I love living in the Prince George area. The only way I could love it more is if the winters were shorter, the summer weather more predictable, better rural internet access and the direct flights in and out of town more frequent. Some may say that would pretty much rule out living here, but northerners are a bit of a different breed.
Noreen Rustad, on the Community Arts Council's 50th Anniversary video, encapsulated my sentiments exactly. Quoting her, roughly: "Prince George is the type of town where you can have an idea, talk to a few friends, and within a week you have an active organization making a difference."
Perhaps it is our remote location that makes us pioneers on a frontier, because we are very good at making up, making do and making better.
To the people of Prince George, I present a challenge:
B.C.'s Northern Capital could be more but we need more people. So many of the things we need simply need a greater population to support them. A proper performing arts centre, a thriving hockey fan base, a cardiac centre at our hospital and more frequent flights through our airport are just a few of the people comforts that could be increased. We need these services and recreation improvements and, even if we get them, they would be better if we had a larger population base to draw from.
Prince George is one of the few northern cities in Canada with zero growth. Our city fathers proudly proclaim record-breaking building starts but where are the people? The new buildings require growth to sustain themselves. However, our population has remained stagnant for 25 years. We cannot continue to reply on poaching people and sales from our more remote and rural neighbours. That is no way to build a sustainable city. We need vibrant, growing, rural populations.
Prince George could play a significant role in revitalizing the North, but we need to embrace our role as a remote northern city. We will not succeed long-term by merely being a retail centre for the region. We will not succeed by trying to emulate cities in the south by spending political capital on banning plastic straws. Nor will our success come by ignoring the plight of our struggling remote and rural neighbours.
We need to become a champion of the resource industries in the north. Around us are trees, oil and gas, agricultural lands and minerals. Those provide our financial backbone upon which other industries can grow but lately, due to the extremist, non-scientific winds of trendy ideas, as well as the lingering problem of unsettled land claims, public perception has shifted away from pride to shame. We need to get our mojo back.
Joel McKay, chief development officer of the NDIT here in PG, has recently written two very good columns in the Citizen and Business in Vancouver, about the need to rethink the survival and growth of rural and remote communities. Find those articles online and talk about the ideas he presents. The recent federal election candidates all had ideas about how to build the North, so look up their interviews and reread them. Our MLAs and business leaders have ideas. You have ideas. Discuss the ideas at your work, with your friends, in your car with your kids, while watching a movie that touches on the problems of declining rural communities and at your dinner table.
It may just be the beginning of a much needed rural and remote communities revitalization that is needed around the world. Just by talking about the role Prince George could play.
We can't do much about the weather. However, we can change the conversation, get a few people together and that might result in making Prince George truly the capital of a thriving North.
