How many of the following arguments, made by Dave Thompson in his “Sports ‘n’ Things” column on Friday, (“Buying local on step in bridging division”) ring true to Trail Daily Times readers?
- The fact that the ski hill and Redstone don’t carry Columbia Gardens wine on the menu must be because they are “snoots” that can’t imagine that “anything of excellence can come from down the hill.”
- Rosslanders in general have an “ick factor” for “anything that has its origin below the waterhole corner.”
- Rossland doesn’t give a damn about the wider local economy, because our hopes are pinned on our future fortunes as an “exclusive destination resort,” economically divorced from the rest of the region.
- The reason Rosslanders want local schooling is because they don’t want their kids to have their “lives tainted by the lower orders that inhabit” Trail.
- Rosslanders are hoping Trail kids come up to Rossland for schooling to be “morally improved by moving among the superior sorts” up the hill.
If more than five people in the whole region actually believe this stuff, I’d be happy to pick it apart piece by piece, starting with my own experience with such shared Rossland-Trail or regional efforts as minor hockey, minor baseball, the shared economic development officer, the Lower Columbia Community Development Team, and on and on.
But I can’t believe that anyone actually buys this hate-mongering (and I really can’t believe The Times prints it). Just let me know if I’m wrong on that and I’d be happy to give you more counter-argument than you probably want to read.
The ultimate irony is that Mr. Thompson seems to fancy himself a regionalist, who bemoans the loss of things the way they were when he was growing up, and who finds it “disappointing” that things have devolved so badly. He ends by arguing that we won’t get along “unless everybody tries for that.”
Huh?? His article (and several previous ones) couldn’t sound more like a deliberate attempt to pit Trail and Rossland against each other. The essential first step to division and conflict is to create an “us” and a “them,” and to sell people on the lie that all of “them” are monsters.
There are no monsters. There may be people in Rossland like the stereotype Mr. Thompson is pushing, but I doubt it. I sure haven’t met them yet.
Aaron Cosbey
Rossland