North of Seven

As someone who lives within a kilometer of Highway Seven, I can write this with equanimity, with friends and fond memories on both sides of the line. And to those readers from “away”, let me explain that Highway Seven runs from Ottawa to Toronto, hugging the Canadian Shield mostly along the way, bifurcating Eastern Ontario into the settled, prosperous, fertile St. Lawrence Lowlands to the south and the hard-scrabble but stunningly beautiful uplands to the north. The south has money, the north has grit and character. Or so the story goes.

But “north of Seven” has a pejorative twist, suggesting that residents of the northern townships are hicks, rednecks, and hillbillies. As soon as you head north on Highway 511, you start to make banjo noises and joke about inbreeding, suggesting scenes from the 1972 movie Deliverance.

Perhaps a more honest movie is the 1968 Canada Film Board gem The Best Damn Fiddler from Calabogie to Kaladar (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWb9PmeHkFM) . Nearly sixty years old, the story is told of poverty, pride, stubbornness, overcoming, and courage “north of Seven”. If somewhat dated, the story is still honest and speaks of the complexity of making a life in a harsh land. (Not to mention that it is the first film featuring Margot Kidder of Superman fame.)

Times have changed “north of Seven”, but the streak of perseverance in the face of adversity remains. Summer homes and retirement mansions on the stunning lakes have brought in money, but those who still eke out an existence from cutting wood and trapping and subsistence farming continue to live with pride amongst the rocks, lakes, and abandoned settlements.

Something like “North of Seven” plays out all over the world, rich and poor sometimes only just the width of a highway apart. In Russia, for example, it’s the rubes from the hinterland who are thrown into the Ukrainian meatgrinder while the trendy Muscovite boys get a pass.

Those who live “north of Seven”, no matter where in the world, tend to vote ultraconservative, which may seem odd given their disproportionate uptake of government largesse. And those of us who live “south of Seven” tend to look on them with a mixture of condescension, anger, and disbelief. “How dare they take welfare and then vote for the parties who purport to be against it?”

It’s perhaps our very condescension which provokes this voting pattern. If we take a little time to get to know the guy still flying a “Fuck Trudeau” flag from his Ford F150, we’ll find a bubbling rage that he’s “getting screwed” – working his heart out to support those who don’t want to work. He holds (mostly) to traditional values while the world is run by overpaid bureaucrats who bring in planeloads of lazy immigrants to come and take our jobs, or worse, pack tenements and live on welfare. We say, “But, you take pogey all winter!!!???!!!”, and he responds, “Damn right I do, and I paid for it!”

Can such views be supported by facts? Well, surprisingly, there are always enough threads of truth to make them less than crazy, even if most are exceptions to prove the rule. They deserve the respect of listening and admitting to a measure of truth. They deserve more than sneering condescension.

Let’s not forget that most of us are descended from somewhere “north of Seven”, whether the harsh highlands of Scotland, a shtetl in Poland, or the slums of London. Most of our ancestors overcame in the face of privileged classes, the very fuel for their ambition being a contempt for those who thought they were better, who thought our forbears should “know their place”. Let’s not be the very ones our ancestors fought so hard to overcome.