The urban-rural divide is about class, not beliefs

I embarked on my tour with a great ambition: to bridge the nascent partisan divide that is growing in Canada. My hope was to bring rural communities together and have conversations that transcend political loyalties. Canadian farmers — and rural dwellers — have a reputation for being conservative and voting Conservative. This reputation is pervasive in the media, as well as among the farmers I've visited on tour. Quite a number of people at my screenings have complained about how conservative their area is. What I haven't encountered are the conservatives themselves — at least none who have vocally identified themselves. Ok, there was one — I personally invited Bonnie Critchley of the Progressive Tory Party of Alberta to a screening in Daysland, where she received a fairly chilly reception.

That beggars belief. I've been touring rural Canada for three months now; I've held nearly 30 open discussions and met hundreds of people. It's not plausible that Bonnie Critchley was the only conservative in attendance. I could make assumptions about conservative leanings from a couple interactions I've had, but even those are rare enough that they stand out in my memory. From first-hand experience alone, I would not conclude that I've been anywhere that is notably conservative. My ambition to bridge the partisan divide has been so unsuccessful that I have failed to find evidence of its existence apart from the frequent but one-sided complaints of numerous self-identified non-conservatives.

It is tempting to conclude from this lack of evidence that the partisan divide doesn't exist. I don't think that is correct, but it wasn't until this past week that I got a clue about why.

My screening in Lowe Farm, Manitoba, was unusual in a number of ways. It was hosted by the largest farmer I've visited so far, and the small audience was made up of, in the farmer's words, "the farm crew". Which is to say, they didn't show up because they were looking for a discussion about farmland values or because they liked the film's tagline ("What it takes to be a farmer, or why you can't be one"). They showed up because their boss (and relative) cajoled them into coming and supplied alcohol.

I spend most screenings listening to the audience rather than watching the film. It was obvious from the start that this audience was different. It was mostly male, and, being primarily farm workers, very working-class. They were a lively bunch, and quite free with their commentary. "That's not true!", "They couldn't do that if they were real farmers." When Katherine Aske appeared on screen for the first time, the crowd's off-colour comments about her attractiveness drowned out her words. I held my tongue, but was mentally preparing myself for a confrontational discussion after the film.

As the screening went on, they started asking me questions and sharing professional observations about what they saw on screen. The questions centred around the farming details in the film: How many acres did they have? What model of tractor was that? That must be a pretty small dairy operation!

Nearly everything they reacted to was visual, not aural, and observational, not intellectual. This was interesting to me, because the film runs on two parallel tracks: An interview-based track made up of words and audio that outlines the film's intellectual thesis about farmland and money, and an image-based track made up of video footage that portrays the day-to-day life of farms that I visited. The two tracks are interwoven and tangled, constantly switching between one and the other, and figuring out how to tell these two stories side by side was one of the biggest challenges of editing the film.

This audience reacted to the track about daily life and ignored the thesis track; whenever the film got too wordy they would chat amongst themselves about what they had just seen. While they were chatting, I'm sure they missed much of the film's central argument about farmland values, but they also caught (and could critique) a lot more details about the actual farming than most.

This is the opposite from how most other audiences have reacted. Most of my other discussions have focussed on the thesis of the film: Access to farmland, how money is used, the idea of 'romance' vs. 'finance' etc. This discussion was much more about me, my journey across Canada, and what happened to me on that trip.

The consensus was that I'd made a very good film. Notwithstanding the confrontational peanut-gallery comments I'd heard during the film, the discussion afterwards was long and fruitful. And it turned out that, while they might not have been paying close attention to my philosophical arguments, my thesis about the cost of land and the impossibility of getting into farming had been clearly understood and sympathized with.

I can't say for sure where the folks in this audience fall on the political spectrum; I didn't ask, and the discussion didn't get into overtly political territory. But it wouldn't surprise me if most of them have voted Conservative. Culturally, I felt like these were the infamous conservative farmers.

But to me the gap feels like something different than a political divide. I don't think it's about beliefs or ideology. I think it's more basic than that. It feels a class divide, and that makes bridging it difficult for me personally because, like it or not, I'm not a member of the working class. I am, for lack of a better word, part of the intelligentsia; I'm a public intellectual.

My sense was that, although the farm crew was quite willing to have a conversation and share their personal experiences, they weren't especially interested in intellectualizing about why the economics of farming are so tough. They were interested in 'what it takes to be a farmer', not 'why I couldn't be one'. Once I had them as a captive audience, they were perfectly willing to engage with the film and share their opinions. They enjoyed the film and they told me so. But I'm skeptical that they would have watched it if their employer hadn't strongly encouraged them to show up. I don't think a discussion about the finer points of farmland speculation is necessarily their idea of a good time.

I think 'what' versus 'why' points to an explanation for why I've met so few conservatives while on tour. The basic premise of the film — 'why I couldn't be one' — is mainly interesting to people like me: the intelligentsia. It didn't seem to be so interesting for my (presumably) conservative audience.

I think this explains why I've met so few conservatives. The audience for my tour has self-selected because of who I am and how I've marketed the film. Most of my audiences so far have been farmers, to be sure, but the farmers who are most likely to show up for a discussion about "what it takes to be a farmer, or why I couldn't be one" are the ones who are already interest in fêting someone like me. They are the farmers who are already less distant in terms of class.

If my goal is to bridge the partisan divide, I need to re-think my strategy of facilitating discussions. The way I present myself and the film marks me as a member of the intelligentsia, not a farmer. At the same time, it was heartening to bring the film to an audience that isn't just people like me and have a fruitful discussion. I'm proud of that, and it gives me hope.

Ultimately, I don't think the urban-rural partisan divide is ideological. It's a class divide, and the obvious political differences that do manifest come from differences in station and circumstance, not from differences in belief. If anything, crossing class may be even more difficult than politics, but I'm convinced that left-right or liberal-conservative are not good ways to characterize it, no matter how common that terminology has become.