Only one way forward on the road to progress

By Nate Smelle

Whenever I spend a significant amount of time in another community in Ontario, I always return home to Bancroft with a renewed sense of appreciation for what it is that makes this region such a special place to live. The longer I am away, the wider my eyes seem to open up to the changes that have taken place since I left. Likewise, I also become more observant of what has remained the same.

Rolling along Hastings Street North on Halloween night, admiring the many developments downtown, it became clear to me how quickly the community is transforming. From the Bancroft Brewing Company's recently opened brew house in the old McCaskie's building to the I.D.A. Pharmacy expansion, to the North Hastings Inspiration Place, and the new apartments on the hill, change is everywhere.

Listening to the presentation bythe town's Municipal Strategic Communications and Civic Engagement Specialist Sarah Phoenix during Bancroft's Committee of the Whole meeting from Oct. 30 for the second time on Sunday, I thought about how each member of council and the decisions they make as individuals and as a collective have the potential to change the community for the better.

At a time when communities across Canada are grappling with rising incidents of hate-fueled violence, discrimination, and social isolation, Bancroft's efforts to develop a Community Education and Engagement Strategyaimed at addressing harms against persons is a welcome and necessary step forward.

Rooted in prevention, education, and collaboration, the initiative recognizes that the harms individuals face—whether physical, emotional, or systemic—are interconnected and require a community-based response.

Phoenix's presentation highlighted the importance of understanding the full spectrum of harm: from senior fraud, domestic abuse, and hate crimes to human trafficking, economic exploitation, and cyberbullying. By acknowledging these realities and their intersections with poverty, inequality, and social exclusion, the town is demonstrating a clear commitment to tackling the root causes—not just the symptoms—of community harm.

What makes this initiative particularly promising is its proactive and inclusiveapproach. Rather than reacting to crises, Bancroft is choosing to build awareness, strengthen partnerships with local experts, and engage residents in honest conversations about safety and respect. This is how meaningful change begins—not through slogans or symbolic gestures, but through sustained collaboration and education.

Bancroft's strategy also aligns with broader goals of community safety and well-being, reinforcing that creating a safe town is not solely the work of police or social services—it's the responsibility of everyone.

If carried forward with transparency and consistency, this initiative could help make Bancroft not only a safer place to live, but also a more compassionate and connected one. While council's support for this strategy may appear at first to be just standard administrative approval, in fact it's a public declaration that the town values dignity, inclusion, and collective responsibility.

In many ways, each of these developments from the town's new strategy to embrace inclusivity to the construction of the North Hastings Inspiration Place, represent progress. However, before we go throwing around the ‘P' word too loosely, it is worth taking a look at some of the things that take away from our quality of life, that always seem to stay the same.

Don't get me wrong, each of these changes underway are indeed signs of progress. Certainly they will, and have already in some regards improved the community as a whole. But progress, as far as I'm concerned, must be measured by the good, the bad, and the ugly realities a community is experiencing.

The “full spectrum of harm” identified by Phoenix at the Oct. 30 meeting is a good place to start when attempting to catch a glimpse of the bad ugliness that must be overcome if we truly intend to establish real and lasting progress. Watching the news, listening to the radio, or flipping through the pages of one of our local newspapers each week, one almost always comes across reports of crimes such as senior fraud, domestic abuse, hate crimes, human trafficking, economic exploitation, and/or cyberbullying.

Recognizing that this ugliness persists no matter how long we might be away from the community, shows us that we still have a ways to go on the road to progress. Taking a closer look at the origin of each of the above mentioned injustices I realized that their source stems from greed and a thirst for power over others.

While it may be difficult, even impossible to directly stop others from committing senior fraud, domestic abuse, hate crimes, human trafficking, and cyberbullying, we all have the ability to some to degree to spot and call out when someone is being exploited. Therefore, a good place for us to start as we navigate our next steps forward is “economic exploitation.”

Why begin here, you might ask? Well, one doesn't need to dig deep into the local economic reality to discover that most working class people here in North Hastings earn less than $21.65 per hour — the amount determined by the Ontario Living Wage Network to be a “living wage.”

For those who may not have even heard of the elusive “living wage”, it is defined as the hourly wage a worker needs to cover basic necessities and participate in their community. Before we light the fireworks to celebrate how far we have come on the road to progress, we need to address economic exploitation directly by ensuring that every citizen clocking in is earning enough money to cover the costs of the basic necessities. This means making the minimum wage, which is the legally set lowest hourly pay, a living wage. Otherwise, our celebration will be a short one for an ever-shrinking crowd.