I credit Jack Bennest as being elementary in helping me to discover who my father, Wally Smith was, as a man, a husband, an orchardist, a writer, and a father. He was all of those descriptions. You might ask what part did Jack play? Jack encouraged me to continue to write stories in ODN. At the time I was also writing my autobiography and needed to access as much of my history, Wally’s history and Oliver history, as possible. As time has passed, people have given me ideas and articles and information from which to draw to produce stories, many of which have been published in ODN.

As long as the story ideas keep coming, I shall continue to write.

I have now finished writing my autobiography, it is simmering on the back burner. All my ODN stories are factual and true according to my memory and the memories of my contributors. However, I am considering writing my autobiography as a work of fiction based on a true story. Wally’s father was a sharp shooter in the Canadian Army during the time of the Boer War. Canada sent troops to that conflict. Was my grandfather in one of those troops? If he wasn’t, maybe he will be. That is a tidbit for your imagination as to the potential for a work of fiction.

To totally change the next subject, I want to explore one of Wally’s favorite discussions, that being food and land use. Wally always felt that few people appreciated where their food comes from. Most people expect their food to be inexpensive and tasty, and give little thought as to how much it cost to produce that food. Canadians have always felt that because we have so much land we will never run out! Therefore, we can build wherever we want, whatever we want, and whenever we want. I say NOT! And Wally would agree with me!

I want to present to you a concept called subtle urbanization. This is how it could work. Mr and Mrs XYZ have a tree fruit farm of 15 acres. The next door neighbor installs a mobile home and a swimming pool. Of course fruit trees need to be pulled out to make room for that endeavour.

Years later, both land owners are approached by a walking trail group which wants permission to put in a small trail between both properties. Permission is given and the trail is established. Unfortunately, both property owners find that people are defecating on their respective properties and stealing the fruit, so they both have to install fences to protect their rights.

Mr. and Mrs. XYZ need to spray their fruit trees but run into trouble with the trail users who object to the necessary farm practices which impede their walking trail use.

The neighbor with the swimming pool sells his land to developers who also object to the tree fruit farmer’s activities, especially the pesticide spraying. The developers start to carve up the newly purchased land with roads and install power, gas, and sewer services. Houses start to go in. There needs to be room for a sports field for family recreation, and a place for a church to be built. By this time the tree fruit farmer with the 15 acres was running afoul with the trail walkers, the developers, and the residents of the new houses. Their children were climbing the fences, stealing the fruit and breaking the trees.

What is a guy to do? He has been approached by the developers to sell and he probably will when farming becomes too unbearable to continue.

Subtle urbanization then is death by a thousand cuts.

What is the solution? Admit that we have a limited amount of farmland for food production. A moratorium on construction of every kind of building on the Valley floor needs to be established.Housing needs to be built above the Valley floor on the hillsides. Walking trails need to be built above the Valley floor, again on the hillsides in order for the fruit growers to fulfill their obligations to the product they are growing. The few thousand dollars the walking trails bring pale in comparison to the hundreds of thousands of dollars the tree fruits bring.

There are some National Park areas of the USA where hikers must defecate and urinate into bags and carry it out of the Park. Maybe that should be the case here?

Wally once said that this Valley would have a water use issue if the population continued to grow without restraint. That was sometime during the 1970’s, a few decades ago now. When will the breaking point come? What has to happen before we awaken to our shrinking resources? It is all connected, the water use and the land use.

Who has the political will to make the hard choices? Those choices will affect our children and our grandchildren. Choosing to do nothing is still making a choice, but that is a dead end road.

ruralreportwithlairdsmith@gmail.com