The Rural Voice, 2003-04, Page 10Attention:
SHEEP FARMERS
Atlas Tanning
is accepting
Wool
as usual
Custom Tanning
Available
CaII 519-523-4595
Atlas Tanning
1 mi. south of Blyth on
Hwy. 4 behind
The Old Mill
Leather & Woolen
Specialist
ti
CANADIAN
CO-OPERATIVE
WOOL GROWERS
LIMITED
•
Now Available
WOOL ADVANCE PAYMENTS
Skirted Fleeces
Well -Packed Sacks
For more information contact:
WINGHAM
WOOL DEPOT
John Farrell
R.R. 2, Wingham, Ontario
Phone/Fax 519-357-1058
6 THE RURAL VOICE
Keith Roulston
Where do I fit into us?
buy supplies through retail co-
operatives, we created mutual
insurance companies to share the risk
of fires and credit unions to allow
those with surplus money to loan it to
those requiring money all within our
communities. We even began the
forerunner of universal health-care
through co-operative health plans.
But these days rural Canada is
being torn between the individual and
the community. To some extent this
struggle reflects the one going on in
society in general as successful
individuals resent being hamstrung
by rules set up to help the less
fortunate — but it goes beyond that.
Increasingly farm families feel under
pressure just to keep the farm going.
Where once the response to struggle
was to turn to your neighbours for
strength of the group, today it seems
to me the reaction is more likely to
turn back to the farm and think there
must be a way to work harder and get
out of trouble yourself.
The result sees many farm groups
struggling for membership and parti-
cipation. With check -offs a group can
have finances, but it doesn't
guarantee people taking the time to
leave the farm and come to meetings.
But while turning away from the
group is just a response to personal
pressures, for others the assault on
the ability of people to come together
for greater power has been direct and
deliberate. From the Canadian Wheat
Board to marketing boards there are
many within commodity groups who
feel shackled by the rules of the
majority. They are sure they as
individuals can do better on their own
and are willing to pull the house
down around them in order to be free
of the majority.
Has rural Canada moved into a
new era when the we no longer need
to come together to solve our
problems? Or we have simply
become more urban and think that the
individual solves problems by acting
on his own? The problem is that if we
choose to act as individuals and we
find out we're wrong, we may have
undone the hard work done of
generations of rural people who
battled to set up the group solutions
we're now prepared to dismantle.0
Keith
Roulston is
editor and
publisher of
The Rural
Voice. He
lives near
Myth, ON.
As children growing up there is a
constant tug -o' -war between our
sense of rights as individuals and our
duty to the family. When we grow up
generally the community or society
replaces the family but the same
struggle remains.
Getting the proper balance
between the rights of the individual
and the needs of the group is tricky.
The group is made up of individuals
and the only way to measure its
success is if each individual benefits.
On the other hand, a situation where
one or two indivduals win and the
rest of the family/community
members are suffering is not good
even for the winners, if they care at
all about others.
We in rural areas have lots of
practice walking this tightrope
between freeing the individual and
working things out as a group.
Urbanites tend to think of us as rock-
ribbed conservatives and we do
generally prize the freedom for an
individual to accomplish great things
through vision and hard work. From
the day when a hardy individual
fought his way through the bush, saw
a stream and envisioned a mill and a
town surrounding it, we've known
the power of the entrepreneurial
spirit. We worry about hobbling it
with too many rules and regulations.
Yet about two weeks after that
visionary arrived, he also likely
realized the task ahead was too
daunting for him to carry out by
himself, or with just his family to
help. Rural people quickly learned to
work together to build each other's
homes and barns, the community's
schools and its churches.
Later we learned to work together
to create cheese plants and
creameries to provide a market for
farm products; we banded together to