Glimpses of Integral Canada: Appreciating the Macrocosm in the Microcosm

© Marilyn Hamilton, PhD CGA - All rights reserved

I have come to believe that fractal patterns of the macrocosm can be appreciated in fractal patterns of the microcosm. So this year’s macro Glimpses of Integral Canada, come through the micro lens of my home town, Abbotsford, the city that I know best.

This year’s integral glimpses will use the four integral quadrants – intention, behaviour, culture, and infrastructure (see Figure 1) -- as filters for seeing emergence in the country and the city. Each of these quadrants contributes a true but partial image of the city. Together these quadrants weave an interconnected picture of the whole.  

Ironically Abbotsford has claimed the title, “City in the Country” because the 25% of the city that is the urban core is situated in the 75% of the city which is a sea of agricultural land reserve. (This reminds us of how little of Canada is urbanized, mostly within one hundred miles north of the 49^th parallel, and how much remains as a kind of land reserve.)  Picture Canada’s fastest growing city (in the last ten years) located in the lush Fraser Valley, population about 130,000. From my windows I view the blueberry fields and dairy farms, poultry barns and greenhouse complexes that represent the centre of food production in British Columbia (in fact this is the most intensively farmed area in all of North America). Picture an emerging transportation hub, where air, rail and highway converge just 5 km north of the 49^th parallel threading through the diked floodplain of the Fraser River. Picture gospel music and bhangra dancing, Dutch tulips and strawberry blossoms, butter chicken and Mennonite farmer’s sausage in Canada’s third most visibly diverse city (after Toronto and Vancouver).

Abbotsford’s growth surge has continued for ten years both because of and despite stable cultural centres of gravity with strong adherence to their status quo. The city has a mayor who has served for 33 years. It has strong fundamentalist religious institutions from Europe (Dutch Reformed), Russia (Mennonite) and South Asia (Sikh). It sits in the largest population agglomeration without a full university in Canada.  It has had a reputation for close (and large) families, country values, spendthrift public policies and slow change. It has had a tendency to muzzle the voices of diversity generators and drive its youth to less boring and predictable urban centres. 

So where can one catch glimpses of integralness in Abbotsford? How can this city in the country possibly be an example of emerging futures? 

I want to use appreciative inquiry to reveal Abbotsford’s strengths and share four initiatives (see Figure 1) – simple in their design, surprising in their effects, promising in their direction and meshworked in their unfolding. I will tell you about:

Imagine Abbotsford and how it is encouraging the vision and values of the city.

Vibrant Abbotsford and how it is addressing the poverty driven behaviours in the city.

Abbotsford Community Services Cultural Diversity Awards and how they are celebrating differences in the city.

Fraser Valley Housing Network and how it is building conditions for the basic shelter of the homeless and working poor.

 

	Interiors	Exteriors
Citizen	Q1 Intentions:   Imagine Abbotsford	Q2 Behaviours:   Vibrant Abbotsford
City	Q3 Culture:   Cultural Diversity Awards	Q4 Infrastructure:   Fraser Valley Housing Network

Figure 1: 4 Quadrants of Integral Abbotsford

  

From Quadrant One/Citizen Intentions: Imagine Abbotsford

http://www.sfu.ca/dialogue/imaginebc/pdf/ImagineAbbotsfordTL.pdf

What is it? Imagine Abbotsford is a visioning process that engages citizens in three theme-based dialogues every year. We start with 20 Thought Leaders gathered for an evening and a day to explore the stories we have experienced around a theme like Environment and Economy, or Learning and Culture. We produce a consensus document from the dialogue and the community newspaper publishes it as a four colour insert and circulates it to 33,000 households. For the second event, we invite the public to spend a half day in dialogue about the same theme and we create a summary document from their discoveries, which, once again, the community newspaper publishes as a four colour insert and circulates to 33,000 households. Finally for the third event, we convene 20-30 Policy Makers and share with them the public’s questions and wish lists for action. The spirit of civility causes many dialogue participants to note how different the dialogue experience is from the adversarial environments where they usually work. The Policy Makers consider the value of listening deeply before reacting or automatically running to do something. Once again the Policy Makers’ dialogue is synthesized into a document that the community newspaper publishes as a four colour insert and circulates to 33,000 households. 

This has been going on for two years, and will continue for years three and four with different themes. 

So what capacity is it growing in the city? Imagine Abbotsford is growing connections between people who are often in the same room together for the first time. The steering committee is always asking, “Who else should be here?”  The dialogic process teaches people a new way to relate around an issue that is different than discussion or debate. The experience of creating a vision of Abbotsford that comes from both individual wishes and shared intentions is a process that slowly empowers and seeps through the city so that gradually many people want to participate (and request to do so). 

Now what can this microcosm contribute to the macrocosm? Imagine Abbotsford  was incubated by Imagine BC, who has been imagining the province of BC over the next 30 years http://www.sfu.ca/dialogue/imaginebc/ .  Imagine BC is drawing Provocateur Thought Leaders from within the province, nationally and internationally. It is modeling the value of dialogue as an exploratory and integrative process for citizen engagement and policy development. Imagine Abbotsford is its “poster child”.  Abbotsford’s local intentions ripple outwards through its provincial MLA’s (who attended the last dialogue) and its federal MP (who has regularly advertised in the newspaper release).

 

From Quadrant Two/ Citizen Behaviours: Vibrant Abbotsford http://tamarackcommunity.ca/g2s2h.html

What is it? A vibrant community actively promotes the well-being of its members and the community as a whole. Vibrant Abbotsford is a poverty reduction collaborative that supports the city’s social planning initiatives. Their website reports, that “although Abbotsford is one of the fastest growing municipalities in Canada, many are being left behind. … 24% of Abbotsford’s household income accrues to households earning less than the median income and the incidence of low income families is nearly 11%.” The 2008 homeless count tallied more than the 226 homeless people who were counted in 2004. Vibrant Abbotsford is taking a self-organizing approach to a litany of social challenges: population growth, a growing number of seniors, lack of affordable housing options, a widening gap between the rich and poor, lower formal education levels, complexity and severity of social issues, exclusion, weakened community capacity, and downloading. Its key focus areas and strategies have become:

·         making positive, measurable, and sustainable impacts on poverty for all citizens of Abbotsford;

·         embracing the efficiencies to be gained from exploding silos, through information sharing, and collaborative efforts; and

·         learning and growing with others who are dedicated to working creatively, and engaging the community in poverty reduction efforts and increased community vibrancy.

So what capacity is it growing in the city? The vibrant communities approach is actively promoting the well-being of members and the community as a whole. This initiative was catalyzed and incubated by Vibrant Communities is supported by three national sponsors: The J.W. McConnell Family Foundation, the Caledon Institute of Social Policy, and Tamarack – An Institute for Community Engagement. It requires that collaborators come together, develop a learning plan and using complexity thinking, “muddle through” a discovery and formation period until they design a homegrown approach to poverty reduction. The members of this group are gaining complexity thinking “muscles” and are linked nationally with 15 other communities who are developing and sharing their strategies for poverty reduction. See details at http://tamarackcommunity.ca/g2s1.html

Now what can this microcosm contribute to the macrocosm? As a member of the Vibrant Communities Network, Abbotsford is demonstrating its own capacity to identify and appreciate its strengths, recognize and work around its constraints and learn from its (and others) success and mistakes. Abbotsford is a node in a national knowledge and collaboration network who share visions, values, principles and appreciative enabling methodologies. 

 

From Quadrant Three/ City Culture: Cultural Diversity Awards

http://www.abbotsfordcommunityservices.com/documents/CDASponsorshipPackage2008-revisedpictures_000.pdf

What is it? We are a three community event that recognizes the best practices amongst Fraser Valley businesses and service providers in responding to and being inclusive of the diversity of our region. A collaboration of Abbotsford, Chilliwack and Mission Community Services and the Clearbrook Library, we have had a sell-out event for six years.

At our 2008, Awards Night (keynoted by B.C. Lieut.-Gov. Steven Point (a Sto:Lo Chief) and international human rights activist Nazanin Afshin-Jam), our recipients were reported in the Abbotsford News as follows. http://www.bclocalnews.com/fraser_valley/abbynews/news/16414221.html :

For its INCLUSIVE ENVIRONMENT: MISSION SECONDARY SCHOOL, where cultures are shared, accepted and embraced.

For MARKETING: TOWNSHIP OF LANGLEY LIBRARIES where multilingual librarians reach out to people of different cultures, and keep them up to date about the library programs and services, provide books in different languages and host multicultural events.

For OUTREACH: FRASER VALLEY CHILD DEVELOPMENT CENTRE (FVCDC) , where the Kids in Action Program facilitates the inclusion and integration of children with special needs into available sport, recreation and/or leisure activities in their community. FVCDC also recently hired a South Asian family and children social worker to provide linguistically and culturally competent support, consultation, advocacy, education, information and referral services to South Asian families with children with disabilities.

For REFLECTIVE WORKPLACE: TD CANADA TRUST, where they create an environment that welcomes and respects each and every person.

For INNOVATIVE INITIATIVE: FRASER VALLEY YOUTH SOCIETY, who operates a weekly drop-in program for youth who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans-gendered or questioning their sexual orientation or gender identity, so that regardless of ethnicity, socio-economic background, sexual orientation and religion they can make new friends who will accept them for who they are and allow them to reach their full potential.

For CHAMPION OF DIVERSITY: LINNEA BATTEL director of Xa:ytem in Mission, who works to educate the public about various First Nations cultures in order to transform attitudes and perceptions of the First Nations peoples. She is now working on a project with SFU’s Department of Archeology to develop a virtual museum.  

So what capacity is it growing in the city? This is the sixth annual Cultural Diversity Awards event. We are growing connections across the Central Fraser Valley amongst communities, sponsoring organizations, individuals, associations and ethnicities, genders, races, ages, belief systems and workplaces. We are celebrating and fanning the flames of acceptance of differences. 

Now what can this microcosm contribute to the macrocosm? Our Cultural Diversity Awards is a model for recognizing actual workplace practices that make a difference for the individuals who are “diverse” and for the workplaces who learn new ways to grow intentional, cultural, behavioral and social capital based on the diversity.

 

From Quadrant Four/ City Infrastructure: Fraser Valley Housing Network

http://www.fvhousing.com/ 

What is it? This is a stakeholders’ network formed by approximately sixty organizations to share resources, opportunities, information and ideas. They work together across the Fraser Valley to make affordable housing available to everyone who needs it. Not a NFP, this group is a “a continuing conversation about how to achieve our collective purpose”. Their dialogue catalyzes joint planning, programs, projects and links the communities of Abbotsford, Mission, Chilliwack, Agassiz, Hope and Boston Bar. 

So what capacity is it growing in the city? This network is growing social capacity and tangible infrastructure. In 2007, it sponsored a Forum for Landowners and Developers and attracted presenters from the province, the region and across the country. Decision makers from business, government, financial and faith communities attended and realized many opportunities to link together. Within months of this event (and a prior one on Homelessness) the group had the commitment of all the Mayors in the region to end homelessness in 10 years. 

Now what can this microcosm contribute to the macrocosm? The phenomenon of homelessness has become a significant reality in every city in Canada in the last fifteen years. In a smaller city like Abbotsford where the family oriented ethic of the community at first denied this issue, it has now been goaded into engagement by the catalyst who coalesced the FVHN. Like the Vibrant Abbotsford initiative, the employment of self-organizing systems, whole systems and complexity thinking, this initiative seems to be demonstrating that if you want to improve the health of a system, connect it to enough more of itself .

 

How do all four initiatives grow capacity in the whole city system?

Never doubt that a small group of committed people can make a difference in the world – indeed it is the only thing that ever has (Margaret Mead). Each of these initiatives has been or become the passion of a few people who are committed to making a difference because it is what they are called to do. They are effectively meshworking and expanding intelligences in the city by noticing the invisible and visible assets, strengths and capacities around them. They reflect them, appreciate them and fan them into life.

As citizens imagine more of what they want in the city over the next thirty years, they are more willing and able to accept and even seek diversity in the present. As collaboratives tackle the challenge of ending poverty, they become avid learners of the system in which they are embedded. As poverty is identified as a complex issue, the opportunity to create new forms of housing becomes a reality. As more people are adequately housed, their capacities to live, work and serve in the community are expanded. And they too become able to imagine a life that is more vibrant and full of energizing diversity. With imagination, the basic necessities of life, vibrancy and energy, the city as a whole becomes more resilient.

How do we create a city that reminds us that we are all interconnected? That we spring from a common source? That emergence and even resilience is available to us always? The answer appears to be, by working together to realize our passions for a better life and supporting what wants to emerge as natural, normal, and next in each quadrant of the reality which is our city.

In making room for each others’ passions about the city, it appears we become skilled translators and stabilizers and that allow many capacities to thrive in healthy ways. Abbotsford is the perfect sized city growing at the perfect (ie. fastest) pace in Canada. What is there to learn here? Nothing and everything. Everything and nothing. It is a place that is co-creating leaders who are imagining a vibrant, affordable place where diversity is valued and progress is measured. In these ways, we catch glimpses of the macrocosm of Integral Canada in the microcosm of Integral Abbotsford.

. . .

Sense in the City Archives

Home