A Rural Requiem

The rural way of life has always been defined as one of struggle and of sacrifice. Often lacking in the trappings of a cosmopolitan existence, and being at the mercy of the capricious nature of the elements, rural folk have assumed a requisite level of adversity in their quest for survival.

Through it all, through equal measures of ingenuity and industry, successive generations were able to meet, and exceed, the challenges often fatal to their forebearers.

As they became more prosperous, and their survival less tenuous, they could devote more of their energies and intellect to collective pursuits – the building of communities and societies. Indeed, the birth of the United States - and modern concepts of liberty and democracy - owes a great debt to ‘gentlemen farmers’ such as Washington and Jefferson who saw no inconsistency between toil in the fields, and grounding in the liberal arts – Greek, Latin, and Philosophy. Even the very nature of the Common Law that regulates our lives, in the creation of the Magna Charta and the principles of habeas corpus, emanated from the power struggles between the Crown and those who owned the land.

It was at this time when the urban age saw its genesis. The great metropolises of our day were the modest civic outposts of the previous era, just as vulnerable to the vagaries of nature and fate – perhaps more so.

All that urban society needed for its very survival lay beyond its grasp – food to nourish, raw materials to fashion into the products of a new age, and the money to construct the roads, public utilities and other assets that form the very sinew and muscle of the city state.

Rural society produced the food that fed the body, mined and harvested the raw resources that fed the factories, and, being the majority, produced the capital, taxation, and political leadership that fed the civic soul.

It was an equitable exchange, for, in return, rural people were able to obtain the modern implements of the new industrial age to improve their harvests, the education to improve their prospects, and the expanded markets to improve their condition of life.

Therein formed an unwritten social compact – strong cities benefitted the countryside, and that prosperous rural communities were vital to the sustenance of a growing urban populace.

Even in the first half of the twentieth century, when political and economic power shifted to the cities, the compact was honoured and preserved. Many urbanites were either from rural communities, or were the sons and daughters of rural folk. It was through them that the legacy of rural life was kept alive – through stories passed down, or the frequent pilgrimages to visit rural cousins who elected to stay.

These stories and shared experiences of a rural heritage were treasured, for these people did not necessarily forsake their rural homes out of spite or disdain, but in the quest of opportunity and more lucrative prospects.

In the past generation or so, however, something has changed. As time moved on, so, too have the urbanites whose connection to the land and rural life was strongest. Each new successive generation has moved one step further from the land that sustained their ancestors and their communities.

For them, rural Canada is but a part of history, a backdrop to past recollections. If it has any modern relevance, it is only as the scenic interlude that divides cities – gaps of wilderness that separate the outposts of what they deem as ‘civilization.’

It has been an enduring fact of this human condition that hostility and prejudice are borne of ignorance – of peoples and their condition. When indulged, it transforms into an ungrounded anger, leading to an indifference that denigrates and dehumanizes.

The first casualty has been the compact between urban and rural peoples. The partnership that built and sustained one of the world’s truly great nations has been neglected by most, and repudiated by some. The idea that strengthening one another was an achievable end, and a worthy goal, has been replaced by the notion of a ‘zero-sum game’, whereby the project of creating an ‘urban renaissance’ is wholly incompatible with strong, vibrant, and sustainable rural communities. Cooperation and mutual respect have been supplanted by policies that, while never articulating the words, have taken a stance for rural communities to ‘conform or die.’

One should only look to authorities who impose harsh rules on small communities and their economic progress in order to ameliorate conditions caused by neighbouring metropolises who have failed in their ability to regulate their own growth and sprawl in a responsible manner.

More incidious has been what this attitude has metastasized into. It has evolved into an arrogance that places a moral superiority of urban ‘modernism’ over a rural culture perceived as backward and degenerate.

To vocally defend the old compact, and assert one’s inalienable rights and interests as rural citizens is to be mocked and ridiculed as a ‘hick’ or a ‘redneck.’ These tactics are purposeful in the sense that the debate shifts away from the legitimate grievances of the rural people, and rests on whether those people possess the mental acuity to understand either the world, or their true welfare. Without having a single grievance answered, the rural citizen must defend either their intellectual capacities, or the charge that they are not simply embracing the dying relics of a bygone era.

They also belie an attitude that is anathema to the rural ethos. ‘Redneck’ is used as a slur, and yet it pertains to the reddened neck of farm workers, and other labourers, whose skinned was tanned as they performed their toil. While a badge of hard, honest work is held as a badge of ridicule, those who work in towers moving papers, money, and other contracts from one place to another are hailed as modern heroes of industry. While the common man and woman do their duty in anonimity, we celebrate the exploits of those who sing, but cannot write the song, those who pretend to be someone else based on the stories of wordsmiths, and those who receive fame for no other reason that they are willing to be the court jester for the masses.

The distances of time and priorities of thought permeate mass culture, economics, and every human pursuit, and make us alien to one another.

Today, the policies of government and industry that so affect rural life – agriculture, and natural resources – are devised by men and women who, in theory, may never have set foot in a rural community, much less lived there. Their ideas are approved for adoption by politicians who, for the most part, may not have a single rural citizen as a constituent. Many times, these policies are presented by a Minister of Agriculture whose riding lacks farms, or a Minister of Natural Resources whose very own home community possesses none of the attributes that fall within their remit.

The final stroke of indignation, however, rests within the attitudes of those who come to rural communities in the name of openness and fraternity, while seeking to alter and reconstitute the very nature of those towns, villages, and burghs. Rather than educating themselves about the enduring truths and legacies of these special places, they see something that is in need of fixing, or correcting to a standard they have imported from the city – that of an urban community with fewer people.

Like the zealous missionaries of centuries past, who destroyed local customs and wisdom in order to ‘save the heathens,’ many urbanites come to urban communities and, with equal passion, use the power of government and other modes of influence brokering much as Jesuit priests used the Cross and the Holy Book.

In the name of the environment, the economy, and of cultural standards that are continually revised and refined, rural people are told that they are somehow deficient of standards and a morality that befits today’s world. The economic and cultural practices of generations are an abomination to modernity and civilized comportment.

The neglect of rural issues, the breaking of the compact, the indignity that comes from the debasing of one’s intellect, culture, and traditions – all of these have contributed to a quiet discontent that has become less quiet of late.

We are the people of the countryside. We mine and drill for the materials that feed your factories. We grow the food that nourishes your bodies. From rough wilderness, we laid the foundations for your governments, your laws, and your towers of glass and steel.

If you choose to come here to lecture us on the preservation our natural heritage, it is simply because you have squandered your own. While our communities are as old as yours, we may yet still breathe the fresh air, and drink the fresh water from where we live. We are not a land of brownfields, polluted streams, and chemical poisons. Save your own soul before you attempt to save ours.

If you come to correct perceived defects in our philosophy of life, it is because you are woefully ill-informed of its merits and its purpose. If you bemoan what rural communities receive by their own right, it is because you are ignorant of a past where you were dependent and vulnerable upon us, a present where waste and malappropriation exist in your own home, and a future where ‘civilization’ can give you everything but the very thing you need to live.

The trust that assured our mutual survival has been broken. Our compact has been betrayed. Sadly, while your progress has imbued you with a sense of invincibility and inevitability, deep in your heart, you must confess that we are an inseparable part of your past, and without us, there will be no future.

The time has come for us to reconcile our relationship, to come to terms with what divides us, and not simply to assimilate us into a mere image of oneself. It is time to place a true and equitable value to what has, and continues to be contributed. It is time to end the intolerance and indifference in the plight of the countryside, and her people.

The failure to meet this challenge – to assure a place for rural people, their communities, and their way of life in the context of a broader society, and under terms that are respectful and tolerant of our uniqueness – will mark no less than the eventual decline of all we have assumed for our future, its hope, promise and prosperity.