.

It was a 20 room house that had four apartments of five rooms each.

My grandmother occupied one and my aunts and uncles occupied all the other ones.

Within walking distance from the neighborhood were schools, churches, restaurants and shops.

I could walk downtown or walk to the waterfront.

The waterfront was only two blocks away and it was still pretty industrial.

It had big oil tanks and things like that, but they had these big floating metal, I don't know, platforms, I guess you'd call them.

And my friend Carmen Nana and I would walk on the platform and take our chances with the water.

Our mothers didn't know we were doing that.

Burlington really benefited from the lake, Lake Champlain to the west, and then the one to ski river to the east.

Lumber and textile mills began cropping up along the shores of Lake Champlain and the Winooski River, creating a wealth of job opportunities.

Burlington quickly became a popular lumber and manufacturing port and stood as the third largest lumber market in the world for a period of time.

After the turn of the century, large numbers of those from Europe, Italy, Syria, Greece and a small number from Germany and Lithuania began coming to Burlington as well.

Some families operated small businesses, namely markets and bakeries.

Usually after having saved up enough money from working industrial jobs, these markets became institutions in the community selling curated products native to the countries.

Many of the immigrants and the community once came, you know, there's almost a homesickness around not having the kind of food you're used to, and also just all the rituals and traditions that went on around eating and preparing foods.

In addition to being purveyors of food, some of the markets were seen as community centers of the neighborhood.

Some of them helped people fill out paperwork that they need to fill out, you know, something to do with citizenship or temporary residency, that sort of thing.

Or, you know, they get a parking ticket.

They never had what's a parking ticket?

So, you know, how do I do that?

These markets were invaluable to both the communities they serve and the proprietors who owned and operated them.

The fact that for newly arrived immigrants and refugees who perhaps left a country where they felt that like the world was out of control for them, you know that if you can really think about how coming here and ultimately having your own business.

So you got to make the decisions would be so important.

Using the American dream of freedom and independence as a pathway to the middle class.

Residents and their children now had opportunities for financial freedom, education and empowerment that previously might not have been possible.

Despite the praises of the city being sung by those who lived in the Little Italy community, the Burlington establishment did not always meet immigrants with the same level of enthusiasm.

Like many American cities, Burlington has a sordid history with the treatment of immigrant and minority populations.

The theory and practice of eugenics had a strong hold on the country until the late 1940s and continued to influence how white Americans regarded those seen as other.

Whether consciously or not, this and similar ideologies influenced the dawn of new American life, sparked by the victory of the allied forces in World War Two immediately following the the end of World War Two.

So 1950s sixties was a time of incredible enthusiasm and progress for America.

We came out of it with incredible technological capabilities.

And with the advent of the interstate highway systems panic set in as local government agencies walked, city dwellers flee crowded, poorly constructed urban neighborhoods for the comfort of the suburbs where they could get more property for less money.

American inner cities were in really rough shape.

They were built somewhat haphazardly, not always with a unified plan, didn't always have basic infrastructure for safe drinking water and sewage disposal and circulation of air and access to daylight.

So there were problems.

There were definitely problems.

The newly introduced concept of modernist architecture was a huge influence in the rebuilding of American cities across the country.

Suddenly, major U.S. cities became targets for urban renewal, a concept introduced by the federal government through the establishment of the Housing Act of 1949.

I do think it's important to acknowledge that these programs started with very good intents asking What can we do to improve the living situation?

And again, with that modern optimism, say we can build it new, we can build it better, and we will solve the problem.

And that looks great on paper and in reality, it really was a disaster.

Racism in urban planning and development was a norm in the 20th century.

Zoning laws enforced racial and ethnic segregation of neighborhoods, and the advent of redlining made it near impossible for people of color to advance in their communities.

Narratives of slum and blight were woven from those tasked with house visits in the urban renewal area.

While poverty and substandard living conditions were undoubtedly present, the extent of it remains questionable.

It started out as a way to improve the lives of those living in America's inner most cities.

However, the narrative quickly shifted to one of blame and resentment towards the country's immigrant and minority populations.

When urban renewal passed and it was an item on the ballot in Burlington, I think there was just a lot of fear, a lot of disbelief.

They're going to take our homes.

Who does that?

It was in 1963 that Burlington voters approved a $790,000 municipal bond in support of what was being called the Champlain Street Urban Renewal Project.

The money, along with a $2.4 million federal grant, would be put towards the demolition of the Little Italy neighborhood, with the hopes of building a better downtown in Burlington.

It's not a surprise that the Champlain Urban Renewal Project didn't target the Hill section because that's where the businessmen and community leaders who were spearheading urban lift eminent domain, the right of the government to take residential properties away from their owners with payment compensation was the tool used in urban renewal neighborhoods to force out the residents in Burlington.

Outside agencies were hired to complete land acquisition, giving each resident the amount of money they deemed worthy for the home.

Demolition of the neighborhood began in 1966, and by 1968 the neighborhood was completely leveled.

300 buildings raised, 157 families ousted and left with not even a shell of the place they once called home.

While demolition on the newly cleared land hit the ground running building residences for those displaced by urban renewal was slower to start.

Relocating people was one of the promises they made.

It was one of the promises they didn't keep.

They didn't help anybody.

Almost a year after the demolition of the neighborhood, a site was finally chosen to build housing for those displaced by urban renewal.

Riverside Avenue is big development built out there to house these people from the Champlain Urban Renewal area, and that's picking up a core population of downtown Burlington and moving them the outskirts of the city.

My Aunt Catherine, who was the eldest of the six sisters, she was about 65.

The woman didn't drive and was on a widow's pension and the house was paid for.

They gave her $6,000 for that little house and she had to find another house safe and suitable.

She found a new little ranch house on Village Green in the new North End.

It was $14,000.

She had to use her six to make a down payment and incur a mortgage.

At the age of 65, this widow who didn't drive, she walk everywhere she needed to go and her house was paid for.

And that's what urban renewal did to her 65 years old.

Here's your money, and thank you very much.

You can get out now.

In 1963, after a failed attempt to partner with construction company de Marisco, the city of Burlington contracted with Horizon Inc, a group of local developers, networkers and business owners.

Horizon created what they named the Horizon Tower, a $2 million project, resulting in a one stop shop with commercial and retail space apartments, a hotel restaurants with views of Lake Champlain, swimming pools, tennis courts, movie theaters and of course, lots of space to accommodate America's newest obsession the automobile.

Despite their vision, the Horizon Inc development firm never managed to secure the funding needed to carry out the project.

After years of extensions and delays on construction, the city canceled their contract in April of 1967.

As time passed, sections of the Urban Renewal area were sold off to other private developers who built municipal government buildings and hotels, notably the Hilton and Marriott hotels that are present today along Battery Street.

Currently, the land is the subject of yet another construction project aimed at improving downtown life in the city.

It's planned to be primarily residential project, so there's about 450 residential units on top of about 40,000 square feet of retail space.

And in the middle, all the buildings kind of shield a three story parking garage similar to the 1960s.

One of the most pressing issues the city faces today is its lack of adequate, affordable housing for residents of the planned 450 new units to be built for the project known officially as City Place.

About 85 of them will be built in partnership with Champlain Housing Trust, a local Burlington nonprofit.

The slow to start project plans to be completed in 2026.

While some are hopeful for what the building will bring to the city, others feel as though Burlington may already be too far gone.

I think that Burlington lost a lot.

Right now they're scrambling for affordable housing, and we had affordable housing.

They took it and they built their big buildings and their expensive condos and built some big revenue properties that Burlington can subsist on.

And I think that that didn't do any good for anybody.

They didn't learn anything from history.

History is repeating itself, and we've got another mess there.

It was a community all by itself.

It had the stores.

They had grocery stores.

They had apartments.

I see the city trying to make that place all over again.

They want stores, they want housing and what did we have in the sixties?

It was all there.

It was all there.

Burlington, Vermont is one of the many cities across America that felt subject to urban renewal initiatives that were sweeping the nation in post-World War two America.

The reimagining of American cities began with ideas of equity and prosperity for.

Today we look back and wonder, how far have we really come?

There's a lot of people that don't like the idea of development, you know, like I like the way things are.

I mean, I like the way things are.

But it's a it's a balancing act.

And you need you need to do some development to stimulate the economy because the city can grow.

Projects try to replicate the traditional New England town green and they say, all right, we've got this plot of land.

We're going to make a town square, we'll put a gazebo in it and offer parking around the square, and then we'll ring it with two or three story buildings, retail on the ground floor and offices and apartments above.

And voila, we've done it.

We've created New England.

And it really works, because what's missing is time.

Well, I don't see that area coming back as a closely knit community.

I mourn the loss, but I realize it can't be replaced.

The role of family of the store that I've talked about, their eldest son had died in World War Two and their reaction was, we gave our son to this country and now you're taking our property or taking our home and our store and our livelihood.

They destroyed lives.

Urban renewal destroyed the lives of a lot of people.

157 families, individuals and business owners were forced to give up their homes and community in the name of new growth and progress for the city of Burlington.

65 years later, there's still a hole in the ground, a hole in the memories of the city and a hole in the hearts of the people of Burlington.

So those and I never felt what would you do?

We've reserved the surgery for Molly for Monday.

But Arthur, unless you can pay the deposit, we can only hold it through tomorrow.

You?

I see many options.

You must choose which one?

The right one.

Which is?

The answer is already within you.

So after three months, that'll be your total.

That's.

That's a lot of interest.

Well, we really will do anything for our pets, won't we?

For.

So what about your parents?

They won't even give me money for rent.

She's lived a good life already.

Don't.

I can't think about that right now.

You know, Richard always said it was worse than it looked, and we know it didn't look good.

He stayed as long as he could.

He also knew what was happening.

So you think I should do it?

When Richard saw you drunk in the street, he took you in because it was the right thing to do.

And he had the power to do it.

You owe the same now to Molly.

Molly, this one will hurt, but we'll be together.

This one might not be possible.

And this one will be quick but sad.

Okay, Molly, you have to choose.

Come on, girl.

You can do it.

Come on.

That's.

That's not an option.

Molly, you remember this place?

One.

We're almost there, girl.

Come on.

Come on.

Molly.

When Richard was on the breathing machine.

How did you know it was time to.

You don't know.

You just hope.

But it was the right decision.

And it was what it was.

That's reassuring.

If you.

Well, you know, if you had the opportunity to do it again, would you do it the same way?

I can't tell you what to do.

Life is full of decisions.

You have to either make them or get left in the dust.

Why can't I just let life happen?

Because it's painful.

Sitting with Molly while she can't move will be painful.

When she can't eat, she can't feel.

She can't breathe.

You can ask everyone.

You know what they would do, but it doesn't change a thing.

At the end of the day, you have to come to terms with it, not them.

You have carrying around that picture of Richard like he's still here.

He's not all right.

He's buried six feet under the dirt and he's never coming because of you.

So I can do it myself or with you in the room, whatever is easier and we can do a private cremation or with multiple animals.

That's.

That's fine.

We have a variety of terms that we can choose from.

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