Honestly, they’re just people, no different from you and I.
If all goes right, they wake up in the morning blessed with a new day. Some get the kids ready before hustling them off to wherever it is the kids go for the day. Some take out the trash before heading to work, because it’s, well, Tuesday. Some get up earlier because that new hair straightener from Amazon was on the step yesterday when they got home. A few wake up crusty, regretting those last few drinks that had them crawling into bed mere hours before and now crawling out of bed looking for the Tylenol.
It’s all pretty normal stuff, the kind of life tapestry that’s unfolding all around as others do the same things more or less, except for the night shift folks, who I won’t talk about because they wreck my narrative.
People, getting a start to their day, one foot after the next, inexorably leading to wherever it is they themselves go for the day. Almost an old-school Norman Rockwell feel to it.
Some work for others, some work for themselves. Some are part of the workforce, some provide jobs for that workforce. Some have their own businesses, some own their own businesses with storefronts along the downtown corridor. Some work for the public sector, most for the private. And every single one of them, a lot of them anyway, are salt of the earth types, the people you see at Walmart or No Frills or Timmies, or the rink on a Saturday morning. Their kids mix with yours, they mix with you, and it’s all a beautiful tableau of everyday life here in The Valley.
What could possibly upset all this, and transform these very same people into something less than a beautiful slice of everyday life?
Giving them a faint sniff of something they mistake for power. That’ll do it almost every time.
It happens easily enough. Hire someone and give them a title and a salary of $150,000 per year or more. Give them their own office maybe. Give them marginal authority over others in the same workplace. Watch how that person anchoring the church choir sings a different song throughout the week than the one they belt out on Sunday morning.
You could tell them that they’re titans of industry because they employ two people, four people, forty people, even more. But you won’t have to, because they’ll do it themselves.
They’re the indispensable ones, without which the rest of us couldn’t possibly go on. At least in their minds, their absence would trigger a domino effect of catastrophic consequence, impossible to recover from. Which is sad, because we almost always do.
They show up to be seen, not to see.
To be fair, it’s not the rest of us that they’re suspicious of, jealous of, and conspiratorial about. It’s each other. It is, after all, brutal at the top. They’ll have no hesitation in carving up their rival business neighbours along the main drag if they feel that the other one is getting a little too big for their britches. And as they do that, they’re getting carved up themselves by two other business owners right down the street.
They are legitimately feared by others, especially by those dependant upon being on their good side, whether that’s subordinates, employees, wannabe friends, and even some equals. They smile at each other and shake each other’s hands, then burn holes in each other’s backs. They keep their friends close, but their enemies closer. Different faces for different people. Different words for different audiences. It’s a minefield, let me tell you.
Put them on a board or a committee and watch them swell up in self-puffery. Make them think they have a say, even if they don’t, or even if they shouldn’t. Make them community leaders, not by any popular vote, but by being appointed by others belonging to the same club.
These are the small-town elites, and if not properly checked, they can cause as much harm as good. Their fingerprints seem to be all over a lot of what currently ails Renfrew. They revel in their power, even when there really is none, so they’re willing to make their own.
In Upper Canada they were called The Family Compact. In Lower Canada they were called The Chateau Clique. And we have a similar strata right here in Renfrew, but haven’t really gotten around to naming it yet. And whatever it’s name, it’s nothing new. All communities have them.
Famous Canadian author Robertson Davies once lived in Renfrew, his father the publisher of the local Renfrew newspaper back in the day. He wrote a book about these types of elites called Bred To The Bone, set in a town he called Blairlogie, which was really actually Renfrew. His characters of over 100 years ago have an eerie similarity to what we can see today. And while he lived here, he hated it here, being made to feel as if he was an outsider who didn’t belong, who wasn’t good enough. I wonder if that sounds familiar in any way to anyone living here today?
Those elite types have always had their ways of putting interlopers back into place.
In short, power intoxicates, even it’s only local small-town power. It wrecks the school yard, poisons the classroom, pollutes the rink, and turns the business section against one another. There is nothing good in it.
And often it’s wielded by those very people described in my introduction. Nice people. Good people. People who do care. People who do mean well.
But people who lose themselves when they let their self-importance get the better of them. People who read their own press clippings, and maybe even create them on their own.
People who, when they scramble for advantage, can cause serious harm, not to themselves, but to others, and especially to the very communities they claim to be bettering.
People who need to take a step back and honestly self-evaluate. For their own good, and possibly for the good of the rest of us who get caught up in the crossfire and have to clean up the mess afterwards.
For those who’ve not yet fallen into this trap, my advice is simple, but genuinely offered:
Don’t fall into this trap. Don’t lose yourself to to ephemeral illusions of power, because there is none. Certainly none that’s worth selling yourself out for.
To those who crave it, congratulations on your accomplishments, on your achievements, for the things you do or contribute to that make Renfrew a better place than had you not. Genuinely, thank you for all the good you do, the things you advance, the people you employ or lead.
You make our community better.
But please, if it’s not too impolite to suggest, get over yourselves. Fighting and squabbling and back-stabbing and intimidation are not good looks, and those very things will come back to haunt you. Hubris kills.
This piece has no one specifically in mind. It derives primarily from my reading of documentation and interviews with people generous enough and trusting enough to share their time and observations. It is, in no way, an attempt to cast aspersion on anyone simply for the sake of doing so.
There is some wisdom here.
COVER PHOTO: Sorry about that unfortunate helicopter. There’s your AI for you!
NEWSMAGRENFREW 