Going Home?

In this economy?

Finally last week I made it back to my home town of Kelowna, BC. It’s kind of crazy-making because although I honestly have a lot of good memories from my childhood, teen-aged years, and young adulthood, the Kelowna of today disappoints me terribly.

Some of this of course may reflect my time in France, where buildings and whole towns remain largely the same as they were 200 or 300 years previously. The twisty streets and stone buildings really do change how you live your day to day life, and more importantly the landmarks that guide you through that life stay the same from day to day and month to month.

It’s honestly comfortable in a world that seems bent on change in every way.

I was not surprised that my boyhood home on Morrison Avenue was now a vacant lot. And I already knew that pretty much every store that I shopped at while growing up is now long gone. Some disappeared under the wheels of redevelopment, but others couldn’t survive when Free Trade opened our doors to cheap imported manufactured items, and then to WalMart.

A town of orchards, and familiar names like Marshall-Wells and Woolworths is now awash in endless chain restaurants and tourist friendly businesses.

Including the Paramount movie theatre, where I learned about the broader world in endless films. The sign remains on Bernard Avenue, but the theatre is now inexplicably a Tim Horton’s coffee shop.

I guess ultimately what I’m saying is that although progress is inevitable, and often a good thing, it’s also valuable to also hold tight to the past. As Joni said “you don't know what you got 'til it's gone.”

I would go one step further and suggest that the Internet has accelerated this pattern of abandoning things more that a few years old in favour of the newest and shiniest. The woman-oriented news site Jezebel is about to be shut down. It’s only latest in an endless string of sites that are bought, then closed. At Google alone I can think of three of four tools and services that I have relied on, only to have Google shut them down.

I guess that’s why, today, I find myself wondering about what things I can preserve, and why, and what things deserve to stay on even if they don’t make tons of money. On-line there are places like the Internet Archive that are working incredibly hard to preserve things, but they don’t help us to keep buildings, and neighbourhoods, and shops that make our lives complete and happy.

And they don’t archive the millions of family photographs sitting on people’s smart-phones, most of which simply disappear when it’s upgrade time. A physical photograph can live on forever in a black paper photo album. A digital picture will most likely disappear into a landfill when the device is thrown away.

So today do me a favour. Think about your past, and think about how your past can become something that your children and grandchildren can cherish after you’re gone.