Seven Strategies for Small Town Revitalization
We have to look at the Big Picture….
Brenda Goodine
People born in the 1940’s have experienced this in their lifetimes.
Dr. Reimer, Professor Emeritus at Concordia University in Montreal, states, “It’s not a bleak picture. I wouldn’t represent that small towns are declining. I think they are diversifying, if anything, and there ae some fantastic small towns that are doing well.”
Dr. Reimer has spent over 30 years studying issues relating to rural Canada. A former director of Canada’s New Rural Economy Project, Reimer says that while many remote communities may die out, others can survive the continuing trend towards urbanization by changing how they do business.
Reimer states, “Surviving communities are those that can anticipate and figure out a strategy to deal with these general trends, to mitigate the negative aspects and take advantage of the opportunities.”
Read this paragraph again…it provides the answer in a nutshell!
Reimer says there are 7 key characteristics of a surviving rural community, focussing on diversifying the local economy or social structure. “Surviving communities will be those that look at ALL assets…the social, cultural, environmental, not just the economic, and work at building their capacities in all of them.”
The following are the Seven Strategies that Reimer notes that small towns have used to succeed.
1.) Form alliances with nearby urban regions. A town that can closely partner with a city and show how its community serves as an advantage to the urban place will continue to thrive, Reimer says, citing communities in the Catskill Mountains that are critical to the health of New York City’s water supply as an example. “New York has a formal arrangement with communities in the Catskills where they exchange community development funds in exchange for communities being stewards of their water supply”, he says. “Those communities are going to do relatively well.”
On a personal note, this strategy takes me back to 1970, when my husband and I started Goodine Petroleum Ltd. in Perth-Andover. He was 28 and I was 27. We had 99 fuel oil customers, one or two service stations to deliver gas and some farmers. To be successful we had to branch out and work hard to get more customers. Within five years we had 1,500 fuel oil customers, many more farmers, and in a few years we delivered to at least 35 service stations using our own trucks and those of the heating oil distributors in Grand Falls, New Denmark, St. Quentin, Bath, Bristol and Plaster Rock.
One of our most successful strategies was going to Ontario and signing up Maritime-Ontario Transport, Home Hardware and Roy Clough Transport companies to a credit card plan to purchase their fuel at Valley View Texaco (on the old T.C.H. below Perth-Andover) while in New Brunswick. Goodine Petroleum Ltd. delivered this fuel to Valley View. Remember to look outside of the box! Be creative, form alliances.
2.) Go Global. “Those communities that figure out what they have that urban people want around the world and market it to them are GOING TO DO BETTER”, Reimer says, stressing that the innovation can’t be commodities based. “Mechanization means that you’re actually going to have fewer people.” Instead, Reimer points to examples like Warner, Alberta, which recently opened one of the premier girl’s hockey schools in Canada. Reimer explains, “The local people supported them in financing. They figured out what people want from a world point of view, which is pretty important.”
3.) Welcome Immigration. According to Statistics Canada, fewer than 5 percent of immigrants coming to Canada choose to settle in rural communities which is a KEY factor in the growth of major cities.
Reimer says that towns that open their doors to immigrants will be able to compensate for future population drops, and he points to Steenback, Manitoba as an example. “They sought out newcomers to support a bunch of manufacturing businesses, and now they have levels of immigration that rival Toronto, which is absolutely phenomenal. “Rather than circling the wagons and protecting yourself consider: It’s OK, what kind of people do we want to live here and how can we welcome them and make them want to live here?”
In 1981 the Perth-Andover Refugee Council welcomed Boat People refugees Duong and Psan-Cu Lao and their 9 month old daughter Hai Macau from Vietnam. They later moved to Toronto, where they have done extremely well, Psan-Cu opening her own business of making Chinese food and Duong holding down a full time job. Macau has graduated and plays piano. Three more children were added to the family. Think about how enriched Perth-Andover would have been if this family had stayed here.
4.) Build a Strong Social Infrastructure. Small towns are particularly susceptible to boom and bust cycles, in which closing factories threaten to decimate a community’s population. Reimer says a solution to mitigating the cycles is to make the community so attractive to people that everyone will be vested in solving the town’s problems. “Make it so attractive to the people who are there that they’re interested in coming up with ways to maintain our situation”, he says, pointing to tiny Inuvik, NWT as an example. In that community, leaders spent boom money on hospitals, schools and an impressive recreation centre to make the region appealing during the next bust. “If the people love living there, they come up with alternative options and ways to survive.”
As an example: In Perth-Andover we have Atlantic Potato Distributors. Ralph Hanscome, originally from the area, returned with his wife and sons and established this business in the Industrial Park. APD employs at least 50 people, and is a great asset to the community in many ways. We need to encourage people who love a rural life-style to return or move to Perth-Andover!
5.) Exploit All of a Town’s Assets. Reimer says rural communities need to use the assets that are special to them to woo immigrants and urbanites. “Surviving communities will be those which look at all of their assets – the social, cultural, environmental, not just the economic – and work at building their capacities at all of them”, he says, pointing to the Cap-a-L’Aigle, Quebec annual lilac festival as an example. “Yes, it’s economic development but it started out as a group of people who were interested in lilacs, who had some knowledge about networks and who built up an internationally known event.”
Perth-Andover has the Bass Fishing Tournament, The Larlee Creek Hullabaloo (Matt Andersen!), the Gathering of the Scots, great trails, cross country skiing and a river that is perfect for watersports among many other things. Promote, promote, promote!
Reimer says Quebec’s regional MRCs (municipalites regionals de compte) have received international recognition for tying communities together. “They’ve become really good at regional management”, he says.
Florenceville-Bristol is doing a good job at joining together to better their communities. Take a drive down there when the weather warms up….especially on a Thursday in late May.
7.) If You’ve Got It – Flaunt It! “Most of our food, water, energy comes from, and much of our recreation takes place in rural areas. Unfortunately, because our economy is so dependent on community production, it’s easy to forget that our I-Pads and Ski-Doos and clothes are paid for at a national level by selling off our rural resources”, Reimer says. “I think that successful communities are those that recognize that inter-dependence and make it visible, particularly to urban policy makers through things like farm visits or direct marketing.”
Unfortunately, Reimer stresses that there are no silver bullets for a town to survive the ongoing population trend toward cities. “We are urbanizing and we will continue to urbanize”, he says. “That’s been the history of Canada. We’ve had towns dying out for ages. Some communities are not going to survive and some are.”
But through innovation, ingenuity and a willingness to transform many of Canada’s small towns can thrive and even grow in the next 20 to 50 years. “There’s always going to be challenges”, Reimer says, “but I know that the people living in those communities are very innovative and often very gung-ho for figuring things out. They’re not totally at the whims of urbanization.”
Look at the new Medical Clinic, look at the new pharmacy and manor being built, look at all the businesses we have that are up and running. Look at all the homes in the hills…we can make it! We are survivors!
