Alberta Review: Right to Exist
Alberta Review: Right to Exist
There are some places in this world that, to be simplistic, don't make sense. But they all do, in their own way.
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I grew up around plenty of places that barely deserve the name “place”; they usually consist of a church and a hall. Stry, Hamlin, or Dickey Bush, these places dot Alberta and have, for generations, formed the core of so many communities and so many memories. But often, especially now as larger centres take over the roles these places played, they feel like—to put it in a very vulgar way—they shouldn’t exist. They’re a dot on the map and little else to most of the world.
When you become obsessed with something the way I have with the role of geography in human affairs, your personal experiences inform, and sometimes poison, that obsession. So, having grown up in a small place, far from any major demographic, economic, or political centres and surrounded by small places that sometimes feel like they “shouldn’t exist,” I have dwelled on other places whose existence feels out of touch with the prevailing necessary conditions for success, namely some natural endowment—like natural transportation networks (rivers) or resources (agricultural land, oil and gas, forestry, minerals)—that generally precipitate the existence of a major centre. At the same time, it is not just natural geography that produces that kind of fascination. There are places where history should have wiped thier independence from the map. Andorra, San Morino, or Singapore are extraordinary in their independence when their regional histories are considered. They fit my non-academic and highly arbitrary definition of a “place that should not exist” because of it.
Another way to characterize a place that shouldn’t exist is distance from the nearest population centre or geographical core of a nation, region, or province. Geographical cores suck in people, capital, and economic activity and form the backbone of an economy and culture. Alberta’s is the QEII corridor, housing most of our commerce and population. A similar example would be the Mekong River or the Golden Horseshoe in Ontario. Some places have multiple cores, like the United States. The further away from this core, the less likely a place seems like it can be a thriving, prosperous place. It’s harder to “exist” the further you get from the core and requires more luck—or hard work.
So the lack of access to natural endowments, a political history that should’ve swept independence aside, or significant distance from a region’s core are good indicators of a place whose success doesn’t make sense. Many islands fit these descriptions, but there are cities in perfectly prosperous places that can also meet it, usually due to distance.
These places are fascinating, perhaps because they stand in such contrast for someone from Alberta, where almost everywhere you look, nature has bestowed a town or city with some sort of path to prosperity. While some initially thought Palliser’s Triangle could never be turned into cropland, that’s a far cry from an isolated island or small city-state surrounded by hostile actors. Medicine Hat or Fort McMurray may feel isolated from most of the province’s population, but they have natural resources and favourable geography.
My wife and I honeymooned in the Azores. Specifically, the largest island of Sao Miguel. These Portuguese islands weren’t discovered until the 15th century, late in the European context, and had no prior human settlement. They grew into a thriving agricultural and maritime centre but were never large enough to be integral to Portugal’s economic success. Instead, they were necessary stopovers for those seeking riches in the Americas. Briefly, during the First and Second World Wars, their location also proved vital to Allied efforts at crossing and controlling the Atlantic, but the production of bigger engines and planes quickly erased their essential role as a trans-Atlantic stopover. Their location made them essential. Today, they produce a lot of (absolutely delicious) milk, cheese, and butter and have a decently-sized tourism industry, but for the most part, they cannot be considered vital to Portuguese geopolitical success (they are, of course, a region unto themselves) like they once were. Due to technology, they now partially fit my description of a place that shouldn’t exist.
And yet they do not only exist; they thrive. This is partially due to history’s inertia but also because people have a tie to the land and work hard to keep it a prosperous place. Funnily enough, that is what makes these places survive now in more modern times, where quick access to global markets means so much to prosperity (and is something these places rarely have). They’re great to visit because they have maintained their unique culture, or they feel like an actual getaway. Tourism has replaced more “real” economic activity, but a desirable tourism industry is often a product of geography, the same way a thriving oil and gas industry is.
But, despite the fortunate hand we’ve been dealt, we share a few things with those places that shouldn’t exist, primarily the dogged insistence that our home matters and hard work and smart choices are required to maintain its success.
Alberta doesn’t have to thrive. There are plenty of places that have significant mineral deposits, or oil and gas, or good weather and access to large markets that do not. Hard work, dedication to the land, working in concert with what nature has provided, and dedication to a system of open politics and commerce are all necessary. Every place on God’s green earth exists for a reason; some just make a little more sense than others through our modern eyes and personal biases.
Interesting Stories
The Age of the Spurious Upgrade (Commentary)
When someone puts into words the things that frustrate us every day and make us question our sanity, it is usually, as the former editor of Popular Mechanics points out, all the things that are pushed as upgrades but are clearly downgrades, like the motion-activated faucet, and how they are there not to make your life easier writing. They are there to make things cheaper, easier, or more profitable for those who install or invent them. And, too often, they represent a pernicious attack on privacy through data collection.
The beauty of concrete (Works in Progress)
People travel around the world and spend thousands to see the great architecture of old. Some of that is because of great design or the perfect locale, adding that extra something to a great building. More often than not, though, it is the ornamentation that makes them so great:
“Ornament is amazingly pervasive across time and space. To the best of my knowledge, every premodern architectural culture normally applied ornament to high-status structures like temples, palaces, and public buildings. Although vernacular buildings like barns and cottages were sometimes unornamented, what is striking is how far down the prestige spectrum ornament reached: our ancestors ornamented bridges, power stations, factories, warehouses, sewage works, fortresses, and office blocks. From Chichen Itza to Bradford, from Kyiv to Lalibela, from Toronto to Tiruvannamalai, ornament was everywhere.”
But why don’t we do it anymore? This article tries to explain.
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