The rural renaissance holds a certain appeal
It’s tempting to leave urban stress behind to bake butter tarts and make jam — but I won’t, for now
“The air is fresher.”
I had just asked my nineyear-old niece what she liked best about where she lives now. Without missing a beat, that was the answer she gave me.
Looking for a change from the hectic pace of city life, last year my sister-in-law, her husband and their two kids sold their house in Toronto and moved to a small town just outside of Collingwood, Ont. We’ve recently been spending time with them at a family cottage.
There are compromises, they’ve told me. Their work lives are still pegged to the city, and they still have to drive back and forth weekly to meet with clients.
But all in, they’re happy with their decision. The kids are outside all the time. They raise bunnies in the backyard. Wild asparagus and tomatillos grow on their property. On Fridays, my six-year-old nephew attends a wilderness school where he learns about rocks and plants, builds forts in the woods, carves spears from sticks. They’ve also told me that they’re not the only ones; there is a growing community of former city dwellers migrating out to smaller rural towns in the vicinity.
These are anecdotes. But it bears out with what I’m seeing around me here in Montreal, too. Same kind of demographic — 40-something dual income couples, often with kids — disaffected with the stress and cost of city life, looking for a better work-life balance or something more … authentic.
But if there is indeed a kind of rural renaissance happening, is it a cynical movement for well-off urbanites who can afford to buy that authenticity? Or are we seeing a bona fide cultural shift where rural intelligence trumps urban arrogance? Are we remembering that growing your own food, spending time in nature and knowing how to raise animals are valuable skills?
I’ve had a chance to read some pretty slick magazines geared to this demographic. They feature stories of people who have dropped out of the corporate chase and hustle of urban life. Folks who leave their high-powered jobs in business or finance to buy farms and make their living selling goat-milk mosquito repellent or heirloom tomatoes pollinated with their own on-site honeybees. Pictures of dapper young men with waxtipped moustaches, wearing suspenders and tweed trousers, Hunter rubber boots; pretty women in floral dresses and bare feet. Someone in the picture is usually holding a chicken (because: free-range organic eggs). Maybe it’s a manufactured authenticity. But they’re tapping into something. People like us are buying those magazines.
When you’re tethered to a computer and desk all day like I am, it’s pretty easy to romanticize rural life. There’s a part of me that loves the idea of packing it in and moving to the country. I could spend my days baking homemade butter tarts and jam bars for the general store, the kind that sell beside Coleman propane canisters, fishing lures and Harlequin novels. But I don’t know the first thing about farming. I don’t know how to drive a tractor or rotate crops or keep chickens. The closest I’ve ever come to raising goats is feeding and watering my Labrador dog. None of this stops me from wondering.
For now, I’ll do as I do every summer. Sit on the dock. Keep an eye on this gang of kids in front of me, catching frogs with nets and scrubbing rocks with soap and water to bring out the colours. I’ll flip through the free real estate magazines my husband picks up at the local grocery store: “Ten-acre farm for sale. Hundred-yearold barn.” I’ll watch the breeze wrinkle the surface of the lake and smooth it out again. Then later, I’ll hike up the small hill to a clearing in the trees, wave my smartphone around and try to pull some cellphone reception out of all this fresh air.