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The Rural Voice, 1986-09, Page 10• • OAK MANOR FARMS • Dept. C. Tavistock, Ont. NUB 2R0. I519I 6622385 THE MILL SotTn OF PuNKI Y000uLI: s CORNERS ...Processors of One of the Largest Selections ofCerti/ied Organic Products in North Americo • Stone -ground. freshly -milled flours, fresh bread • Organic bee((box. pcs.), pork, and other meats • Organic produce in season, organic fertilizers • fuggy -stocked on -fans retail store. Mon. -Sat. 9-5 • Large orders (wholesale) please phone ahead. MAIL ORDER price list sent free on request • • LISTOWEL STEEL Ft EQUIPMENT CO. We have all the steel you'll ever need for farm and industrial use. * REINFORCING ROD * BEAM * TUBING * EXPANDED METAL * HOG PANELS Come in and talk with Doug Cook or George Burnett. We are located in the old Ontario Hydro Building. Distributor for Tools LISTOWEL STEEL Et EQUIPMENT CO. 350 Wallace Ave. South Listowel 519-291-2775 or call toll free 1-800-265-3592 10 THE RURAL VOICE RURAL/URBAN SPLIT WILL BE GREATER A combination of the news stories about the arrival of the Tamil refugees and a visit to the city brought the realization home to me: if we think farmers are misunderstood by the urban population of Canada now, the problem can only get worse. For many years, the main source of growth for Canadian cities was from the sons and daughters of rural people moving to the city to take up urban jobs. Even today the most important export from our farms and small towns is the young people we send off to college to learn trades and professions they can only practise in the city. But while we've continued to nourish the pleasant myth that the city people have a basic under- standing, (even if stereotyped and out of date) of Canadian farming, the growth pattern of Canadian cities has changed radically since the end of the Second World War. The dispersal of the Tamil refugees found in lifeboats off New- foundland was an example. The 155 refugees split up between Toronto and Montreal. None will be coming to Goderich or Kincar- dine, let alone the little villages of the country and certainly none to the farms. Immigration in recent years has more and more been going straight to the big cities. Many Europeans coming to Canada at the end of World War Two came first to the rural areas, some by choice and some through the displaced per- sons program that saw people work on farms and in logging camps to get them a start in the new country. When these people -roved to the cities (some as quick- ly as they could), they carried with them some experience outside the big cities. Today most immigrants are from the cities of other countries add even if they are from Third World countries, they are likely to have been middle-class profes- sionals. We aren't bringing in many farmers from India or Malaysia. Toronto today has nearly a half - million people of Italian descent, nearly 100,000 Chinese, and equal- ly impressive numbers of Por- tuguese, Greeks, and people from India and Pakistan. On a recent visit to Toronto, our family visited a shopping mall in Agincourt, far from the traditional downtown Chinatown, where our white skins stood out like a crow on a snowbank. The Chinese mall had the same storefronts, etc. of tradi- tional malls but everything in the stores was as if from another world to a Huron County farm boy. This ethnic diversity can be turn- ed to the benefit of farmers. The sheep farming industry has been virtually reborn, for instance, by the desire of new Canadians for fresh lamb. While Canadian -born consumers either ignore lamb or are willing to accept frozen, New Zealand lamb in order to save money, these new Canadians, rais- ed on fresh lamb, will accept no substitutes. Lucky for Canadian farmers, because they're willing to pay the price to obtain it. There's no doubt about it that Canada is benefiting by this new influx of people. Farmers will get more opportunity to develop specialized markets that will return higher profits. Consumers will get a chance to taste foods from around the world both in restaurants and in traditional supermarkets (on a recent trip to Ottawa we found shark for sale in a suburban Loblaws). But the fact remains that the gulf between urban and rural life will continue to grow. We, in our communities full of only white faces, can't realize how much the cities aren't like us any more and the cities, with their millions of people who have no reason to visit the farms or small towns to visit relatives, will have less and less in common. ❑ Keith Roulston is the originator and former publisher of The Rural Voice.