Why your assumptions about rural Canadians are probably all wrong

Farmers and ranchers, sure — but you’ll also find executives, scientists and sculptors, writes Toban Dyck.

Canadians make assumptions about those who live in the rural nooks and crannies of our country. And we are all wrong to do so. I’m guilty of this, and I live in a nook and cranny surrounded by gravel and cropland.

It may be tacitly understood, and even supported by studies, that those living in Canadian cities are healthier and happier than us rural dwellers.

I farm a 120-acre field 13 kilometres directly west of my yard. To drive there, I must navigate a gravel road, at least one dirt road and another stretch that for the sake of brevity I’ll also call a road, but, in reality, is far from it.

It’s a route I often drive in a hurry, hauling grain from the field to home. But not always. Sometimes I observe the yards and homes I’m driving by. The stereotype routinely foisted on those who live outside the fray and hustle of the city is that they have deliberately chosen a simple life — a life requiring less of them. The subtext of which is that someone living and working in the city is somehow selflessly maximizing his or her service to the community and this world. Rural dwellers are merely bowing out, choosing to disengage.

I have this conversation more than I think is healthy. I don’t like having to defend rural dwellers to people who have difficulty hearing my words as anything more than self-vindication. I don’t need to be the example that changes your mind. There are plenty of better ones to draw from.

There’s a yard nearby that looks similar to the others along the same road, but an architect lives there. He works in the city. He commutes.

Along another nondescript road on a yard that looks similar to those around it, lives a research scientist with a PHD. Close to him lives a person who splits his time between southern Manitoba and San Francisco, where he has a condo. Then, still nearby, there’s another yard. This one is owned by the executive director of a prominent national organization. Just over a kilometre east of me lives a psychologist.

The value of country living does not depend on the letters behind the occupant’s names, but these off-the-top-of-my-head examples help illustrate the fact that stats and polls don’t necessarily paint an accurate picture of rural Canada.

Rural Canada is made up of sculptors, writers, ranchers, farmers, academics and everyone in between. Each one of these people lives where they live for reasons that our ultimately their own.

So, if you find yourself telling me why it is people choose to live in the country and I have a smirk on my face, it’s because I’ve turned inward and I’m thinking about all the people I know living in the nooks and crannies of Canada who are busy doing extraordinary things. The prairie grid — like the rest of the country — is littered with such people.

I don’t know much about most of the yards I pass along that 13-km stretch. Some of them look well groomed. Others, far from it. Whatever the state of the yard, more often than not, we would be correct to assume that unique and incredible things are happening there. Things that tell the story of a person who has not run from the pressures of city life. Things that tell the story of a family that chose to live there for reasons that can’t be easily reduced to armchair platitudes.

Join me for a pint under the canopy of the old Manitoba maple tree behind my house. We can talk about life in rural Canada and the richness therein.

If you ever find yourself driving outside your respective perimeter, assume the best of the yards and the people you see. You’ll most likely be correct.