Rural Reckoning: Find value in our place and our people
Rural folks don't need to start turning lemonade into lemons just yet, says Mark Austin
Thar's a reckoning wreckin' rural Nova Scotia, I reckon. Depletion of population and livelihoods can do us in, but not nearly as efficiently as will a narrative of inevitable decline.
Failure of regenerative imagination in the guise of austerity, scarcity's faithful sidekick, has some folks clamouring to turn lemonade back into lemons.
Instead, let's take stock of the value we have in place, revitalize and conserve what can serve us, innovate and create with all the vigour we can muster, and only then reconcile surplus capacity.
I know it's hard to read while you're rolling your eyes, but I use the buzzword innovation simply to mean doing things differently for better results. It's not always about novelty. In fact, in realms such as how we source our food better implores that we embrace more of what used to be the norm: local production and consumption of real foods.
What it is about is creating positive change, rather than resigning to reactionary retrenchment.
In the forward to Now or Never: An Urgent Call to Action for Nova Scotians, Ray Ivany and his band of distinguished commissioners implore our province "to undertake a projet national, a concerted collective effort, to transform ourselves into a more unified, progressive, creative, and change-oriented society."
It's amazing how many schemes have been dipped in Ivany for legitimacy while skipping over this foundational imperative. More of the same — simply doing more or doing less of the same old same old — won't create our new economy.
So what will? Let's rehabilitate the phrase "wealth creation."
We — all of Nova Scotia, including cities, towns and rural regions — need to work hard at finding things that work for us, that fit in place while creating it.
Along the way, there will be some regions and sectors that contract, but our starting point has to be building from assets rather than choking off existing infrastructure.
The alternative to austerity isn't wastefulness; it's resourcefulness. Rural Nova Scotia has that in abundance.
Mark Austin is the executive director of the Rural and Coastal Communities Network. He also worked with the Nova Scotia Commission on Building our New Economy. He lives in Old Barns, Colchester County.