Warren Kinsella sat down with the Picton Gazette last week to do an interview for Watershed. Mr. Kinsella, a national columnist for the Toronto Sun, is a seasoned journalist, lawyer, and political campaigner. He is, in other words, the real deal, and he asked all the tough questions. “What, exactly, were you thinking when you decided to buy a newspaper?” was his opener. 

“Do you worry about going bankrupt?” came next. 

We answered honestly. (We weren’t, and, quite often, thank you). But things improved. We got onto the interesting topic of how the County sustains not one but two print newspapers. And why small papers and local news are important.

We left off after an hour that could have gone on forever with the observation that everything that happens here is happening pretty much everywhere. Local news gives a detail-rich, on-the-ground look at the costs and consequences of much larger, abstract phenomena. Climate change is behind some of the increase in land prices in Canada, for example, as well as its ranking high up on the list of the best places to live in the world.

There’s nothing unique to PEC about its unaffordability, poor quality jobs, disenchanted young people, homelessness, tourist economy, or antipathy to newcomers. 

The local intersects with, or is an effect of, the global. In every single case. 

At the same time, as Mr. Kinsella put it, he, like many others, moved to this island nation during the pandemic, because “if the world was going to end, well, I wanted to be somewhere a little more genial.” 

Starlink made all the difference. A journalist can file stories in Toronto from home. Technological innovation is just one of the drivers behind the population forecast for PEC. It makes living here and working elsewhere a real possibility.

But to get back to the original question: How can PEC offer a retreat from dismaying global forces, while it is still participant in them, affected by them, in every possible way? Is it not wishful to think that one can have it both ways? 

It’s a question I’ve been pondering for a while now. It’s true that the country is full of eases and comforts simply unavailable in a large, crowded city. I laugh when I hear complaints of “traffic congestion” on Main Street. 

And yet it’s also difficult and heart wrenching. There’s a lack of opportunity and of resources for young people that is immediate and up close. 

Last week I was forced into watching The Gentlemen on Netflix, written by Guy Ritchie. I couldn’t find anything else, but that’s a topic for another day. 

Mr. Ritchie used to be married to Madonna. He’s the one who said she was impossible to live with, and, or because, she slept smothered in creams and wrapped in plastic. I was not expecting to find a meditation on the role of the local in the global. But what do you know.

The story concerns the supposedly enviable, extremely handsome, younger son to a Duke, of course. The first episode features the death of the patriarch and a surprise turn — our guy inherits the land and titles instead of his elder brother, who is a cocaine-addled wastrel. 

The estate is spectacular, of course, as are the production’s cinematography, cast, costumes, dialogue, and actors — all are exceptional. It’s all so glitteringly sensational, it’s like the series itself is on cocaine.

The new Duke almost immediately discovers that his inheritance — not just a house but his position in life —  is only kept going by an illegal weed growing operation that’s been underway for years in a huge underground hothouse on the estate. 

A man of principle, he is shocked to learn that his family and way of life are sustained by criminal activities. 

Front and center are how the private, local, and domestic are implicated in global capital in a way they never asked for and cannot get out of.

This to-the-moment version of Upstairs Downstairs renders what life feels like right now. We all, like the Duke, face menacing global forces —a plague, widescale environmental degradation, a rapacious, exploitative system of global capital  at once utterly beyond our control, and deeply, piercingly affecting. It has left each of us with the sense of a poisoned landscape and inheritance.

Equally, elements of life here in PEC are recognisable in this Netflix series. Unaffordable real estate. Check. Traditional, principled ways of life under threat. Check. Drugs. Check. The lure of a highly stylized, perfectly rendered, digitized life. Check. Criminal Global Capital. Check. Farming. Check. Microgreens. Check. 

I won’t give away the ending, but it’s not a good one. It seems there is no way anymore for the narratives of neoliberalism to offer a way out, for the hero to overthrow the bad guys and reassert moral order. At least not in Guy Ritchie’s universe. The options he presents are limited to kill or be killed. 

It’s not like ordinary people have a whole lot of say in how the world works, is the message. Give in or be done in.

But that brings me back to us, and to our own little here and now, the place people come to “to get away,” a place people of all kinds have lived in quietly, happily, and productively for centuries.

The value of going small scale, local, is that it does offer an opportunity to make a difference, to have a say in how things work. In a small, independent community, there’s a chance, at least, to create a life on one’s own terms, in ways both large and small. Business owners, farmers, volunteers, event holders of all stripes, local housing developers, winemakers, hoteliers, fundraisers, theatre troupes, art galleries, music festivals, libraries, the leaders of community organizations, the local government, the radio station, the newspapers, residents — we all have an enormous chance here, to create, in some small way, the community we share.