Prairie People by Robert Collins

Author:Robert Collins [Collins, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-55199-513-7
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 2004-10-05T00:00:00+00:00

VIII

CITY LIGHTS

The western city has yet to take its place

of prominence in our mindscapes.

GEORGE MELNYK

The Urban Prairie, 1993

The City as Province

How about doing away with the prairie provinces and dividing them among the five largest cities? Prairie writer and editor George Melnyk floated that notion ten years ago: that Winnipeg, Regina, Saskatoon, Edmonton, and Calgary might be regarded as city-states in the ancient Greek tradition.

“An anti-urban bias runs through our heritage,” he wrote in The Urban Prairie. “Westerners are an urban people like other Canadians. This fact must be recognized. At some point the city has to become a dominant power in both the cultural and political mythologies of the region.”

He’s right. Many of us idealize the rural prairie because our roots are there, but urban areas now account for 75 per cent of the provinces’ population and the bulk of their economic product.

What if Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba ceased to exist? Melnyk speculated. “In their place would be a region divided into five city-states, having all the powers that the three provinces now have – five provincial capitals if you like. The rural inhabitants in each city-state would relate to the capital city and the smaller centres under its control, linking their economic future to that of the city-state. It makes more sense for a beet farmer in southern Alberta to have Calgary as his seat of government than Edmonton.”

It wouldn’t work, Melnyk concluded. Would Regina’s territory extend to Saskatoon’s boundary, leaving Saskatoon responsible for everything north? Would Winnipeg, already dominant in Manitoba, take over the province?

All the same, his idea casts a refreshing light on the West.

“The land cannot be the sole arbiter of our identity, nor the farmer our sole representative,” Melnyk wrote. “We have been obsessed with the land and its meaning for more than a century. Perhaps it is time now to reflect on the cities.”

Here, then, are snapshots of the Big Five and a few of their people. Residents may say, “This isn’t the city I know.” Fair enough. These are impressions only.

WINNIPEG

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.