Prince George residents are tough on the dreamers.
Under the guise of common sense and frugality, many people (myself included) are quick to rain on the parade of anyone with the vision and the audacity of dreaming big and chasing a goal that seems impossible.
The irony is that Prince George has an excellent history of visionary thinking and turning the seemingly unattainable into reality.
A group of dreamers formed the Interior University Society in Prince George and those seeds grew into UNBC.
Residents frustrated by the lack of local doctors filled CN Centre more than 20 years ago and the Northern Medical Program was the eventual result.
In both of those examples, residents didn’t just complain about a problem. Instead, they saw an opportunity to bring forward a bold solution and were willing to spend years convincing government leaders and bureaucrats in Victoria of the wisdom of their ideas.
Most importantly, the residents driving the efforts to create what became UNBC and the Northern Medical Program weren’t doing it for themselves.
Rather, they spent that time, energy and money to create a better Prince George for their children, their grandchildren and current and future residents they would never meet. They had a dream and, most importantly, they took the wheel, rather than saying “somebody should…”
We need more dreamers and drivers right now. We need a new generation of local dreamers and drivers to tackle the current impossible problems.
Waiting for Victoria and Ottawa to act on the social issues facing Prince George has led us nowhere, so it’s time we seized control of our own destiny and took care of our own people, not for ourselves but for our children, our grandchildren and the current and future residents we’ll never meet.
We can’t air grievances and assign blame because that’s looking backward, not forward.
We can’t carry attitudes of “it can’t be done,” “it’s not my problem,” “the politicians should do it“ and “why should my tax dollars pay for it?”
We can’t go forward without a vision of what we want Prince George to be, of what we want for our fellow residents struggling with the effects of crime, poverty, housing, addiction, mental health issues and intergenerational trauma.
We can't fear failure.
We can be inspired by previous success.
We can look past common sense.
We can see Prince George for what it could be, not what it is.
We can care for our city and for one another more than our personal politics.
Let’s start by talking (and listening) to each other.
Editor-in-chief Neil Godbout
