Small towns with big appeal. (The Way It Is).

Today is a big day in our town. You see, we just got our first set of traffic lights. Well, that is riot entirely correct. We just got our first set of temporary traffic lights. The lights control the one-lane traffic while one of our in-town highway bridges is being repaired.

And that reminds me of all the things that sophisticated city dwellers make fun of when talking about small towns.

What time do you roll the sidewalks up at night? Given your declining population; have you designated the last to turn out the lights? We have got more people in our bowling league than live in your town? How far is it again to the next town? You saw how many bears in your back yard?

There is no doubt the population in our town is both getting smaller and the average age is increasing, while our big cities are growing in leaps and bounds. That is the case in hundreds of rural and remote communities across Canada. And those of us who choose to live in small towns cannot understand why anyone in their right mind, if they have a choice, would choose to live in a city.

Gridlock, daily commutes, high rents, skyrocketing real estate costs and rents, smog alerts, daily parking fees, living cheek-by-jowl and wall-to-wall concrete - why would anyone willingly make that choice?

In the 1950s our town was a boom town, accessible only by train. As families came in by train, the husband, eager to get to work at his new job, the wife would get off the train and often bad to be forcefully detained from getting right back on to go anywhere by where she was. A few years later, when the husband was considering a move to a new job elsewhere, the wife would say, "You can leave, but the kids and I are staying here. We like it." And they stayed, except for the kids who went away to college or university. That, phenomenon continues to this day.

What is the magic of small towns? Since I live in a small, remote town by choice, let me share my reasons for resisting the lure of the city and staying where I am.

While we may be shrinking in numbers and, on average, getting older, everyone in our community knows just about everyone else. We are, in a sense, all family. We care about each other and regularly demonstrate that fact by routinely pitching in to help those who cannot help themselves.

We celebrate together. We have fun and share our sorrow together. When things need doing, we join into get them done. Volunteers built our curling rink, our arena, our community centre, our library, our two museums and our golf course.

Thanks to the generosity of our residents, we have a modern hospital complete with state-of-the-art X-ray and ultrasound equipment funded by the community. The air ambulance gets us to big-city care faster than you would experience in the city.

It is a fact that the charitable giving by the residents of small towns far outweighs that of city dwellers.

Smog? I guess the diesel smoke from a passing logging truck might qualify. But most of the time we can look-out our, window to forest. When two vehicles stop when passing each other on Main Street to briefly pass the time of day that might qualify as gridlock. Commuting usually means the 10- or 20-minute trip to our favorite fishing lake since you can walk to just about anywhere in town and many do.

When you can still receive a letter at the post office with just your name on the letter, no address that counts for something.

We run things with volunteers - at the youth recreation, the golf club, the curling club, and with about 100 other volunteer boards, committees and groups. We fund many of these activities from our pocket-books rather than town taxes.

If you have a complaint, it is possible to attend a town council meeting and have your complaint listened to, with respect. We can get to talk to our school board and the principal at the school. Our chief of police is Bill, and-you can talk, things over with him and with any of our local officers, too.

We do have, high-speed access to the Internet and we do have banking machines.

But, the truth be told, we do NOT have traffic lights. And, let us hope that it stays that way.

Bob Michels is an author and a consultant living in Atikokan.