Shucking Oysters: And Another Thing
By Alex Allen
There is definitely an uptick in visitors on Hornby, even before Blues Week. I have noticed more year-round first-time visitors and I am sure it has something to do with many Canadians choosing not to go to the US. If our popularity is to continue growing and diversifying as it has been, we need to be very cognizant of its impacts, both positive and negative, specifically: the social, economic and environmental fabrics of this small island. A small piece of land surrounded by water, detached and isolated no more.
We all share a common responsibility towards sustainability. But not necessarily a common understanding. Sustainable tourism or sustainable something can mean just about anything to anyone. It can mean continued growth and intensification. Or it can mean low-impact or no impact. As someone wrote, sustainable tourism is “an intellectually appealing concept with little practical application.” And unregulated tourism can contain within itself the seeds of its own destruction.
Remember when every other person you met professed to do something with a brush, a pencil or a chisel? This may be due to the indisputable fact that we attracted artists to the idea that deep down we are all artists and that all it takes is to move to the liberating atmosphere of an island for us to be able to describe ourselves as such.
Back in the day on Hornby, when anyone arrived we noticed. We talked about them at Ford Cove and then at the Gas Bar and eventually in an hour, everyone knew their name and where they came from. Also, more importantly, whether they were single. The random ones usually are. And invariably they, like many of us, came here to begin again after a complicated life somewhere else.
If I can borrow from Dave Bindini, when I moved to Hornby it had a “carousel citizenry.” Now it’s beginning to feel like an exclusive country club. There is something precious about not only owning a home on Hornby but also having a Co-op number below 2000. The wealth that has been coming to the island is extraordinary. An article “Tahoe Residents Are Growing Weary” touches on “feeling the impacts of a vibe shift.” I hear the very same concerns on Hornby. And sometimes it feels like a slow-motion crash.
I ask you to ponder that as I gaze across the waterfront, gingerly dipping my silver salad fork into a wedge of avocado Bavarian cream sprinkled with oil pressed from grilled pistachios, set over a spoon of smoked black herring caviar from Aquitaine. And all surrounded by wiggly concentric swirls of white onion mousse, brilliantly green parsley-coriander sauce and purple beet juices.
David Brooks wrote in The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life, that a healthy community is a thick system of relationships. It is irregular, dynamic, organic and personal. In a “rich” community, people are up in other’s business, know each other’s secrets, walk with each other in times of grief, and celebrate together in times of joy. In this kind of community, Brooks writes, “the social pressure can be slightly overbearing, the intrusiveness sometimes hard to bear, but the discomfort is worth it because the care and benefits are so great.” Sound familiar?
Meanwhile, let’s start with better community-building conversations by focusing on the possibilities not the problems. What crossroads do we stand at right now? What can we build together? Empathy? A picnic table? We need to ask the possibility questions. Not what’s wrong but what’s right. What works.
If I may paraphrase Brooks, such a conversation doesn’t start with an impersonal question like how do we tackle homelessness? It starts with a personal question: What can we do to help so and so lead a life of stability, safety and security? When you envision success as a biography you see all the different factors that go into a better future. You see all the different relationships that need to be built.
We are going through a great crowd derangement. In public and private, both online and off, people are behaving in ways that are increasingly irrational, feverish, herd-like and simply unpleasant. But are we happier? A lot of evidence indicates that we are destroying the foundations of human prosperity in an orgy of reckless consumption.
It is family and community that have more impact on our happiness not wealth and money. Prophets, poets and philosophers realized thousands of years ago (as did Mick Jagger) that being satisfied with what you already have is far more important than getting more of what you want.
