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The conservative historian Donald Creighton wrote that conserving the past is as important as innovating for the future, although the latter dominates government agendas these days. An age of disruptive technological innovations more than ever requires the permanence of values and place that is based in the country. Recognizing our rural roots and inheritance is not “ancestor worship,” but acknowledges that the conservation of traditions and values plays a crucial role in building acceptance of change by reducing the fear that important elements of what makes a society unique will be lost.

Statistics that say 81 per cent of Canadians are urban imply rural residents are of little importance. However, if people were asked whether they spent time in rural areas, the share would be much higher than the 19 per cent implied by the official stats, another example of how society cannot be understood by numbers alone. Most city-dwellers flee their azoic habitats to spend their vacations and weekends in rural settings, often in cottages and cabins to reconnect with their rural heritage and to revert somewhat to the way of life of previous generations. Here in Ottawa, the local CBC weekend morning radio program is called “In Town and Out” in recognition of the fluidity of the rural/urban distinction at that time of the week. This constant movement of people between town and country is one justification for not requiring rural election ridings to have populations as large as city seats, since the snapshot of geographic location captured by the census numbers ignores the flow of population at regular intervals.