Making Guelph a Better Place

(July 03) - Like many others in this wonderful city, I came from a distant land. I am Canadian by choice, not by birth. All my children and my granddaughter are Canadian by birth. All but my oldest son were born in Guelph General Hospital.

Whether we were born here or traveled here, our diversity defines us. It makes us interesting. In school I was taught that Canada had two founding nations, the English and the French. It was a lie. There was a third, if you lump all the aboriginal nations into one.

Be that as it may, the original people and the European invaders have since been joined by families from every country in the world. Whether we have been here for ten years or ten thousand years, we celebrated our 142nd birthday on Wednesday.

Canada had its 100th birthday 10 years after my family stepped off a ship and onto a Quebec City dock. In the centennial year we were excited young people in an exciting young country. We were entranced by Expo 67, mesmerized by the music, galvanized by the politics. Then, we marched for peace in Vietnam. Today it’s Iraq and Afghanistan.

Then, we organized food co-ops and worker co-ops. Today I belong to, shop in, or work at, some of the co-ops in Guelph: Meridian Credit Union, Co-operator’s Insurance, Cole Road Housing Co-op, Planet Bean, the Natural Burial Co-operative. There are lots more available: five other housing co-ops, a couple of other credit unions, a bunch of child care co-ops, Guelph Campus Co-op, Gay-Lea Dairy, Fire Fly Energy, Genex and many more.

I had never heard of Guelph 42 years ago. It entered my consciousness in 1968 when ITT, the company my father worked for, abandoned Montreal to come here. I followed in 1971 with a wife and a 14-month old baby.

I had heard of Lester Pearson, the centennial Prime Minister. He has a little known connection to Guelph. He is the only Canadian politician to ever play semi-pro baseball for the Guelph Maple Leafs, a forerunner of the Guelph Royals in the old Canadian League. The Royals Wikipedia entry doesn’t mention Pearson’s time with the team, but he was here for at least the 1917 season. He’s in the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame, but not the Guelph Sports Hall. Are our standards higher, or is our Hall overdue for a correction?

When I made my way down the 401 to Guelph, it was a bustling city of 60,000. An early memory is trying to catch a bus to campus. I walked to the Square, sat on a bench and waited. And waited. It was a cold February Sunday morning and it was long time before someone came along to tell me I’m not in Montreal any more. You want to know how long ago that was? The public library had so much space there were two community meeting rooms in the basement.

Guelph was a good place to live in 1971 and a better place today. What makes it so? The people, the history, the public institutions, the community involvement. There were always three legs to our economic stool: public sector, manufacturing and co-operatives. The public sector has been eroded by too many acts of privatization. Manufacturing has been hammered by free trade and globalization.

The co-operatives continue to thrive. They have done for a long time.

Samuel Carter, the mayor of Guelph in 1913 – 14 was president of the Workingman's Co-operative Association of Guelph. He was also the first president of the Canadian Co-operative Association.

We have come full circle with our present mayor who also has strong community roots and brings a co-operative style of governance to city hall.

What makes Guelph a better place? We all do.