Reading that last post in retrospect, it seems pretty damned obvious doesn’t it?  Nothing really new down there.  However, it should say something about how something so obvious actually isn’t obvious when considered from one’s normal point of view.  It’s like combustion engines that run on fossil-fuels; it’s pretty damned obvious that they’re an environmental, political, social, and health hazard… but they’re so convenient and can be a terrific lot of fun.

I kind of chuckle at how silly I must sound, talking like ‘wow, there are real people in those real towns out there… who knew!’.  It sound ridiculous, and it is in a way, but it is obviously still something routinely forgotten in socio-cultural centers such as Thunder Bay.  So I guess it’s not silly at all… because it shouldn’t be.

At the Hymer’s Fall Fair the other weekend, I got another glimpse into a perphiral culture (actually, an intersection of many, slightly different peripheral cultures) that are withering away, and now are more taken as spectacle rather than something central to a community.  Fairs such as this were celebrations of rural culture, culminations of a season’s hard work, expressions of regional cultural dialects in music, food, artifacts, competitions, etc.: all together it was the most important event in the area – a showcase of meaning.

Not really anymore.  Some of what I described does remain, but even in the last fifteen years I’ve noticed a shift toward nostalgia and away from substance.  Trades and skills that were once critical to the very fabic of rural culture are now quaint, ranking more as a spectacle or novelty.  Rural producers are fighting for booth-space against trinket-selling shysters from the city.  I suppose (not having the demographic numbers in front of me) that this shift is a result of increasing interest in Hymer’s Fair from urban Thunder Bay residents, and also – perhaps – a result of some urban Thunder Bay-ites’ recognition of their own cultural bankruptcy.

In the last two years, however, another shift has occurred.  The fair has attracted a new crowd – the urban, slow-food, local producer crowd – the farmer’s market crowd – and along with it an emphasis on alternative energy supply, local artisans (knife-makers, sculptors, artists), and the like.  This shift comes with its own contradictions, but I find it kind of funny; urban types pride themselves on being trend-leaders and progressives, and, yet, here we are at a rural fair – an hour out of town in the heart of our regional farmland – and the rural folks are revealed to be actually leading awareness and change.

And why not?  After all, farmers and rural residents tend to have a better grasp on their surroundings – seeing as how they rely on their surroundings and are ‘held accountable’ by it – and subsequently are more attuned to the problems related to consumption and waste.  Just one more reason why rural perspectives needs protection in an increasingly urbanized world.