Out of the box
Northerners vs Nuppies (revisited)
Rummaging through an old accordion-file in order to thin it, I found an article that I cut out of the Vancouver Sun on March 28, 1992. It’s called “Northerners versus Nuppies,” and jokingly
outlines perceived class distinctions between people from Smithers and those from Houston. When I first read it I was living in Vancouver while attending UBC, though I was from Hazelton. Reading the article must have startled me, because I scrawled on it “what a weird thing to run into at 6:30 on a Saturday morning while drinking coffee.”
It gave me a cheap thrill, because it was like listening to one neighbour dishing on another. The gist of the piece was that Houstonians (the author being one) exemplified a more down-to-earth, humble sensibility than Smithereens’ smugly elitist, yuppie aesthetic. The most telling detail is the author pointing out in the introduction that Smithers “supposedly has the highest number of PhDs per capita in Canada.” There’s an obviously tongue-in-cheek lean to the kinds of obvious of comparisons made about pastimes, clothes, dogs, fishing (fly = nuppie, regular = regular folk), but the edifice of the analysis is class division.
As anyone from a small town can tell you, there’s nothing more small-town than being resentful of a slightly bigger town. Ever since I moved to Hazelton in 1981, it’s been clear that there’s a rivalry between Smithers and the other nearby towns. It most often emerges in sports; the volleyball, basketball, soccer and wrestling teams I’ve worked with at Hazelton High always fix their sights on the Gryphons (in Smithers), as do the Wolverines of Houston Secondary. Years ago a girl admitted that she wanted to beat Smithers because “they have all those fast-food restaurants.” Throughout the commentary in the Sun, the “just good folks” pride barely masks a covert envy. It was odd to read this backwoods dishing in a big city paper.
The article interested me especially since I had been straddling the two worlds of Northerner and Nuppie for many years. I spent my high school years reading and rioting, just as interested in watching Woody Allen movies as going to see the moose quarter Mike had hanging in his garage. In fact, as a university student, my Vancouver friends knew me as Bob, a rural dude, and back in Hazelton I was Rob, a citified college-boy.
I wonder what the author would think of the same issue sixteen years later, with Smithers no longer in the running for “the highest number of PhDs per capita.” Would the construction of a Starbucks officially damn Smithers to some Nuppie hell? What about the emergence of the SUV, which lives in some niche between the “four-wheel Japanese jeep” of the Nuppie and the Northerner’s “four-by-four American truck”? I suppose Carhartt gear would have to be added to the Northerner’s wardrobe, one of “utility…a hometown hockey team jacket.” How about the ubiquity of the cell-phone, something once exclusively Yuppie/Nuppie but now wielded by everyone, no matter what the outfit? Even generalities have to be updated.
Of course, this mild divisiveness can’t really put substantial walls between the people who live in this particular part of the North. We all put up with the same endless, occasionally dangerous winters. We all get to look at these grand hills and mountains. When it’s flooding in Hazelton, it’s flooding all along the Bulkley and Skeena and we’re all slinging sandbags and hauling Grandma to the top floor. Even back in my UBC days, especially while living in residence, I’d meet someone from Smithers or Houston or Prince George and believe that we had more in common than we did with the kids from West Vancouver or Kelowna.
I suppose that it would be easy to add to this. After all, I still straddle those worlds. What else can you say about a teacher who listens to CBC and “watches films, not movies,” but who also lives in a trailer and “backs into a parking spot”? Vive la différence!
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