Letter

Helen Forsey | Dec 13, 2017

A welcome challenge "outside the box"

I came back from Newfoundland in October to find that exciting things have been happening here over the past few months. Thank you for your coverage so far on the "Contribute and Thrive" bundle of projects that North Frontenac Council has been discussing.

While I maintain what I trust is common-sense skepticism about some of the ideas, I also applaud the "C&T North Frontenac" group, and Mayor Higgins, for their openness and willingness to think "outside the box."

After several decades of experience with various collective attempts to forge different and better ways of living, I realize that many such attempts fail. But some succeed, and there is never success without some failures along the way. Moreover, it's high time we started "thinking outside the box", because it's becoming ever more obvious the mess our society has gotten into by staying inside it.

As someone who loves the diversity of our scattered communities and their very rural nature, I was put off by the centralizing and urban-sounding term "one small town." But when I learned more, I realized the term is a misnomer. As I understand it now, C&T is not about "one small town," but rather about an approach to organizing people's efforts and resources for the betterment of the broad community.

The C&T group's basic concept of "contributionism" strikes me as having positive parallels with many traditional indigenous teachings, as well as overlap with the egalitarian philosophies that feminists and other progressive people are working to put into practice.

So I say a cautiously enthusiastic (is that possible?) "Bravo," and will look forward to the unfolding of this novel initiative.

Helen Forsey