A Lot Going for Salmon Arm
North of 50 - Fair Comment
Don Sawyer
A friend here in Salmon Arm recently created a blog site called Aim High Salmon Arm (www.salmonarm.wordpress.com). This is not one of your run of the mill self-indulgent blogs that inflicts misinformation on the uninformed. No, AHSA is dedicated to encouraging dialogue and reflection on issues that affect Salmon Arm and, inevitably, the global community we are all part of. Glancing through the submissions on the site, I was reminded that Salmon Arm is a very odd community. Here I'm using "odd" affectionately and in its original meaning as something that is "singular in a positive sense of renowned, rare, choice." Oh, I know. All of our towns and cities are different, unique even, each with its own charm and assets. But Salmon Arm is something else. It's really quite an amazing place.
For starters, we are the only town in Canada we can find that has successfully fended off "Smart Centres," Canada's largest shopping mall developer. (In this case, the massive development was proposed for an environmentally sensitive area at the mouth of the Salmon River and would have nearly duplicated in size the entire commercial area of the downtown core.) This was not easy. Led by an all-volunteer group called the Committee for a Strong and Sustainable Salmon Arm (CASSSA), it took the collective effort of hundreds of community members researching environmental and economic issues, appearing at council meetings, organizing rallies, preparing and distributing information pamphlets, discussing the issues door-to-door, making presentations to community groups, and, finally, hundreds of concerned community members coming out night after night (staying, in one case, until 2:00 am!) to voice there concerns at a series of council meetings.
But that's not the only remarkable display of Salmon Arm community engagement and resourcefulness. Not by a long shot. The SALMAR Community Association is celebrating its 50th anniversary as the owners and operators of theatres in Salmon Arm - currently five of them. So what? Well, they may be the only non-profit group in all of North America to operate a first-run multiplex, pouring thousands of dollars back into the community each year. (Why send profits to Los Angeles when we can keep them right here in town supporting dozens of worthwhile community projects?).
Salmon Arm is home to one of the most successful film societies and festivals in the country (and the only 3-D festival.) The Salmon Arm Roots and Blues Festival, celebrating its 16th anniversary this summer, has become one of the premier summer music festivals in Canada, drawing around 15,000 people to the magnificent site adjacent to the downtown. We have a vibrant downtown that thrives despite economic downturns and big box blandishments. Salmon Arm has one of the top fairs in the province, with one of the highest per-capita participation rates.
We have a municipal trail system that is the envy of BC - and under the leadership of volunteer committees, we will soon have one of the most extensive systems in the country. We are in the midst of a community initiated Smart Growth (not to be confused with Smart Centres!) project that is providing new and more sustainable ways of looking at how our community can grow for everyone's benefit. We have the Larch Hills trail system, one of the largest Nordic tracts in western Canada, maintained by the Larch Hills Ski Club, a volunteer community group that for 20 years has made the Larch Hills synonymous with excellence in community-managed sports venues.
But why am I telling you all of this? Because there is another word I'd like to analyze: community. Community comes from the Latin word communis, "common, public, general, shared by all or many." Communis became commutatem, "fellowship, community of relations or feelings." I like that. A community of common feelings. Salmon Arm, like all communities - has its deep philosophical and political divisions. But somehow despite these, there is a remarkably high level of shared engagement, caring and commitment - a community of common feelings - I have rarely seen elsewhere.
While walking a while ago, I exchanged greetings with a woman sharing the path. "Aren't we lucky to have such wonderful trails?" she asked. I nodded, smiled and went on, but as I thought about the woman's comment, I realized she was wrong. It wasn't luck we had the trail. It was vision and lots of hard work. Dozens of people had lobbied at the political level, as well as wielded shovels and mattocks to build the trail itself.
And it is these people that make Salmon Arm special. We have a long history of self-reliance, cooperation and stubbornness, traits often seen in agricultural communities. It has resulted in a tradition of volunteerism and community responsibility. Maybe it's this tradition that keeps us from becoming just another cookie-cutter town. Or maybe we're just cantankerous. Either way, keep your eye on Salmon Arm. We've got something good going up here.
Don Sawyer is a writer, educator and former director of Okanagan College's International Development Centre. He lives with his wife in Salmon Arm.
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