People didn’t believe Al Scholz could collect enough good news about rural Saskatchewan businesses to fill a book.
Scholz said people would ask him while he was writing the book, “You mean there are 18 success stories in rural Saskatchewan?”
Don’t Turn Out the Lights, commissioned three years ago by the Sask-atchewan Council for Community Development, is now in bookstores.
Scholz said his book’s biggest accomplishment is that it gives people hope.
Speaking at the council’s annual meeting Nov. 24, he said he tried to counter the myths about problems with distance, lack of markets, low grain prices, aboriginal business and general negativity. His stories include wild rice marketing in the north, turning pulse crops into ready-made soups, and revitalizing a community with a mineral springs spa for tourists.
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“Ordinary people can do extraordinary things together,” said Scholz, who worked with a committee from the council to pare 50 stories down to the 18 in the book.
SCCD board chair Mitch Ozeroff said the council wants to get everyone involved in developing Saskatchewan, including Metis and First Nations.
While rural communities have been hurting this year with accelerated elevator closures, more branch-line abandonment and a plan to amalgamate municipalities, Ozeroff said he is not pessimistic.
“It’s an issue of hope and the ability of small and large groups to get together and talk about how to survive … . Maybe one town can have the school and one the hockey rink.”
While the idea of amalgamation annoyed many rural municipalities last spring, Ozeroff said they must learn to co-operate.
“We know of RMs that build a road that goes nowhere because their neighbor doesn’t pick it up.”
Ozeroff said there are a number of ways the council is trying to improve economic development in Saskat-chewan.
He said it will continue seeking federal funding for its leadership skills training. The program trained 107 people this year to be champions for economic development in their community.
The council also houses three formerly independent programs: the Agriculture Institute of Management in Saskatchewan, which offers farmers business courses and will wind up in 2002; the Canadian Adaptation and Rural Development in Saskat-chewan, which will spend $1.5 million funding 55 projects in the 2000-2001 fiscal year; and the Saskatchewan Agriculture Community Training Advisory Coalition.
The council also launched an annual awards program for community development, presenting plaques to three rural people.
Farm women advocate Noreen Johns of Zelma received the overall community achievement award for her public speaking and committee work in health, education and agriculture.
Vern Pusch, a farmer from Kipling and the longest serving member of Federated Co-operatives’ board, received the economic development award.
Gayle McMartin, program co-ordinator at the Carlton Trail Regional College in Watrous, received the education and training award.
