The Bruce Report

Every country needs its whipping posts; those communities or regions outsiders feel perfectly sanguine about insulting and slurring. So why should it surprise anyone that in Canada, the Atlantic provinces have always merited, and continue to receive, most of the verbal lashes?

For generations, we’ve been portrayed by our western neighbours as the poor, dumb, lazy partners in Confederation. We are, the argument goes, slow, defeatist and uncompetitive. We’re unskilled, unschooled, unsophisticated, and decidedly unenlightened. About the only things we’re good at is catching cod, cutting trees, and collecting pogey. And since these resources have run out (or are about to), we’re really not much good for anything, anymore.

This, at least, was the impression Margaret Wente – The Globe and Mail’s estimable social affairs columnist – left in her Canada Day screed when she observed, “The biggest culture gap isn’t between ethnic and linguistic groups. It’s between the vibrant, multiracial cities and the shrinking white ghettos of the Atlantic provinces and the rural hinterland.”

To be fair, Ms. Wente wasn’t commenting about current conditions; she was imagining the state of the nation some 47 years hence. “Since the turn of the millennium,” she mused, “all of our population growth has come through immigration, mostly from China, India and the Philippines. In the thriving megalopolis of Greater Toronto (population: 12 million), people of European descent make up less than a third of the population.”

Still, the use of the term “white ghetto” seemed decidedly unfriendly, especially on a day when Canadians were celebrating what the Globe’s editorial board unilaterally decided was our growing maturity and self-assurance. (It goes without saying we Canucks don’t know what to think about ourselves until the nation’s self-appointed arbiter of our identity informs us).

Beyond this, Ms. Wente’s quip is not even a particularly realistic forecast.

Most serious demographic research indicates that the future – at least, the future of prosperous societies – rests with smaller, not larger, urban areas. The land of milk and honey is not the megalopolis, but the “microlopolis”, where population density, not size, matters most. In an energy-challenged, increasing geriatric Canada, proximity to essential services and food production actually purchases urbanity as it attracts growing numbers of older and highly educated knowledge workers to clean, efficient, well-organized polities.

The best attributes about Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver are their tightly woven communities, their neighbourhoods. The Atlantic region’s cities – Halifax, Saint John, Moncton, Fredericton, Miramichi, Charlottetown, Summerside, St. John’s, and Corner Brook – have always been just this: Neighbourly in scale, function and attitude. And, despite their occasional economic development missteps and setbacks, they have all benefited mightily over the years from their disposition and perspicuity.

Moncton and Fredericton are two of the “smartest” cities in the world, according to the New York-based think tank, Intelligent Communities Forum. With limited government and private- sector investment (compared with that which is available to major centres), they have transformed themselves into hubs for Information Communications Technology (ICT), health care delivery, and public administration. Educational attainment rates are high (though they could be higher); and abject poverty is low (though it could be lower).

Meanwhile, Saint John is rapidly becoming an East Coast energy nexus; Summerside is burnishing its reputation as a world-class centre for aerospace and defence contracting; Charlottetown is enjoying its reputation as home to one of the country’s finest, comprehensive universities; Halifax is advancing its agenda to become the region’s gateway for international trade; and St. John’s boasts one of the most skilled and multi-ethnic workforces in Canada.

How is it, then, that Atlantic provinces are fated to become old folks homes for idle Caucasians? They seem, more likely, to become magnets of the very talent 21^st Canada needs: Experienced, wise, reflective, cultured, entrepreneurial, diverse, international and globally aware.

Would that surprise those who traffic in worn stereotypes about this region’s progress in the world? They might want to put the verbal lash to their own posts for a change.

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