None of us has complete authority on the question of who we are.
It seems strange, counter-intuitive, and even unjust, in this individualistic era, but it’s true: I don’t have the total say in who I am. Our identities are shaped by the communities in which we live, and our communities are shaped by our identities in turn.
I remember voting for the first time ever. I was from a conservative rural community in the BC interior, and so when the time came for me to express myself through democratic means I knew what to do: I voted for Darryl Stinson, a cowboy-hat-wearing populist perhaps best known for challenging his rivals to a fistfight. It had never occurred to me that I was not a conservative, and I had very little idea of what conservatives stood for, so I wore that part of my identity as a direct reflection of my community. Until I began to explore other ideas that, I was later told, were by no means conservative. I didn’t choose not to be conservative; I was unceremoniously excommunicated from that identity through the postures and positions of other conservatives, who attacked the ideas that seemed true and important to me. My self-declaration of identity to align with my community had turned out to be untrue, and I found out the hard way.
Part of the reason I identified with conservative communities for so long was because I was a member of conservative Christian communities. It was while I was in a conservative pentecostal Bible college that I began exploring other political ideas, in large part inspired by my faith and commitment to loving my neighbour (I voted NDP that year!). I followed my Christian faith through two degrees, learning ancient languages and studying textual transmission and the development of doctrine over the millennia in my quest to understand and embody that concept of loving my neighbour and living a virtuous and compassionate life in the world today. The ideas I gained along the way not only made me less conservative than I thought I was, but eventually I was told by some folks in the Christian community that I didn’t really belong to them either. Somehow, all of my efforts to be a good Christian had led to being told that I wasn’t Christian enough at all.
Now, I have plenty of ability to argue that those who said I was not a real Christian are just plain wrong; and I am quite willing to admit to those who say I am not a real conservative that they’re right! But in both cases, hearing others say who I am has shaped me. Sometimes others can see aspects of me that I cannot see clearly, identifying whether I really fit in with them. And sometimes my self-proclaimed identification with a group or idea becomes a challenge to others who identify with that group or idea, and that group or idea clarifies or refines a position, either affirming my self-identification with them or, in these cases, denying it. And that teaches me something about them, and about me. Such is life navigating identity in community.
Canadian culture is highly individualistic: at least in theory we put our self-proclaimed identity first. Other cultures do the opposite. I have heard that in China and Japan, family and national and even company culture takes priority over individual identity. But we’re all navigating this same tension, and that tension leads us to some of our highest highs and lowest lows. Human beings have an innate need to belong, and yet we also have a sense of self that needs to be expressed. Losing either self or belonging is catastrophic to our mental health.
Identity in Brighton
My friend Irene recently passed away. I’ll be honest that I didn’t know her terribly well, but I call her a friend because one of the very first times I met her she was hosting me in her home and offering me hospitality. She was tremendously smart, but also incredibly kind and genuinely warm. She was hosting me because she was part of a neighbourhood group in Brighton who wanted to meet their electoral candidates, so she also must have had a strong sense of community. All of this was immediately apparent about her, so it struck me when she said that she didn’t feel like she was “from Brighton.” When I asked her to explain, she said that there were many in the community who saw people who had moved to Brighton as outsiders more than as neighbours, and she had her husband had had a hard time being welcomed into the community. At the time I had only lived in Brighton a few years, and still hardly knew anyone, and yet there I was running for council; was I setting myself up for failure because I wasn’t from Brighton, or would my two years of living here be enough? I asked how long she’d lived here. “Almost twenty years.”
I am grateful to say that it’s been a long time since I felt that kind of exclusion, even though some people on Facebook are happy to express such exclusion out loud (though thankfully that too seems to have become less common). As someone who moved here, it can feel very painful to be excluded from the community that I and my family have chosen to be our home, and I’m glad we no longer experience that.
But I have to acknowledge that it must be painful for folks who have grown up here to have their sense of community identity shift without their realizing it, much less without them having much say in it. There was a past, still in living memory, when Brighton was a very small town and township characterized by apple orchards and British Loyalist ancestry. One resident recently noted at a council meeting that he used to play street hockey in front of his house…on highway 2! While I’m sure that was dangerous even at the time, and surely hasn’t been feasible for forty years (I’m picturing Wayne and Garth saying “car!” over and over again and never actually getting to play), ideas like that have a way of lingering in our sense of self and community. Realizing that they’re well and truly gone can hit suddenly, and when it hits, it hits hard.
It was news to me that I wasn’t really a conservative, but when that sunk in it had the effect of cutting my ties to what I had thought was my community, and therefore part of my identity. I had taken that part of my identity for granted, and having it taken away stung and felt alienating. When my identity as a Christian was questioned, after all of my hard work to embody that identity as fully as I could, it was not only a disenfranchisement from that community, it also felt like the world was turned upside down. I can imagine that having your community change as significantly as Brighton has in the past few decades might feel like both of those at once: longtime residents haven’t just taken the size and culture of their community for granted, they’ve also built and maintained that culture over many years of community events, volunteering, and taking care of their neighbours. They built the Brighton that was, but they don’t have the full say in what Brighton is.
When new folks come to town, they make it their own. That’s a two-way process: when people move to a new place they both take on some aspects of the local culture and they leave their own imprint on that local culture. We adjust to each other. That adjustment is hard on both sides, and we need to take extra care for each other as these changes happen.
Branding and Corporate Identity
The Municipality of Brighton isn’t just a community, it’s also a municipal corporation charged with the care of the community’s infrastructure and services. As a corporation, it has a “brand”: official colours, logos, and even mottoes. (We haven’t yet decided to have a mascot, but some places do!) These are chosen, ideally, to embody and evoke local culture and values. We are in the process of rebranding the corporation, and like most aspects of change in the community, it has been somewhat controversial (at least according to the metric of how many people tell me about the rancorous conversations on Facebook).
Branding consultants presented council with two final concepts to choose between. Both were the result of community consultation to try to identify symbols that were the most representative of the community, and the two most commonly identified symbols were the Presqu’ile Point lighthouse and an apple. Of the two final logo concepts, one included both of those symbols, while the second had a lighthouse without an apple.
Both of them are beautiful, and I had no qualms about which one would be chosen. With options like this, we couldn’t lose. But I found myself drawn to Concept #2, for reasons I couldn’t necessarily articulate at first. It seemed more modern, somehow, and more future oriented. Future orientation matters a lot to me, because the decisions council makes shape the future of our community. It was only through a lot of reflection that I realized that the second concept only seemed future-oriented by comparison to Concept 1, which has the most traditional symbol of Brighton: the apple.
Now, keep in mind this is the corporate brand: it does not dictate the culture of the community. We will continue to have Applefest, and continue to have the same history of apple orchards that we’ve always had. But nonetheless, this symbol and the process of choosing it has embodied the process of identity change that the community is going through. In that sense, it’s appropriate: the brand of the corporation of the municipality should somehow embody the culture and the cultural moment, so if the logo captures the challenge of a shifting culture then the branding consultants have done their job well. But a community’s symbol should embody not just what we are, but our ideals, what we want to be. And for many folks, particularly those who grew up here, that’s embodied in the apple.
Mayor Ostrander captured this well at the council meeting. He said (I’m paraphrasing here) “I like Concept 1 because I want a logo that acknowledges the longtime residents of Brighton.” Councillor Rowley, another lifelong resident, also voted for Concept 1 in a recorded vote, for similar reasons.
I asked several people what they thought of the two logo concepts. Most of them chose Concept 2, and most of those who chose Concept 2 did so almost immediately and offered aesthetic comments about how it looks better. Several said both look good, and offered little other comment. Those who chose Concept 1, though, largely did so with emphasis: they felt very strongly that the logo should include the apple, and not just for aesthetic reasons. All of the people I spoke to who felt that way were longtime residents, and some of them were people who had previously expressed frustration with the rate of change in Brighton. It feels very personal to them.
I am tremendously sympathetic. I’ve been part of communities that no longer feel like they belong to me, or I to them. But the examples I’ve given of where that has happened to me were communities that became hostile to me, and I don’t think the same is true of Brighton; a cultural shift away from historic symbols does not exclude those who still celebrate that history. Concept 2 includes all of Brighton: the shape of the colour swatches behind the lighthouse captures the shape of the municipal boundaries of Brighton on the map, while also representing the water, forests, and fields of our landscape. We could argue that it is more representative, not least because our days of apple orchards are largely behind us: while we still have a few orchards in Brighton, we’re far from being an “orchard town”, and we aren’t doing anything as a community to invest in agriculture (though we’re working on an Integrated Community Sustainability Plan draft that includes reference to supporting agriculture in several ways, so we might in the future!).
What was perhaps most interesting to me was that, when I asked people who weren’t from Brighton about the two concepts, three different people told me “oh, that’s the Big Apple” when they saw Concept 1. Brightonians know that the Big Apple, the large roadside fruit stand and petting zoo, is not in Brighton at all, but in our neighbour Cramahe Township. Remember what I said earlier about how other people have a say in our identity? Part of a corporate brand is that it needs to identify us to outsiders, and if outsiders think that the apple is indicative of the Big Apple, then logo Concept 1 actually served to mis-identify us.
Council ultimately chose Concept 2. The decision is made, and we can move on. But we should not move on lightly, lest some of our neighbours feel left behind along with the apple imagery. If you are someone who feels like part of the community identity, and therefore part of your identity, has been left behind, please reach out. I’m happy to hear from you, and share in those feelings, and find ways to honour that community history and identity as we move forward together. We cannot choose whether or not change will come, but if we work together we can help shape what that change will look and feel like, and in so doing we can preserve more of that cultural identity even as we continue to grow and change in ways we could never have imagined.