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MLA’s handbook of sedition

The day after the municipal election, a time when the top 25 per cent of Red Deer’s citizens all came together in a single enterprise (were you a part?), a book arrived at the Advocate.
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The day after the municipal election, a time when the top 25 per cent of Red Deer’s citizens all came together in a single enterprise (were you a part?), a book arrived at the Advocate.

In a plain brown wrapper. A seditious book.

It’s a manual on how to destroy communities. It was, of course, a co-operative effort, involving a government MLA, no less, and a newspaper editor who also writes fiction (you can never trust these types). The MLA is Doug Griffiths, of Battle River-Wainwright, and the editor is Kelly Clemmer of The Wainwright Star Chronicle.

The book is titled 13 Ways to Kill Your Community, published by Frontenac House, out of Calgary, thanks to the usual tax-wasters, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the Canada Council.

I’d like to offer my copy to the first member of the new city council who cares to read it, hopefully to pass it along. But please don’t consider me generous or anything — after all, my copy was free.

Besides, I have an agenda.

Essentially, the book grew out of a speech that Griffiths has probably presented in community halls and church basements about 300 too many times. It’s aimed at small communities that make up the Battle River-Wainwright area, but it applies so closely to Red Deer, you can’t help but think you’ve heard a version of it at a ReThink Red Deer meeting or something. Its first chapter even covers a topic that was part of the election campaign.

So let’s start at Chapter 1. The first strategy for killing a community is to not have quality water, or enough of it for present needs and future growth.

In the Red Deer example, that segues right over to Chapter 7: Don’t Co-operate. If we didn’t want Red Deer to succeed, it would be good to oppose our regional water strategy, so that our neighbours could not succeed, either.

Following that notion, it would also be a good idea to put as many roadblocks as possible to the Red Deer River greenspace plan, which will connect many kilometres of the river valley as a continuous park, linked by trails.

After all, we don’t want to encourage tourism or new business opportunities (Chapter 2), a topic also covered by Chapter 10, on rejecting all new ideas that might promote our strengths as a region, and Chapter 4: Deceive Yourself About Real Needs and Values.

Two other chapters were so similar in structure they should have been combined — Chapter 3: Ignore Youth and Chapter 9: Ignore Seniors. That would have destroyed the sinister nature of having 13 ways to kill a community, but surely Griffiths could have some up with another. Try Slander All Nonconformity.

One interesting bit in Chapter 3 talked about businesses setting up job fairs for Grade 11 and 12 students, not to attract resumes, but to let students know that once they’ve finished their post-secondary educations, there are jobs in their hometowns waiting for them. So that they come back.

Other chapters involve curbing civic pride — Chapter 5: Shop Elsewhere and Chapter 6: Don’t Paint. Not until this book did I really stop to think about the economic value of things like the Communities In Bloom project.

Other chapters cover topics close to my heart — Chapter 11: Ignore Outsiders and the last chapter: Don’t Take Responsibility.

Newcomers, and even lifetime residents (people with disabilities, for instance) know when they’re not being included in community life, and we’re wasting a valuable human resource whenever that happens.

Those who didn’t vote in the election (ignorance is a pretty poor excuse for inaction) could be directed to Chapter 13. But not with my copy — it’s reserved for someone who already understands it.

Greg Neiman is an Advocate editor.