Newfoundland & Labrador, in a global context at least, has too much geography and not enough history. But we do have enough of a past, and ample knowledge of it, to sieve through what has happened in this province over the past fifty years and prohibit it from happening again.
That’s the way I would have begun Danny William’s first speech to party faithful after winning his first election. I recall the speech vividly! The issues were deadly accurate!. He asked all the right questions and provided many of the right answers! Williams’ talked about his vision for the future and how he intended to make it happen. He reiterated the importance of a plan for the province and the sound fiscal management on which that plan had to be based.
He talked about community development and how government had to continue to focus on rebuilding our economy. How government had to adopt a social and economic blueprint and learn from the strategic successes of others. He talked extensively about rural sustainability! He talked about giving to those who have historically done without!
The William’s Era is now over but the plight of rural communities continues. Rural sustainability is just as paradoxical today as it ever was…. in the Newfoundland and Labrador context at least. Frankly, it reminds me of Labrador - in the sense of being a frontier, a place where the known and the unknown meet and interact.
Those who live beyond the settled southern belt of this vast stretch of rugged mountains, roving valleys, and meandering rivers recognize that the land, the bush, are the final judge of everything there. Chunks of this great land have been despoiled. But its eternal silence remains, brooding, vast and unfathomable.
If you spend any time in Labrador, as I have, you begin to experience feelings of humility. Any human arrogance is tempered by a sense of awe and you seem to cling to the place by your fingertips. Outside the settled areas, the land can swallow you without a trace.
Like the ‘Big Land’, it is less that people and groups and governments choose rural sustainability, than that it chooses them. Battling constant motion, while struggling to handle both harmony and dissension at the local level, eschewing the simplistic division of the world into “right” and “left”, those trying to sustain rural parts of this province seek to move forward on a steady course in a polarized world.
In the northern climate you have to do your job against a background of constant struggle for existence. Much of what can be achieved there - as in rural sustainability - depends on the players and whether they understand the game or recognize the team. If one gives less than his or her best, they are finished. And one’s failure may be fatal to everyone else!
There is no unequivocal “right” or “wrong” way to sustain rural communities in this province and there are risk involved, regardless of the approach taken. It is about solving problems together that cannot be tackled alone. It’s about teamwork! It is about learning to plan and planning to learn. It is about leadership.
Those who are willing must assume leadership and initiate community discussions and generate ideas as to how we should proceed from here. People in all our communities must not only be given the opportunity to understand the changes that are occurring, but also be given the chance to explore reasons for the changes and their implications for the future.
The solution to any predicament in rural regions of the province is not to continue on the path that we have been following . We have had years of blaming everyone else for our problems while we hid under a cloak of self-pity. It has gotten us nowhere! Instead of bemoaning our situation and throwing up our hands in desperation we need to look at the strengths that we have in our communities/regions while being cognizant of our weaknesses. Only then will we be able to take advantage of opportunities that may exist. The major threat to this reality is the reluctance of many to participate in finding solutions because they are too busy dwelling on the problem.
If we value our societal make-up and love the province as much as we say we do then we must encourage a mind shift. If we value ourselves and wish to maintain the integrity of what we already have then we must be prepared to recognize our roles and responsibilities.
In the end, the future will unfold anyways. Morning will come whether we set the alarm or not. As individuals we have an obligation to influence the evolution. We cannot afford to sit by, hope for the best, prepare for the worst, and be surprised by what actually happens. As George Lamming once said, “the architecture of our future is not only unfinished, the scaffolding has hardly gone up.”
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