Reversing the Tide - Successful Strategies for Rural Communities

Reversing the Tide: Strategies for Successful Rural Revitalization – This conference, to be held in Prince George October 6-8, 2008, will convene world class organizations from BC, Canada, and abroad, to share their tested strategies for successful rural revitalization.

Join delegates from all levels of government, First Nations, economic development and community economic development practitioners, interior BC business & finance organizations, academics, and non-profit organizations to learn about real life success stories that can be taken back to interior BC communities.

Delegates will learn about economic, environmental, and social well-being issues that contribute to vibrant rural communities via plenary sessions and small workshops. Topics will include, but not be limited to current thinking on future economic and social trends relevant to interior BC communities, effective regional rural investment, affordable housing to support in-migration, and effective partnerships between Aboriginals/non-Aboriginals.

For more information and to register for the conference please visit, www.civicinfo.bc.ca/Conference/ruralrevitalization.asp. Early registration is highly recommended since space is limited.

Dennis Mackay not running for re-election

Dennis Mackay is one of the MLAs that I have a lot of time for. I like the fact that he is forth right and open with his opinions. I have never felt he is in politics for his own benefit, but is there to do what he thinks is best for his community and to express opinions that are not raised.

When we have MLAs that are willing to critize their own party, when there are MLAs putting the interests of the electorate over their own political career, we all benefit.

The loss of Dennis Mackay and Corky Evans will be a huge blow to the legislature post May 2009. These two men from opposite sides of the house have worked hard for rural BC and their type of voices will be even more important as the legislature grows in size and rural political representation is still smaller.

There is no need to be from a rural riding to be a voice for rural BC. One of the strongest voices in the house for rural communities has been Ralph Sultan from West Vancouver, though he to may chose to retire.

Short Exchange about the woes of Lillooet with Erdman

Mining is a long shot at the best of times. There are only a few dozen mines in BC and maybe another 30-50 strong projects in development.

The Lillooet area has some potential, but nothing really dramatic at the moment. The Elizabeth Project is mainly a stock market thing and not much else. Bralorne - I have no idea what Louis Wolfin is doing, it looked good on paper but nothing is happening. Much of the highest potential for mines has been made off limits in the South Chilcotin park. There is some early stage exploration happening near Lytton, but all early stage projects are longshots. I believe that the Cayoosh Creek area near to town holds a strong potential for a hard rock gold mine. The area has not been really looked at by anyone in decades or more and modern technology has never been used to explore the old mine sites.

And finally there is Hat Creek.......

What you do not note is micro hydro. The Lillooet region has the potential to produce thousands of megawatts of micro-hydro (Walden North is one example in operation). There are hundreds of sites in the region. If you were to develop 5 to 10 per year you would be producing a lot of blue collar construction work for decades. Something in the order of 100 construction related jobs per year. Once the sites are build, there is a need for people to operate them and maintain them, the more there are, the more people will be able to base themselves out of Lillooet permanently for the work.

Small manufacturing has always been possible, but Lillooet is not in a good location for it because of the logistic problems.

I still believe the former forestry building would be a good office complex and should be put to that use. Imagine convincing a video games company to make use of it for their work. It gives them away to offer a very different lifestyle for their workers - or even allow them to 'get out of the city' for a few months and be in adventure land.

Lillooet's biggest tourism problem is that it lacks the infrastructure to get people to stay and enjoy. First off the town needs a backpackers hostel - whoever figures out that one will have a strong and steady business 12 months of the year. Second the area needs to make the back country the focus and offer ways to help people get out there and enjoy the hiking, ice climbing and other more extreme adventure tourism. I believe there is a very good business possible for someone to be a Stein Valley taxi service - drive people to the top from the road that comes off of the Duffy Lake and then pick them up in Lytton. Connect this to a place with overnight accommodation and you can charge for 2 nights in town to stay (one before and one after) and another fee for the drop off and pick.

Agriculture needs at least a few people with some money to build up the business. The heavy gardening/light farming model is not going to make for the break out.

Lillooet should look at a food tourism - wine, artisan cheeses, breads, fruits and a decent restaurant or two that cater to the upper end.


jade valley wrote:

Some thoughts re financials and local forest sector (not for paper, just thoughts) We must admit that the article below is dramatic and when such 'reputable' outlets say this, the whole truth is probably a lot more dramatic than that:

http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/28/news/economy/disaster_sloan.fortune/index.htm?cnn=yes

When one reads the above financial article by CNN and considers its alarmist message in tandem with the article in the Lillooet News last week saying that our local mill's company is close to a billion in debt and can't meet obligations to bond holders, and bond holders won't renegotiate payment schedules, and when one then factors in the dramatic decline in housing starts and all the unclaimed houses flooding the market due to sub-primes, one must ask if the long- predicted diminution of our local forest industry component is not closer than we thought. If so, the question then becomes 'What next?'

a) tourism, b) agriculture, c) mining d) small manufacturing?....

d) Small manufacturing, whether a tech media studio, pottery, jade carving, furniture-making like Walden North once did, or food processing is possible and can benefit from the relatively low overhead cost-benefits in living here.

c) Mining is seeing a dramatic up-swing across the Province and particularly the Kamloops area and this local highly mineralized region has many proven deposits of copper, silver, molybdenite, nickel, as well as the gold region able to produce again with new technology and capitalization. It needs a 'mineral miner', not a 'paper miner'.

b) Agriculture was once much more developed here than now. Lillooet had a fruit growers co-op selling volume to the coast as well as a cannery in the building of the second hand store next to the railway. When Lillooet was host to the Japanese-Canadian internment camps, they soon produced many fields of vegetables supplying this cannery. When I was a teen, I remember large fields of onions, beans, and field tomatoes machine harvested and shipped to the coast market both across the river and out Texas creek Rd. As these 'high end yield' products went, they were replaced largely by hay production, which, in effect, exports large volumes of nutrients from benchland topsoil at very low income per acre compared to more intensive agriculture like U Pik. The price of food is rising dramatically, and the rising cost of gas mandates that food be grown closer to home.

a) Tourism is perhaps our most under-developed potential, due in part to the forest industry's discomfort with the 'environmentalism' associated with this industry.
Also, many workers comfortable with the forest industry or mining industry do not see themselves easily making the adjustment to the tourism industry, and this fear is often expressed as: ' I don't want a job as a chambermaid for some lodge.' The reality is different, of course. The tourism industry requires a wide variety of jobs, from lift mechanics to all the trades, continuing construction crews, to cooks, managers, service industry professionals, guides, drivers, pilots, white collar workers, and all kinds of ancillary job aspects and new industries that attach themselves here due to the proximity of a tourism venue here.

The 'government sector' is a 'service sector' to industry; it is not industry as such and cannot provide a substitute for a productive economic base. When we are talking about the 'economic development' of a region, we are talking about 'private sector economic development', and no amount of government initiatives, studies, commissions, and safety nets can make up for the global fact that economic productive activity that works is private sector activity. Our post-war decades, globally, have proven this in spades, and locally we have borne witness to this for decades now.

What governance at all levels CAN do locally, is send out the message (advertising) about our local advantages of climate, resources, and favoured location so that the private sector with the required skills and capitalization knows we exist. With always forestry to fall back on, we have not done this, and so have fallen way behind the rest of the province in this regard of diversifying our economic options in the interest of long-term job-stability. This diversification initiative has been talked about for decades, but not effectively acted upon. With the alarming news about the US financial situation noted in the CNN article linked above, I would expect it's time to make up for lost ground in this regard.

Best regards, ET-M

---

You could win a 2008 Mitsubishi Eclipse from Sympatico / MSN Autos. Hunt for the Total Eclipse NOW!

The New Electoral Boundaries in BC

This week the NDP and the Liberals agreed to a new set of boundaries in BC for elections. They chose to preserve the northern and rural ridings and added six ridings in urban BC.

I am happy to see representation kept for the north, but I am concerned with the population gaps that are emerging. There will be 10 ridings in BC that will be under 75% of the average population of a riding, the smallest population will be less than half the average. Stikine will have just over 20 000 people and on the other end of the spectrum there will be five ridings with close to 60 000. The gap is getting too big to justify. One in eight ridings being well under the population numbers is going to lead to problems for representation.

The disparity can continue for a long time, federally we are willing to accept that BC deserves a lot less representation than Atlantic Canada or the praries, but it is not ideal and will be leading to problem with the concept of confederation.

There is only one good answer to the problems of representation in BC. The north needs to separate and form a new province. The economies of the north and urban BC are too different to put them into one province

A Town Without Children

This is a song by a friend of mine, Erdman Tuemp of Lillooet BC.

His song echos a problem in almost all the small towns of BC - there needs to be some substantive change to allow youth to remain in the towns and to have youth be interested in staying.

A large motivation for why I left Lillooet in 2004 was that I could not see a future for my kids in the town. I could not see the teen years being anything positive.

Now if I could only get Erdman to make an MP3 of this song, our send me the chords......

A TOWN WITHOUT CHILDREN

A town without children

Lays deep in this land

Where waters are flowing

The old take their stand

Against new beginnings

Afraid to arrange

New forms of employment

Afraid of all change

The old are officials

On government pay

They fear any change would

Make them go away

The old made careers with

The jobs that weren’t there

They built on relief that

Was based on their care

(ch) They think they’re important

With what they believe

While holding positions

Their children all leave

The old were sincere in

Their care for the lost

But somehow they lost track

Of who pays the cost

The old are officials

Who fear any change

They know their own limits

And limit the range

Their Main Street is peaceful

Few children roam there

The old do their shopping

All stooped full of care

From holding positions

That drove the young out

The old are the righteous

Who never knew doubt

(ch) They think they’re important

With what they believe

While holding positions

Their children all leave

The waters are flowing

The land fills with Spring

The flowers are blooming

With songbirds that sing

The old cling to old ways

The young go away

Officials are always

Important that way

A town without children

Is dreadful at best

The old are officials

Who limit the rest

The government pays with

No jobs to be found

And so these officials

Won’t turn things around

(ch) They think they’re important

With what they believe

While holding positions

Their children all leave

The sun’s always shining

On fields made to grow

A town without children

Has no where to go

Officials are well paid

To stop what may come

For those needing jobs that

May help feed the young

Officials are objects

That do not know life

To keep their positions

They feed endless strife

They block all the options

That others may find

They block all the children

Because they are blind

(ch) They think they’re important

With what they believe

While holding positions

Their children all leave

The old are officials

In towns where they rule

The people with children

Will not be their fool

With families leaving

The old will remain

To walk down their Main Street

To walk there again

The government pays them

To keep the pretence

That governance trumps what

Is just common sense

The cities are growing

As towns have to shrink

Because of officials

And what they all think

(ch) They think they’re important

With what they believe

While holding positions

Their children all leave

This Main Street is peaceful

With old folks all day

With government pensions

They’re happy that way

With old folks officials

Who climb every rung

This Main Street has no room

For anyone young

They block any jobs that

Young families need

To cling to positions

From which the old feed

They care for beliefs that

Keep old folks where they

Make towns without children

To keep them at bay

(ch) They think they’re important

With what they believe

While holding positions

Their children all leave

5th BC Rural Communities Summit

5th BC Rural Communities Summit
" Building Communities Together "
A joint conference of the
BC Rural Network, Cariboo Regional District and Rural Team BC
100 Mile House Lodge and Conference Centre
March 13-15, 2008
100 Mile House, BC

The BC Rural Network, in partnership with the Cariboo Regional District and Rural Team BC, are please to host the 5th BC Rural Communities Summit in 100 Mile House, BC.

The need and desire to improve networking and exchange of information among rural communities has been clearly identified and requested by rural stakeholders across BC.

“Building Communities Together” will be an opportunity for rural residents, and representatives of rural organizations from across the province to come together to discuss ways to coordinate their efforts to improve networking and build the capacity of rural communities in BC.

• More than 25 workshops and presentations that will provide new skills, explore the experiences, and share the lessons learned by rural and remote communities across BC.
• Social events and networking opportunities to develop new contacts and partnerships
• The Annual General Meeting of the BC Rural Network
• Inspiring speakers and plenary sessions
• Youth sessions and participation: planned and presented by rural youth

REGISTER EARLY!

The conference registration brochure, as well as travel and accommodation information is available on-line. Please click on the Registration tab at the top of this page.

You may also request a print version of the registration package by contacting Maureen at:
summit@bcruralnetwork.ca
250-392-1400

A limited number of travel bursaries are available on a first come, first served basis to rural residents and representatives of rural organizations who would otherwise not be able to attend. Information on how to apply for a travel bursary is also available on the Registration page, and in the print packages.

Be sure to make your travel and accommodation arrangements early, to avoid disappointment!

The Province of Northern BC

The time is here for a province of Northern BC.

Canada would benefit from there being two pacific coast provinces. Northern BC would be very motivated into making the ports of Kitimat, Prince Rupert and Stewart into major ports for the nation. The highway 16 corridor could be made into the primary import/export conduit for the nation.

Northern BC would have a population of 320 000 people - the second smallest in Canada but a province with a lot of resources on hand. Large oil and gas reserves - enough for several generations. Most of the new mines in Canada. Large coal reserves. The Peace has grains and the rest of the region has a low to cattle. And the grand daddy of all is forestry. This would be a province that would be able to look after itself.

Northern BC would also be able to be control its own destiny - it would decide the pace of development. It would no longer be beholden to all these MLAs from the south.

The creation of Northern BC would quickly speed up the development of Prince George as a significant city. With the building of a legislature and a new civil service, Prince George would gain a new class of people. Right now anyone going to the senior levels of the civil service or in elected politics has to leave the north. With a capital in PG, there would be more people moving in.

With the rise of PG as a capital, there would be bigger demand for flights in and out of PG. The CBC would have full time radio there and the market for other media would expand. The rise of PG would also mean that transport would change - there will be a demand for flights from Dawson Creek/Fort St John, Prince Rupert, and elsewhere into PG. The need to fly to Vancouver and back would be reduced. Connections with Alberta would be increased.

Northern BC could choose to look to the south or Alberta for some services or create their own.

Northern BC is also home to the most interesting and innovative university in Canada. UNBC is the core to the dynamic expansion of the economy of Northern BC.

In 20 years I can see Northern BC as a strong province with 500 000 people and unparalleled financial resources. The province would be centred on three main hubs. The Peace for Oil and Gas, Prince George for government and forestry and Prince Rupert/Kitimat/Terrace for shipping.

Northern BC would be well placed to work with Alaska and Yukon to build the rail, electrical and pipeline infrastructure needed to bring the North into the grid of the rest of North America.