In the spirit of the holiday season, which is nearly upon us, it is time to discuss an important idea that could have huge ramifications for the Town of Bonnyville and surrounding communities, summer villages, towns and cities: co-operation.
The Lakeland is not an island. It is a network of streets, highways, rivers and lakes that interconnect the Town of Bonnyville with Ardmore, Fort Kent, Glendon, the summer villages, Moose Lake, Cold Lake and beyond. The people in Bonnyville cannot exist without the people from those other communities and farther away.
It is not Bonnyville vs. Cold Lake or Bonnyville vs. Moose Lake or Bonnyville vs. Edmonton or Bonnyville vs. the world. It's time to stop thinking the province and the world were built around Bonnyville and that Bonnyville's needs are being overlooked by everyone else. Not everything needs to be a battle.
Instead of facing off against the province and against our neighbours for clean water, we would get farther by working with them.
Building strong working relationships between the communities in this area offers nothing but positive side effects. Imagine a future where Bonnyville and Cold Lake lobby the government together for what they both need – better roads, wider highways, more infrastructure, modernized schools. Instead of fighting with each other, we could be working together.
Instead of seeing the people who live around us as enemies, if we start to see them as friends, the power of this region to achieve and attain the things it needs to thrive in the future would be enormous.
Everyone knows the Lakeland is a busy place, developing at quick rates, and it will only get busier. We are going to need a lot of help developing our infrastructure and our communities to keep up with the high-speed industry development projected for this region.
Maybe if we started working on thinking as a region rather than a scattered patchwork of communities fighting over the same piece of funding pie, we could get a little farther.
What we can achieve increases exponentially the more we work together.
Think about it. After all, it's nearly Christmas, a pretty good time to start thinking kindly about our neighbours.
