This is the sort of shocker that gets more than a tear, it gets me riled up and howling at the moon at the helplessness and tragedy of it: We may be the last generation to enjoy what we've come to call The Community Centre.

No joke. It's bad news, real bad news that doesn't seem to have any real answer: Communities just can't afford community anymore. And no, it's not insurance, tho' the good Lord knows the nails that particular bugaboo has put into the rural community coffins, but no, this is bigger than insurance and just as inescapable.

Can you say 'downloading'? I knew you could. And part of that downloading? Can you say 'Walkerton'? Well guess what comes next ...

It's true. Water. It all comes down to water. Your teenage sons and daughters can't meet "somebody nice from around here" because we won't be having any "around here" and the reason is the staggering cost of meeting Ontario provincial 'guidelines' for water testing. According to an item in the Echo:

"At the meeting it was learned that water testing costs for the four small centres alone would be in the $25,000 to $30,000 range."

That's fifteen really big ones each, every year, year after year, just to ease our new-found water paranoia. We'll drink the bottled stuff without asking questions but if we want a place 'round here where neighbours mix and mingle and ease the tensions and just kick up their boots and let loose, it's got to have a 7×24 known Water Quality Index.

Couldn't we just drink tequila?

Back to the math, buildings like that aren't impervious to the years, none of us are, and buildings need care, they need repairs (especially in this climate and next to that lake) and they need all this to the tune of another $5,000, which, while a fraction, still brings the annual bill to just stay standing in the midst of the parking lot to $20,000 ... which is just co-incidentally ten times the annual revenues from renting the average hall ...

Can you say 'crikey'? I knew you could.

What to do

What use is a rant if I can't take a stab at an option, tho' I'll admit I have few I'd consider really viable, but one that strikes me is that we're not effectively using these buildings and maybe that's what needs to change. I don't care who's club thinks they've got squatter rights, this is survival, plain and simple and if we are going to even have a 'centre' to our community, we need to preserve those things that give the community places to peek over the fences, reasons to de-cocoon and get out and get in with this all of us crowd we call home-town. We need to move in to these places.

Amabel-Sauble Community School has a similar problem and for similar reasons: These buildings are not tents we can fold up and leave snow-covered Labour Day to Easter, they are structures and they will sit there pretending in their own minds (if buildings have minds, and I think they do) that there are people inside them whether or not it's me and you, or just the ghosts of those people who hacked this place out of the bush with dreams that someday it would be something they'd have called 'Community'.

If it costs money to run them, we have to pay our rent, and if we're going to pay our rent, we should use the space. if you ask me, this town needs to have an Office of Keeping All Halls Booked Solid ... even if that means cub-scout troups watching a bear-feeding video. These spaces get cash flow by being used, and if you take all the costs and divide them by 365 days it's a whole lot less than if you can only spread the total across 15 days.

I'd like to also say we should tell Queen's Park where to stuff their water test schedules too, or at least where they can roll up tightly and send the bill for the tests, but I suspect it's no so easy. 'Course, it would be easy if each building was equiped with a small decentralized membrane filtration system but hey, let's not go there with this story ;)

Nonetheless, when the op costs are still, water excluded, twice the renveues, what it tells me is that this is not so much a problem for politicians or an issue we should address with puppy-eyes and our palms held out. Not at all. What this tells me is that at least some part of the blame is on us ... for squandering this precious opportunity and realize those community visions our forefathers left in our charge. Whether or not that's the whole story of it, lobbying for pie-in-the-sky government handouts is one thing, but booking our own halls is nonetheless something we can do.

And we'd better do it now, while we still have the chance.

[ Source: Wiarton Echo, Wiarton, ON ]