The Rural Voice, 2005-03, Page 10"Our experience
assures lower cost
water wells"
105 YEARS' EXPERIENCE
Member of Canadian
and Ontario
Water Well Associations
• Farm
• Industrial
• Suburban
• Municipal
Licensed
by the Ministry
of the Environment
DAVIDSON
WELL DRILLING LTD.
WINGHAM
Serving Ontario Since 1900
519-357-1960 WINGHAM
519-664-1424 WATERLOO
BARN
RENOVATIONS
• Renovations to farm
buildings
• Concrete Work
• Manure Tanks
• Using a Bobcat Skid Steer
w/hydraulic hammer,
bucket, six -way blade &
backhoe
BEUERMANN
CONSTRUCTION
R.R. #5 BRUSSELS
519-887-9598
or 519-887-8447
6 THE RURAL VOICE
Keith Roulston
Welcome to suburbia
Keith
Roulston is
editor and
publisher of
The Rural
Voice. He
lives near
Blyth, ON.
Thirty-seven years ago come this
spring I made a trip, with some
trepidation, by subway and bus into
the wilds of Scarborough to meet the
people who would become my in-
laws a few months later.
I'd met Jill in downtown Toronto
where both of us were studying, and
was going to visit her home for the
first time. I didn't have much
experience with suburbia but my
expectations were shaped by the
homes I saw on Leave it To Beaver
and My Three Sons, large homes
filled with luxuries undreamed of in
my farm house back home. When I
got there I was surprised to find a
little house built on a shoestring bud-
get by a returning World War II vet
on a lot large enough to qualify for
Veterans Land Act financing. Things
in the house weren't as far from my
family's lifestyle as I'd worried.
If I was a young man making that
trip today I probably wouldn't have
as much trepidation because now we
all live in suburbia. Oh our lots are
bigger, sometimes 500 or 1,000 acres,
but we all pretty much imitate
suburban living. I was 10 before the
influence of television began to shape
our vision of how life should be
lived. Today we're been molded by
televised perceptions of a "proper"
life for half a century.
In those days we still shopped in
small stores in our neighbouring
towns, saving gas wherever possible.
Today we drive to regional shopping
centres, just like my relatives in
Pickering or Brampton. We drive
farther in miles, though not perhaps
in time, and shop in Walmarts or
Zellers or North Reflections or The
Gap just like them.
Back then we ate at little locally -
owned restaurants. Now we seek out
the MacDonald's and Harvey's and
Swiss Chalet and Tim Hortons just
like someone from London.
Nearly a century of isolation
before the arrival of radio to connect
us to the outside world had created a
local culture in each community
when I was young. People developed
their own entertainments (in our
south -Bruce community people
played "Shoot" not euchre) had their
own locally famous bands and
danced at least some of their numbers
to dances brought over by their
Scottish, Irish or German forebears.
Today Scarborough and Bruce
County both want to be part of the
latest Californian trend as seen in
movies or on television, to be part of
the global tribe. Our kids want to
wear clothes from the.same retailers
as kids from the suburbs with the
same names on the hip or the chest.
They wear sneakers in February
through the snow because it's not
cool to dress for an Ontario climate.
It's a global phenomenon. My
daughter, who lives in one of
England's "new cities", complains
about the "soulless" atmosphere
because there are no shops unique to
the local community but only carbon -
copy outlets of national or
international chains.
But this seems to be the way we
want it. It reminds me of when I was
a kid. My mother used to bake bread
but then a truck started making
regular deliveries to the farms in our
neighbourhood. We kids thought the
spongy, white, super -processed bread
it brought was a huge improvement to
the homemade product.
Times do change, though. Today
many people have turned away from
the homogenized product of the
bread -baking factories. They want
taste and texture and colour.
Which is the future: continued
white -bread homogeneity in which
we all shop in the same chain stores,
dress the same way and only
differentiate ourselves with tattoos
and the colour of our hair or do we
return to communities that seek to be
unique, not carbon copies of cookie -
cutter suburbs? And is it even
possible to switch, as we did with re -
embracing bread with taste and
texture?0