By Julia Blushak
A minister, a major, an executive director, an activity coordinator and an outreach worker walk into a restaurant for breakfast. When the waiter asks for their order, they exclaim unanimously – ‘A healthier neighbourhood, sunny side up, please!’ Joking aside, the set up is based on real events.
Sometime late last winter, several community leaders began meeting for casual brainstorming over breakfast in an eastside St. Catharines restaurant. More than anything, they began meeting for mutual support. Their professional lives felt daunting at times as they confronted the day to day demands in a neighbourhood deemed one of high needs, based on findings in reports like the 2007 ‘A Legacy of Poverty?
Addressing Cycles of Poverty & the Impact on Child Health in Niagara Region.’ Together, these individuals knew more about the lives behind the faces in their controversial neighbourhood than most of us care to. And so, with their ‘sunny side up’, hands-on philosophy, they set about to plan a celebration of bounty.
This first ever Harvest Festival will be held in the Centennial Gardens Park just south of the Queenston Street neighbourhood, just east of the St. Catharines downtown core on Saturday October 2, 2010 from 11 a. m. to 4 p.m. At the time of this writing, tables and vendors, music and food and crafters and agencies are looking forward to sharing a day of friendly mayhem and fun for the whole family in an under-utilized neighbourhood green space. Everyone is invited, rain or shine.
The Harvest Festival will make a positive impact. To this end, it is with more fortitude than policy that committed individuals and agencies with an ear to the needs of a community dare to shift a sense of place and purpose for so many. Meanwhile, at some altitude above the Niagara Region, assessments and monies perspectives whirl away regarding prosperity in our area. At ground level, a hospital will soon leave a vacuum in this city’s older and established side of town. Local employment opportunities remain scarce and the choices to live a healthy, balanced life tip more favourably for those who are mostly healthy and balanced or have adequate transportation at their disposal.
If the notion of sustainable community is a choice, then grassroots and collective enterprises must lead and plant the seeds for change, and soon! For the long haul and for my own bit of blue-sky thinking, I would suggest that community and neighbourhoods are still the places where we learn to thrive and give. On a very practical level, mixed use of available urban and rural spaces instead of residential-only zoning can help bring needed business, employment and enthusiasm to a locality.
Regrettably, the medium density residential zoning by the Niagara Health System will not ensure a more balanced transition after the St. Catharines General Hospital is demolished and the land is sold. Smaller businesses, affordable housing, better cross-town and trans-regional transportation can help keep enterprise local and encourage stable, sustainable growth. Whether it’s church communities like the Silver Spire United Church, the Unitarian Congregation of Niagara, Westview Christian Fellowship, St. Barnabas Anglican, Westminster United, Salvation Army Booth Centre or small agencies like Start Me Up Niagara or CAN (Climate Action Now) and health providers like the Greater St. Catharines Community Health Centre or the Red Cross who come together to reach into a community, in the end we are individuals working and playing beside each other. We all benefit when good things happen in our own backyard.
If you are able, neighbour, do come by the Harvest Festival for a folksy and friendly good time. The more the merrier.
(Julia Blushak is a resident of St. Catharines and a communications & community outreach developer with Start Me Up Niagara in that Niagara, Ontario city.)
(Visit Niagara At Large at http://www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to residents in our greater binational Niagara region.)
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