CCN Back Issues Vol 7 Issue 4

Robert Dixon, Monica MacNeil, and their two children – seven-year-old Hannah and four-year-old Rachel – live in Port Medway, Queens County. Robert works as an electrician at the Bowater Mersey Paper plant near Liverpool, while Monica is a full-time Mom and homemaker.

One day last fall Hannah brought a note home from school. Nothing unusual in that, but the contents were more than a little alarming to Monica, to Robert, and to anyone else who had a child attending grades Primary to Six at Mill Village Consolidated School. The note Hannah Dixon carried home that day told parents that at a meeting in late October, the South Shore District School Board had decided to set in motion a process to close Mill Village Consolidated at the end of the current school year.

This closure is part of a School Board proposal to reduce the number of schools in the South Queens area from six to three by 2005, after which all area students would receive their entire education in Liverpool. For some students in rural areas of the County, this could mean twice-daily 90-minute bus rides to and from school. Monica MacNeil and other parents have done the math: if the plan goes ahead, some students in South Queens could find that a part of their years in the public education system would be spending the equivalent of more than 316 24-hour periods riding a bus. Assuming the average child sleeps only eight hours each night, that's something approaching a year-and-a-half of a child's waking life.

Needless to say, Monica and other parents of the 75 kids at Mill Village Consolidated weren't about to take things lying down. There are certain rules that have to be followed when a School Board wants to close a school. Studies must be undertaken (this has already been done in the case of Mill Village Consolidated, and is what prompted the School Board's proposal), meetings must be held to allow for public input, and committees formed of educators, administrators, and citizens. Monica and her neighbours are in for a busy few months in their efforts to save their school.

"I volunteer at the school, serving lunches and such," Monica tells me as she bounces little Rachel on her knee at the kitchen table. "I know the name of each child, I know who their parents are, and I know where they live. Through the school, my daughter knows she is part of a community. If you take the school away from here, we may as well go live in an urban apartment building where we wouldn't know the name of our next-door neighbours."

"People here are very concerned," Monica continues. "Even seniors who have no school-age kids are worried, because if the school closes, eventually families with kids will be less attracted to the community – and families with kids make up the backbone of small communities. They are the households rural fire departments and other community groups draw upon for volunteers. Without the services provided by those active community groups, how can seniors stay in rural areas?"

Lorna Stephenson teaches at Milton Cen- tennial School, where local kids go for the first two years of their public education. It is another of the South Queens schools the Board wants to close over the next few years. Lorna and I talk one afternoon in her classroom, shortly after the tot-laden buses have set out from the school parking lot. She is also involved in the effort to save the small schools of South Queens.

"These are all good, valid schools," Lorna says. "In smaller schools, kids learn the value of community, but as more of them close and kids get pulled into larger schools at younger and younger ages, they lose that sense of the value of who they are and where they are from."

Lorna then opens a copy of a recent report on poverty and education produced by the Canadian School Boards Association. She points to a passage in that publication that reads: "The role of schools in community economic development is little understood and not widely accepted."

Mike Foley knows something of the value of schools to small communities. He's an Area Supervisor for the Halifax Regional School Board, and his territory stretches from east of Dartmouth along the Eastern Shore and up through the Musquodoboit Valley. He also teaches part-time in the Education faculty at Mount Saint Vincent University, and has done extensive academic research on rural schools and the impact of their closure on small communities. So Mike knows the issue, having himself attended a two-room school on the Eastern Shore at Head of Jeddore that closed in the early 1970s.

"Most of the old one- and two-room schoolhouses that used to dot the provincial landscape were closed in the 1950s and '60s," Mike tells me over java at a Bedford coffee shop. "At the time, these small communities all felt a strong sense of loss, but many of the former schools went on to other lives as community centres or other community institutions. Others, though, did not, and these communities suffered greatly."

"Parents in small rural communities – especially in less economically developed areas – know that their local school is often the only institution that sustains and nurtures community life," Mike says. "Such schools tend to be everything to everyone: seniors use them, parents volunteer in them – in short, they're the lifeblood of the community. So, to close a rural school involves an incredible human cost that doesn't appear in any accountant's balance sheet."

"The impact of funding schools in rural areas is dramatic," Mike says. "Rural communities are willing to give so much to their schools – everything from chocolate bar purchases for school projects to massive volunteer efforts. In fact, if it weren't for volunteers we wouldn't be able to run our rural schools. Especially at the elementary level, rural citizens do amazing things for their schools. Typically, schools that teach higher grades have a tougher time attracting a strong volunteer base. This is only natural, because the higher grades tend to be taught at larger schools more distant from the communities where the students and families live.

Although his School Board is actively considering school closures in the Halifax area, Mike is pleased that it has no current plans to close schools in rural areas. "There is a cost involved in providing quality education in rural communities, but if we look at only the bottom line we're doing something wrong. When you close a rural school it sends a message to kids that they have to leave their community in order to become productive members of society. Of course, this isn't true, but the lesson gets learned nonetheless. And, rural schools can be used as training centres to give both kids and adults the skills needed to be productive in their own communities."

Universal public education came to Nova Scotia in the years leading up to Confederation, and for the next 80 to 100 years, hundreds of multi-grade, one- and two-room schoolhouses served the needs or students in tiny communities across the province. Then, in the 1950s and '60s, most of these were closed and kids who used to walk to school in tiny communities like Cheverie and Creignish soon found themselves being bussed to Brooklyn and Port Hawkesbury for their public education. Today, rural Nova Scotians seem to be facing yet another round of school closures in small communities. But this next round of consolidation is not as inevitable as it once was: rural citizens are less likely than they once were to quietly accept the "wisdom" of such measures.

When proposed school closures have been announced in recent years for Mill Village, for Greenfield, for Margaree Forks, or for River Hebert, citizens like Monica MacNeil and others have come together to fight for the future of both their communities and their small, local schools. Some have been successful, some have gained either temporary or long-term truces with their local School Boards, and others have failed. There is hardly the space here for a comprehensive inventory, but a brief look at three recent local battles to save community schools might provide some lessons for those "on the barricades" today, next month, or next year.

In December of 1996, Moira Peters was a student at the high school in Margaree Forks. The School Board had been wanting to close the school for some time, citing serious problems with the school's roof. Now, the Board was about to hold a vote on the concept of P-3 schools. ("Public-Private Partnerships": a means the provincial Liberal government was promoting for the building of new and larger schools across the province. Schools would be built and operated by private companies. This gave the province a chance to keep the capital costs of new schools off the books, but imposed a new player – private companies looking for profit – into the educational mix. The P-3 concept was abandoned when the Conservative Hamm government came to power in 1997. In all, 39 schools were built across the province under the P3 mo-del.)

Moira, her fellow students, and the rest of the community knew that if the School Board voted to approve the P-3 concept, it would mean the inevitable closure of both the Margaree Forks school and another in Northeast Margaree where lower grades were taught. One day in early December of 1996, Moira and a half-dozen fellow students decided to occupy the school. They put forward three demands: that the Board not hold a vote on the P-3 concept; that the Minister of Education agree to meet with them; and that the community, which had garnered resources and volunteer equipment well able to do the job, be permitted to fix the roof on its own.

"The whole community came out in support of us," Moira tells me on the phone from Mount Alison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, where she is studying philosophy. "The co-op store gave us food, janitors supported us in every way possible, the credit union showed its support, and parents and others in the community were fantastic."

During the course of the four-day occupation, the local Board decided to play hardball. "The head of the Board told us that none of us would ever darken the door of a Canadian university," Moira remembers. "Well, as soon as the President of King's College heard that, he called us up and told us we were all welcome there anytime. The Board also threatened us with legal charges ranging from break-and-entry to theft. Then, the School Board went ahead with its vote in favour of the P-3 concept."

In the end, none of the students demands were met, and the two Margaree-area schools were closed. Today, Margaree students are bussed to a new P-3 school in Belle Côte. Long-time Margaree-area residents Bob and Anne Peters (no relation to Moira), were part of the community effort to save the schools. "We were very disappointed," remembers Anne. "Those schools had been under threat for a long time, and the community fought long and hard in their defence. At one point, we were told that the schools' futures were guaranteed. Well, those guarantees were only good until the locks were on the doors."

"It's really sad to drive by the old school buildings today," adds Bob. "They are slowly falling apart, and they are such a symbol of community loss. There's not at all the same spirit at the new P-3 school as there was in our community schools. Back when we'd call a home-and-school meeting at our little elementary school of 300 kids, we'd get 20 or more people out. Now, at the much larger Primary-to-Twelve school in Belle Côte, they are lucky to get a handful of people out. And they have water problems there that cost about $40,000 per year, just in bottled water. We tried to engage the entire community in our efforts, but there were always a few who took the School Board's side or were influenced by its threats. Perhaps if we'd had gotten everyone on-side we might have won. It's sad, but we have to move on. So, we're taking advantage of the French immersion offered at the new school."

In January of 2000, Chignecto-Central Regional School Board made known its plans to close River Hebert District High School and bus Grade 10-12 students to Amherst. The community rallied and the school closure was prevented. (For details of the battle to save the River Hebert school see the July/August 2000 issue of this magazine, which is accessible through our website at: www.coastalcommunities.ca)

The people of River Hebert won the battle to save their school, but subsequent events hint that many small wounds may yet cause them lose the war in the long run. "The student-teacher ratio has placed extra work on most teachers," says River Hebert resident Pam Harrison. "There's no funding going into fixing the school, and some teachers are spending a lot of time trying to get new computers for the school. That's time they are not spending one on one with the students. Some teachers are working until eleven o'clock at night, and that may lead to burnout, but if you care about your school and your community, you do it."

Today, River Hebert's elementary and high schools remain as cornerstones of the community. "But," cautions Pam, "I'm very concerned about the future of our schools – about what it's going to be like a few years down the road."

Greenfield is a relatively isolated community in northern Queens County that looks to the forest for its livelihood. Its small two-room schoolhouse in many ways seems a throwback to earlier times: its 42 students are spread over grades Primary to Six, and enrollment has steadily increased in recent years. "We've kept our school because the entire community has been united in its defence," says Harry Freeman, President of Freeman Lumber, the area's largest employer. "It was back in the Buchanan years that they really tried to shut us down and bus the kids to Caledonia, but we simply said 'We won't go.' At one point, the School Board came in, carted books off to the dump, and put locks on the school doors. But the community came together: we had a recreation hall, we had three teachers who volunteered to teach for free, we had a school bus and volunteer drivers. We went out and spent $5,000 on desks and new books. The community was ready to run its own school. The School Board finally backed down, and it has pretty much let us be the past several years."

"Kids in our school do really well academically," adds Harry's son Richard, who works for his Dad's company. "The citizens of Greenfield don't need a palace for a school. Palaces don't educate people. Schools and people do."

"We were fortunate to have the full support of our MLA, John Leefe, at the time the school was threatened," says Richard. "But, when you get right down to it, I think we've managed to keep our school because Greenfield is a community of people that works entirely together. In the end, it's the people."

Meanwhile, back in South Queens, Monica MacNeil, Lorna Stevenson, and many others are busy with public meetings, committee work, and the informal kitchen-table networking that is the inevitable expression of grassroots organizing in rural Nova Scotia. The School Board is set to make a final decision on the three proposed closures in South Queens by April 15.

"The School Board will be taking a similar look at schools in Lunenburg County next year," Monica tells me. "I hope we can find a way to save our schools. But what we would really most like is to find a local solution than can also be used by other people in rural areas who have their schools threatened down the road."

Rural Nova Scotians across the province who have fought, are fighting, or – inevitably – will fight to save their local community schools can only wish Monica and others working to save schools in South Queens that their fondest wishes are realized.

For more information on the fight to save schools in South Queens, or to network with others across the province on the value and importance of rural schools, please visit (no http:// or www) openschool.w3.ca, the developing website of the Nova Scotia School Closure Support Centre, or call Monica MacNeil at 677-2326.

The Many Motions of Community Spirit

When most folks hear of Bass River, what first comes to mind is those lovely hardwood kitchen chairs our mothers or grandmothers had in their kitchens or dining rooms. Others might think of similar chairs sold more recently in certain upscale furniture stores. The ones our moms or grandmoms may have had could well have come from Bass River, a lovely little Colchester County community nestled on the northern shore of Minas Basin, though the ones we see in some stores today are bound to have come from much farther afield. There hasn't been a chair made in Bass River in more than a dozen years.

We'll get back to "Bass River chairs" later, but there is a lot more to Bass River than sit-down furniture. When I drop into Martha Brown's house next to the Bass River Fire Brigade's hall, I'm greeted warmly by Martha, curiously by her dog Jillie, and pretty much indifferently by the household's three cats. Within a matter of moments we're joined by Judy Lewis and Wendy Cox. Over coffee they do their best to try to educate me a bit about what makes Bass River tick.

Despite its coastal location, life in Bass River is hardly focussed on the sea, as I discovered a few minutes before dropping in at Martha's. A sign on Highway #2, the main drag through the village, directed me left onto Wharf Road. I drove for a few minutes before coming to a dead end: the only sign of a wharf I could see was a few sad old pilings struggling to keep above the water's surface. So, although a few people here dig clams, when people talk "fishing" in Bass River, most are speaking of the recreational fishery. Anglers still flock to the area for the striped bass that journey upriver from the sea in summer and fall.

Some people in the Bass River area earn a living through maple production, farming, forestry, or tourism, but most working people commute to jobs at an industrial park in nearby Debert, in Truro, or even as far away as Halifax, about 90 minutes away. This is at least part of the reason Bass River is unlike some small communities in the province – there are lots of young couples with growing kids here. The little ones receive their elementary education at two local schools, then are bussed to Truro for high school.

Martha, Judy, and Wendy are all involved in the various community groups that are at the centre of rural and village life across Nova Scotia. Martha is a lunch-hour supervisor at the local junior high school, where she also coaches soccer and basketball teams. As well, she is one of four women volunteers with the Bass River Fire Brigade. "There are more than 40 volunteer firefighters here," says Martha. "We haven't had any trouble at all fitting in. People have accepted us women, just as they would any other volunteers." Judy is an elder in the United Church, the largest of the community's churches, while Wendy serves as President of the Fire Brigade's Women's Auxiliary. And all three devote time and effort to the Bass River Heritage Society.

"The Auxiliary's current main projects are to add an extension onto the fire hall and get new medical equipment for our 'first responder' vehicle," Wendy says. "We hold community dances, where we do 50/50 draws to raise money. And, during maple season, we put on pancake breakfasts." That medical equipment would be a big plus for the Brigade, because of just over 50 calls it responded to last year, 34 were medical emergencies.

The United Church's Cobequid Pastoral Charge includes churches in Bass River and in the nearby communities of Portaupique, Five Islands, and Economy. Although the area hardly has the population to sustain a weekly community newspaper, the United Church goes a long way toward filling that void with its monthly newsletter The Cobequid Outlook, which is distributed to every home in the area regardless of the occupants' church affiliation. "There are also people who have moved away but still want to keep in touch with goings on at home," says Wendy. "They do that by subscribing to the newsletter, which has subscribers all across the country." Adds Judy: "The Outlook is the sort of thing you put on the fridge door and refer to through the month. You never throw it out until the next one comes."

In recent years, the Bass River Heritage Society has been one of the community's most active volunteer groups. "We started out in 1997," Wendy says, "when Anita MacLellan of the West Colchester Community Development Association came up with the idea of celebrating Bass River's history. So, one of the first things we decided to do was to establish a museum to celebrate the community's heritage and history." Their first job was to find a suitable building.

There was an obvious candidate. Through the early years of this century the Church of the Nazarene had a presence in the area. (In fact, the first Church of the Nazarene in Canada was established in Oxford in 1902.) In 1944, a former Presbyterian Church in Lower Economy was dismantled and reassembled in Bass River as the Church of the Nazarene. But through the 1970s and '80s the congregation aged, and the last services were held in the church in 1991. But by the late '90s, the church was still structurally sound and would make an ideal home for the Heritage Society's proposed museum. So, in February of 1999, the Society bought it for a dollar.

But there was a problem: it was in the wrong place. Among other factors, the church was located on a sharp turn and shared a driveway with two private homes. "There are a lot of logging trucks using the main road," Judy explains, "and the idea of a motor home turning onto the highway just as a truck comes around the corner wasn't a nice one. For that and other reasons, we determined that we'd have to move it several hundred yards down the road to a more central spot in the village."

"We found a contractor, Sheldon Rushton, who knew how to go about such a thing," Martha remembers. "He was helpful and did all he could, but it was going to cost us about $28,000, and that's a lot of money, even in a much larger community than Bass River. Anna Parks of the Colchester Regional Development Agency was a godsend in lining up federal funding. We matched that amount with thousands and thousands of hours of volunteer labour."

Finally, on December 5, 1999, the whole community turned out to help and watch as the church was lifted from its old foundations onto a flatbed and slowly taken down the highway and placed on new foundations. "That was quite the day," Wendy remembers. "It was sort of like a village street party."

Today, the Bass River Heritage Museum occupies a prominent spot in the centre of the village. Staffed by students during the summer tourism months, it proudly displays artifacts and information about the history of Bass River. "Right now," says Martha, "there is a Community Access Point (CAP site), in the junior high, but we hope to move it to the Museum next summer so visitors can more easily check their e-mail and the like." Across the street from the Museum, the Heritage Society has developed the Bass River Heritage Interpretive Park, a small facility that includes an information kiosk and interpretive panels to help visitors learn more about the village.

Bass River is also home to a credit union, a community health centre, and a pharmacy, but no visit to the village is complete without a stop at the Dominion Chair General Store. The main floor offers everything from milk to hardware, along with a small liquor outlet, while the second floor is given over to gifts and local crafts, and the third and top floor is a furniture outlet where one can buy, among other things, what many people take to be "Bass River chairs."

Which brings us back to sit-down furniture. A chair factory was established in the village in 1860 by a descendant of James Fulton, the village's first settler. For the next 129 years, chairs and Bass River would be linked together in the public mind. Five times – in 1885, 1892, 1909, 1940, and 1948 – fire destroyed the chair factory, and five times it was stubbornly rebuilt. In 1984, Jim Grue became Manager of the Dominion Chair Company, and the factory continued to operate until a sixth and final fire in 1989 at last put an end to chair-making in Bass River.

Today Jim operates the Dominion Chair General Store, which serves as the centre of the community's economy and acts as an informal village meeting place. The 110-year-old building it occupies used to house the factory's administration offices and company store.

Jim sets me straight on "Bass River chairs." "All through the years of chair and furniture-making here in Bass River," Jim tells me, "there never was any registered name "Bass River Chair." It simply became a nickname in the public imagination. Then in the early 1980s, a Prince Edward Island company wanted to use the name and we formed a working arrangement with them. Since we stopped making chairs here in Bass River, that Island company has continued to use the name to sell chairs. They're very nice chairs, but they aren't from here. In fact, the furniture up on our top floor comes from Union City, Pennsylvania."

The store's liquor outlet was one of eight approved last year by the province for smaller communities far from full-fledged Liquor Commission outlets. It opened last October, following a plebiscite in the area the previous spring. Despite a long history of temperance in the Colchester and Cumberland area, more than 82 percent voted in favour of the liquor outlet. The turnout was higher than in the previous provincial election.

Volunteer community groups maintain a playground and library at Bass River's elementary school. Another helps with the community health centre, which is looking for a permanent, full-time doctor. In fact, whenever something needs doing in the Bass River area, it seems people get together, roll up their sleeves, and tackle the task at hand – without looking in any way for any personal gain. That's only possible when folks come together for the common good, and that's what happens time and again in Bass River. That's reflected in Wendy's comment as I rise from Martha's kitchen table with my pad of scrawled notes and prepare to head home. "Here, we have school teams in various sports," she says. "But they aren't just school teams. They are community teams."

For the first time in more than a century, spirits are on sale in Bass River at Jim Grue's liquor outlet. But even without that, there would plenty of spirit to go around in Bass River.

To find out more about the Bass River Heritage Society and its Heritage Museum, visit its website at http://bassriver.ednet.ns.ca.

New Provincial Forestry Regulations

Recently, the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) announced new measures that will dramatically improve the protection of wildlife habitat and watercourses during forest harvesting operations. The new regulations, known as the Wildlife Habitat and Watercourses Protection Regulations, will affect the conduct of harvesting operations such as clearcutting, as well as silviculture treatments. They must be adhered to on all land holdings including Crown and industrial holdings, as well as small private woodlots. As of January 14, these Regulations became law and must now be followed when forest harvesting takes place on any woodland in Nova Scotia.

The regulations are designed to protect valuable wildlife habitat and ensure that Nova Scotia's future forests will have a diversity of both plant and animal wildlife. There is a significant history to the development of these regulations. In fact, in 1989 the original Forest-Wildlife Guidelines and Standards of Nova Scotia were established. These created, for the first time, restrictions on harvesting and silviculture on Crown lands. Although not required by law on privately owned land, DNR encouraged the implementation of the Guidelines and Standards on these lands through education and extension efforts.

Over the past decade, there has been much discussion, debate, and consultation regarding what laws would adequately protect wildlife habitat and watercourses while, at the same time, being fair to the various stakeholders, such as woodland owners. What evolved after several years of consultation culminated in the development of the new regulations.

The Wildlife Habitat and Watercourses Protection Regulations are composed of three main requirements that must be met when harvesting is carried out on forest land:

The new regulations stipulate that forestry operators, as much as possible, must leave standing dead trees and large woody debris on the harvested area in a manner similar to natural patterns.

During the first two weeks of December, DNR conducted demonstration field days throughout the province. By adopting the new regulations, all Nova Scotians involved in the forestry sector will help assure that our future forests are environmentally healthy while at the same time providing a livelihood to so many people in our small communities and rural areas.

For more information on the new regulations contact Tony Duke at 679-6148, visit the DNR office nearest you, or go to http://www.gov.ns.ca/natr/extension. Don Cameron writes "A Walk in the Woods," a regular column that appears in a number of publications across Nova Scotia. This article was adopted from a December column, with permission of the author.

New Helm, New Direction?

The first month of 2002 brought some interesting developments in the province's commercial fishing industry. On New Year's Day, Herb Dhaliwal was federal Minister of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO). He is now gone from that post, replaced by West Nova Member of Parliament Robert Thibault. During his time in office, Dhaliwal made few friends in this province, but hopes are high that Thibault, the first Nova Scotian to serve as DFO Minister since the 1930s, will do a better job. He has experience in the fishery, he studied fisheries management in his younger days, and through his first days in his new office he has spoken more than once about the importance of the fisheries and how they are managed to the well being of coastal communities. We wish him well in his difficult watch at DFO.

Just how difficult that job is likely to be was driven home to me one afternoon in mid-January. I was walking along Spring Garden Road, probably the "trendiest" of Halifax's streets and a place that's probably as far removed, in cultural terms, as one can get from the wharves and quieter streets of the province's small coastal communities. Amid the street people hoping for change, the well-dressed shoppers, the skateboarders, and the executives going to or from their luncheons, stood a man with a sign saying something about jonah crab allocations. As I approached him, I couldn't help but think that many people on this street would probably think that "Jonah Crab" was the name of a rock band.

The man with the sign turned out to be Paul Fraser, who fishes out of South Bar in Cape Breton. He's a soft-spoken fellow, but he is also determined to right what he sees as wrongs done him by DFO. To this end, he is spending weeks on end in a Dartmouth motel room and rotating his protests from Spring Garden Road to Clearwater Seafoods in Bedford and to DFO offices in Dartmouth. Through his measured words, I can almost feel his sense of outrage at how unfairly he feels DFO has treated him. In this, he is far from alone: in recent years, fishermen from different parts of the province (and the country) have occupied DFO offices, lashed themselves to the mast of the Bluenose, or pitched tents of protest at Province House. Many of these people and their sympathizers believe that DFO's long-term plan is to get rid of the many small, independent owner-operators in the fisheries and to turn over our fisheries resources to the corporate sector. It would be a delightful change if, under Minister's Thibault's command, DFO were to show that this is not the case.

GPI-Atlantic (GPI stands for Genuine Progress Index), is a research organization that challenges traditional ways of measuring our economy. Using the standard measure of gross domestic product (GDP), events like the grounding of the Exxon Valdez or the September 11 attacks in New York are seen as positive, because they lead to spending large sums of money on cleaning up spilled oil or on vastly beefed-up security measures. In contrast, GPI assesses the health of our natural resources, the quality of our environment, and the state of our communities. Unlike the GDP, in which "more" is always "better," less crime and less pollution make the GPI go up. The over-fishing that led to the collapse of many of our groundfish stocks a decade ago was a boost to the GDP. In contrast, the GPI would measure the loss of those natural resources and the subsequent damage done to the sustainability of our coastal communities as a social cost, not an economic benefit.

GPI challenges traditional economic thinking by considering the social costs of certain economic activity. It is currently in the midst of a five-year project to look at twenty different sectors of the provincial economy. In mid-January, it released its assessment of Nova Scotia's fisheries sector.

It is the first attempt anywhere to assemble comprehensive biological, social, and economic measures to gauge the well being of fish stocks, the ocean environment, and the coastal communities that depend on them. The report also found that access to groundfish has become more concentrated over time, with fewer people and corporations able to go fishing than in the past. It also warns that this concentration of access to fishery resources could now be happening in the lobster fishery, and that the impact of this on our coastal communities could be disastrous.

At a press conference on the Eastern Shore announcing the release of the GPI fisheries report, its principal author, Dr. Tony Charles, recommended that one of incoming Fisheries Minister Thibault's first jobs should be to read, and to absorb the implications of, the GPI fisheries report.

DFO must begin to take the concerns of people like Paul Fraser seriously, and to treat them with respect. To head the Department in that direction, we can only add our voice to Dr. Charles'. Mr. Minister, please read the GPI fisheries report as one of your earliest duties of office.

To learn more about GPI-Atlantic and its report on the province's fishery sector, visit www.gpiatlantic.org.

Celebrating Culture, Building Self-Reliance

Last summer, a friend and I sat on our half-finished cabin roof and watched the tourists passing through the Wagmatcook Mi'Kmaq Reserve. At the same time, I was trying to ignore the dastardly black flies who were convinced I was prime sirloin, and so, as a mental diversion, I made up an imaginary tourist family who were minutes away from Wagmatcook.

My make-believe family is driving a van stuffed with camping supplies, a gorgeous wife, two darling children, and a drooling collie-shepherd mix named Rockie. After driving all day, they are looking forward to camping in the Highlands, to having a traditional Cape Breton vacation. But, they face a typical tourists' problem. Rockie has that I-need-a-pee look, as do the kids. And they are all hungry. Fortunately, my fictitious family is approaching Wagmatcook.

They pass a sign that says "Welcome to Wagmatcook." "Daddy, how do you say that word?" Junior asks. "Who knows?" Daddy answers, but says he believes it's a Mi'Kmaq reserve. He wonders why it's such a tiny dot and in such small type on the standard tourism map. There seem to be more people here than in a lot of communities considered worth much more prominent mapping.

What a non-suburban look to the place, Dad thinks. Houses new and old, big and small, laid out almost at random, as if they were seeds sown by the wind. A tiny store selling tax-free cigarettes, an old tractor parked aside. Side roads unpaved. Groomed lawns. Lawns choking on medicine (weeds to tourists). Children and adults walking and biking along. On the busy tourist lifeline, wary dogs playing on road shoulders, just a splat away from oblivion. And traffic, traffic, traffic. The scenery? Gorgeous! Mountains all around. Shades of green and brown. The turquoise Bras D'or waters caressing Wagmatcook's south side.

My imagined family spots an impressive building on the east side of Wagmatcook called the Wagmatcook Culture and Heritage Centre. It's beautifully landscaped, with a huge stained-glass window showing an eagle at the front entrance. It's magnificent and yes, it has a restaurant, called The Clean Wave. Washrooms too. Even a fire hydrant for Rockie.

And you know, I think this is where these tourists get lucky. They probably already know a little about Native people. Media-fed things, probably: their poverty, social problems, that they like to fish and have lobster wars – that sort of thing. But now they're going to receive the real stuff at the Wagmatcook Culture and Heritage Centre. They enter the Centre and are immediately struck by its sense of space and the feeling of being in a cultural retreat, rich and wise.

The Centre is located on the Trans-Canada Highway, ten miles west of Baddeck. About 600 people live on the Wagmatcook Reserve, which was officially established on May 2, 1834. Its original land base of more than 4,500 acres has over the years been dwindled – and swindled – down to less than 912 acres. The Mi'Kmaq here want to get their message out. The Wagmatcook Culture and Heritage Centre will play a major role in this.

Some months after my summertime daydreaming on a rooftop, I had the privilege of talking to Band Chief Mary Louise Bernard at her home about the Wagmatcook Cultural and Heritage Centre. She was instrumental in the development of the Centre, so I was sure our conversation would be enlightening. Her split-level is tucked against a hill of birch and spruce trees, and the snow outside her living room window sets a magical mood for her lovely Christmas decorations.

Once we're settled down at her long dining-room table she begins talking about how the Centre came to be. She explains that in 1996, the Chief and Council conducted something called an "Economic Development Leakage Study." It revealed that 96 percent of the money spent in Wagmatcook was leaving the Reserve and being directed to surrounding areas. And to add salt to that economic wound, not one Wagmatcook Mi'Kmaq was employed off the Reserve.

Then they did some analysis of the study. They looked at the resources to hand, at the size of the community, at what people's interests were. They then developed a consensus of what people on the Reserve wanted. They found that the Number One priority was economic development that would embrace both Mi'Kmaq cultural traditions while also promoting the community and encouraging it to look for partnerships with outside businesses and industries, both Native and non-Native. It's the focus on this priority that is responsible for the fact that the Centre presently employs both Native and non-Native people. Jobs are filled based entirely upon the skills of those who apply. Chief Bernard explains that it's important to develop these partnerships because it links Mi'Kmaq culture to other Native and non-Native communities and helps encourage understanding among cultures. In 1997, the Band Council drew up a budget and decided what it could afford to invest in the proposed Centre. Federal and provincial governments were lobbied and a business plan was developed. The response was excellent: more that $1 million was raised through assistance from many government departments.

"Why did a small community like Wagmatcook, with only 600 people, need such a large building?" I asked Chief Bernard, because I'd heard some residents express concern about how much money had been pumped into the Centre.

The Chief explained the Band Council's reasoning. First-Nation businesses are rapidly expanding and need access to a full range of services: things like a decent store-front area, a restaurant, a bank, a post office, and the like. The Centre also provides a huge cultural resource for the people of Wagmatcook. Local people wanted a safe place to exhibit and store family pictures and historical artifacts, and now the Centre provides just that. (In the future, the Nova Scotia Museum will also be providing aboriginal artifacts for display.)

I knew that the unemployment rate on the Reserve was astronomical – something that would have been seen as scandalous in any white community – so I asked Chief Bernard if the Centre was helping in this area. She explained that it employs, during peak season, 40 people as managers, cleaners, tour guides, cooks, waiters, cashiers, and such.

What is the Chief's take on local people's attitudes toward the Centre? "Ninety percent acceptance," she says, and then expresses her pleasure at how eager local people are to use the facilities to embrace new technologies.

Chief Mary Louise then tells me that the Centre has helped make the Reserve more self-reliant. Its postal and RCMP offices, its bank, craft shop, and restaurant are now providing services that used to be available only outside the community. These outside businesses probably never thought that, at some point, Wagmatcook residents might not have need of their services, or that they would lose some of Wagmatcook's business. So there might be some degree of animosity toward the Centre outside Wagmatcook. But I have also heard non-Natives in the area express the opinion that the Reserve appears to be a better place to live than it was a few years ago. This must surely be at least partly due to enterprises centred around the Wagmatcook Culture and Heritage Centre.

"What have been some of the Centre's recent successes?" I ask Chief Bernard. She considers its biggest success to be the grand opening, which allowed the community to come together with people who had committed to the Centre, either financially or in terms of expertise. (Of course, everyone enjoyed listening to Aboriginal singer Susan Aglukark during the opening festivities.) In early January of this year the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board held thirteen days of meetings at the Centre, and participants took advantage of all the facilities on offer.

And what about the future? Over the next two years or so, there is the prospect of a community television channel operating out of the Centre. It will present local and other cultural programs, along with television bingo to raise funds for local endeavours. The technology this local station will bring to the community will allow the Centre to train students to produce documentaries, cover community events, and give both children and adults an opportunity to learn about plays, the theatre, and even to produce programming of their own.

There will be rental space for businesses and a fitness centre. The University College of Cape Breton will offer courses from the Centre and also provide Mi'Kmaq education programs using the latest in fibre optics to present on-line courses.

A library of material about the First Nations of North America is planned over the next few years and the museum will offer an annual theme that will deal with different aspects of Mi'Kmaq history. And, of course, the restaurant, craft shop, and museum – along with weekly events held in the main hall – will provide tourists with a whole package of worthwhile services and necessary enlightenment.

I thank Chief Bernard, and then began to drive back to the Centre. As I drive, my mind strays again to my imaginary tourist family. They are now heading out from the Wagmatcook Culture and Heritage Centre. Rockie is wagging his tail because, he believes, Mom is carrying a doggie bag. Everyone's tummy is stuffed with sweet bannock and a traditional Mi'Kmaq meal of eel stew and four-cent cake. While they enjoyed the food they couldn't help but look out the massive windows of The Clean Wave Restaurant onto the Bras D'or Lakes to see a large wharf snaking its way out into the water. This 700-metre wharf is part of the next major development at Wagmatcook, due to be finished in two to five years. A marina will be built, along with a theme park in association with the Heritage Centre. There will be docking berths, tour and fishing guides, canoe rentals – all things to help the Reserve educate locals and visitors alike, while also supplying needed employment and economic activity.

As they leave, my imaginary family is absorbing their tour of the museum. They had even been lucky enough to be there when a drumming demonstration was held in the main hall. Mom had bought some quill works at the craft shop and the two children had each obtained dream catchers. But best of all, they would leave Cape Breton with a better understanding of who the Mi'Kmaq were, are, and will be. Their vacation had struck gold.

Larry Gibbons has spent part of the last eight years living on or near the Wagmatcook Reserve. Last spring and summer he helped build a cabin for his fiancée and himself. They hope to live in and sell crafts from the cabin next summer. Presently, Larry is working as a mild-mannered library clerk at a community college in Kingston, Ontario.

Schooling: Education or Training?

My wife was born in the tiny Kings County hamlet of Melvern Square. She walked to a one-room, white-painted clapboard school within the community, and she carried on in that same school from the time she started until, as she approached the higher grades, she completed her "provincials" – a series of exams that determined future career options for young people. Those who passed could go on to the final academic grades, usually at a high school in the nearest town. Those who failed were usually denied an academic career, but, for those who applied themselves, there were many other ways of gaining meaningful employment that would provide a good living through adulthood.

Education began with prayers each morning. Though many may scoff at the very idea of starting each day in this manner, nevertheless it had virtue in that the acknowledgement of a Supreme Being was part of Canadian culture. It established a system of ethics shared by all – both boys and girls. It reminded children that we human beings are not masters of all we survey and that we are all born equal. It instilled a certain respect for others as well as respect for ourselves. This mutual respect also extended to others' property rights.

Mutual respect was shown in many ways, especially in the conduct of boys toward one another. (I'm certain this mutual respect was also shown among girls, but I was a boy in my younger years, and am more comfortable expressing the male perspective.) The idea of the "fair fight" held sway. No matter how hard the feelings between two combatants, any physical settlement of differences was always "one on one." Another aspect of the boys' unwritten code dictated that "you don't kick a man when he's down." The idea of "fair play" was rooted in playing games according to the rules rather than the idea of winning at any cost. The decision of a referee was never challenged. Respect was also demonstrated every time a child met a teacher outside the school. Boys were expected to doff their caps, address the teacher by name, and bid "Good day." Girls bowed their heads and gave similar greetings, deference in their voices.

Respect was also shown to children by teachers who would not have dreamed of standing before a class without a shirt and tie or, in the case of women teachers, a dress and stockings. Without saying a word, the idea of what is acceptable in our society was taught.

Responsibility was another lesson which, although not laid out in the curriculum, was taught by giving each child some small task they would be responsible for, whether it was cleaning off the blackboard at the end of a lesson, tending the stove in the middle of the room, or making sure that some other small, routine task was well carried out. The teacher would, as a matter of course, thank each child for a job well done.

There are many who feel justified in saying that the one-room schoolhouse had benefits not to be found in today's schools. As one grade of children was busy with lessons, another was being taught in the other half of the room. The benefit was that those writing in their exercise books were also picking up information from the other class – especially if their exercise was completed and the child was waiting for the next lesson to begin. In other words, information was being transmitted almost by osmosis, encouraging the pursuit of excellence.

Every community had three establishments that distinguished it from all others, yet were to be found in every village. They were the village hall, the school, and the church. The village hall still fulfills its same function as the nerve centre of civic administration, and the church is still preaching the same message as always (though perhaps in altered application). But the school, once the very heart of the community, is gone, replaced by regional schools – huge buildings with an air about them that is vaguely threatening, their architecture more like that of a police station than a place of learning.

Do these regional schools do a better job than the village schools did? Let's look at some other issues to shed light on the question.

First, take their appearance. The distinguishing feature of regional schools is that they sit on huge expanses of asphalt. This provides parking for the cars of staff and students as well as room for school buses to turn around and pick up and let down children transported from different areas of the school district. The cost of busing in our school system is $11 million per year. It doesn't seem logical to provide transport at such a price and also provide ample parking at the same time. (One argument is that the parking area must be large to accommodate the cars of parents who might wish to attend graduation ceremonies. But this is a once-a-year event that surely can't justify the expense of providing parking on such a scale.) There is a vested interest on the part of school staff in maintaining the status quo – for many people, part of the cost of going to work is the price of parking, which varies from place to place. However, the teaching staff parks free of charge – an annual non-tax benefit worth up to $1,000 per staff member.

Another part of the appearance of regional schools is the untidiness and the air of general neglect, with empty pop cans littering the premises and paper cups in such number as to attest to the economic viability of coffee and doughnut shops through the province. Half-hidden in the shrubbery, plastic bags, the popular wrapping for sandwiches, are becoming ever more evident as the accumulation continues. The children, in becoming accustomed to all this litter, are being taught that destruction of the environment is inevitable, and to accept the lowest standards of society. The pride children used to take in their school has eroded almost to the point where it is non-existent.

The idea that education permeates every aspect of life seems to have fallen by the wayside. When a student submits a history paper, for example, the paper is graded solely on the narrow aspect of the topic at hand. Spelling, grammar, vocabulary, and usage are not considered important enough to be corrected by the history teacher. (Or – an alarming thought – does the history teacher not have the knowledge needed to make corrections in the proper use of language?) The provincial Minister of Education recently said that she has been told first-hand by university students that they have advanced through the public-education system without developing the writing skills they need to take on more challenging post-secondary assignments.

There is no doubt that dubious teaching methods over many years in this province have led to a general deterioration in children's communications skills, both written and spoken. Listen to children when they speak and you'll be taken aback by the throw-away phrases that lard every conversation. ("Like... ya know... and all that stuff.") Can this be the product of years of experimenting with "Whole Language Theory" in the schools? One of the very basic errors of this theory was that, in order to recognize the written word, the child first had to be able to "phoneticize" it. Worried parents who wanted to help their children were told not to – that this new and wonderful way of teaching was beyond the parents' understanding. This same attitude was extended to parents who wanted to make sure their children were being properly educated in other areas. "New Math" was one of these: teachers told parents that it would only confuse the child if they tried to assure their child's numeracy skills were appropriate to their grade level. In bygone days, children received as much education from their parents as they did from their teacher. However, in these times of narrow specialization, children are too often left on their own.

Whole Language Theory was tried and found completely inadequate in Ontario some years ago. Nevertheless it was introduced here, with similar dismal results. Finally, more attention is beginning to be paid to the linguistic basics of grammar, punctuation, spelling, and usage. Have the same members of the Nova Scotia Teachers' Union (NSTU) who not long ago cautioned that only they were capable of teaching children begun to reverse their stance? Are they now going to begin asking parents to take a more active role in the education of children?

The latest theory to be played out in the classroom is to combine the first two years of public education in one classroom with a single teacher. Over the past ten years, there has been a swelling demand across Canada that teachers be accountable for the quality of their work – an idea that has been stoutly resisted by teaching staff. Parents in Ontario are becoming more and more vocal in demanding standard testing for grade levels so they might know what they are getting for their education tax dollars. Parents also want to know how their children compare academically to their fellow students. Here, by combining the first two grades, the NSTU hopes to frustrate the wishes of parents: it can then claim that a test for the combined two grades is not possible, thus making it unfeasible to evaluate the teacher.

A January 10 statement by the faculty of the University of Waterloo deplored the fact that in a test passed in by a certain class a full 52 percent had plagiarized the internet to such an extent that there was no original thinking involved in assembling the test paper. The time has come to pose the question: what is the difference between education and information? What is the function of each?

Most young people in our society are looking forward to getting a job when their school days are over. They hear repeated pronouncements that there are many thousands of vacancies in the information-technology sector, and that this is a rapidly expanding sector of the national economy. Naturally, they want their education to be skewed in this direction. But if the education system is to be used as a means of equipping young people with marketing skills, then it should be recognized as training rather than education. And so the costs of this training should be met by a combination of prospective employers and the federal government through Human Resources Development Canada. But, if the objective is to turn out well-rounded citizens capable of rational, sustained, and independent thought – citizens capable of questioning what the government would have them believe – then it is an education that is required. Is it an education system worthy of the name when 83 percent of its budget is spent on staff salaries and fringe benefits, leaving only a small share for the education of the next generation of Canadian taxpayers?

I believe that children in today's school system are being cheated of an education. They have been taught to be satisfied with far less.

Dan Watters is Councillor, District 11, for the Municipality of the County of Kings.

Coastal Communities News is published bi-monthly by the Coastal Communities Network, a non-profit society registered in the province of Nova Scotia.

Coastal Communities News is made possible by the generous efforts of many volunteers, and by financial contributions from Human Resources Development Canada, and by donations and in-kind contributions from the Nova Scotia Department of Education and Culture, as well as from member groups and organizations.

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On The Barricades For Community Lifeblood

The Many Motions of Community Spirit

New Provincial Forestry Regulations

New Helm, New Direction?

Celebrating Culture, Building Self-Reliance

Schooling: Education or Training?

Coastal Communities News

Join the Coastal Communities Network

Our Mission Statement

"A Large Voice for Small Communities"

How to Become Involved
in the Coastal Communities Network

On The Barricades For Community Lifeblood

The Many Motions of Community Spirit

New Provincial Forestry Regulations

New Helm, New Direction?

Celebrating Culture, Building Self-Reliance

Schooling: Education or Training?

Coastal Communities News

Join the Coastal Communities Network

Our Mission Statement

"A Large Voice for Small Communities"

How to Become Involved in the Coastal Communities Network

How to Become Involved
in the Coastal Communities Network