Protecting against a Big Mac attack
By Tom Henheffer - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - 3 Comments
Tofino, B.C.’s town council wants to keep fast-food franchises out
Photograph by Jeff McIntosh/ CP
Tofino, B.C., is a tiny surfer town full of independent coffee shops, greasy spoons and eco-clothing boutiques, and its residents want to keep it that way. So, last week, the town council unanimously passed a motion asking city staff to come up with a way to keep large franchises— like Starbucks, Wal-Mart and McDonald’s—out. “We want to be reflective of the environment in which we live, which is wild, untamed and thus different,” says Maureen Fraser, owner of the Common Loaf, a local bakery and hippie hangout. “There’s no sense of escape if you find the golden arches.”
Bob Long, the town’s chief administrative officer, is working on a proposal for council. He says he’ll likely recommend zoning bylaws restricting signage and regulations requiring restaurants to have table service. Other small towns have fought off chain stores with similar regulations. After a large video chain drove local rental places out of business, Port Townsend, Wash., instituted a “formula store ordinance” that restricts the locations of franchises and requires stores to tailor their signs to the town’s Victorian aesthetic. It hasn’t had another franchise open in the city since. Qualicum Beach, B.C., about 160 km east of Tofino, has also managed to keep fast-food chains out with a bylaw that restricts the sale of prepackaged produce.
But Garth Whyte, president and CEO of the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association, says these towns are moving in the wrong direction. “It’s like shooting yourself in the foot,” he says. “A lot of people want the food and fun associated with [franchises].” Whyte thinks good planning is all that’s needed to keep independent stores in business. But those in Tofino don’t buy that. “You come here and get a unique cup of coffee,” says Long. “The more diversity we have, the better it will be.”
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decades, later
By Andrew Potter - Monday, May 12, 2008 at 11:08 PM - 0 Comments
Forty years on, it seems everyone these days has an opinion on May 1968…
Forty years on, it seems everyone these days has an opinion on May 1968 — on its causes, what it meant at the time, what it’s legacy is, etc. — with more essays appearing each day. I was tempted to write a recent Maclean’s column on the topic but was (wisely, very wisely) waved off by my excellent editor, Sarmishta Subramanian.
For the record, I see the inherent promise of 1968 as being almost entirely fulfilled, through an extremely useful division social labour. On the one hand, the aestheticization of protest that found its expression in the dadaist/situationist/happenings has been reduced to what it always was, namely, kids fighting for their right to party. It has been stripped of any political implication whatsoever, and manifests itself in the inert and wholly idiotic pillow fights and flash mobs and silent dances and all the other distractions of contemporary hipsterdom, as celebrated by the Torontoist and the good folks at BoingBoing. On the other hand, the genuine political energies of the day have finally been effectively channeled into the appropriate institutions of change (by, e.g., men like Bernard Kouchner, Daniel Cohn-Bendit).
All in all, a very happy result: The culture has gone its way, politics the other, and the original theory that mistook the first for the second has been exposed as a myth.
On my desk today landed the latest issue of Dissent, which features a round-table discussion (featuring Michael Walzer, Marshall Berman, and other big hitters) on the Lessons Learned from 1968. I took it home, figuring I was professionally obliged to read it. Then I happened across this essay by Rachel Donadio from yesterday’s NYTimes, arguing that 1958 was arguably the more important year, not least because it was the moment when the nascent hippies joined forces with the cultural elitists and agreed to hate the masses. It’s a nice short essay, a useful reminder that most of the important theoretical developments that gave rise to what we call “the sixties” actually happened a decade or two earlier.
