City slickers bring their issues to small towns
Spring is in the air lilacs are soon to bloom and summer weekends aren’t far behind. Here is a little book to take with you on one of your junkets out of town. It will fit in the back pocket of your jeans or in your car’s glove compartment. The Weekender Effect is a little book about big ideas. It’s a book Calgarians should read — especially those who put $100 in their SUV gas tanks every Friday after work and ride well over the speed limit all the way to Invermere B.C.
Originally from Calgary Bob Sandford moved to Canmore in 1981. He is an ecological historian — an expert on water resources — who began his career with Parks Canada. He has written more than 15 books on the natural and human heritage of Western Canada. But The Weekender Effect feels personal. He opens the book with: “Deep and meaningful connections to a place are a fundamental element of what makes us human.”
This is a book about what makes us human. Although Sandford doesn’t use the word “Canmore” once in the book The Weekender Effect is all about Canmore. It plumbs the depths and effects the nouveau rich have when they start buying big condos in your small town. It sometimes pits developers against the community. It asks the reader do you want real culture or do you want real estate culture? One could say The Weekender Effect is about: “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”
Sandford writes: “The town has become essentially urban in character. We now have traffic jams weekend gridlock and parking problems. There are multi-light waits at downtown intersections long lines of cars and trucks at railway crossings and not surprisingly the appearance of a completely new phenomenon: road rage…. Weekenders don’t even notice — they are used to it — but locals still hanging on to their ideal of community don’t like it one bit.”
The Weekender Effect begins a conversation you may not want to have. What happens to that quaint little mountain town when the locals can no longer afford to live there? What do you want your small town to look like after it grows? This little hardcover an elegant extended essay packs a punch. Some readers will find a love song to the mountains others may throw it across the room.
Isn’t that just what we want from a book?
