Community Pride: An Essential Ingredient for Economic Development (Lessons from my hometown)
This summer I experienced one of extremes that Canada has to offer — the breadth and overwhelming energy of its largest city (Toronto); contrasted against one of its smaller communities. This smaller community happened to be the small town where I grew up in rural Saskatchewan (called Shaunavon).
The contrast between these two extremes highlighted three things that I think us urbanists and city leaders can learn from small-town Canada..or at least, from this particular small town! I share these three learnings toward the end of this post.
Those who know me know that I’m a stubborn and adamant urbanist. I love cities and all that they have to offer. I often defend cities against their many detractors. It’s because I believe that they are perhaps one of humankind’s greatest inventions. They are the centres of commerce, innovation & culture. They are full of diverse ideas and diverse people and diverse experiences. They offer something for everyone, even the outcasts. They are also the most efficient way we have of organizing the world’s 8+ billion humans. We simply cannot all live in rural, remote places. It wouldn’t work.
One thing I’m not entirely sure of, however, is how I came to love cities so much when I actually grew up in a small town. The nearest actual cities were hours away by car (in Saskatchewan we measure distances by the time it takes to get there).
Whatever the reason, my biased affection for cities had not allowed me to consider the merits of small towns, though I certainly don’t judge anyone who chooses to live in them (many of these people include my friends and family!). That is, until I went home earlier this summer and witnessed something endearingly positive about my home town. I noticed a profound energy that I can only describe as “community pride”.
You might not consider this to be an observation worthy of the word “profound”. But there is a reason why I feel this is so important, especially in places that are vulnerable to big outside forces (like commodity prices).
Before I give some examples of Shaunavon’s unique energy and spirit. Let’s zoom out.
The graph above uses Statistics Canada data to make a dramatic and important demonstration: most agricultural-based communities like the one I grew up in have been in decline for decades and many no longer exist. The math is simple: large corporate farms deliver the economies of scale needed to make farming viable; but what they don’t require is excessive labour (aka people). Farming equipment has gotten so large and so efficient over the years that a small group of workers can manage increasingly large amounts of land. This means that towns — that used to be service centres for all these family farms, complete with schools, banks, grocery stores, grain elevators, pharmacies and a skating rink — are no longer needed at the same scale. My home province of Saskatchewan is dotted with towns that no longer exist (including the town that my mom was raised in called Dollard).
Towns that have sustained themselves are rare. Towns that have thrived are complete anomalies.
In simple terms, this is why Shaunavon’s energy is unique. Travel around rural Canada and you’ll see that the level of pride and energy that is expressed in Shaunavon is rare. Here are some photos I took on my visit just a few weeks ago.
One thing that was happening during my visit was this mural contest (there were several more that I didn’t share here). This might not be too impressive a feat until you realize how small of a town Shaunavon is: just 1700 people on a busy day.
Even more impressive. Check out all of the other activities going on during this same weekend:
I remarked to several people after the lawnmower races that I was just so impressed with how the town came together to host an event like this. At face value you might think it’s kind of silly, or perhaps a tad bit “redneck”. But let me tell you: this event is impressive. Lawnmowers that exceed 70 km/h ripping around a make-shift dirt track. Bright lights installed on lifts. Professional auctioneers in place to secure bids on each team. A watering truck to keep the track from drumming up dust. A large tent (seen above) that hosts a cabaret (with live band) late into the night. The list goes on.
Community Pride: A Self-Perpetuating Force
One thing that I did notice when I lived in Shaunavon many year ago is that the town seemed to produce talented people. I think the success of these talented people, even though many no longer live in the town, becomes a source of perpetuating energy that fuels the pride that the remaining residents have (and the pride that people like me who haven’t lived there for decades but still tell these stories!).
Though there are several examples of what I’m referring to by “talented people being from Shaunavon”, there is no better example than Hayley Wickenheiser. Hayley is one of the most decorated and celebrated Canadian athletes of all time. Among many of her impressive stats and records, she remains the only female to score a point in a men’s professional hockey league.
Hayley hasn’t lived in Shaunavon since she was maybe 13 years old, but if you asked her today — or at any time over her illustrious career — about her hometown, she will beam with pride.
Lessons for the City Folk: What can this small town teach us?
City-dwellers can be a bit pompous when it comes to learning from others — yet alone from small towns. Having lived in both, I think this is a mistake. Here are a few things that I think we can learn from them:
- Civic-engagement plays a fundamental role in community success.
By civic engagement I don’t mean voting participation (though that is never bad!). I mean the demonstrated ability for community members to get involved and make stuff happen. Or, if they’re not the leaders who are making the events or projects happen or even the volunteers who show up to help make sure things can proceed, civic engagement means showing up to the event or making the donation. Over and over. It also means creating welcoming spaces (or project committees) that bring in fresh perspectives and energy.
Communities like Shaunavon demonstrate civic engagement in spades. As I mentioned, every event listed in the program posted above took dozens of volunteers. Some events take months to plan and hundreds of volunteers to pull together. This is where cities can learn from small towns: though every place has committed people and volunteers, we do need more people to get involved at their neighbourhood levels, community-wide levels, and even at the metropolitan-region levels. Statistics have shown that the rate of volunteership is actually falling. Let’s get it back on track and make our communities better. Let’s also mentor the next generation of civic leaders.
2. Community Pride is Important…And it’s Self-Perpetuating.
In my career as an economic developer, I’ve been to hundreds of communities, mainly across western Canada and the great plains region of the USA. But many more in other countries too. To me, it is glaringly apparent when a community doesn’t have pride in itself. Buildings are run down. The people are less friendly or less helpful. Civic assets like parks, or recreation facilities look tired. Of course, there are many reasons for economic decline that go way beyond civic pride, but I’ve seen economies that are presumably strong where these same negative attributes are present. Plus, having pride of place in spite of a deflated economy can go a long way toward bringing it back. In fact, I believe that this sense of pride is self-perpetuating and can actually lead to positive economic results.
Let me give one example from Shaunavon. Over 10 years ago my good friend Garrett and his wife Kristy decided to move back to Shaunavon from Calgary to start a restaurant. At the time, Garrett was an award-winning chef who earned his chops in some of the best retaurants in the heart of downtown Calgary. Trust me when I give this testimony: this guy is an amazingly talented and passionate Chef. When word started circulating that they were about to do this, I have to admit: none of us in his friend circle thought it was a good idea. And we were remarkably (and happily) wrong! Go to Shaunavon today and find Harvest Eatery. Not only have they survived, they have been featured in provincial and national “best of” lists, have won numerous awards and accolades, have consulted with other restaurants, and have even recently opened another restaurant (in another town about an hour away). Read their story here.
What we can learn here is pretty simple: I don’t think that Garrett & Kristy would have taken this risk without the strong sense of community that they knew they were getting into. Something about the energy in this small town gave them enough confidence to take the risk (and starting a high-quality restaurant from scratch is a MASSIVE risk; yet alone in a small town of 1700 people).
3. Global Forces can be harsh. But we can react deliberatively and positively.
Like many small towns around the world, Shaunavon is at the harsh disposal of commodity-driven resources — the strength of which are based on global forces. The boom and bust cycles of oil & gas and agriculture make them vulnerable to forces that are 100% outside of their control. However, I would argue that this is true of pretty much all of the small towns, at least in the province of Saskatchewan. The difference between Shaunavon’s ability to sustain itself and the other communities that simply have not is something that exists as an invisible counterforce to these global forces (I actually wrote about this in a previous post here). And I think it’s — at least partially — a matter of the aforementioned phenomemon of civic engagement and community pride. These forces bring a kind of energy to the community that allows them to react to bust cycles and take advantage of boom cycles.
Conclusion
While I have no plans to move back to the place I grew up, I’m so glad that they caught me off guard in my recent visit. I remain pleasantly surprised at what I witnessed back there this summer. As an urbanist and economic development practitioner, it offered me insights that I hadn’t appreciated in the past. And it made me even more proud to talk about where I’m from and what the community has evolved into after nearly 20 years away. I would love to see more cities and communities care about themselves like smalltown Shaunavon, Saskatchewan does.
