FARM24 - Wayne Caldwell tells rural Ontario's story, but who will tell his?

BY SHAWN LOUGHLIN

Wayne Caldwell is the foremost expert in rural planning in Ontario and perhaps all of Canada - everyone knows this. When The Citizen or any other media outlet needs a rural planning genius, they call Caldwell. He tells the world the story of rural planning, but who will tell his story?

 

First of all, that’s Dr. Wayne J. Caldwell PhD, FCIP, RPP to you, pal. 

 

He is the author of many books, the holder of many degrees and the winner of many awards. He has been the president or chair of many committees, institutes and councils. And yet, all of this success, knowledge and wisdom began on an East Wawanosh Township farm.

 

The retired rural planning and development professor from the University of Guelph was first educated at S.S.#10 in East Wawanosh, which is where his siblings and his father all studied before him. Caldwell notes this in his introduction to A Snippet in Time, the history book produced in 2017 to mark the 150th anniversary of East Wawanosh.

 

It’s that foundational education that sent Caldwell in the direction he would eventually go, one in which life on the farm was always a central tenet. 

 

“Again, memories and lessons connected to farm, family and community were reinforced throughout these early years [attending S.S.#10 East Wawanosh],” Caldwell wrote. “While I look back nostalgically at the early years in S.S.#10, I recognize now that moving to this larger school was helping prepare each of us for the changes that were happening in society. Unlike the generation of my parents, my generation had the opportunity, and expectation of continuing education.”

 

Caldwell then noted that he went south to attend Central Huron Secondary School from there, while many in the northern portion of the township went north to Wingham to continue their education.

 

“Secondary school allowed us to participate in organized sports, develop our interests and begin to think about our place in the world. Secondary school also provided the opportunity to travel and to explore new horizons,” Caldwell wrote. “For me, trips to Washington and Italy catered to an interest in politics, history and culture. These and other experiences helped to point us in directions that would culminate in career choices.

 

“For some, secondary school led to a career in carpentry, for others, engineering, pharmacy and farming. Unlike my parents’ generation, changes in society and in agriculture meant that many of us were leaving the farm.”

 

Then, in his piece, Caldwell provides a paragraph that could easily be interpreted as the thesis statement for his very career.
“For myself, even though I was pulled in the direction of academia, I remained committed to the concepts of family, farm and community. I was intrigued with questions such as: What is the future of agriculture and rural communities? What is the role of rural Canada in a global community? What will be the place of rural Canada and how do we build concepts of civil society? How can we influence or help to steer public policy to the benefit of current and future generations? How do we improve lives and livelihoods? How do we (i.e. rural folk) interact with the dominant forces of urbanization that redefine Canadian society? And finally, what are our respective roles as citizens in helping to shape this future?” Caldwell wrote.

 

Caldwell then reminisced about his time spent aboard the S.S.#10 school float in 1967 when the township marked its centennial and all that has changed in the subsequent 50 years.

 

“Since that time, we have seen a significant reduction in the number of farms within the township, while production and average farm size has increased,” Caldwell wrote. “While my father would have been quite happy with an average yield of 100 bushels of corn to the acre, my brother today has expectations of 200 bushels! Over this time period, we have also seen a significant reduction in ‘’mixed farming practices’ and an increase in larger, more specialized farms.

 

“Our landscape is also more open with much larger fields and fewer fencerows. Many farmers and others embrace environmental responsibility working towards improved soil health, clean air and water and healthy woodlots. As a child, the Blyth Brook that was close to my parents’ farm had an unmistakable odour with minimal fish populations, whereas today it is a wonderful trout stream.”

 

In the event that you doubt Caldwell’s commitment to being a champion of telling the story of rural Ontario, don’t. Just don’t. The Citizen spoke with Caldwell for this story via Zoom as he vacationed in Spain. Snuck in after a siesta but before a late dinner, The Citizen spoke to Caldwell about the changing landscape of rural Ontario, his esteemed and wholly individual career and the very civilized nature of siesta and late dinner culture.

 

He said that, as opportunities increased, children and young adults with differing skill sets and interests were able to apply them in a way that was able to better the world around them. So, for a young man with an interest in governance and planning with a healthy side of rural Ontario knowledge, Caldwell became the change he wanted to see in the world, to co-opt a famous quote.
He was educated in geography at the University of Western Ontario in the 1980s before furthering his education in economic development and regional planning and resource development at the University of Waterloo in the 1990s. 

 

He began working with the Huron County Planning and Development Department in his home community, but would eventually take a turn towards academia as a professor and researcher with the University of Guelph.

 

As he rose through the ranks and became a shining light in Ontario’s planning and research worlds, Caldwell saw a disproportionate amount of attention being paid to urban centres. After all, he said, when one thinks of planning, the ideas of city planning and urban development do leap to mind for many.

 

In fact, to prove this point, Caldwell and a colleague, many years ago, performed an analysis of articles published by Plan Canada, the industry magazine for the Canadian Institute of Planners. At the time, he said, there was a clear discrepancy in that nearly all of the articles were being written about larger, urban centres, while about 20 per cent of the population of Canada lived in rural areas. By that math, at least one in five articles should be about rural communities, but that just wasn’t what he was seeing. 
As Caldwell started to craft a rural planning approach, viewing policies and decisions through what he calls a “rural lens”, he developed a graduate program at the University of Guelph and began teaching students more about rural Ontario. He found that the students who made the effort to take his course were “fully invested” in what they were doing.

 

From there, the natural next step was for Caldwell and his students to begin doing their own research and singing the song of rural Ontario to ensure it was part of the provincial conversation and that policies were taking these communities into account so that they might thrive as well.

 

Over the years, Caldwell has authored or co-authored many books, papers and reports on sustainability and survivability for rural Ontario and he feels that three of his pieces of work stand above the rest in terms of changing the minds of decision-makers in the province.

 

The first was a report on finding prosperity with a stagnant or declining population (Finding Prosperity with a Stagnant or Declining Population, 2010). The research has many applications throughout Huron County, as a majority of its communities have maintained relatively stable populations over the years and even for generations.

 

Using Blyth as an example, as a community whose population has hovered around 1,000 for many years now, his research pointed to the ways in which a community like that could prosper and find economic stability in the face of a stagnant population.

 

Then there was Health Futures for Huron Agriculture: Best Management Practices for Rural Water Quality, a program proposal prepared on behalf of Huron County in 2000.

 

Like so much of Caldwell’s work, it greatly considers the changing climate and how it will affect rural Ontario with its healthy soil and agriculture-rich economy. He says that research focused on the environmental side of things and used land-use planning to protect the farmland communities like Huron County so cherish.

 

The third gets to the very heart of the changing landscape of rural Ontario, but in a way that endeavours to help them flourish and prosper, rather than lament what has been lost. That, as a side note, is something Caldwell strives for when few others do. He feels the research into the decline of certain things in rural settings is easy to come by, whereas very few people are working to find ways that these communities can thrive as they are.

 

The “Healthy Rural Communities Toolkit” is an extensive guide to optimizing scenarios for rural Ontario through effective land use planning policies, the benefits of a co-ordinated approach to rural planning and development and identifying innovative land use planning policies that can lead to healthy rural populations. 

 

“This tool kit recognizes that low population density, an expansive rural landscape, dispersed population and small urban settlements all challenge the built environment. Planning processes can help to engage residents, leading to strategies that can influence the built environment and the local economy. This ranges from community design, for example, improving walkability, to local economic development by helping to create employment and enhance quality of life,” Caldwell wrote on his website, describing the toolkit. 

 

“This tool kit identifies land use and development strategies that can help to enhance the rural built environment and contribute to positive quality of life and health outcomes. The tool kit brings a rural lens to issues that are often viewed from an urban perspective. Numerous examples and innovative practices from across the province are profiled. This tool kit recognizes many characteristics associated with rural communities, including a low-density population, a declining population in some areas, aging citizens, youth out-migration, rural land uses and an economy that is significantly different than that of urban Ontario.”
Reflecting on what has been a decades-spanning career as a champion for rural Ontario, doing everything in his power to ensure its success, Caldwell says he hopes he has changed some minds and improved perspectives, putting a rural lens on decisions to ensure those 20 per cent of Canadians aren’t being forgotten and that those communities have just as much of a right to be prosperous as urban-centric communities do.

 

Caldwell continues to conduct research and, for those interested in his work, his website, which can be found at waynecaldwell.ca, is a tremendous resource that includes full reports, publications, tool kits, ongoing projects and more.  
And for those who doubt Caldwell’s eye to the future and status as a Nostradamus-like figure for the rural landscape, here are the last few paragraphs of his address in A Snippet in Time in 2017 (not torn from today’s headlines, The Citizen assures you).

 

 “While the questions asked earlier are not easily answered, the future of East Wawanosh (now located within the Township of North Huron) is to be found in these answers. In 2067 (50 years from now) and in 2117 (100 years from now) East Wawanosh, Ontario and Canada will be very different. The population bulge caused by the baby boom generation will be behind us and yet the population of urban centres of the province and country will have grown significantly,” Caldwell wrote. “While the rural voice will have politically dwindled, the importance of rural communities to the environmental, ecological and economic health of the province will have increased. Those areas of rural and small town Canada that thrive will have a more diverse population more closely mirroring Canadian society as a whole.

 

“Over the next 50 to 100 years, climate change will have unforeseen circumstances. While agriculture in this part of the world is forecast to be more productive, we should anticipate new pests, less predictable weather and global uncertainty. The end result is likely to make our precious agricultural resources even more valuable,” he said. “The nature of agriculture in this new environment remains a question mark. Thinking out 50 and 100 years, there are reasons to anticipate either a more intense small-scale approach to production, or a more mechanized, corporate version.
“In order to cope with these changes, I also anticipate that, as a society, we will need to be more globally aware and that we will continue to embrace those values that make us Canadian. Values of tolerance, respect, equality, generosity and social justice will help guide us into this future,” he wrote. “These are the values that I was taught 50 years ago by my parents, my Sunday school teachers and my elementary and secondary school teachers.”