By JON COOKSEY
Drip, drip, drip. That’s the poison leaking into our community. Not the forever chemicals falling with our rain (though that’s bad too) but the poison of bile, which is seeping into the way we express our opinions, and the way we treat each other, even though we are all linked by our intense love for this island.
A little over a year ago, I started working on a public engagement for Transition Salt Spring (TSS), in anticipation of a long overdue revision of our official community plan (OCP), now 18 years out of date and counting. I’m a member of the board of the Farmland Trust, and I’d chosen to work on food security because pretty much everyone likes food, so a low potential for conflict. Housing, it seemed, not so much, but — like most people, I imagine — I was only half-paying attention.
I had that luxury because I own a home (okay, the bank owns a home), but it isn’t only homeowners who aren’t paying much attention. After more than a year of talking to a lot of people, I can tell you there are many, many people who are desperately affected by our housing crisis, but they too have tuned out.
Why? Poison. Op eds and letters that threaten to crowd out important articles about roads, climate change, water, Christmas parties, repair cafes, our need for a hockey rink and 100 other things that are talked about constructively and are consequently fun to read about. Not housing. The bile just keeps rising, and the problem keeps staying more or less the same in the face of thousands of Salt Springers either unhoused or living in substandard housing.
Who would want to jump into that conversation? I’ll tell you who. Nobody that isn’t already in it. The social cost is too high, and not everybody has the skin of a rhinoceros. But the poison in the way we communicate — as distinct from the passion of our underlying beliefs — is rippling out. The bile has risen so high against our only present islands trustee — from all sides — that it’s cited as the number one reason why great people don’t want to run for office in the upcoming election. As a result, we’re likely to get only candidates at extreme ends of the opinion spectrum. Is that the choice we want in October?
I’m not writing this to wag my finger at you, or anyone. (It would be pretty stupid to say “Okay, everybody, as soon as I’m done criticizing you, no more criticism!”) We all live in glass houses (some with mould), including me. I’m writing this because I just saw an inspiring example of how we can work together, at a time when I was wondering if we still can.
If you don’t know, seven Salt Springers volunteered to be on a committee to advise McElhanney, the consulting firm hired by the Salt Spring Local Trust Committee, on how to engage our community around the OCP revision. I’m going to name them, because these people stepped up to make our community better: Eric March, Maxine Leichter, Robert Steinbach, Riley Donovan, Tim Hiltz, John Cade and Anne Gunn. That’s how you fix things. You step up. These are the people who did that.
If you don’t know them, they have very different opinions about how to revise the OCP and what the right answer is for housing on Salt Spring. And their time on the Project Advisory Planning Commission (terrible acronym, like a baby throwing up) has not been easy — in fact, it’s been pretty frustrating. So they have every reason to be cranky with each other. Even poisonous.
But when I attended their meeting last Thursday as an observer, that’s not what I saw. I saw a group of people treating each other respectfully, voicing strong opinions but finding common ground as they went along, shifting alliances on different issues depending on the facts and their consciences, and generally observing a rule that was central to my engagement for TSS. We only had three rules, but the most important was this: We will see and treat each other as friends.
You’re driving through Ganges (at 30 km/h, of course) and glance over to see if Whiskers is open and BANG! You’ve rear-ended someone. How much differently is that going to go if the person who gets out of the car in front of you is a stranger, or your friend? But that’s the thing. The person getting out of the car has a choice: to assume you’re a person who is stupid or malicious or out to get them . . . or they can assume you’re a person just like them who had a bad moment. Which assumption would you make, if that was you?
This is the choice we have in front of us, that will change everything: to start assuming that others are just like us, thoughtful, well-intended, trying to do the best for all living things (not just human things) on this island of ours. Here’s a secret: nobody agrees with you. Not about everything. Not your partner. Not your dog. Differences of opinion are the fabric of relationship, and learning to handle them constructively is the secret to a happy life. Anger, not contempt. Passion, not poison. But for this to work, we all have to do it — it can’t just be most of us. Are you on board?
Drip, drip, drip. That could be the sound of happiness.
The writer is an independent consultant and volunteer member of the Transition Salt Spring Advocacy Circle.