The News
The latest articles and news relating to rural living...
Creston Picks Its Future
Creston Picks a Fresh Approach It’s hard to know if you’re winning without a strategy. And a strategy is precisely what had been missing in Creston, BC, for years. When it was decided it was…
Read More
Freshly Picked Future
Freshly Picked Future — Creston’s OCP Challenge was an experiment in community planning and in rural placemaking. The process used a mobile app, a website, and paper scavenger hunt maps to get citizens exploring community…
Read More
BC Rural Centre Social Media e-Magazine (Autumn 2017)
We hope you enjoy our October social media e-Magazine. Be sure to stay in touch with us on Facebook (and don’t forget to like us)!
Read More
BC Rural Dividend grants over $10 million
On Friday, October 13, the BC Government announced over $10 million in new grants to rural communities through the BC Rural Dividend. Here’s the official press release: The B.C. government is distributing $10.1 million…
Read More
Attracting Young People to Rural Communities
Attracting young people is one of the toughest challenges facing rural communities. The outflow of young people from rural to urban hits small towns and rural regions in a variety of ways, including stripping communities…
Read More
Café Culture Comes to Rural Ontario
Café culture stirs the pot in rural Bath One of the first things young people look for when considering a move from an urban centres to a rural setting is the availability of great…
Read More
BC’s Grizzly Trophy Hunt Ends, Government Announces
BC’s grizzly trophy hunt ends. In the following announcement, the BC Government announced an end to trophy grizzly hunting: Effective Nov. 30, 2017, the British Columbia government will end grizzly bear trophy hunting throughout…
Read More
Small Town, Big Change
Small town, big change. Dale Williams was mayor of the small rural North Island New Zealand town of Otorohanga (pop. 2,700), and Chair of the Mayors Taskforce for Jobs. A certified motorcycle engineer by trade,…
Read More
Is There a Doctor in the House? Attracting Physicians to Rural Towns
Is there a doctor in the house? Rural health care is a pressing challenge for many small, often isolated, communities in rural BC. The challenges facing small communities struggling to provide an acceptable standard of…
Read More
Forest Fibres Key to Rural Revitalization?
This recent CBC article examines the possibility of forest fibres emerging as a significant economic engine for rural BC communities. Forest fibres — an abundant resource waiting to boost the economies of rural BC…
Read More
Garden Hill First Nation Creates a Farm in a Box!
Food security is a significant issue for many remote First Nations across Canada — including Garden Hill First Nation, located in northern Manitoba. In the following blogpost from Aki Energy, a non-profit Aboriginal social enterprise…
Read More
Affordable Rural Housing — the View from Yorkshire, UK
Affordable rural housing is often at a premium in small communities and rural regions. While rural housing prices may appear a bargain to newcomers and second home buyers from overheated urban real estate markets, they…
Read More
Ktunaxa Nation: Ensuring the most vulnerable citizens can succeed
For the Ktunaxa Nation, a key pillar of the community is supporting its most vulnerable citizens. It’s an effort that is changing lives for the better. Ktunaxa Nation has grown its Cranbrook-based social services from…
Read More
Rural Revitalization, Iowa-Style
Rural revitalization Iowa-style. There are plenty of small towns badly in need of economic and social renewal across North America. Earlham, Iowa was one of them. Through a combination of community resilience and tenacity,…
Read More
The Arts & Rural Revitalization
Culture matters. According to the Creative Cities Network of Canada, municipalities that adopt culture as an industry gain positive economic benefits. Cultural industries create job growth, turn ordinary cities into “destination cities,” create interconnections between…
Read More
Creative Placemaking, Attracting Young People to Rural Places
Creative placemaking: what is it, and can it serve as an effective toolkit for rural communities wanting to attract young people? Attracting and keeping younger adults is a challenge that many small cities and towns…
Read More
Rural American Fairs & Festivals
It’s Fall, and across rural North America, festivals and fairs are in full swing, celebrating everything from the harvest to local history. These celebrations play a number of important roles in the communities that host…
Read More
BC Community Forests Make a Difference
A report entitled Community Forests — Community Benefits: The Economic Contributions of Community Forests to Rural BC Communities, recently released by the Southern Interior Beetle Action Coalition (SIBAC), in cooperation with the BC Community Forests…
Read More
CEDIFs an Investment Model for Rural BC?
The BC Rural Centre believes that a vehicle like Nova Scotia’s Community Economic Development Investment Fund (CEDIF) would be an ideal way to repatriate a portion of the investment funds currently leaving British Columbia, stimulate…
Read More
“Overtourism” Protests Spreading Throughout Europe
Rural BC communities seeking to reinvent their formerly resource-based economies, communities that happen to be located in beautiful areas — so-called “high amenity” places — face a unique challenge. In many cases these communities have…
Read More
Millennials Make the Move to Rural Ontario?
Tony Scott is a Millennial, and the founder and president of Akira Studio, an established tech company based in London, Ontario that designs, develops, and hosts websites for over 450 companies across the globe. Akira…
Read More
Western Juniper?! ‘Why Not?’ Says Small Mill Owner
Western Juniper is a native species in Central Oregon. Over the past century, it has begun to outcompete other native vegetation and interfere with the balance of the local ecology. Because harvesting Western Juniper in…
Read More
Help for BC Rural Small Businesses Hurt by Wildfires
Straight.com reports that hundreds of wildfires in B.C. this summer have not only wreaked havoc on evacuees, they’re also putting some businesses in jeopardy. In response to this, the BC Government Minister of Forests, Lands,…
Read More
Wildfires Linked to Climate Change?
Wildfires are sweeping B.C. Close to 900 have burned through 600,000 hectares so far this year, blanketing western North America with smoke. Fighting them has cost more than $230 million—and the season is far…
Read More