The Club of Rome comes to Annapolis Royal.

• Author: Atkins, Michael
• Position: President's Note

I made a brief return to the homeland (Nova Scotia) last week for a little business and family

A cousin welcomed me for tea. She apologized for the lack of biscuits and explained her car had been stuck in the driveway since Feb. 28. Shopping on foot did not include biscuits.

I bunked in for a night with my Uncle Charlie who this year turned 94. I could only see the roof of his house as I drove in the driveway. It was smothered in an eight-foot snowbank. Didn't seem to faze him in the least.

I must say, with more than 40 years of experience in Northern Ontario, I don't remember ever seeing so much snow at one time.

It is the best of times and the worst of times in Nova Scotia. The town of Bridgetown (incorporated 1867) disappeared last week into the County of Annapolis. It just didn't have the money to stay alive. A few years ago, all councillors just gave up and it fell into trusteeship. In LaHave, Nova Scotia, where I go in the summer, the cost of using the essential local ferry has been increased 165 per cent by a province trying to balance its books. The province also wiped out its Department of Economic and Rural Development and Tourism, laying off some 300 people in its recent budget.

Amidst the doom and gloom, the failed subsidies, the diminished fisheries, the demographic tsunami, the higher taxes, the failed forestry policies, the outrageous cost overruns (the Bluenose), the potholes, and the belt-tightening, something else is happening.

A lot of people have had enough. They want change. Big change. They know what doesn't work is giving more money away to pulp companies or anybody else to make jobs for them.

I attended an economic conference in Annapolis Royal (pop. 481). It was one of the most invigorating gatherings I have attended in some time, and I have survived many an economic development conference.

The fresh air started at the top.

Gregory Heming, who has lived around the world (including 10 years in the Yukon), holds a PhD in ecology and, among other things, is a member of the Club of Rome. Right now Gregory is a municipal councillor in Annapolis County and chair of its economic development committee. He founded the Centre for Local Prosperity (www.localprosperity.ca).

His partner in change is Robert Cervelli, a life science technology entrepreneur living in St. Margaret's...