Ah, the beginnings of the bustling metropolis of...Port Morien? Wait, what?

When I first saw pictures like the one above, it took me a long while for my adolescent brain to make sense of them. In the world I came from, there were one billion more humans on earth compared to when I was born, and even Saturday Morning cartoons harped on overpopulation causing global food and energy crises. I was also living in Warner Robins, Georgia, which was growing so fast we got a new All-You-Can-Eat Chinese Buffett every second Tuesday. So in my world of ever-expanding crab rangoon options, I could not conceptualize the idea of a place actually shrinking. The world was growing. That's just what it did.

Don't let the "crab" in the name fool you. They're just fried pockets of cream cheese, which is exactly as amazing as it sounds.

So when I see pictures of Port Morien with a bustling main street and open businesses, I still get confused. At this point, it's nigh impossible to spend a loonie in Port Morien. There is no store. There is no restaurant. You cannot buy gum, or milk, or rent a movie. My grandfather once ran the chowder house on Marconi Trail, but today, a loonie in Port Morien contains more value as a projectile weapon than as a unit of currency. Besides a Bed & Breakfast and the Legion, Glace Bay is the nearest place to actually use money.

If you replace the Cheap Store with a Dollarama, and the three-piece suits with pajama bottoms, you get 2015. Hmmm. Ew.

And Port Morien isn't alone in this dwindling population, pajama-bottom future. It's just the one I'm most familiar with because I spent a good amount of my youth there, and it pains me to think that such a gorgeous, textbook Cape Breton harbor-town has little to no reason for tourists to actually visit. But small communities everywhere, from Arichat to Meat Cove are facing the same challenges. Some people might take offense at the title of this article, saying that I'm implying that Cape Breton is somehow "broken." Well, too bad. That's exactly what I'm implying. Here are the...

Three Problems Facing Cape Breton Today

(Disclaimer: Rory hasn't actually lived here that long and doesn't know the first thing about economics or local history. His bosses are currently scratching their heads as to why he's writing this, as he's completely unqualified in every way to discuss these highly complex problems. However, he's going to do it anyways, because he's not that smart.)

The odds of Rory solving Cape Breton's problems are roughly the same as a Labradoodle discovering cold fusion.

Problem 1: An Aging Population





Japan is inventing robots to take care of it's aging population. Cape Breton is not.

Don't get me wrong Seniors. I love you guys. I love your hard candy and the fact that you single-handedly prop up the tapioca pudding industry. I love the fact that you wake up at 5:00am to walk around the mall for reasons beyond my comprehension. I even find your use of the word "queer" for "weird" anachronistically endearing. But let's face it, you're expensive. As much as numbers confuse me, here's a few. Cape Breton's median age is now 47, with twenty percent of it's population being older than 65. An economy cannot survive on legion bake sales alone.

For about 80 years, the first world had a pretty good system of the current generation taking care of the older, and that's great. I would say it's the Canadian way to take care of citizens who need it the most. But people aren't having the 13 child families they used to have (I'm looking at you, Laheys) and my generation is finding it really difficult to be economically self-sustaining before 25, whereas 50 years ago, a blue-collar wage at the steel mill was a hop, skip, and jump away. And it get's worse when you take into account...

Problem 2. Youth Outmigration

"I'm going to go make my own province, with blackjack and hookers, named Alberta."

Ok, so youth outmigration isn't nearly as cute as that, but seriously, where are all the 20-somethings in Cape Breton? The only places I ever see them is at the movie theatre and the mall. Also, I'm in a bunch of plays around here, and it's all 30-somethings in the cast, and 50-somethings in the audience, except that one little girl with a British accent, but I'm pretty sure she's a spy so I'm writing it off as an anomaly.



Apparently there isn't much to do here for a 20-somethings. Something about a lack of nightlife and decent restaurants? Oh, and jobs. Yeah, those are important. Seems to me there are two kinds of employed people around here: nurses and lucky people. I would fall into the lucky category, and since I can subsist on nothing but gas-station taquitos and fountain pop (Thanks Esso!), the lack of sushi restaurants on the island doesn't depress me to the point of leaving.

So if our young people can't find jobs, and the rest of Cape Breton needs new hips, where do we find ourselves....

Problem #3. We're Broke

Congratulations Mombo! Now fill my potholes and make it warmer!

Man, I do NOT envy local politicians around these parts. People do not like deficits, they do not like cuts, and they do not like tax hikes. But as the public purse keeps shrinking, the situation demands some sort of fiscal alchemy to keep this island afloat. Heh, afloat. I like the idea that if Cape Breton runs out of money, it will sink down into the Atlantic, like it's actually just a giant land boat or something. Ok, I'm taking this metaphor too far. Anyways.....

Economics sometimes confuses me to the point of requiring weapons-grade Ritalin and a nice long "sit-down and stare-at-wall," but in this instance it's pretty simple. There's just not enough people paying taxes, and there are a lot of expensive things that we expect from our government, which is not a wizard guild with wealth-expanding magical powers.

So, if we're spending way more money than we're taking in with no end in sight, how do we get out of this economic death spiral?

3 Solutions (Ideas*) for Cape Breton

*We at goCapeBreton.com have downgraded Rory's "solutions" to "ideas" because, frankly, the notion that Rory could actually solve any problem beyond an undone shoelace is the most laughable part of this article.

Idea #1: A Superport

If Dexter has taught me anything, it's that this is a great place to get murdered.

How can't you love an idea with the word "super" in it? Even horrible things become, at the least, intriguing when you put "super" in front of them. Supergingivitis! Tell me you don't want to Google Supergingivitis, just for the pictures. Well nothing happens, because I just made it up.

If you were to gauge my feelings toward a super container port in Sydney, I would call it a soft positive, but like so many other politically polarizing issues, it seems to me that proponents and opponents of this idea are living in two completely different realities, and can't even agree on simple facts on the issue.

Paraphrased Version of Events from What I've Heard:

Proponents of Port: It would bring a ton of much needed jobs and money into Sydney and Cape Breton, and it would be great for Cape Breton to get back to it's industrial roots. Until the invention of teleportation, there will always be money in getting stuff from one place to another place, and why shouldn't Cape Breton get a piece of that? The closest Panamax container port is New York, so the largest container ships can come to Sydney, and transfer their containers to smaller vessels on the way to Montreal, Halifax, and the rest of the smaller Northeastern ports.

Opponents of Port: This is obviously a government cash grab by private interests. Halifax's container port barely shipped 35% of it's capacity for outbound and inbound container traffic. Why would Sydney spend so much in a market that's already drying up? Shipping is currently shrinking in the Atlantic and growing in the Pacific to get goods produced in Asia to established markets in North America. Why would people ship to a city without a rail line, and without adequate transportation infrastructure to ship that amount of goods over land to where people actually want to buy them?

Also, a piece of me feels like this is a political move to appease a certain generation that loves to vote, and sees Cape Breton Island as needing one single large industry to survive. I don't blame them for that perspective. When you take into account the economic history of this place, being one of fishing, then mining, then steel, then economic recession, it certainly feels like Cape Breton needs a single large scale industry to keep it afloat, but there could be another idea worth exploring...

Idea #2: Investing in Small Businesses

Did you know Sydney is the world's leader in custom, electronic, beer enclosure technology? Neither did I!

My boss told me that his children were taught "communities need a reason to exist." I guess the teacher was talking about fish, coal, or steel, but I have to ask myself, does a community really need ONE reason to exist. That might have been true in the days when empires sent out frigates to bring home boat loads of dried fish, but these days I'm pretty sure communities can exist for hundreds of small reasons.

And we've even had proven successes. Even though it seems few people around here know about Protocase, the makers of the fancy beer cooler above, they employ about 100 people in Sydney, and make enclosures for companies like Space X and host Mars Rover competitions, so that's super sweet. And there is Gavin Uhma, who sold some crazy tech idea that let multiple people share a single browser, opened up the Uhma Institute, and along with the Spark Awards has created this feeding frenzy of tech entrepreneurship in Cape Breton. UIT's first batch of graduates are just now being unleashed upon the world.

Look at how bright-eyed and bushy tailed they are! Don't you just want to scratch behind their ears and fund their startups!

And don't forget about your own local, content sharing platform goCapeBreton.com, that employs super nice, approachable, frequently chipper employees like me! I realize there are a bunch of economic development offices around Cape Breton supporting startups already, but I'm just saying that it's a pretty good cause, and I like doing things that cost money, like eating and sleeping under a roof. But now for the third and most novel idea on the list...

Idea #3. Refugees

Because we really should come together as an island and give that donkey a break.

Huh, what was that sinking feeling I just felt in my stomach that's telling me my tone should suddenly become more serious? Weird. Anyways, this is an idea I've heard bandied about recently, and I find it super intriguing. Sure, Cape Breton has it's fair share of problems, such as horrible winters and not the most happening nightlife, but the odds of becoming a casualty of civil strife still remain comfortably low. Really, the largest risk of death around here is still diabetes, which, while being awful, is an absolutely decadent way to go compared to wartime alternatives.

Seriously though, Canada takes in about 260,000 immigrants a year, with 10,000 being refugees, and I have no idea where they go, but if just 500 came here a year they could help fill the gap of working-age adults in Cape Breton, as well as bring in revolutionary economic ideas, such as "keeping your business open past 5" and "Thai food." Cape Breton is already speckled with multicultural influences like Tarabish, perogies, and meat darts. I actually have no idea where that last one came from... Poland? Why not keep the good times rolling with some Syrian and Iraqi culture thrown into the mix? Who knows what fabulous prizes they hand out for winning at darts!

How would this get done? I have no idea. I'm more of an ideas guy. I tried to cook dinner once and ended up setting a sock on fire, so I leave the implementation to the professionals. And honestly, there is no golden ticket or silver bullet to all the problems that we're facing, and it's not just us facing these issues. Almost every small community around Canada is dealing with some of these challenges. It doesn't mean we can't talk about them though.

So what do you think? This isn't a newspaper, so you can write whatever you'd like below. Just remember, no matter how much you would like to throw me in the harbor and run me over with a cruise ship, keep the comments section classy folks.