I’ve seen the future, my friends, and the future is black.
No, I’m not prognosticating hard times for Tumbler Ridge. Indeed, far from it.
But if you were to look at the stories this issue, you’d think we were a coal mining town or something. Quintette is going to re-open! They’re working on the Murray River project! And it looks like somebody (we won’t say who, but their name rhymes with Bronuma) might have designs on Peace River Coal as well.
Yes, we are moving into the future and it looks … well, it looks a lot like the past.
We’ve heard this refrain before, seen this story play out. The coal mines open up, everyone bows down to the king. Prices go down, the mines shut down, and we realize the king has no clothes, or in this case, the town has no other industry.
People struggle for a while, the mines re-open, everyone goes back to supplicating themselves before the throne. Rinse, lather, repeat.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not dissing coal mining itself. Coal mining has kept a lot of locals in the lifestyle they’ve been accustomed to.
And Conuma—while not without its flaws—has done an admirable job of recognizing this and taking steps to reduce their overhead so that they don’t get squeezed out of the market when the next downturn inevitably comes.
No, my issue is, 20+ years on from the first time the mines closed, from the first time we as a town realized we needed to diversify the economy and …
And we’re still not really all the diverse a place.
To be fair, we’ve gotten better. We have wind projects, but, as any coal miner will tell you, once they’re built, you don’t need a huge team to keep them up and running.
And we’ve got tourism, sort of. But despite years of working towards attracting people who want the guided experience, the standard visitor is disgustingly self-reliant.
But the majority of people still rely on black gold for their income. (Not Bev; coal.)
And it’s not when the mines are going under that we need to start working on diversifying, it’s now. When the mines are going great guns. Now is the time to be looking at other ways to keep people employed so that if the hydrogen smelters that are starting to be built in Europe take over the industry and the met coal industry collapses (something that many are predicting will happen by 2050), we have a fall back plan. A way to keep Tumbler Ridge from becoming another Barkerville or Britannia Beach, a ghost town turn curiosity, where people come to learn about the things people used to do, like, well, like coal mining.
It isn’t lack of will or lack of ideas. It isn’t a grand conspiracy or foreign interests controlling the town. It’s that change? Is hard.
I was just reading that of the millions of resolutions that have been made over the last week or so, fully 80 percent will fail to stick. Oh, sure, you wanted to lose weight, to exercise more, to stop smoking or to start a new hobby. But your life has been following this path for a while and it’s worn ruts into the fabric of your reality, and getting out of those ruts? I mean, it can be done, but it’s hard. If 80 percent of people aren’t keeping their resolutions, it does mean that 20 percent are succeeding. Are spending less and living more. Are slowly but surely becoming better people.
If you are trying to keep your New Year’s resolutions, there are a couple things you might want to try, according to new research.
The first is to reduce stress. When people feel stressed, off balance or out of sorts, they feel like they’ve lost control, and when you don’t feel like you have control over this part of your life, it is easy to give up control over other parts of your life. It becomes easier to compromise intentions and even abandon goals when you are tense or anxious.
So when you feel like life is getting out of control, don’t keep digging yourself deeper and deeper into that stress hole. Do something that helps you de-stress. Go for a walk. Listen to music. Visit with a friend.
There’s this great video that Instagram insists on showing me every few days. You’ve maybe seen it. It features a four year old kid out snowboarding. But the twist is her parents put a mic on her, and as she’s going, she’s talking to herself, singing her intentions. “I won’t fall” she sings as she goes down a path through the trees. “Maybe I will. That’s okay, because we all fall.”
It’s cute, but it’s also a really good strategy to staying in control, according to a study out of the University of Toronto. People who mute their own inner voice are less able to self regulate and manage their own behaviors. You don’t have to go all Stuart Smally on it, but by reminding yourself why you made the resolution in the first place, you are more likely to stay on target.
Exercise can also help keep us on track (especially if your goal is to exercise more.) This is because exercise boost blood flow in the brain and helps with higher level cognitive processing.
Bring a buddy along helps, too. Sometimes we aren’t able to pull together the desire to meet our goal, but I’ll be darned it Peter sees me fail. If I disappoint myself? That’s a daily occurrence. But if I disappoint others? That’s more powerful.
Finally, be empathetic. Put yourself in other people’s shoes. Imagine how they feel when they meet their goals. It can, according to study at the University of Zurich, help your own issues.
And it’s okay if maybe we haven’t come as far as we want to as a town. But if we look back 20 years, we’ll see that we have come pretty far. 20 years ago there wasn’t a museum, a geopark. Many of the trails we enjoy didn’t exist. And maybe coal is still king here for the foreseeable future. That’s okay. As long as we keep moving forward towards a diversified future, one that includes mining and logging and eco-tourism and remote workers. As long as we keep working to better ourselves and the town, we should be good.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
