If the North won't quack, it isn't a duck.

• Author: Robinson, Dave
• Position: WikiNorth

When I was trying to understand why Industry Canada couldn't accept the fact that there was an impressive cluster of mining suppliers in Sudbury, I found the answer on a page on the Industry Canada website. The page explained how to identify an economically significant collection of firms. My mistake, it turned out was just counting the companies and workers and products. The website told me that you don't have a cluster until there is an organization to speak for the firms in the cluster.

This was a bit like saying you aren't a duck unless you are quacking. To be real for Industry Canada you had to sound real. The solution for Sudbury was to create an organization of mining supply firms. Dick DeStefano organized the Sudbury Area Mining Supply and Service Association (SAMSSA), and the publisher of Northern Ontario Business created a quarterly magazine, and suddenly Industry Canada and the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines could see the 300 companies that had been invisible a few months before.

There is a lesson here for all of Northern Ontario: you have to quack. To get the senior levels of government to really deal with Northern Ontario's problems, the region has to make room for Northern Ontario in people's heads. Political organization is only part of the story How do we teach Northern Ontarian's to quack like a culture?

The answer may be an open source program called mediawiki. Almost everyone one who uses the web uses Google, and sooner or later almost everyone runs into Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Anyone with a browser can contribute to Wikipedia, and because it has so many volunteers it has become the most-used reference source in the world. Wikipedia uses the mediawiki software.

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WikiNorth at hyperlink http://wikinorth, is setting out to be the people's encyclopedia of Northern Ontario. Like the Wikipedia, WikiNorth will be built by volunteers using the mediawiki software. It will have northerners sharing their knowledge about Northern Ontario. If it succeeds, it will make Northern Ontario seem like a real place. WikiNorth can help Northern Ontario quack.

Encyclopedias have been used many times to strengthen communities. The Encyclopedia Canadiana and the Encyclopedia of Newfoundland and Labrador, the Catholic Encyclopedia, and the Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan were all designed to reinforce their communities. To see how it works, think about how businesses use the web. You can tell if a...