Municipal Horizons Part 6: A Grounded Approach
Original Kitchener, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Friday, October 21 2022
Just three more sleeps until the day of decision. There’s not much more to be said about the 2022 municipal election process when it is so close to completion.
Even the standard “be sure to get out and vote” message feels dubious. If you don’t know enough to make an informed decision, I think it’s OK to remain with the overwhelming majority and sit this one out. Given all the gaps, flaws and weaknesses in the local/regional news, information, investigation and deliberation ecosystem as it exists here and now, no one can be blamed for feeling out of the loop. There is no loop left to speak of, at least not one that might warrant the definite article. Sometimes it all just looks like a confusing array of mutually exclusive mindsets, each spinning around in its own loopy circles.
Fortunately, what happens Monday will be just one more step in a process that is ongoing. It’s a turning point, like the beginning of a new year, but essentially, just another day.
It’s time to start talking about what we can do better in 2026, and over the hours, days, weeks, months and years between now and then. I’m going to start with some thoughts about fundamentals, and then turn to a few particulars.
The train of thought I’m sharing in this series of “musings” began with comments from veteran local/regional politician Tom Galloway when he announced that he would not be seeking re-election this time around: “The provincial government is making life miserable for municipalities in a lot of different ways,” he complained.
This resonated with a longing that I’ve felt for a long time, a dream, a wish for what I described in the first of these posts as “some kind of movement, grounded in the actual places where we live, learn, work and associate, dedicated to achieving a better balance between the spheres of Canadian democracy.”
For us, here in Waterloo Country, that means working towards a more harmonious relationship between our four townships, three cities, the regional municipality, other polities nearby, the province, and Canada as a federation.
These reflections on what’s on the municipal horizon are a hopeful, wishful kind of thinking. I’m recommending that we turn our attention to the fundamental workings of the Canadian political order as it has evolved since 1867, with a view towards breaking the logjam that polarized political partisanship has led us to, and making some adjustments that bring us more in line with 21st century realities.
The basic storyline of a never ending struggle between an insurgent left and an entrenched right began with the upheavals of the late 18th century. Regardless of whether this formulation was ever useful or valid, given the challenges we currently face, it is high time to turn the page, start a new chapter, choose another vantage point.
Fundamental means pertaining to the ground on which the current prevailing order was built. This is part of what I mean by a grounded approach.
Grounded also means getting down to work, to actually doing things. This is work that we have to do together, with our feet on common ground, standing shoulder to shoulder, face to face.
The kind of changes we need to make in order to deal with the challenges immediately ahead -- global warming; planetary degradation; biodiversity loss; widening disparities; systemic racism, classism, sexism; nuclear proliferation; nationalist, militarist and authoritarian resurgence; aging populations; wars, famines, migrations; inflation, stagnation, disruption, unemployment, misemployment -- will need to be imagined first, taken to heart, and lived into realization.
The role of our imaginations, our wills and our courage, personal and associational, is especially important here in unruly, fragmented, rudderless, profligate Anglo America (as distinct from Latin America, which is not much better off).
No matter how just, wise, capable, and knowledgeable the leadership of tomorrow may be, improvements in how we relate to one another and to our earthly home simply won’t take root and flourish if imposed from above, even when based on truths that appear self-evident, backed by limitless resources, and enforced by all the king’s horses and all the president’s men.
If we wait for the powers that be to act, we’ll wait forever -- Queen’s Park, Parliament Hill, Westminster, Capitol, White House, Brussels, Paris, Berlin, The Hague, United Nations, Wall Street, G8, Davos -- we can’t count on the high and mighty to get things done, no matter how loud and how universal the demand for action may be. It has to come from the ground, and spread along the ground, out in all directions, rather than from the ground up. The rest will follow.
This is no time for revolution in the sense of cataclysmic change, the violent overthrow of an old order, turning the world upside down or rightside up again. There are too many dangers; our world is simply too fragile for that kind of turn. It must be peaceful, gentle, kind, but it also has to be quick and thorough. We don’t have much time. Thorough means radical, in the sense of fundamental, down to the very roots. That, too, is part of what a grounded movement entails. But it doesn’t have to be total, or even consistent.
What I’m imagining is a dynamic, multifarious, constantly shifting movement, not another system, party, faith, ideology. There are many ways to work to achieve common purposes. The work just has to be practical; the results actual, beneficial, and down to earth.
Grounded means on the land, and ever mindful of the air and the waters. The primary concern is the relationship between people and the planet, between Canadians as part of the human race in relation to Canada as a country, as a substantial portion of the planet Earth.
Grounded also means on the spot, in place -- actual, physical, geographical and cultural/historical place. The immediate personal, familial, parochial and associational are as important as the civic or governmental orders. Municipal affairs matter as much as the national or international.
Because the forces of centralization, concentration and amalgamation have been relentlessly at work for more than a century now, the immediate actually requires more attention, but only to restore a measure of equilibrium. Many of these apparent binaries -- centre and periphery, metropole and colony, freedom and belonging, us and them -- are not forces inherently opposed to one another. The goal is balance, harmony, consonance; the call is for true reconciliation, not elimination, judgment, compromise or defeat. It is a complex, dynamic equilibrium we’re after, not a simplified or static one.
The municipal sphere is a good place to begin because it is the most fundamental, the closest to the ground. Kitchener, Galt, Preston, Elmira, New Hamburg or Wellesley are places where we actually live, while Ontario and Canada are remote, abstract. We can walk, ride or drive around and see, hear, smell and taste a town, a city or a countryside. The province and the nation state are only visible on a map. From space, you can see the Great Lakes and the Bay; the Arctic, Pacific and Atlantic; the fields and the mountains, and the glow of the cities at night, but borders and the lines of the surveyor are indiscernible.
The fact that the municipal dimension is generally overlooked or viewed condescendingly is another reason why the immediate is the best place to start thinking about a movement to establish a dynamic equilibrium. Towns and cities are an aspect of modern nationhood the builders of the both settler dominion here in the north and the settler republic down below haven’t paid much attention to.
My hope is that this stone the builders have rejected can be the cornerstone for a more equitable, more just, more respectful dominion, and a republic even greater than her Founding Founders, under God, could have imagined.
I also cling to the notion, or at least try to make believe, that Waterloo Country is the ideal place for “a movement, grounded in the actual places where we live, learn, work and associate, dedicated to achieving a better balance between the spheres of Canadian democracy.” I’ve heard it said, especially of the Waterloo that is rooted in migrations from Pennsylvania “Dutch” country and directly from the various German states of Europe, that this is a place where a proposition will only be taken seriously if it is grundlich -- plain, practical, frugal, efficient, down to earth.
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