MY daughter got married this summer to a farmer’s son. It was a wonderful experience. My urban and their rural family worked together to prepare invitations, decorate church and hall, feed the multitude and do the endless other tasks necessary to hitch our kids in a proper way.
Our new in-laws gave time, energy and hospitality extravagantly. They got things done in a way that was awe-inspiring.
That volunteer spirit is typical of rural communities that I’ve known and studied. They tend to be remarkably self-reliant, partly because they don’t have the wide variety of social agencies present in cities to depend on. According to a recent study in Ontario by the Foundation for Rural Living, rural people donate a higher percentage of their time and income than their rural counterparts. They are also more likely to offer direct help to a neighbour.
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Oddly, much of this generosity is captured by urban groups. For example, about 16 percent of Ontarions are rural. Yet the study found that only four percent of Ontario’s charitable funding is spent on rural residents. To some extent, rural charity seems to support urban needs.
I know one reason for this. In my research, rural agencies around the world have said to me, “our people give outside our community. But we have a hard time drawing money back in. The big urban organizations have high-paid fundraisers. They draft proposals that win almost all of the government and foundation grants.”
There is an attempt to legitimize this imbalance, as reported in the Conference Board of Canada’s conclusion that “the best way to help smaller Canadian communities survive is to make sure key [large town or urban] centres are targeted for a disproportionate share of federal investment money.” Perhaps realizing, however, that few readers will believe diverting taxes from rural folks for city use will ultimately strengthen rural regions, the board goes on to admit that this rural “generosity” will kill some communities. It recommends that policy-makers help them “downsize with dignity.”
But their disappearance will hurt our cities. In previous articles I’ve shown how, pound for pound, rural folks ultimately give back to our society more than they take. Their children grow up knowing how to pitch in and help out. When they grow up they take that volunteerism into cities. For example, in a 1994 study I did of Toronto churches, I discovered that church leadership was disproportionately made up of people from rural backgrounds.
Obviously rural and urban regions benefit each other. But the former are disappearing. We shouldn’t be robbing them to prop up our populous cities.
Perhaps, as Ron Rollheiser suggested on CBC’s Tapestry a few weeks ago, we need to develop a Canadian “charter of rights for communities.” We have one for individuals. But we allow the strongest communities in our country to plunder the weaker with impunity. Perhaps its time that Canada starts giving back to its rural communities as much as they have given to Canada.
Cam Harder is associate professor of systematic theology at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon.
