By Keith Roulston

Late last winter I noticed a grey smudge on the snow outside our kitchen window and when I investigated, I found the remnants of a paper wasp nest blown out of one of the trees in our yard. The wear and tear of winter winds had ripped away the outside paper skin but the interior comb of hundreds of breeding cells was still intact. When I did a little research and found out the entire structure had been made by wasps that chewed up fibre from old wood or from plant stems to create the paper the nest was made of, I was struck by how much effort by how many hundreds of wasps went into building this home that now lay in ruins. As I mulled it over later, I thought how different we humans are than these tiny creatures who must work together by the hundreds to get a job done like that. Then I realized that humans originally had to work the same way. Imagine the group effort it took to build the pyramids in Egypt in the days when the only power came from the muscles of humans and animals. Even the castles of Europe and structures like our own parliament buildings required huge amounts of muscle power to erect and, because of that, an enormous amount of co-operativity. Lately, because of a personal creative writing project I’ve taken up, I’ve been immersed in reading about, and thinking about, the lives of the first settlers who came to Ontario to carve out new lives for themselves. It’s hard to even conceive what must have gone through the mind of a man who faced 100 acres of solid trees with nothing but an axe, knowing he must chop down enough of them, fast enough, or he and his family would starve to death. It must have been very lonely in those first days when a family had only its own resources in this life and death struggle. It’s no wonder, then, that pioneer families were happy to discover they had neighbours. Soon people were coming together to build roads and schools and to help each other out when an emergency such as illness or injury struck. Often co-operative efforts like a barn-raising also became social events as lonely families came together. This tradition of joint effort created business opportunities as farmers came together to erect co-operative creameries or cheese factories and farm supply co-ops. The entrenched understanding that people working together had more strength than individuals on their own led to the creation of supply management for dairy, chicken and eggs in the 1960s. By then things were already changing. Combines meant that it was no longer necessary for farmers to come together for threshing bees to harvest their crops. One man with a hydraulic-equipped tractor could do the work of a dozen a century earlier. At the same time, the coming of television meant each family had the best, most talented musicians, actors and athletes in their own home. They didn’t need to gather for entertainment at community concerts or cheer on local hockey or ball teams. Each family existed in its own world, tied by modern communications to the outside world without the need of the neighbourhood community. I’m now reading that some experts think society has moved to a worrisome new level of isolation. In these days of social media and online shopping, some people are cutting themselves off from human contact, even though we are, by nature, social animals. That’s one thing that was reassuring in seeing crowds gather to watch the Toronto Raptors champ-ionship run. People wanted to come together to share the experience. Nobody wants to return to the days when back-breaking work forced people to come together to share the burden, but we still need other people. We need to find new ways to bring our neighbourhoods and communities together. ◊