Small Towns and my trip to the Eastern Townships

On November 21st 2009 I had the privilege of travelling to the Eastern Townships where I got the chance to meet and work with a group of young people looking to make a difference. I spent a little over an hour with them talking about what is in their community now and how they can move forward in their communities. We brainstormed ideas of things that could be going on and how they could make a difference. Many times I was found challenging them on their ideas and making them think broader and bigger.

It was an interesting trip because as much energy and excitement and ideas the youth had, I realized they still all had so many "barriers" in their heads. I write barriers with parentheses because to me they were fictional barriers. These barriers were things the youth had made up saying that people didn't come to their towns, that their towns were boring, but yet they had just worked with someone else telling them all the things they were going to do-adventure parks, huge games across community borders of treasure hunts, etc...I pointed out to them that if they held the attitudes they did that none of those things would ever come to fruition because the first time they ran up against a challenge they would quite and say "well that is the way the town runs, and no one ever listens to us" If they were going to change other peoples mindsets about their towns then they were going to have to change their own mindsets about their towns.

I found this a great day as I to grew up in a small town called Shawville, Quebec and I too once said Shawville is so boring and there is nothing to do here. No movie theatre, no Tim Horton's, no anything. Coming from a small town we are always looking for more-a mall, a place to watch movies, a bigger grocery stores, a Tim Horton's for goodness sakes that is so unCanadian to not have a Timmy's. But, what people don't realize is that there are amazing things that happen, little things that happen no where else. Movie theatre, who needs a movie theatre-we set up a screen and a projector in our park and the community comes out to watch. Hockey is our mall-that is where all the kids come to hang out and talk-and sometimes they might even know what the score of the game is. The point is small towns have lots to offer and people need to start to realize that the only limitations we have when living and working in a small town is our imagination. Look around there is tons of space and usually tons of people who are willing to help if you ask, mind you, you might have to ask more than once.

Check out more about the Eastern Townships at http://www.townshippers.qc.ca/