СÀ¶ÊÓƵ

CARLYLE OBSERVER - First of all, I’m thrilled about writing for the Carlyle Observer – again! I wrote for this paper a few years ago, then stepped away for a season. I’m thankful to Dolores for giving me this opportunity to write again.

For most of my life (and it is getting longer and longer), I’ve lived in large cities. First it was Toronto, then it was Winnipeg, a somewhat smaller city.

Occasionally, I heard about small-town life but never paid much attention. After all, I thought, it wasn’t something I would ever experience. Mostly what I heard was negative. “Small towns are cliquish and gossipy… there’s no such thing as privacy”. That sort of thing. Everybody knew everything about everyone and people weren’t hesitant sharing what they knew or thought they knew, if you know what I mean.

Well, I did end up in one of those places … Carnduff. And I discovered that a lot of what I had heard was true. Family connections give the appearance of cliquishness and the gossip wire is very active … and fast! There are very few secrets in small-town Saskatchewan.

An elderly lady whom I visited at our local personal care home from time to time recently passed away. Following our visits, I would return home amazed at how a ‘shut-in’ knew so much and knew it so quickly. I often felt that she knew about things before they even happened. Small town news gets around faster than social media, it seems.

As uncomfortable as these small town ‘negatives’ may be, I’ve discovered many benefits that are missing (or scarce) in large cities. To be honest, the benefits are such that I’m not sure I’d ever want to return to a large city. I’m now used to the so-called negatives that I’d heard about and even appreciate some of them.

And I’ve really enjoyed the ‘untalked-about’ positives. For example…

A few weeks ago, my wife and I received the tragic word that her younger brother in Winnipeg had passed away very unexpectedly. We had been with him the week before and everything seemed to be fine. We both were in a state of shock, unable to think of much else.

We both had to work that day but our minds were in Winnipeg. When she got home, we couldn’t even think about what to have for supper. I suggested that we go out to eat. We went to a restaurant the next town over and as we entered, we saw some fellow Carnduffians that we knew distantly. We exchanged ‘hellos’ and they asked how we were doing (surprisingly, for a small town, they hadn’t heard the sad news yet) and we told them about my wife’s brother.

They returned to their table, we ate our meal, and thought nothing further about our brief conversation … until we went to pay the bill. Our meal had been paid for! When we dropped by their place later to thank them, they told us it was the least they could do for us.

Although hardly knowing us, they wanted to be there for us. A beautiful thing that one sees far more often in small towns than in those urban centres.

The following day, we went to Winnipeg to mourn with my wife’s parents. While there, a lot of snow fell in Carnduff. When we returned, our driveway had been shoveled clear. We figured out who did it - another family that we knew better than the couple at the restaurant. It was their way of encouraging us in our season of mourning.

Just recently, a local teen was diagnosed with leukemia and, as is often the case in small towns, the community has rallied to support her family financially and in other ways.

Small-town life comes with many benefits that you don’t hear people talking about in those large cities.

And those benefits make small-town living such a great thing!