in praise of small

At the time of confederation, just 19% of Canadians lived in "urban" areas. The rest lived on the land or in small towns.  By the time I was born, nearly 60% of Canadians lived in an urban centre. Now 80% of Canadians live in a city and just 13% live in small towns. 

With remote work, people are moving back to smaller centres. Some say they are moving due to the affordability of housing and the slower pace of life. The shorter commute and the comfort of community and wanting to give their kids a safe childhood are other reasons. Perhaps the pandemic has made people re-evaluate their priorities.

The recent CBC Contest "Best Small Town BC" has brought back a lot of memories and made me think about small town Canada. What's good? What's bad? And how does it shape you as a person? 

Me and my mom. Trail, BC.

My dad grew up in Vancouver and my mom was from Edmonton. They met in Dawson Creek and lived in Victoria, then Trail where I was born, then back to Dawson Creek where I grew up, and then Tumbler Ridge. They were city people who chose small town life.

Me and my best friends Patti and Vivianne

Your history shapes you and that's something you don't even think about while that shaping is happening.  I know my small town childhood shaped me. If there was an event, we went to it. If there was a club, we joined it. We went to Sunday School. I learned to figure skate and swim and sing and play piano very badly. We volunteered or more accurately, were volunteered by our mom for various projects of her design. If someone needed help, we gave it. We went to the ballet and classical music performances and every eccentric play the drama teacher put on. We dressed up for Bonanza Days. We took drives into the countryside and had picnics in the wilderness. Our house was a madhouse of friends and committee meetings and awkward dinners with strangers. It was the Grand Central Station of my mom's un-ending megaprojects. 

Proud members of the Mile Zero Figuring Skating Club.
Where my mom made the costumes and my dad ran the lights and became a figure skating judge.

In my small town, my classmates lived on farms and apartments and trailer parks and suburban homes. My friends' parents were geologists and engineers and mechanics and secretaries and truck drivers and ranchers and salesmen. That's who I hung out with. That's what I knew. When it was my birthday my mom insisted every girl in my class be invited so no one would feel left out. I didn't know there were places where richer people lived in one neighbourhood and poor people lived in another. I didn't know about classes or status or race.

At the neighbours

Our friends came and went. Mostly they went. Dawson Creek was a stopover for upwardly mobile people, a place to make a name for yourself and then move on. Unless you were teachers, which my parents were. Then you mostly stayed.

In front of our local TV station, CJDC.

I don't remember feeling deprived of anything as a kid. Our house was big and beautiful, or so it seemed. We had friends. We had things to do. It never occurred to us the city might be a place where we could or would live. Cities were places you visited where you ate in restaurants and shopped at a mall and visited the museum and the zoo and the parliament buildings and the planetarium. Those were things you did on vacation, not daily life. I didn't get why you would want to live there.

At the legislature, Edmonton.

But you do need to live in a city to go to university and when it was time to go, I was ready. Ready to try the city. Ready to spread my wings and find out if there were more people like me out in the world.  At university, almost everyone I met was from a small town. Places like Grimshaw and Manning and Fort St. John and Taber. We had our similarities. For one thing, we spoke the common language of "Git 'er done" and "let "er rip". We were first to organize something and the last to leave. We'd talk about where we were from with that mix of pride and shame small town people have. Making jokes that we all understood. We talked about our homes as places we were from, not places we were going back to. You go away to school so you can be your best self and maybe you can't be that person in your hometown.

Easter Sunday. with the family.

Your town is part of you. Just like your family. You know there are shortcomings but it's yours. It's where you're from. It's part of who you are. So when city people said, "Oh my god, you're from a small town? What do you do all day? How can you stand it?"  I laughed along like a racialized person laughs at a racist joke, but it wasn't all that funny. 

My brother and me, junior cheerleaders for the South Peace Penguins.

I never moved back to the town where I grew up. I looked for work in a city and didn't get it. I lived in Sexsmith, got married to a city man who would have preferred city life. But city life never happened. After Sexsmtih we travelled, then lived in Fort Resolution, followed by Viking, followed by Slave Lake- a town very much like Dawson Creek-where we raised our family. When it came time to retire, we moved to an even smaller and very different town that checked the boxes for what we valued and could afford. 

Slave Lake

Over the years I have learned a few things.

In a small town, your life plays out on a small and highly visible stage. That is a challenge. Sometimes the character you play fits a stereotype that becomes impossible to shake. The busybody, the small town philosopher, the bully, the funny guy, the nerd, the person who came looking to follow a dream and then gave up. Often the stereotype is wrong as stereotypes are. If you want a different reputation, it's hard to become a new "you". I know a few girls who were thought of as slutty. They had to leave so their reputation didn't become their destiny.  "The rumour mill is deadly," says my cousin. But "I loved knowing everyone."  For me, if I had stayed in Dawson Creek, I would always be the principal's daughter. The goody goody. I wanted to escape that reputation and it took me a few years to acknowledge that's what I am, and what I would have been no matter where I lived. As they say, wherever you go, there you are.

Me and my high school friends at the boat race, Dawson Creek

There aren't many people in small towns. So you end up with friends that might not be like you. Maybe not the nerdy chess club kid from high school. Maybe friends you would never have gotten to know in a bigger place where there are more people like you. That's a good thing. If you are a teacher in a small town, your students are everywhere. They are your servers and mechanics and your police officers. And who sometimes need your help. If your town is transient, many of your friends move away. That happened to me as a kid and again as an adult. It happened to my kids as well. That is not a good thing. It can make you lonely and sad and sometimes you might just feel like its not worth the effort to even make friends.

Our very good friends, the Jorgensons who moved away

One thing about small town life is that when people are "in your business" they can also have your back. When there's an accident or a death or a natural disaster, everyone knows. They know, they empathize and often, they help. Because whatever happened to your neighbour could also happen to you. During and after the Slave Lake fires neighbour helped neighbour. They helped each other get out of town. They helped each other rebuild. They helped other towns who had experienced their own disasters. When you are part of a community, that's what you do. 

Helping hands mural, CJ Schurter School, a mural created after the Slave Lake wildfires

Small towns are not all alike. Some are friendly and welcoming and others are not. We lived in a prairie town for a whole year and only one person even said hello. Where we live now, every single one of our neighbours introduced themself within two hours of our arrival. 

Some small towns are keen to let you try new things and others love the status quo. While in the unfriendly (and may I add, dying) town, we were never encouraged to participate in anything, in our next place I joined the choir, and my husband took up acting and stand up comedy.  In our time there, with other community members, we produced 80 plays, wrote and self published a national bestseller, created a performing arts association, and organized the delivery of over 400 original works of art. Could we have done that in a city? Probably not, but then again maybe we wouldn't have needed to.

The Stage North crew, Slave Lake.

One of my friends says that in a small town you learn to do new things. Because you have to. If you want something to happen, you have to make it happen. If there is no live music and you value that, you organize it. If you love the theatre, you may have to build the theatre. If you love to eat good food, you might have to learn to cook - or make friends with people who can cook. If you enjoy soccer, or synchronized swimming or cricket, you have to use your skills to coach, organize and participate. If you want change in politics, you have to get involved. Whether it's lobbying or protesting or starting your own constituency association. You need new skills for those things and when you can make something happen, that's exhilarating. When you don't, it's depressing. And exhausting. 

Small towns are often closer to the wilderness. That is something my husband and I love. It is what made Slave Lake a good fit for us for some time. It's why we chose to live where we do now. Proximity to the wilderness puts you in contact with people of different values. Some love the fishing, hunting and offroading opportunities. But it's also skiing and wild skating and hiking and paddling. That can lead to an uneasy coexistence between factions. But you already know how to coexist. Because you are from a small town where you have had to do that forever.

Columbia Valley views

We do not all have the same feelings towards our small towns. My small town childhood informed my attitudes as much as my parents did. My own children no doubt have different feelings. All three of them live in cities quite happily and I imagine that's where they will stay. One of my cousins lived in a very small town, a small city and now an acreage. He says he made friends wherever he lived and "any place is what you make it."  I suppose that's true. 

Small towns are not for everyone; single people, those with specialized training, those who want to be entertained, those who like large malls or fancy restaurants or who want to easily engage in cultural events or attend professional sporting events. If you are a member of a minority group, you may not find anyone like you. But if you are one of those people thinking about moving to a small town for improved quality of life- if you like to be involved and make a difference, set aside your preconceived notions.Bring your imagination and your energy. Try small town life. You might just find a place to call home.

March 11

How do we measure our lives?

Lives, measured in numbers.

Your bank balance

Your height and weight

The price at the pump

Your phone number

The amount on your paycheque

The number on your tax bill

Your social insurance number

Your pension

And a number 

A number you track as it goes up and up and up 

Until it's too big and you stop paying attention

Because it is so much easier just to pretend 

Lives, made up of people. 

People you know and love

People you have met

"Friends" on Facebook

"Followers" on Twitter

People who "like" your Instagram photos

People who hire you and fire you

People you work with and people you work for

People who lead and people who follow

People who are there when you need them even if you don't know who they are

People you will never meet

Millions upon millions of people

People you chose to help

And those you turned your back on

Lives, made up of time.

Seconds and minutes and hours and days and weeks and months and years

Moments of clarity

Minutes of indescribable joy 

Hours of contentment

Hours of despair

The day you met the love of your life

The day you met your dog for the first time

The day your child was born

The day your dad died 

The day your town burned to the ground

The day a pandemic was declared

Months of waiting

Waiting for summer

Waiting for Christmas 

Waiting to meet the "one"

Waiting to buy a house

Waiting to sell a house

Waiting to start your career and then waiting for it to end

Waiting for it all to go back to normal. 

Whatever "normal" means.

And years.

So many years

Years of childhood

Years of raising children

Years of figuring it out and you never really do

Years when you did your part,

Day after day, hour after hour, minute after minute

And then

A second

A second when you made a choice

The second you decided not to care.

Charlotte Small

Imagine a young Metis girl with a wiry build. A girl who was shy but also active and alert. She had black eyes and dark hair and glowing, almost copper coloured skin. When she was just six years old, her father abandoned his “country wife” and his three small children in a small village in northern Saskatchewan. It was a common practice back in those days- white men would marry strong, independent women with skills to survive in a rugged land, and then leave them behind as they returned to Europe where they married women who were- in the eyes of some- more “refined”. After she was abandoned, the girl’s mother made ends meet as best she could as a trader and a translator in the fur trade.

The girl learned to read and write at a time when most women were illiterate. She was fluent in Cree, English and French as well as several other indigenous dialects. She could hunt and fish and build a shelter and manage a canoe. She was clever and resourceful with many skills that allowed her to travel not only throughout the wild northern lands, but also amongst the different peoples of Canada.

When the girl was a teenager, she met an older man and they were married-not in a church but in a traditional Cree ceremony in a small northern village. She and her husband traveled over land, through steep mountain passes and burning hot plains, her husband navigating by the stars. They traveled by horseback, fording raging rivers and trudging through deep snow. They traveled by canoe on rivers large and small, portaging as needs be. Her skill with the canoe led to her being called "Woman of the Paddle Song".  They lived in tents and hastily constructed forts. They hunted and fished and were often near starvation until she snared rabbits or caught fish. They were threatened by the Piegan. They traveled 42,000 kilometers in all - from Fort Vermilion to Kalispell- from the Pacific Ocean to the Great Lakes to the St Lawrence. Further than Lewis and Clark. Further than most Canadians.

She acted as liaison for her husband in his work. She was able to speak the languages of the indigenous people they met on their journeys. She was instrumental in establishing good relations between her husband and the people they met. She helped negotiate alliances and find hardy people to help them travel, explore and find enough to eat. Over the course of 12 years, she gave birth to five babies, often traveling with her tiny ones and her newborns. Once her children were nearly crushed by a horse who her husband shot immediately in a fit of rage. Another time her daughter got lost along a river and was found 6 hours later, huddling near a snowbank. Sometimes she and the little ones were left behind at a trading post for months on end.

Her husband called her his "lovely wife" and "the Blood of her people" but rarely mentioned her in his pages and pages of journals. He recognized that her skills gave him an advantage over other explorers and traders. There is no doubt their marriage was one of love and commitment.

When their travels were over, she and her husband settled in the east where they were married in a church ceremony. She never felt she belonged. The skills that kept her family alive were not recognized. Where once having your feet in both worlds was an asset, now being of mixed blood was a liability. Yet she persevered. Two of her children died and she was heartbroken. She had more children. Two more died. 13 children in all. Initially successful in their business enterprises, some bad decisions led to bankruptcy. Her husband’s years of work- the maps he created and the journal he wrote- went unrecognized and unattributed in their lifetime. She and her husband lost everything and had to live their last years in poverty in a room in their daughter’s house. At night the two of them would walk out into the night and look at the stars, perhaps remembering the life they left behind, perhaps hoping they could chart a different course.

Sculpture in Invermere BC. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncF6vTuJupc

Three months after her husband died, she also passed away. They were married for 58 years.

We know him as one of Canada's foremost adventurers and explorers. Would he have been able to accomplish all he had without her by his side? Without her unique knowledge and skills and her ability to live in both worlds?  Some say their marriage helped define our nation. 

We should know her name. 

Charlotte Small.

Woman of the Paddle Song.

Portrait of Charlotte Small. Artwork by Wandering Jayne Creatives.

https://www.westernhorsereview.com/blogs/small-matters/

Aretha van Herk, Travels with Charlotte, Canadian Geographic Journal