Antigonish revisited

Stamped in history: Father Moses Coady of the Antigonish Movement │ Library and Archives Canada │ Copyright Canada Post Corporation.

Blogging here yesterday on the subject of  “co-creating our communities and local economies,” Mike Targett of TARGETT Design in Cape Breton reasons why “collaborative local politics” presents an alternative to “the false choice between rescue from government and rescue from big industry.”

“Instead,” he suggests, “we need our leaders to be inspired by a constructive alternative vision, like the kind Fr Jimmy Tompkins and Fr Moses Coady sought to establish during the Antigonish Movement. Whatever shape it takes, collaborative community-based leadership requires of us that we educate ourselves and organize ourselves.”

Targett concludes his timely post with a plug for the principle of subsidiarity. In this case, that means all three levels of government work together for the common good, but the community “leads in determining its future.”

Small town blues

Crossing the Annapolis River from the south: Bridgetown on a winter’s day │ Photo: © 2012 Rachel Brighton

Depressed housing prices can sometimes be a good thing. Follow this link to my Sunday column in The Chronicle Herald newspaper about a young couple with kids in Toronto who want to “town-size” to Bridgetown, Nova Scotia, then watch the video here to see what they saw.

The complete four-part video series can be seen here. Thanks to the Town of Bridgetown for producing these videos and to the folks who took part in sharing their experiences.

Life is sacred

Regarded as one of the most influential women in the world, Dr. Vandana Shiva is a renowned environmental and feminist activist and a prominent figure in India’s grassroots campaign to support organic farming and fair trade and protect natural resources and diversity – especially native seed. Shiva toured the Maritimes this month to talk about food, farming and sustainability, stopping at Horton High School on February 24, where Greg Daggett was in the audience. Listening to Shiva speak on the future of food led him to ponder the connection between food security and faith communities. He concludes in this opinion piece that historic networks of faith can strengthen our quest for food security by nurturing social networks.

The company house

The century-old Dominion Coal Company House Number 734. Painting by Diane Lawrence

By Jan Hancock

A worker’s dwelling on Mechanic Street in the coastal town of Glace Bay in Nova Scotia (the home of ‘The Men of the Deeps’) has been bought at a tax sale and donated to an applied research project to rejuvenate abandoned housing. Renovations to the historic ‘company house’ (c. 1890s) have been coordinated by faculty at Cape Breton University, aided by an enthusiastic team of university students, college apprentices, neighbors and heritage activists.

Wealth without growth

If we want to conserve energy and learn how to live on a sustainable scale, we should look to small towns and communities where low-growth or no-growth economies are supporting a high quality of life and housing treasuries of knowledge revealing what it means to have wealth without growth. Bridgetown, Nova Scotia, is such a place. It is therefore a good place to launch this series of stories, anecdotes and examples from here, there and everywhere that will explore the social dimensions of small-scale economies and community-based wealth.

The Mechanics Institute

New Lambton Mechanics Institute in New South Wales, Australia, 21 September, 1901. Photo: Ralph Snowball courtesy of the Norm Barney Photographic Collection, University of Newcastle, Australia; used with permission.

The Mechanics Institute is a public-service site published in Bridgetown, Nova Scotia, to enrich communities through citizen-inspired learning. It is itself inspired by the community-based, adult-education movement given bodily form in the mechanics’ institutes that were established across England, Scotland, Australia and, to a lesser extent, the United States and Canada, in the 19th century. This site is managed by Finest Point Periodicals Limited in Bridgetown, whose publications include Coastlands: The Maritimes Policy Review and The Nova Scotia Policy Review. For more information, please contact Rachel Brighton at editor@policyreview.ca