They say if a smaller community doesn't pick itself up in one way or another as it pertains to the future, it'll sooner or later become another ghost town.
Cue the wind blowing a breeze down Main Street, cue the sound of crickets and other bugs in the field, and cue the one lone tumbleweed rolling across the road.
Living in Saskatchewan as we do - rural Saskatchewan, at that - it's extremely hard not to see this reality come to fruition with the area that's mapped around us.
Take the village of Bounty, for example. Now, depending on the age of the person reading this particular column, they may or may not believe me when I say that at one time in history, Bounty was undeniably THE place to be when you were young, had access to a car, and were looking for something to do with your date on a Saturday night. Dances at the hall were a weekly occurrence, and they proved to be consistently popular for decades. I know this because I have family on the Dallas side of the equation with intimate knowledge. Well, truth be told, some of that knowledge may be a little bit, um, blurry, shall we say?
Yes sir, back in the day, Bounty was a real happening place. So then, what happened to it? What caused it to become an abandoned ghost town? That's not for me to say. Perhaps it was just inevitable, and that may ultimately end up being the case for some communities.
So how do we solve it? How do we fight it? What can communities do to ensure they'll still be here in the next 10, 30, 100 years from now? Good questions, and those were exactly the ones that people probably had on their minds when they attended a public event last Thursday night at the Rec Plex in Outlook. Doug Griffiths, an author and speaker on how to keep communities relevant and help them grow amidst an ever-changing world, gave a presentation on what he's found in dealing with communities over the years that want to stay alive and prosper.
Griffiths, as the author of the book '13 Ways to Kill Your Community', has come up with a title that definitely grabs your attention, hasn't he? You're thinking, 'What the...? Isn't this guy supposed to tell us how we can SAVE our neighborhood? But he's telling us how we can deprive it of all remaining life?' See, that's the point. His talk spoke volumes on the issues being faced in towns and modestly-sized cities across North America; some of them relatable to Outlook and area, some perhaps not. In touching on the source material, the '13 ways', he's essentially presenting you - tongue pressed firmly in cheek - with a bullet-pointed list on how NOT to further grow your community and how to keep things the hum-drum same so that no one prospers, nothing ever changes for the better, and your town eventually goes the way of the dinosaurs. Or, as mentioned earlier, Bounty.
I thought the presentation given by Griffiths was well done, effectively eye-opening, and a unique one in its 'I'm saying one thing but please take notice of the sarcasm' delivery. It's just a shame that there wasn't more of a crowd for the presentation.
Oh well, I'm sure someone likely whipped up an entertaining anecdote about it during Coffee Row. Ah yes, that lovable time of the day where only the absolute truth is told, and nary a word of a lie! Hey, I've got a bridge I'd like to sell ya...
But then again, can we really blame people for not choosing to come out and hear this talk, as engaging and thought-provoking as it was? After all, Outlook people have heard this similar song and dance before. In May of 2018, there was another presentation given by another author who was also in town to address how Outlook was going to tackle the future and what people wanted the community to look like over the next decade or so. Funny thing is, nothing ever really came of it. I remember hearing that the presenter was taking everyone's feedback and thoughts and was planning to compile an official report, but I'm not sure if that ever did come together or whether the previous town council declined to go any further with it.
At least this time, you can sense the change in the air as Griffiths spoke about adapting to the world and inspiring people to do their part in shaping Outlook's future. That's because you'd have to be blind to not see what this town has been up to in recent memory. With the current work that's being done and projects being accomplished or undertaken, Outlook is indeed thinking about the future, and a hopefully prosperous one, at that.
In the end, it's up to a town and its people to dictate what the future will look like, with each person doing their part to ensure the community's prosperity. What we don't want is for our hometowns to become a place like Bounty; a lonesome, heartbreaking image of a once-happy place where the good times are locked away in memories.
I do know one thing, however. Despite what inevitably happened to Bounty over time, I'm glad that the former Bounty Theatre building now resides in Outlook beside the museum. As I come to work, I can look across the road and see it standing there, just waiting for more upgrades so that one day, it can be used again by a whole new generation of people that are hosting a whole new generation of events, letting the good times resume after all these many years.
In that regard, and as communities look at ways to better themselves and adapt to an ever-changing future, it's good to know that places such as Outlook keep a finger in the past.
For this week, that's been the Ruttle Report.
