Editor: I am writing to support the proposal contained in the letter from Bart Robinson, Felicity Edwards and Ron Casey “Getting back to the Future” that appeared in the May 4 edition.
Observing the community debate over the years, it seems we’ve often been talking about strategies, but not often enough where these strategies will lead us. Debates are often triggered by proponents of one strategy or another – for or against, win/lose.
The time is right for a bottom-up process that re-creates a shared vision of our long-term future. Without the compass bearing such a shared vision creates, how can we have a useful discussion of which set of strategies will get us there?
Canmore seems to be constantly being pushed, prodded and pulled by pressures coming at us from all over the world. If we don’t imagine our future for ourselves, someone else will. We may or may not like what “they” think we should be. And we know we have strongly differing views within Canmore about our future.
Seeing the polarization of those discussions grow, it’s clear we need more of what may unite us and less of what divides us.
It’s time, again, for Canmore to say what the future of our community looks like. You could even argue we need to do this on an ongoing basis since the pressures on us are so great and the shelflife of such a vision is so (relatively) short.
Conducting this process in an election year is good timing. The process and outcome may help us choose a mayor and councillors in October that will steward our community closer to getting to the vision during their term.
Maybe it’s too much to expect the Futures project to be completed in time for the 2017 municipal election, but maybe we will get an idea by voting day.
Mining the Future has been a useful document, but more importantly, it was a good process. It’s time for MTF 2.0.
Norbert Meier,
Canmore
