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The Citizen, 2018-09-06, Page 5The most powerful influence in politics these days, worldwide, seems to be nostalgia for the good times of the past that never really existed. False memories of the past are powerful tools, whether they’re Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan that helped him win the U.S. presidency or the leaders of the Brexit movement who exploited nostalgia for some golden era before Britain joined the European Union to convince people their country would be better off without political ties to Europe. Trump has explained to interviewers that for him the time when America was great was the late 1940s and 1950s when “we were not pushed around”. Well he was only a child in those years – and a child of a billionaire – so the accuracy of his recollection of what life was like is doubtful. There’s a famous quote about the 1960s: “If you remember the ’60s, you really weren’t there.” There should be a version for the earlier decade that goes “If you think you remember the ’50s you mustn’t have been there”. Perhaps these people are still under the influence of the bouncy, upbeat theme of the ’50s-themed television show Happy Days. I was only a boy in the 1950s, and although there are moments I would like to relive, I’d hate to trade today for that decade. I remember the constant fear of knowing that the world might be destroyed by a nuclear confrontation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, particularly at moments like the confrontation after Francis Garry Powers’s U2 spy plane was shot down over Russia. I remember the 1950s as a time of fear of illness, and hope for new cures. Tuberculosis had maimed and killed thousands, until antibiotics revolutionized treatments, leading to the closure of the sanatoriums built to treat victims. In the mid-1950s the fearsome scourge of polio was tamed at last with the invention of a vaccine. Few of those who long for the 1950s would want to trade lives even with middle class residents of that decade if they were faced with the reality of everyday life before smartphones, microwaves, automatic washers and dryers and dishwashers. Yes, there were good things I wish we could have back. You had the alternative to take the train if you didn’t have a car. I remember how self-sufficient little towns seemed to be with healthy main streets of business owners who were leaders in their communities. But it was we, the people, who killed these things off through the choices we made of where to spend our dollars, not dark outside forces. I can’t help thinking there’s a human survival mechanism at work here – the same comforting amnesia that lets a woman who has been through the pain of giving birth remember the good feelings and not the bad, so that she’s actually prepared to go through it again. Nevertheless, there’s a clear line between how people regard the past and how they vote. A U.S. poll showed that 75 per cent of Republicans believed life has become worse since the 1950s while 70 per cent of Democrats felt life had improved since then. Three recent books attempt to set the record straight and prove that, rather than having gone to hell in a hand-basket, the world in which we live is a better place than ever in the past. The three authors have different reasons for why people have the wrong perception that things have gotten worse. Veteran journalist Gregg Easterbrook, author of It’s Better than It Looks: Reasons for Optimism in an Age of Fear pins the blame on his own profession. The media tends to tell you only what went wrong today, not all that went right. Steven Pinker, author of Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress,blames intellectuals who expound about the mess humanity is in because it makes them sound serious and prophetic. Hans Rosling, who wrote Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World – and Why Things are Better Than You Think, started out thinking people were uninformed about the progress we’d made but came to think it’s not about what we know or don’t know, it’s about how we think. Our brains have evolved to search out danger and so we always perceive threats. I’d add another theory. Many of society’s leaders, whether in the media, academia or politics are like demanding parents who seldom praise their kids for what they’ve done well but instead focus on improvements they still need to make. These leaders always remind us that despite how far we’ve come, we’re not where we should be. It’s exhausting! Whatever the cause, the answer is not to want to return to the 1950s. I was there. It wasn’t that much fun! Other Views Evolution of a thriving community Keith Roulston From the cluttered desk Why the ‘good old days’ weren’t Shawn Loughlin Shawn’s Sense Our coffee maker stopped working well last week and, with a heavy heart (mostly because it’s nowhere near as old as some of the coffee makers I’ve retired), Ashleigh and I decided that we would replace it. Fortunately for us, The Citizen’s coverage area has become much more commercially- successful in the eight years I’ve been at the newspaper. We literally had to walk half a block and cross the road to find a replacement. At that moment, I took stock of just how much Blyth, Brussels and the surrounding communities have changed since I signed on with The Citizen over eight years ago. When I started Blyth had an inn and one diner open and another recovering from a fire (soon after, those two diners’ fortunes were reversed). There was a hardware store, though I’m told more than one person was unaware of its existence. There was a local grocer and a bustling public school down King Street. Main street had what I’ve heard some community-design minded individual called missing teeth: empty storefronts. It was a quaint community, though certainly not one you would point at as being commercially booming. Brussels had many of the same benefits as well as many of the same problems. A school, a grocery store, a hardware store and some empty storefronts. Without sugarcoating it, neither community could boast a robust commercial core, though both have cultural centres to draw people to the downtown. With Blyth, it’s the Blyth Festival while Brussels has an absolutely beautiful example of a Carnegie library. My, how things have changed in eight years. Brussels is now the home of a one-of-a-kind wedding venue/community centre/agricultural structure with the Four Winds Barn, which is inspiring commercial development around it. The village boasts speciality food stores, luxury accommodations and unique new commercial ventures with a decidedly community twist. No, Brussels doesn’t have an elementary public school anymore, however, in a beneficial twist, another educational facility has opened in the home of the former Brussels Public School. With a significant upgrade proposed for the Brussels, Morris and Grey Community Centre, the community is certainly booming. Blyth has seen such significant change since I started that the village is nearly unrecognizable once you stray from the residential areas. From the southern part of the village which is experiencing a years-long renaissance starting with the construction of the Emergency Services Training Centre (ESTC), continuing on to commercial development on both sides of County Road 4 and now leading to interested parties looking to purchase the ESTC, the south end of the village has evolved tremendously in that time. The downtown core has also changed dramatically and is continuing to do so. Where once there was a single restaurant, there are now five in the community the alongside the inn. Where once the empty storefronts were plentiful, new businesses open up every year. Heritage buildings are being restored, the number of empty storefronts is the lowest it’s been in my time in the village and new businesses are still starting up. Businesses are also switching hands instead of closing up when it comes time for entrepreneurs to retire (which, fortunately for Ashleigh and I, resulted in the coffee maker being available). While I’m sure our local politicians would like to claim responsibility for the development (and to be fair, as you’ll see in a story in this issue of The Citizen, North Huron Council is credited as being easy to work with by a residential developer), in reality, many of the business people from out of town (be it Brussels or Blyth) tell The Citizen the same story when we interview them: they fell in love with a village and its people. Whether it’s someone taking over an established business, taking over a commercial space or opening a brand new venture, entrepreneurs and business owners routinely say they were travelling through Brussels, Blyth, Belgrave, Londesborough, Walton or Auburn and say they loved what they saw. For some it was the quaint village, for others the commercial opportunities. Regardless of the exact hook that drew them in, it’s safe to say that the communities that have been built are proving to be just too good to pass up for these out-of-town developers and business owners. Locals opening up new businesses, of course, already know how great these communities are and prove they do love what’s here by investing where they live. So heed Blyth Arts and Culture Initiative 14/19 Inc. Project Director Peter Smith’s words (also in this issue of The Citizen) and don’t be blind to the great opportunities and assets that are in your community. If all these great endeavours are finding a footing here, we must be doing something right. Denny Scott Denny’s Den THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2018. PAGE 5. Scantron card politics It feels like I’ve been writing a lot about the pitfalls of party politics lately, but it just seems to be my Whac-A-Mole issue these days. I tackle one issue and two take its place. This time, it’s an example of party politics used properly. With the death of U.S. Senator John McCain – former Publisher Keith Roulston referenced it in his editorials last week – the world lost one of the few politicians unafraid to reach across the aisle. It seems to me that the foundational concept behind party politics was to bring together a group of like-minded individuals who share certain outlooks or values and who could then work together to achieve a common goal. However, in a case of the tail wagging the dog, we’ve fallen into a situation where what your constituents want is a distant second to what the leader tells representatives to do. This time I don’t have to bring up the ongoing sexual education mess that Premier Doug Ford, Minister of Education Lisa Thompson and the PC party have created. Queen of the Furrow Loretta Higgins did it for me last week. She started her speech with a reference to the step backwards it represented, but then changed gears and discussed the need for greater education leading to careers in the agricultural field (another good point). Lisa was present for that speech, so if she didn’t already know, she’s now heard it from a young, intelligent, Huron County native who’s both a student and a leader in her community. That decision was one of Ford’s election promises, so no doubt when Lisa was handed her cabinet post, she knew this was something she was going to have to roll out. When I first wrote about my disappointment in Lisa’s position on this issue, reporter Denny Scott and I had a discussion after he read it. He said that in order for my column to hold water, I would have to assume that Lisa is supportive of the rollback of the sex-ed curriculum. Since Lisa is the one who made the decision, common sense should dictate that she is supportive of it. However, Denny raises a good point in our current political climate. Is the decision to roll back the sex-ed curriculum being made by Lisa, or through Lisa? The latter raises the issue of a puppet representative and this is where we return to party politics. So often party members are told how they should vote. Stripping a politician’s decision-making power is a bastardization of all the democratic process tells us to hold true. If we believe in democracy, we have to believe that Lisa is doing what she feels is right. If Lisa, for instance, disagrees with the decision to roll back the sex-ed curriculum, we shouldn’t be left to figure that out for ourselves. You’d like to think that she would take it upon herself to voice her disagreement and stand up for what she believes in. This is where we circle back to McCain and the local example I always invoke of long-time Liberal MP Paul Steckle – these people were party representatives, but if they disagreed with their party on an issue, they weren’t afraid to voice their opinion. If every vote is simply going to break down party lines, we don’t even need MPPs, let’s just pay a university student to fill out Scantron cards for every vote rather than paying politicians. Every vote in Ontario for the next four years will be 76 PC votes to 48 (40 NDP, seven Liberal and one Green Party). People are elected for their politics, yes, but also for their minds. If every election is about a party platform and not about human representation, perhaps it’s time to end the charade and do away with MPPs altogether.