Coincidental to my previous article on solar powering our community, a flurry of world-wide solar projects landed in my lap each of them lending weight to the need for change and, collectively, confirming global warming as the existential threat.
In India, for example, the world’s first solar-powered passenger train is now in service and that news was closely followed by word of Sweden’s famous ice hotel — usually built from winter ice then melting in the spring — has installed a solar-powered ice-maker (think Arctic Midnight Sun), that will make the ice hotel viable year-round.
Then came word of a B.C. summer music festival drawing all its on-stage amplification needs from solar power, followed quickly by news from the UK that manufacture of internal combustion engines for motor cars will cease in 2040, thus compelling manufacturers to produce alternative power sources for vehicles which, undoubtedly, will include electricity.
We are at last heeding the dire ramifications of global warming and acting to mitigate them. Now it’s our turn.
It’s about 30 years since the CP rail lines were torn up. Isn’t it time we give serious consideration to re-establishing a rail link between Grand Forks and Christina; to forming a Boundary Narrow Gauge Railway Society; to finding the wherewithal to get the job done and show the world that shorter distances between communities don’t have to be by road?
One of the seminal books of the 1970s was Small is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher (get it through the library), in which he extols the virtues of keeping things smaller and within parochial managerial range.
World trade, so contemptuously dominated by mega corporations, would be better served by small, local enterprises. Nelson owns and operates its own power generation, for example, and I believe we should seriously consider being in the vanguard of re-establishing a community owned and operated narrow-gauge railway system as a key element in our economic revival portfolio.
To our big advantage, the rail bed already exists and I’m pretty sure that a small, solar-powered engine hauling small, comfortable rail cars parallel to the Trans-Canada Trail would have much to proclaim. It would make our stretch of the TCT uniquely attractive to both enhanced tourism and local transportation needs — goods and passengers.
You’re invited to research worldwide narrow gauge railways. Not the piddling miniature railways whose drivers straddle tiny engines as if riding a mule (some of those small units are actually called mules) but something from the middle range of rail locomotion between them and what CPR ran out of here until the late 1980s Given the popularity of many of those small railroads, it seems worthwhile putting out feelers to test our own readiness for such an effort.
It is not too far-fetched to consider asking CPR, Burlington Northern, KVR and other railways for help; they likely have much of what is needed to get such a project back on track — in a manner of speaking.
Philanthropists are out there looking for community economic development projects into which to sink some funds, as are investors.
I would go further: There is so much potential in rural economic re-development that governments would also get on board because the widening gap in Canada between urban and rural standards of living is undermining national cohesion. Them and us is fraught with danger.
We can’t sit back wishing the begging bowl full.
I believe a first-class job of presenting our case would be regarded favourably. The theme of the four articles in this short series is all about community re-vitalization: The pedestrian precinct on Market Avenue, the crematorium to serve the Boundary (it garnered the most positive feedback), solar powering all of our community needs and generating excess to sell into the grid to finance future community services and, above, our own small railway system.
Combined, these signal a community poised for revitalization. By adding your suggestions to the mix we affirm our social willingness to shake off stagnation and the eagerness to re-new.
Our future is in the scales. It’s time to shelve petty differences, to build the case for redevelopment of our local economy and build what it takes to make it happen.
-This article is the conclusion of a series about economic development in Grand Forks.