What is Rural?

I spent 3 days in Regina this March at the 2024 annual convention for the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities, or SARM. I have been a councilor for 8 years now in the RM of Kindersley, aka RM 290. There are 294 municipalities in Saskatchewan. Many of them may have fewer people living inside the boundaries than their official municipality number. Once a year, representatives from each RM are invited to Saskatoon or Regina, depending on the year, to vote on resolutions, voice their ratepayers concerns directly to the premier and his cabinet ministers, price out a new grader or mower, and pack every seat of the city's steak houses and beer parlours.

SARM is old, and I don't mean its 129 year history. Of the 1,300 odd people attending at delegates, many, probably most, are over 60. If the average age of a farmer in 2023 is 56, your elected RM councilor is likely older. There are a lot of hearing aids, bad knees and a burning distrust of the NDP that most younger urban voters can't parse. Lorne Calvert left power before the financial crisis of 2008 and more people are worried about communism than what happened with the Global Transportation Hub scandal during the Brad Wall era.

So, what does rural mean in Saskatchewan? The open space of rural living generally connotes freedom, it means small government, it means concerns about agriculture are front and centre, and lauds self-directed stewardship. As a councilor I know it also means making sure we have systems in place to stop people from doing dumb, illegal, or dangerous things. Individuality yes, but legally entrenched property rights as well. This isn't to say that rural life means you have to be a loaner. Concerns over a vanishing way of life suggest to me that it is community and lifestyle that rural folks want to hold on to. Rather than the suburban post-war boom with picket fences and single income households it's more about the one room school houses, and smaller mixed farms that consume more of their own farms production rather than the big box landscape of modern grocery stores and parking lots. Bigger families, manual labour, dirt roads. This is rural for the baby boomer generation, and those who lived on farms, or at least have memories of a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle or cousin and that lifestyle. 

Let's consider what rural is through the lens of health care. It is the number one concern for an ageing population, and, despite 40% of provincial tax dollars going towards it, health care is in a very rough state in the province of Saskatchewan. We have retention problems for doctors and nurses, especially in smaller rural areas, and we have well trained paramedics ferrying patients on day long trips to urban centres for kidney dialysis or imaging due to lack of population density. You might complain about wait times in Saskatoon or Regina, but you still have to get to a hospital before that clock starts ticking. Everyone has an issue at some stage of the care process. Enter a figure long gone, the ‘Country Doctor’. One person responsible for their community's needs. Lifelong retention, patients medical history from birth to death, always home, practical, no nonsense, knows the area and the area's ills. No administration or bureaucracy, just the opinion of the community he serves. An artifact that many pin their idealized image of rugged individualism on, one that speaks to all the values of rural life. Independent in a way, but close knit community-first ties as well. You might hate your neighbour, but when you neighbour is the only one with a working stove or extra dozen eggs, you set those differences aside. Much like the one room schoolhouse, you make things work with what you have around. Now I'm talking like I was born in the early 50's instead of the 80's.

For me, rural is real, but for the generation whose great grandparents had a farm, but sold it or retired before the grandkids got a combine ride, it looks much different. If we want to uphold the best parts of rural living we have to make small towns places that are not only cheaper to live and less hectic, but welcoming, tolerant, and as culturally vibrant as possible. In an age where remote work is more common than ever, people need a reason to embrace the best parts of small town life. And half a beef cut cut and wrapped for 5 bucks a pound isn’t bad either.