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Northerners pay their dues to sustain rural economy
Rural Canada adapts and find new ways for economic stability
_“ ...the ‘idea of the North’ ... is at the core of Canadian identity. The North is a place of austerity, of spaciousness and loneliness; the North is pure …. The idea of North is a Canadian myth. Without a myth a nation dies.”_
-R. Murray Schafer
Being on evacuation alert due to flood or fire is relatively common in B.C., but in the North rural residents wonder whether it will be economic instability that causes the air horns to blow.
World-renowned Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer once said the idea of North is at the core of the Canadian identity. It is a Canadian myth, and without such a myth a nation dies.
Although many would agree whole-heartedly, fewer and fewer people are living the northern life—some barely hanging on.
That has some critics questioning whether a rural way of life is worth maintaining at all.
A recent study prepared for the Ontario government suggests that some rural communities are surviving solely off subsidies. The committee, commissioned to investigate the role of government, recommends some hard choices be made, including picking which northern Ontario towns to take off life support.
Here in B.C., the provincial and federal governments are cutting services and shutting offices in the Heartlands, indicating some rural towns may already have lost their lifeblood.
Which communities softwood lumber didn’t affect, mad cow disease did. Health authorities have been chopping staff and northerners can rarely count on the government for a well-paid job any more.
Divergent livelihoods may not be interconnected in the South, but for many in the North it’s a way of life.
“ How goes the lumber industry is how goes the beef industry as well,” says Haida Gwaii veterinarian Don Richardson, who also runs the ranch his family has held since 1919.
He says most families with new agricultural developments along Highway 16 rely on the forest industry as their primary source of income.
“ Most are fallers, run a skidder, have a logging truck or whatever, but that is how they finance the development of their farm.”
If not forestry, then farmers rely on the teaching or nursing income of their other half. Richardson has diversified operations with his veterinary services and a feed store on the property.
As for so-called subsidies propping up the rural economy, he hasn’t seen any. Richardson is also the president of the Canadian Hereford Association and says in the thick of the mad cow crisis, his industry was losing $50 million a week across Canada.
Money has since come in to support the industry, but, according to him, those dollars usually end up at the feed lots or with the packers in the South, not in the hands of farmers who now only get $200 for an animal that used to bring in $800.
With most ranches in the North raising an average of 35 head of cattle, Richardson quickly crunches the numbers to show that making a living in ranching is next to impossible.
Why does he continue?
“ It’s a great way to raise kids.”
Jim Abbott who owns Abfam Enterprises in Port Clements, one of the only operating sawmills west of Smithers, admits that most people in the forest industry are in it for a job, not for the way of life.
But he has made sure his job has kept him in the home he chose 45 years ago: Tlell.
“ Somebody says I’m local, I’ve worked here for 20 years. And I always say, when your job goes away where do you go? A lot of them say Nanaimo or Chilliwack.”
According to Abbott, these southern centres also control the resources in the North. He says what gets cut, where and how much, are decisions made far from the forests of Haida Gwaii.
“ If the economy goes into the toilet in the North it is generally because of decisions made in the South.”
Abbott’s mill is still around because he’s always done things differently.
“ We are constantly changing our markets and what we do with the timber. We always go for the highest value, not for the most production.”
The ability to adapt to constant change is exactly what Greg Halseth in Prince George says is necessary for small towns to survive. The University of Northern BC geography professor also holds the title of Canada research chair in rural and small town studies.
“ Rural Canada has to adapt and find new ways to play in the shifting economy.”
Since the 1980s, he says, there has been real change in the rural economy. Sawmills across the North employ far fewer people than in the past, and governments face competing interests for tax dollars.
To illustrate his point he mentions the shutdown of the coalmine in the town of Tumbler Ridge and how the community galvanized to diversify and keep the community alive.
“ People have to do other things, but we need infrastructure, services, skills training and the support of public policy to be able to do this.”
According to Halseth, the rural economy is on the agenda both federally and provincially with a focus on equipping rural Canada to be able to re-energize.
Of course, one department doesn’t always know what the other is doing. He mentions the ferry across Ootsa Lake, which the government wanted to cut back in order to save $100,000 a year.
Meanwhile the Ministry of Forests said they would lose more than that a month if trucks were unable to get across to the beetle-infested timber.
Halseth says other communities re-tooling themselves to become tourist destinations instead of one-industry towns found the provincial government planned to shut down their biggest draw: the surrounding provincial parks.
Those calling for an end to rural subsidies aren’t looking at the real relationship between rural and urban areas, he says.
“ The Canadian state has been built on reciprocal relationships between different places. One place provides funding for the other. The resource communities drive the export base and the cities drive manufacturing.”
Urban areas provide connections to markets, legal, financial and corporate activities for what happens in rural areas, he says. The rural areas play an important role too.
In Europe, he says, the rural landscape is part of the cultural heritage of the state. “People have decided this is important. The rural tourist economy is central to the national economy. They would never call it subsidies. They call it investment and development. And they are generating wealth from this investment.”
But unlike Europe, the identity of many Canadian rural communities is fragile and if people just see dollar signs at the end of the day, communities may not survive.
Art Lew, manager of the Community Futures in Masset, says that communities committed to understanding how best they learn and setting up networks to help citizens do so will be better equipped for changes in the economy.
After all, as Amanda Reid-Stevens, a Haida from Skidegate, asks, if you take everyone out of the rural areas and start flying people in to work on resource extraction, who is going to put the brakes on?
She says it is important that people stay in rural areas because they understand the rhythms of nature. “Not just First Nations, but any rural people who are connected to the land.”
Reid-Stevens is optimistic about the way native and non-native people are coming together on certain issues. She points to Port Clements and Masset’s support for the Haida on the case against Weyerhauser now in front of the Supreme Court of Canada.
For all the disasters in the rural economy, there are rays of hope as well, such as the cruise ships and potential port container in Prince Rupert, the rail transportation corridor and, of course, tourism.
Northern small towns are also attracting a different type of migrant—those with capital who are seeking the mythologized Canadian way of life.
Halseth says things are changing, but they’ve always been changing. “There are lots of innovative ways to address that.”
He doesn’t believe that globalization is all bad and, with some planning, communities can be heralding newcomers searching for a better quality of life in the North, instead of fearing the siren-call of the city.
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