Reflections on Peace River in the Wake of the Municipal Election

A lot of people have been asking me lately why I care so much about Peace River. They want to know why I ask so many questions about what happens in town, why I cared so much about a municipal election I couldn't vote in myself, and why I started a blog with posts specifically about candidates in the Peace River election.

The implication is I shouldn't care, or I don't have a right to be involved, or that I'm not a part of Peace River at all.

I've tried to explain why I care about Peace River many times in short comments about our daughters going to school at Glenmary, and our business often doing work in town, or my long history of living and volunteering and working there. But in this emotional week where not only did we have hotly contested municipal elections, but my oldest daughter is also going away to college, and I said good-bye to my last and closest grandparent, it's become a deeper question than I originally thought. Peace River does mean a lot to me, and to my family. Let me tell you why.

When our daughter was only about 6 months old, my husband Doug and I took a small vacation to Peace River to see if we might want to move to town. We were still living in Calgary then, and as two country kids, we hated it. We barely knew our neighbours, the only rental house we could find in our budget that allowed kids had turned out to previously belong to a dangerous drug dealer despite being right next to a school, and in the early morning the noise and smell of the exhaust of the big transit buses would wake our baby daughter up crying. We dreamed of a place where everything including just parking didn't cost precious money, where we could feel safe, where we could breathe fresh air, and where we could escape the orange glow and see the stars in the sky at night. We dreamed of a better place to raise our family.

Doug had gone to welding college in Fairview for his first two years, and loved the big blue northern skies and the people. I had visited him there once, a 12 hour trip on the Greyhound bus, and when the bus trundled through Peace River at 7 am on the way to him, I had been amazed by the beauty of the valley and loved the experience of crossing the bridge. With this very limited knowledge of the town, we thought maybe Peace River was the place for us.

So, poor as we were, we borrowed $1000 and headed north for a week.

In Calgary, we were constantly looked at askance for even having a baby in our early 20's. The other parents in our new parents group were largely past middle age, silver haired engineers complaining about how they would afford diapers while serving drinks in what to us were palatial homes. My otherwise lovely Irish boss at the non-profit where I worked told me I needed to “play the game” more and look better for our corporate supporters, even when I was in maternity clothes and could never have afforded or fit the $400 pantsuits that would have made me “look the part” she was asking me to try to fit. When you walked past strangers on the street, there was an unspoken invisible force field of body distance that everyone instinctively adhered to, and strangers didn't even look at you, let alone speak with you. We had become used to the elaborate secret social games of the city streets, and the isolation of living next to thousands and thousands of people we didn't know. No one helped us. No one cared.

Peace River was a different world.

We happened to visit town during PeaceFest, and our first Peace River experience was the pancake breakfast in the co-op parking lot. It might not have had the local star power of a Stampede breakfast, but we also didn't feel like two nameless cattle out of hundreds being packed through a tight chute to eat. We were amazed by the warmth and openness of everyone we met. Each person was kind to us, cooed over baby Trinity, and smiled at us like old friends.

When we went shopping for essentials, at first I was taken aback when the cashiers actually chatted to us, and sincerely, instead of using the armour of fake disinterested politeness to move us along as quickly as possible. We were used to cashiers acting as if their interactions were just another transaction, not treating us like we were also people with lives and showing genuine interest in them, even as they swiped our meager groceries. This happened everywhere we went, not just at one store. We quickly realized this was the norm. It took me a while to be able to comfortably chat back.

We were amazed that we felt welcomed. We loved the Northern Exposure-like whimsy of the painted mooseprints that meandered down the sidewalks. We loved the peaceful flow of the river. We loved the endless sunshine. We could actually afford a decent place to live, and there was plenty of welding work.

So we decided to take the risk. We packed our lives and our baby into our truck and moved. Our families sneered and told us we would be back within a year.

It's been 17 years now. We may not live in town anymore, but I'm still in Peace River almost every single day. 

Why did we stay? Our first month wasn't easy by any means. The job that Doug had landed was supposed to be in town, and instead they sent him to Grande Prairie. We only had one vehicle so he had to take the truck, and I was left alone in a place where I didn't know a soul, with no family, no transportation and a new baby. I often called Doug crying. I had real doubts we had made the right decision.

Since we didn't even have a washing machine yet, and taxis cost money, to do the laundry I would pack Trinity in a stroller, put a bag of laundry in the storage on the bottom, and walk downtown to the laundromat. Once again, I wasn't ever looked down on as less, or ignored as a stranger. Even at the laundromat, people would chat to me in a friendly disarming way, and I started to look forward to going instead of dreading it. That was where I made my very first friend in town while waiting for the dryers to finish, bouncing Trinity on my knee. (Hi Loretta!)

Peace River has never lost that friendliness and sense of welcome for us. As anyone in town knows, you had better plan on extra time every time you go out to run errands because you will bump into people you know everywhere and end up talking for longer than you expected. I have friends in Peace River who are closer to me than people I knew in high school. It's just that caring of a place. 

This past week, in the midst of both angry attacks and strong support from people in private messages and on public forums over my blog, in the midst of my grief over the lost of my grandfather, and full of both joy and sadness knowing Trinity was now about to leave home for the first time, there I was, back in the Peace River laundromat washing blankets and bedding and clothes.

Sure enough I saw people I knew. I got to check out the silk scarves my friend Rhonda was washing for the first time after she had dyed them herself, and talk about the use of writing and the cloud convergence in technology with Richard. Distracted, I apparently forgot a load of my own clothes in the dryer and didn't even realize it until I was getting dressed for the trip to Edmonton for my grandpa's funeral, when I couldn't find them.

When I went back yesterday they were still all there, even though I had left them in one of the prized big dryers. When I told my husband, he laughed in disbelief and said he's had clothes stolen while he was wearing them before, let alone left in a public dryer for days.

But that's Peace River.

More than industry, more than the oilfield, even more than its natural beauty, this is the best resource Peace River has: kindness, and sense of family and community. This is what drew us and it's what made us stay.

That's why it's special to me, and to my family. It's a community and a sense of belonging we haven't found anywhere else, even small towns where we've lived before or moved since.

It's the the way people we didn't even know reacted when our youngest daughter Aurora broke her ankle on a trampoline, opening doors for her everywhere we went and lifting her up if she needed help getting up stairs with her tiny crutches, wincing in pain for her and telling her they hoped she felt better soon.

It's the messages of support and empathy I got from some people who had been vehemently arguing with me moments or days before, because they heard my grandfather died.

It's never being treated as a stranger, and always feeling like you're home.

I love and care about Peace River because Peace River has always loved and cared for me, and for my children. It is a place where people truly do build community, where there is real peace, and where people do bridge their differences by seeing each other's common humanity.

Peace River has this to offer not only to everyone who lives there, but as an example to the province and to the world. Some of the best things about Peace River are some of the best things about Canada, too. Maybe it's living in a place that's so northern and cold that's made us all realize we need to depend on each other to survive.

This past election was divisive, I know. It imported some of the divisive tactics we're seeing across the country and across the continent right now. Perhaps not to the extent that was shown in Calgary, where racism was one blunt tactic used. But certainly in terms of labelling people who don't agree with our own opinions, in terms of criticisms without focusing on offering real alternatives for the good of the community, and in terms of some of the sheer nastiness that was spouted.

For writing what I did, and exposing what I did, I was told I must hate some people, or love others. I was told I must be angry at some people, or not angry enough at other people. I was asked what right I had to ask questions, and made fun of for daring to ask them. I was labelled an NDP operative, or a Tom fan, or a left-wing bleeding heart.

None of that was the reason I wrote what I did. I stood up, at real personal risk to my own family financially from possible lawsuits and certainly despite immense pressure from some quarters to shut the hell up, not because I loved or hated anyone, wanted to support or destroy anyone in particular, because of partisan political values or because of being part of any specific group or team.

I wrote about unethical behaviour because unethical behaviour is objectively wrong. I don't believe it's what's best for Peace River, and I thought Peace River deserved to know so the town's citizens could decide what kind of leadership they wanted for themselves. I did that knowing I might lose some friends or have to face some people's anger, because even though it can hurt, it was what I thought was right for the whole community. I believed in that and I was willing to face the consequences for that.

This was the same reason I spoke out originally on the bridge, another thing that earned me dubious comments and jeers from some. I know the bridge is good for town and for all of us. And in a contentious election, we seemed to all be forgetting that we can still share past achievements and new hopes and opportunities even when we sometimes disagree.

These days though, it seems you can't speak out on any issue without someone trying to slap a label on you and put you in a box. If you say we need gun control you're a lefty snowflake. If you say we need to move beyond racism and Islamophobia you can't possibly be a conservative. If you say we all need healthcare or that farm workers need protection you must be a socialist/communist. The list seems endless and it's not healthy.

Hell, people in the comments sections couldn't even let Trudeau cry over the loss of the Tragically Hip's Gord Downie without criticizing his politics and saying his tears must be fake.

This is a problem. It tears people apart from one another. It forces them into more and more extreme camps. We can see this south of the border where people can't come together almost at all anymore because they are shoved into two different groups, Democrat or Republican, with no space for a single shade of grey between.

Humans are so much more complex than this, and ultimately we are much more alike than we are different.

Remember we do a disservice to conservatives too when we assume they must be against, say, gun control, or for discriminating against LGBTQ rights. The reality is we have to all agree to want to protect people from being killed because that is a basic fundamental value we can all share as human beings. So is learning not to discriminate against anyone, not because of our political “team”, but because discrimination is wrong, and hurts people. 

We do liberals a disservice too, if we let them get away with corruption or self-interest or rape just to name a few possibilities, just because of their labels, or their team. 

And any real journalist must be willing to face anger for exposing something unethical, no matter who did it; president or priest, businessman or non-profit leader, actor or family friend.

There are simply some things that we need to agree on as communities and societies, and find ways that we are the same, rather than allowing those who seek power to divide and conquer us through difference. Division through labelling is a tactic, an intentional tactic, used by those who want power to divide and conquer us all. They use our tendencies to tribalism to force us apart. It's so much easier to get their way if we can't work together anymore.

How can we come together to say a certain behaviour is objectively wrong, when those who have an interest in keeping that behaviour quiet shout over top of us that we must be operatives for a party or a person or an idea, that we must be, in short, an enemy?

How can we come together, as a society and as a people, to progress and learn and behave better and put in better more humane policies and laws, if when we try, we are divided from each other by labels?

We can't. And we know better.

Making people go without healthcare because they are poor is wrong. Allowing people to get killed without finding ways to stop it is wrong. Bribery and corruption is wrong. Not because of political affiliation, but because of our common humanity and the values we can all share as people who need to live and work with each other and depend on each other to survive.

We need to see someone who is sick and understand how scary and painful that can be.

We need to be able to see genuine tears of sorrow and remember what it feels like to lose a hero, or a friend, or a grandpa. We need to still reach out with empathy, because we ourselves will one day need someone else to do the same for us, because we are all humans and all go through pain at some point in our lives. Not mock the other person's human pain because they're not on our team. That way can only lead to alienation, broken communities, and a broken country.

By this same token, people (including me) didn't ask questions or choose to vote for certain mayoral or council candidates in Peace River because they all hate someone personally or want to hurt someone personally, or because everyone in town is left-wing or NDP.

I believe voters chose the way they did at least in part because they decided as a community that they wanted leaders with integrity, who would do the right thing even when no one was looking. I also think, like in Calgary, the results of the municipal election were overall a vote for community and positive cooperation, rather than a vote for anger and division. In this election, I think Peace River can be proud of coming together and trying to make the best choices for everyone, so we can all keep moving forward.

Peace River is a place that teaches us that at the end of the day, we can try to hate someone we disagree with all we want, but we know we'll end up bumping into them at the store later. Maybe we'll end up on a fundraising committee for our kids together, or maybe we'll witness an accident on the highway and have to administer first aid together to the driver.

That's Peace River, and that's why we need to think carefully about who we criticize and also who we may hurt with our actions, because in the end we'll still need to live with each other and therefore, ourselves.

We can either face our neighbours and all those familiar faces on the street everyday with the knowledge we acted with integrity and did what was felt was right, or we can cheat and hurt others and know we still have to face them too. Either way, we have to live with the consequences, and I hope, learn from them and do better.

Peace River's not perfect either, of course, and too often racism and discrimination and greed and corruption boils under the surface here too. It will always try to divide us. It will always try to take control. We need to call those things out when we see them in order to set an example and choose a better path.

Because things won't get better by tearing each other and the bridges between us down for our own individual benefit. They will only get better if we keep building new bridges between us, for the benefit of all. 

Let's keep doing that. Together.