Preservation struggle: some of Canada's small communities are doing just fine, but many have been losing population for decades. Job opportunities are few and young people leave for cities. Meanwhile, cities are spreading to meet what used to be separate rural communities, turning them into bedroom (commuter) communities.

Places like Gabriola Island in British Columbia are among the country's most appealing communities. The lush vegetation, easy-going lifestyle, and warm climate have attracted several thousand residents to the island, which had only a few hundred people four decades ago.

The small town of Bamfield (population 500) on the southwest coast of Vancouver Island has survived for different reasons. Bamfield has changed over the last century. It used to be a thriving fishing community (from the 1920s to the late 1970s), and a Pacific terminus of the Pacific Cable Station (from 1903 to 1960), a submarine telegraph that connected member nations of the British Empire. After the cable station closed, its buildings became the home of the Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre (BMSC).

On the shores of a treacherous sea, Bamfield also became the site of a coast guard station and a lifesaving trail in 1906. As the Caledon Institute of Social Policy explains in its 2004 report on Bamfield, "The trail was the beginning of the West Coast Trail--now prized as a recreational and ecological jewel."

In 2001, the Bamfield Community School Association, the community's Aboriginal members of the Huu-ay-aht First Nations, and the BMSC applied for a five-year Department of Fisheries and Oceans grant to re-establish the Coldwater Pinto Abalone. Abalone is an expensive seafood that was placed on the endangered species list in 1990, and the community is now setting up a spawning and growing operation.

These are only some of Bamfield's projects, all aimed at building on the community's strengths to support healthy economic and social growth. Not all small towns have the assets of "a paradise setting of ocean, rock, and lush forest," as Bamfield has been described.

But, what some lack in physical beauty and idyllic location, they make up for with creativity. Artists started moving into the Prairie village of Meacham, Saskatchewan in the 1980s, transforming the community from a deserted farming town into a centre for creative minds. Artists and sculptors were joined by a musician and a composer, an actress and an artistic director who established a local theatre. Not all the locals are behind the creative group: some say they show no interest in the traditions of the town such as maintaining the skating and curling rinks, but others say they have stopped Meacham from becoming a ghost town.

Other towns across the country have reinvented themselves. Elliott Lake, for example, in Northern Ontario, has changed from a booming uranium mining town to a retirement community. When most of the fish disappeared in Bay Bulls, Newfoundland, the town developed a tourist industry and became a bedroom community for St. John's.

But, while some small towns have flourished and expanded, most are declining, either slowly losing their populations or struggling to hold on to those they have. It's a challenge to attract businesses and investors to small communities with their limited labour pool and market access: young people have little choice but to leave. And, with the exodus goes the future of towns with too few people to support schools, or libraries, or doctors, or even churches.

Rural Newfoundland, which is most of the province outside St. John's, lost 58,000 people from 1991 to 2001 and could lose another 18,000 in the next decade. In 1991, the province had a population of 579,000; by 2011 it's been estimated there could be only 503,000 people there. Most people are either moving to St. John's, which is growing, or to another part of Canada. The situation is similar in other parts of Atlantic Canada where rural areas that survived on natural resources are declining and urban areas are growing. The same is true in Saskatchewan, and many parts of the B.C. Interior. And, the story repeats itself in Northern Ontario, and parts of Quebec.

Other parts of the world have noticed: here's how an article in The Economist in 2003 described Canada: "Today, the most visible cleavage in Canada is not between French-speaking Quebec and the English-speaking rest, but between five large urban areas (dynamic, successful, with many immigrants but with strained public services) and the rest (mainly rural, declining economies with high unemployment, kept alive by federal aid)."

Those who love the rural life, especially if they're anywhere near a large urban centre, are finding the city creeping into their turf. The Region of York, north of Toronto, is growing too quickly for some of its residents. The number of people employed in the region is expected to be 696,000 by 2026, up from about 400,000 in 2000. But, the region is already suffering from traffic jams, poor public transit, and inadequate social and health services. Residents are also concerned about the degradation of the natural environment many moved to the region to enjoy. Urbanization is spreading east and west of Toronto as well. For country folks it's a nightmare that leads to announcements such as the one that hit Milton (west of Toronto) in 2001. That's when the Canadian National Railway Company said it had bought land in the south end of town to build a rail yard across from homes in the old residential area. The vision of trucks going in and out of the 40-hectare site 1,000 times a day was a nightmare to the locals. And, that was just during the first phase of the planned facility: it eventually would cover 180 hectares, with more than double the truck movement. City planners had other ideas that focussed on preserving the original character of Milton, and avoiding low-density suburban development that leaves town centres deserted. (Normally, industrial projects need municipal approval to rezone rural land. But, CN operates under the federal Railway Act, so it isn't subject to the sections of Ontario's Planning Act that protect farmland.)

And, this is typical of what's happening in many parts of rural Canada.

According to the Sierra Club of Canada, Ontario alone loses one square kilometre of prime agricultural land every day to the bulldozers.

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES.

1. New Brunswick is one province that retains a strong rural base, with more than 47 percent of the population settled in smaller communities outside its main urban centres. The scenic tourist town of St. Andrews By-the-Sea, with 1,800 people, grew by 6.7% in 2000 compared with 1996. In addition to its natural beauty, the town, with its world-famous golf course and Fairmont Algonquin Hotel, has developed housebuilding incentives, a new call centre, year-round tourism initiatives, aquaculture research, and an expanding community college to draw permanent residents as well as tourists. Do a report on St. Andrews, or a small town in your own province, that is beating the demographic trend away from the rural life.

2. In the village of Limerick in south-central Saskatchewan, population 150, the community is kept alive with group events including fairs, weddings, funerals, feasts, and dinners. The village's families are divided into four work groups, which do all the catering and organizing on a rotation system. There's no question of anyone not wanting to participate. As one resident explained, that is not an option: "If you want to be well regarded and included in the community, you participate." Contrast this with the isolated lives that urbanites often live.

3. Some observers think it might be the fate of Canada's small towns to become retirement communities as their young people leave and seniors opt out of dry life. Discuss whether or not you think this is a good transition.

4. When Canadians leave their smaller home towns for city jobs, they find that a portion of their pay cheques is being used to support the rural communities they left. How so? Canada's electoral boundaries still give rural areas disproportionate power in Ottawa: in B.C. 22 of 36 ridings have populations above the national average, but not a single tiding in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, PEI, or Newfoundland meets the national average. According to John Ibbitson in The Globe and Mail, "These distortions lead to bad policy, wasted resources, and undemocratic derision-making."

Despite this, rural communities remain underserviced, especially in health care. A long-standing suggestion to cure this problem seems to be gelling a bit of traction--encourage skilled immigrants, particularly health care professionals, to settle in rural areas as a condition of coming to Canada. Discuss whether or not you think this is a good idea.

CROP SHARING

One way of reviving rural economies is by promoting locally grown food. Rather than shopping at the neighbourhood grocery store for produce that's probably been on a long journey from distant forms, some regions have taken to the idea of "community-shared agriculture."

Community Shared Agriculture is a system of growing and distributing organic produce to restore the link between farmers and consumers.

Local households purchase subscription shares of the year's harvest from a local farm. Each share entitles a member to 20 weekly deliveries throughout the summer and fall, The content of each delivery varies according to the growing season, but the variety increases as the season progresses. It works for both sides: the farmers are assured of regular customers, and the consumers receive fresh produce and support their own communities.

It's estimated there are about 1,000 CSA farms in North America.

ACADEMIA MEETS SMALL TOWN CANADA

The Rural and Small Town Programme (RSTP) is based at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick. It helps people and organizations adapt to change and act on opportunities for developing sustainable rural communities and small towns. The Programme links research and action by generating and sharing new knowledge, developing self-help tools, and providing information and educational services which lead to innovative approaches and solutions.

The Programme combines traditional academic research with the experiences of rural communities, focussing on economic development, community development, and emerging rural issues. It provides services in such areas as Aboriginal affairs, business retention and expansion, community economic development, conference coordination. proposal writing, facilitation and/or training, environmental issues, home-based business, information technology, rural development, tourism, agriculture, community/municipal planning, entrepreneurship, health, housing, microenterprise development, and strategic planning.

One of RSTP's schemes is the New Rural Economy project (NRE), a five-year research and education program underway in rural Canada. NRE is a collaborative undertaking bringing together rural people, researchers, policy-analysts, the business community, and government agencies at all levels to identify and address vital rural issues. It is conducted at the national level with historical and statistical data analysis, and at the local level with case studies involving community and household surveys.

As part of its program, NRE is studying 32 communities across the country in an effort to help develop their potential economic and social capacities.

SPRINGFIELD REVISITED

A federal government discussion paper released n August 2002 compared small towns to Springfield's cast of characters in The Simpsons: rural, young people said large cities such as Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, were both positive and negative, and were to Lisa and Mr. Burns. selected Lisa, the middle Simpson wonderkid, said cities were places to pursue career or educational goals, the arts, and become better than one's parents. Those who picked Mr. Burns, the Scrooge-like nuclear plant owner, believed large cities are cold, uncaring, and centres of greed.

Websites

Community Supported Agriculture--http://www.umass. edu/umext/esa/index.html

Everdale Environmental Learning Centre--http:// www.everdale.org/index. html

Rural and Small Town Programme--www.mta.ca/rstp/