City or country, we’re of the same herd
PAIN COURT, ONT.— The quilt tent at the International Plowing Match and Rural Expo in Chatham-Kent was a busy place last week. Award winning and historic quilts were hung with pride. Some had abstract designs, others depicted stories of rural life.
One in particular stood out: a beautiful aerial view of Kent County called “As the Crow Flies,” with a patchwork of farms stitched together forming a quilted map. All of it, the tent and that quilt, reminded me of Toronto.
Walk around Toronto and you’ll eventually come across shops and cafes where people get together and knit. A knitting bee isn’t so different than a quilting bee, to my mind. Nor is that map quilt much different from the wares sold in shops around the city where pillows, books, jewellery, art prints, coasters and other items have maps and illustrations of Toronto on them. It’s all a crafty love of where we live.
And yet somehow we’re supposed to think that the plowing match and downtown Toronto are different, oppositional worlds in the current political discourse where cities, especially Toronto, are pitted against rural Ontario. There’s a vibe, explicit and implicit, that “real” people live in rural settings and “elites” live in the city.
This sensibility is partly why Ontario politicians always make time to go to the match, essentially an agricultural trade show and celebration of rural life, to get out of Queen’s Park and show they’re in touch with rural Ontario and its agricultural economy. Apart from the wedge politics, this is good idea.
The plowing match usually doesn’t make much news in Toronto, though perhaps it should, as the health of Ontario’s rural economy is tied to ours. This year was different though as opening day got in the way of Doug Ford’s attack on Toronto city council, resulting in a chaotic weekend and middle-of-the-night legislature meetings.
Here nor there, ChathamKent, a single-tier municipality, has a population just over 100,000, less than most of the districts in Toronto’s new 25-ward system. While Torontonians get one local councillor for that population, 17 parttime councillors plus a mayor represent nearly the same amount of people in ChathamKent. That’s some elite-level democratic representation. When the plowing match was held in Essex County in 1989, near where I was growing up on the edge of Windsor, it was the biggest of big deals. Our schools were made up of both town and farm kids and busloads of students visited. Stu- dents in other parts of the province make the same pilgrimage when the event is near them.
In smaller cities like Windsor, the countryside is minutes away. Though there were farms within what are now the city limits of Toronto in living memory of some residents here, the countryside has rapidly gotten further away as sprawl has surrounded the city. The direct city-rural connection has been lost.
Since I was “back home” in Essex County last week, and the plowing match was nearby, I drove over for opening day. When you’re at the event, some of those urban-rural differences evaporate.
First thing I noticed was the vast parking lots weren’t dominated by pickups, as rural clichés might suggest. Though there was a fair amount of slick F-150s, there was a mix of vehicles that included Mercedes SUVs, Honda Civics, Cadillacs as well as domestic and foreign rust buckets.
After paying the $20 entry I was struck by the vintage farm equipment exhibition with old machinery lovingly restored. Some of these farmers would have a lot in common with fixed-gear and vintage bike riders in the city.
Walking further in, the magnificent new combines, sprayers and tractors lent an immediate appreciation of how much capital investment it takes to farm: it isn’t cheap, and it isn’t easy.
In one tent, festooned with energy efficient versions of “Edison bulbs,” an urban interior design favourite, tastings of local wines were taking place. In another tent, local craft beer made in Kent County was being exclusively served at $6 a can. Not a buck-a-beer in sight. Proud displays of crops like kale reminded me of downtown farmers markets.
All of this is to say that while there are certainly differences in lifestyle between urban and rural Ontario, there’s an awful lot that is similar. Things that might signal “elite” can be found in both places. At the same time, living in either place can be tough and if you’re poor in Toronto you probably don’t feel terribly elite. Though city and rural elections results did manifest a divide in Ontario politics, both areas had plenty of voters who didn’t vote for who currently represents them. We are, as ever, more complicated than wedge politics suggest.
Maybe Toronto should host the plowing match one day, to better connect us with rural Ontario. We’ve already got Riverdale farm ready to go and heck, we could plow under Cabbagetown if it needs more room.