Mayor Delivers State Of The City Speech In A Year Dominated By COVID -19
By His Worship Fraser Tolmie
Isaiah 40:31 “But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary; they will walk and not be faint.”
We are stronger than the trials we are facing!
We must go on.
We will endure.
We will make it through!
In humanity’s most difficult challenges, where have we found the strength and courage to carry on? Where have we found our inspiration and hope, to say we must go on? Many of us rely on our faith and many of us rely on our family and friends to see us through life’s darkest challenges.
A psalmist once cried out “I lift up my eyes to the hills-where does my help come from?” Ps 121vs12
I believe that God’s plan is better than man’s plan and that we, in times of trials, must wait upon the Lord for his good timing. Until that time, I suggest that we, as leaders in this community, look to one another, look to our colleagues and our community for strength, advice, courage and wisdom.
Many have compared the Covid-19 pandemic we are facing now to the Spanish flu that broke out over one hundred years ago. But in the period since that time, the question we must ask ourselves is, what has changed from 1918 to 2021?
Billy Joel has a song, “We didn’t start the Fire.” Unique to that song, which was released in 1989, were lyrics which contained forty years of headlines covering Mr. Joel’s forty-year life up until that point. (I will spare you my wonderful Opera Man impression and instead of singing I’ll just read out a portion of his lyrics.)
“Eisenhower, Vaccine, England’s got a new Queen,
Marciano, Liberace, Santayana, Goodbye,
We didn’t start the fire,
It was always burning since the world’s been turning,
We didn’t start the fire,
No, we didn’t light it, but we tried to fight it.”
Interestingly, he included the word “vaccine” referring to the polio vaccine which was discovered to combat another devastating disease.
What has changed from 1918 to 2021 as the patience of a collective society and community like Moose Jaw is tested? If one hundred headlines covering just forty years can be included in a four-minute song, then what can be covered in one hundred years? I daresay a lot. In 1918, they did not have a healthcare system like we do now. A system created from our selfless need to protect people in our society despite their economic background. This has taken us on a different path from where we were over one hundred years ago as a result of progress and science. Progress has been made despite leading bleeding headlines.
Science has changed and advanced a global society from where it was over one hundred years ago. Progress and Science have also changed the way we farm, the way we work, what we do for a living and even how we relax. And, it will change how we will move forward from this point in time. Time never stops and this gives us an opportunity to look back and see how far we have come. Progress and Science cannot move or improve on their own. They must be motivated to move forward by people. People are the motivating factor in anything that has been achieved.
I have lost count in the number of times that I have said this and the number of times I have been quoted saying this. Moose Jaw’s potential is in its people! I said it last year and I’ll continue to say it, because I believe it and it is true.
Progress and Science are the result of necessity, innovation, advancement and even the will to survive. In our case, it can be translated into people motivated to progress to something better. A destination that is better than where we are now.
These next couple of years may be a difficult journey through uncharted waters to a future that at this time is undefined. Collectively, we must have the confidence that we will arrive safely. In our new reality, we need to set a heading to help us navigate this journey.
How does a community like Moose Jaw do that?
The answer is: relying on our moral compass to set the heading. One of the most defining characteristics of the community of Moose Jaw is the spirit and passion of its people to help one another to change and adapt and improve to make life better. People are already adapting; new opportunities are being made by people who can see an opportunity and seize the initiative. Therefore, our compass must be the collective values of our community.
Those values that make us a healthy community in which achieving our goals is our means of becoming better people and a better community. These values must move us towards the right goals.
The world we live in is perpetually on the road to the future: relocating, reorganizing, revising, restructuring, retooling, reinventing and then doing it all over again. All these changes result in an endless amount of adapting and relearning. We must acknowledge and recognize that our City is worth the effort and sacrifice we will endure to make a better life for the next generation.
It has been said that your destiny won’t happen until you embrace your identity.
Who are we as a community?
We are a community known for having been built on farming. Farming depends on an unpredictable element: the weather!
The Saskatchewan climate is not only unpredictable, but also extreme. We have no idea what it will be like from day-to-day, but that does not stop us from planting the seeds we have. After planting, we endure and adapt, and we plan and plan again waiting for harvest. We endure hot summers that come with blistering heat and sometimes drought, followed by rain and hail. We work extra hours to beat the coming snow to clear the crops and prepare them for market.
We are a hardy and strong people and our story doesn’t end there. Twenty- four hours a day, seven days a week in driving rain, snow and the heat of summer, rail cars move around with chattering diesel engines, banging against each other as grain, potash, salt, oil and other products produced locally get ready to be shipped to ports on both sides of our country and down south even as far as Mexico.
These products find themselves around the globe.
We have an impact on people’s lives within and beyond our city limits.
Just look to the skies!
The skies of Moose Jaw are the scene of aircraft training the next generation of pilots. These pilots are trained to defend our borders, but they are also trained for times in need and to rescue people from life threating incidents. They take medical aid to people around the globe who may be enduring starvation due to famine; people suffering from earthquakes as their homes have been destroyed and people who have endured hurricanes and flooding.
This is what we do here in Moose Jaw, this is who we are.
It is something we can trust in and rely on. Helping others in their times of need and crisis.
For fun, in the dead of winter and freezing temperatures, we lace up two thin metal blades to our feet, grab a shovel to clear the pond or rink so that we can play pick-up hockey, figure skate under the oval lights or just hold hands with our partner.
Our future will take on another role as we will become energy producers. The Great Plains Power Station will mean that Moose Jaw will be a fundamental piece in this province’s power grid. In the future, we will supply power to homes and businesses.
While the moral compass of democracy is being challenged in other areas of the world, we cannot let that be a distraction from our job as a Council. Our job is to maintain and ensure credibility in our democratic system and preserve it for the next generation in the way we conduct ourselves while doing it. We want the people of this City to gain confidence and believe in themselves. This Council will reach a better destination and the goals we as a community set for the future.
It is in everyone’s best interest that we succeed, and we want the people of this City who have entrusted us with this role to share in that success.
We must go on. We will endure!
We are stronger than the trials we are facing.
We will make it through!
May the Lord bless you as we take this journey together.