Lögberg-Heimskringla - 01.03.2019, Page 10

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10 • Lögberg-Heimskringla • March 1 2019
We adapt. We may
bitch and complain,
we may sigh and
cry, we may laugh and sing,
but whatever our response
to change, we adapt. We are
amazing. There are losses,
scars, but also triumphs.
Me, are you talking about
me? Yes, you.
We have been through
massive change and survived.
In 1861, 3.2 million people
lived in Canada and 2.7 million
of those people lived in rural
areas. They survived by
growing crops, digging coal,
and cutting wood. They traded
in furs. They hunted.
Isolation was the norm.
Roads were few and trails were
difficult. A trip by horse and
wagon that today would take
a couple of hours could take a
month by horse and wagon.
Sixty years isn’t a long
time. Sixty years is a lifespan.
You can be born, live, and die –
but it still isn’t a long time. Yet,
by 1921, instead of 84 percent
of Canadians, less than fifty
percent lived in rural areas.
Now, less than twenty percent
live in rural areas.
All statistics, right? No, not
just statistics. These changes
have changed our lives in major
ways. To survive, we’ve had to
adapt.
When I was born at the end
of the ’30s, Gimli’s population
was around one thousand.
A lot of those people were
relatives: great-grandparents,
grandparents, uncles, aunts,
first cousins, second cousins,
third cousins. Many of them
were Icelandic. Ethnicity
mattered. Immigrant groups
gathered in communities
like Gimli, Arborg, Hnausa,
Riverton, and Arnes where they
learned to adapt to rural and (in
the beginning) primitive living
conditions. The same was true
of other ethnic groups. They
needed community support.
They needed translators,
people who could explain the
new laws, the new customs, the
new ways of making a living.
By 1939, roads had been built
– they were most often gravel,
many were still mud – but they
were better than a trail in the
bush.
World War II changed
life. Hitler and his
government disrupted our
life in unimaginable ways.
Germany, half a world away,
took our quiet little village
and changed it forever. An
airbase was built two miles
away. Strangers populated the
airbase – strangers from places
we’d never heard of; strangers
who weren’t Icelandic or
Ukrainian or German or Polish
or Aboriginal; strangers who
came from further away than
Winnipeg. And soon, young
men in the community were
disappearing as they joined the
armed forces and, in turn, were
sent to training bases in distant
places, returning like strangers
in navy, army, and air force
uniforms. Then they were sent
to Europe and their return was a
letter saying they were missing
in action, they were wounded,
or they were dead. We adapted
through our fears and tears.
One million, one hundred
and fifty-nine thousand
Canadian men and women
served in the armed forces.
Forty-four thousand and ninety
died. My ex’s father was one of
those. He was a fighter pilot in
the Battle of Britain. We drove
to Ottawa one summer and went
to the Peace Tower to see his
name. He was shot down three
days after she was born. She had
a father for three days because
of a madman half a world away.
She and her mother adapted.
Fifty-five thousand were
wounded. They adapted.
By the time World War II
was over, rural Canada wasn’t
the same. It couldn’t be the
same. There were too many
dead, too many injured, too
much disruption of a way of
life. We’d been fortunate. We
hadn’t had our cities bombed
into debris.
But the war brought
better railway service, better
roads, more industry, larger
corporations, and growing
urbanization.
Nobody said let’s
deliberately and with
aforethought destroy rural
Canada. It was more like
lakeshore erosion. The waves
keep beating on the shore,
sometimes lapping, sometimes
raging, but there is always
erosion.
The rural Canada I grew
up in was made up of small
farms, quarter sections mostly,
mixed farming, grain, a few
cows, chickens, maybe some
turkeys and ducks, a pig or two.
Survival farming. No one was
getting rich but people came
to Canada to eat and they were
eating. The farm income might
be supported by the husband
having a part-time job. The
wives also might take seasonal
or part-time work outside the
house. In town – and small
towns are considered part of
rural – there was work in the fish
sheds, either processing fish or
preparing nets. But businesses
were mom-and-pop businesses,
family businesses: Bjarnason’s
General Store, Kardy’s
Hardware, Arnason’s Dairy,
Tergesen’s General Store and
Drug Store, Dempsey’s Barber
Shop. The major employer was
the freshwater fish industry.
Because Gimli has
wonderful beaches on Lake
Winnipeg, there were strangers,
city people, who came for the
day or week, but also cottagers,
people who built places to
escape the summer heat of
Winnipeg. They added a boost
to an economy that didn’t have
much potential beyond survival
during the off-season months.
I loved my little rural town.
I loved the rural area around
the town. I really would have
preferred to have stayed there.
But I was growing up. I needed
and wanted things: clothes,
a car, opportunities. Cutting
lawns, shovelling snow, even
fishing didn’t seem to offer
much. I needed a job. I started
going to Winnipeg in the
summers to work for the United
Grain Growers. I was part of the
emptying out of rural Canada. I
was adapting. I was part of the
erosion, though I didn’t think
of it that way. I said I needed
a job and my grandmother said
your great-uncle says they’re
hiring. Apply for a job. If you
get it, come and stay with us.
Few among my grade 11
and grade 12 classmates stayed
in the country. When I bump
into former classmates in the
summers (I go back to Gimli
every summer), I find they’ve
lived in Europe, the United
States, every city in Canada,
Asia – in cities like Toronto
because, in Canada, Toronto is
the mark of success. Good jobs.
Good money. Opportunities.
Even those who have
stayed have had to adapt. Jobs
at the distillery offer good
salaries and benefits just like in
the city. Some have managed to
make a living from commercial
fishing. Some have managed to
get teaching positions in local
schools. But nobody is trying
to make a living growing grain
on a quarter section.
Now, it is big – not just big
but humungous farms have
huge capital costs with some
machines costing 800,000
dollars. Farming has become
an industry. Grain bins hold
30,000 bushels. The grain
trucks no longer are one-tons
with a wood box. They are
semi-trailer sized.
We adapt. People learn
Mandarin and Farsi and
languages I never heard of in
high school or college. They
work on contract in Asia. We
thought it was a big deal to
learn French. Our parents and
grandparents had struggled to
lose their accents. Students
now are learning to speak
foreign languages with the
right accents. A Canadian is the
head of the Bank of England.
We have survived massive
personal and professional
changes. When I was growing
up, hardly anyone had flown
on a commercial airplane. No
one I knew had a credit card.
I’d never heard of a credit
card. When someone came to
town with a hundred dollar bill
people went to see it. No one
had seen a hundred dollar bill
before. Winnipeg, sixty miles
away, was considered a long
way from home. Telephones
were rare and only used for
emergencies. Only a few people
had typewriters. Computers?
Never heard of them.
We adapt. So pat yourself
on the back. You are here.
You’ve survived. We take plane
trips, microwaves, computers,
cell phones, cars that talk to
us, all of it, for granted. We’ve
learned to use them all.
We get an A in that course
called “Adapting.”
W.D. Valgardson
Victoria, BC
ADAPTING
IMAGE: DOROTHE DARKWORKX / PIXABAY
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