When I was trying to understand why Industry Canada couldn’t accept the fact that there was an impressive cluster of mining suppliers in Sudbury, I found the answer on a page on the Industry Canada website. The page explained how to identify an economically significant collection of firms. My mistake, it turned out was just counting the companies and workers and products. The website told me that you don’t have a cluster until there is an organization to speak for the firms in the cluster.
This was a bit like saying you aren’t a duck unless you are quacking. To be real for Industry Canada you had to sound real. The solution for Sudbury was to create an organization of mining supply firms. Dick DeStefano organized the Sudbury Area Mining Supply and Service Association (SAMSSA), and the publisher of Northern Ontario Business created a quarterly magazine, and suddenly Industry Canada and the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines could see the 300 companies that had been invisible a few months before.
There is a lesson here for all of Northern Ontario: you have to quack. To get the senior levels of government to really deal with Northern Ontario’s problems, the region has to make room for Northern Ontario in people’s heads.
Political organization is only part of the story. How do we teach Northern Ontarian’s to quack like a culture?
The answer may be an open source program called mediawiki. Almost everyone one who uses the web uses Google, and sooner or later almost everyone runs into Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Anyone with a browser can contribute to Wikipedia, and because it has so many volunteers it has become the most-used reference source in the world. Wikipedia uses the mediawiki software.
WikiNorth at hyperlink
http://wikinorth
, is setting out to be the people’s encyclopedia of Northern Ontario. Like the Wikipedia, WikiNorth will be built by volunteers using the mediawiki software. It will have northerners sharing their knowledge about Northern Ontario. If it succeeds, it will make Northern Ontario seem like a real place. WikiNorth can help Northern Ontario quack.
Encyclopedias have been used many times to strengthen communities. The Encyclopedia Canadiana and the Encyclopedia of Newfoundland and Labrador, the Catholic Encyclopedia, and the Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan were all designed to reinforce their communities. To see how it works, think about how businesses use the web. You can tell if a northern business is a good citizen by looking at its website. Count the links to other northern businesses and other northern sites. No links means you have a web-egoist – a business that is wholly concerned to grab attention, and too self-involved to give attention to others.
If you find a site with lots of links to businesses outside of northern Ontario, you have a colonial website, one that takes attention and business away from Northern Ontario. If you find a site that links to other businesses in the North or to people and organization in the North, you have found a real citizen – someone who is making the web work for Northern Ontario. WikiNorth will work the same way. It will lead readers to more and more information about Northern Ontario. Other websites tend to lead us away from the North. They actually undermine Northern Ontario’s political identity. WikiNorth will reinforce it.
WikiNorth can only succeed if northerners make it work. Torontonians won’t do it. Think about how little Northern content there is in the textbooks of our schools. The provincial school system is actually designed to lead kids away from Northern Ontario.
And that means you, dear reader, can decide whether the North will quack. If you have an Internet connection, go to WikiNorth and search for any northern topic that interests you. If there isn’t already an article, the Wiki program will ask you to create one. If it is there it will let you improve it. At that moment you are face-to-face with your responsibility for history! Click on “edit” and you become a culture warrior. Every article you add or improve makes Northern Ontario stronger. If you have your own website, adding a link to WikiNorth helps too.
Today, political power depends on capturing attention. In a sense, political power grows out of the barrel of a browser. In this New World, you are armed and dangerous. The future of Northern Ontario is at your fingertips.
Dave Robinson is an economist with the Institute for Northern Ontario Research at Laurentian University. He can be reached atdrobinson@laurentian.ca
