Where do we go from here?

The Duke of Url

Chris Davis, Comment

I am, by local standards, a relatively recent addition to the population of Pincher Creek, having moved to the area in 2006 after visiting here frequently for a couple of years prior to that.

I moved here for a number of reasons.  Toni and I would frequently make the drive to Cowley (exactly 200 km door-to-door) from Calgary for reasons that were personal and compelling.  During one of those trips, on our way back to a pretty condo in an ugly neighbourhood, I said to her (paraphrasing) "I know why we keep going to Cowley.  I'm not sure why we keep going back to Calgary."


Soon after, we put our condo up for sale, luckily for us at the height of the booming real estate market there, and took the plunge.  It sold quickly. We left behind jobs that paid well but were just jobs, with no enduring personal rewards beyond our paycheques.  Parenting became a little more complicated for me, but I was glad to be able to expose my son to a way of life much different from what he experienced in Calgary.

Lifestyle and sense of community here was a big draw, and continues to be the primary reason I live here.  Paycheques have been lower ever since we made the move, but actual paycheque retention - what's left after paying for the necessities - has actually been higher during most of the 8 years we've been here.  Starting a new business skewed those numbers a little bit for a couple of years.

I here cite the success of the Pincher Creek Voice, not quite three years old yet as a full time enterprise, as an example of what makes this place great.  We envied those enterprises operating on a shoe-string budget.  Oh for a string... I had half a paycheque coming to me the day we launched, overextended credit, and a partner willing to accept the chances and help shoulder the burdens, financial and otherwise. I've owned and managed businesses before, with some success, in the big city, but did so by buying or operating already established enterprises.  The relative ease with which we've achieved a modicum of financial success with this brand new enterprise speaks volumes to me about the wealth of opportunities that exists here.  Hard work, yes, but rewarding.

Much has been said about the declining fortunes of Main Street Pincher Creek, but I see much potential and new growth.  Main Street's viability has suffered over the last two decades from a number of factors.

One of those factors continues to be a big issue, a lack of sufficient parking.  I believe that can be addressed in two major ways: more parking, and an evolution of our downtown toward a more viable mix of businesses and higher density housing.  More people living downtown will enable more stability for the service-oriented enterprises that are most likely to thrive on Main Street.

Some of the structures and enterprises that have disappeared from Main Street in recent years were past their viable shelf life.  Many of them had an interesting history and evoked fond memories, but business is forward-looking and to a large degree unsentimental.  Germany and Japan emerged from the second world war as industrial powerhouses because so much of their previous buildings and infrastructure were destroyed, forcing them to build anew, to then modern standards.  A cruel truth, perhaps, but still a truth.

Similarly, a lot of businesses in Pincher Creek were established way back into the last century.  As successful as they were, a business needs to grow to thrive, there's no mercy for stagnation.  I realize that I probably ruffle some feathers with that statement, but in reality the consumers of the area (that's you) have been making that very statement every day by choosing where to spend their money. Our Main Street is slowly evolving into a viable mix of reinvigorated established enterprises and new blood.  The renovations underway to the King Edward Hotel stands out to me as a very visible example of a vital part of Main Street's history being preserved in a forward looking way.  The Fox Theatre going digital, ditto.  The obvious success of Harvest Coffee House tells me that young entrepreneurs have a place on Main Street.  The new Source store indicates to me that big business sees the potential here.  Big business goes where it can make a buck.

Big business is going to continue to come to Pincher Creek over the next couple of decades.  We have space to build big, to build new, and we're in a good geographical position to ensure a market for products and services.  Most of those big businesses aren't going to move to Main Street, so Main Street is going to have to figure out what it's about, and that's best left to the entrepreneurs, the people with a vision and a will to see it through.

Where some see empty lots and empty buildings, others see opportunity.

When I moved here the Ranchland Mall was dying, and the coming of Walmart was often cited as proof it was doomed.  Instead, the mall has been gradually reborn, with new enterprises being established and older enterprises sprucing up to appeal to modern consumers.

Count all the new businesses that have started here over the last few years.  Drive around and see the shovels in the ground, the hammers hammering, the businesses that are expanding and modernizing.  Do the math.

I believe Pincher Creek is in the beginning stages of the biggest growth spurt of its relatively short history.

"Short history!" some might exclaim.  My perspective on that is this - my great something something grandfather led his Anglican flock of Royalists from the United States to Canada at the time of the American Revolution.  I've lived in houses and stayed in apartments in Quebec that are twice as old as the existence of settled white people in the Pincher Creek area, and that's nothing.  In England there are many buildings with "new" wings that were built centuries ago, and England was one of the last of the European countries to be "civilized".  Kootenai Brown's cabin at Kootenai Brown Pioneer Village is a fascinating glimpse of a past way of life for me, particularly since I spent a small portion of my childhood in a log cabin very similar to it, but it's important also to realise that it isn't even representative of the common home of that era.

This town was built by modern thinkers and risk takers.  It was rebuilt by men and women of that same ilk after the big fire ravaged Main Street.  It's being rebuilt now by men and women of that same ilk after the ravages of time and gradual decay had a similar effect.

We're a young society here in southern Alberta, those of us not of First Nations descent.  It's too soon to throw in the towel on progress.

To be clear, I believe in preserving the past, both the good and bad of it.  Without knowing where we've been we cannot properly chart where we're going, for one thing.  For another, history is interesting, enlightening, and entertaining.  It's deserving of regret and celebration, tears and laughter.  It can't be easily dismissed, nor can it be a millstone around the neck of the future.

Culture shock is inevitable, the world is flooding in to communities like ours, in a relentlessly unstoppable way.  Lamenting a past that didn't really quite exist the way it is remembered achieves nothing. The revolutions of print, radio, and television drastically changed how mankind sees itself.  The internet is washing away the last of any meaningful resistance to global awareness.  It's bigger than you and it's bigger than me, and it's not going away.

I don't have much patience for those who argue at every turn against expending resources on the young, on better health care, on education, or on cultural events and facilities, particularly those who don't see what's in it for them.  We all benefit from the society we live in, arguably we are better off than any previous generation of mankind, and that's because we've developed an intricate social fabric that allows for leisure, education, intellectual evolution, and mutual support.  Those who protest the "tax grab" of their dollars so often seem to me to be the very same people who have most benefited from our society.

Does that mean we spend blindly, freely, and without due consideration?  It most certainly does not.  Economic prudence is a cornerstone of the continued success of our  capitalistic society.  Capitalism isn't perfect, but it's fact based.  Capitalism tempered with democracy and social awareness has, more than anything else, resulted a rapid evolution of our species, an evolution that our forebears of a relatively recent few thousand years ago most likely couldn't have even dreamed of.

Those who yearn for a "simpler time" don't understand how complex living in any time has been.  They also usually want to live in a simpler time that has motorized personal transportation, plumbing, individual property rights, electricity, etc.

Here in Pincher Creek we're on the very cusp of the future.  Even our traditions are new.  In the pioneer years this area was originally envisioned as the centre of Canada's new west before the railroad companies screwed it up, and slowly but surely we're turning into exactly that.  Canada's biggest trading partner is less than an hour away to the south.  Resources are plentiful.  There's room to grow.  The weather is relatively mild, wind aside.  The people are social and hard working.

We've got a long way to grow, and the process isn't always going to be easy.  The decisions we make today will resonate strongly into the future.

Let's choose as well as we can, for there will be many choices to make and those choices will ripple out into the future, affecting our descendants in ways we must try to imagine.  The future begins here, now.