From the Edmonton Journal

http://www2.canada.com/edmontonjournal/columnists/story.html?id=d9cdcb67-f8d7-4086-9731-9bcc520d2f6f

Shop local movement boosts our parochial talents
Todd Babiak, Edmonton Journal
Published: 3:05 am
In every West Coast American town from California to Alaska, there is at least one craft brewery; drinking the local beer, or beers, is a point of pride but it's also less-than-pride.

It's reasonable behaviour. Big Rock is in every bar and restaurant in Calgary. Both Amber's and Alley Kat, here in Edmonton, taste just as good. Probably better. They've won national and international awards. They're no more expensive than Big Rock, and have travelled fewer kilometres -- though compared to imported beer, provincially and nationally, Big Rock is a fine choice.

So why is it such a dear struggle to find Amber's and Alley Kat on tap, or even in bottles, in their hometown?

"Edmonton's different," said Jim Gibbon, of Amber's Brewing Company on 78th Avenue and 99th Street. "We have this strange fear of seeming parochial. Buying local seems below us. We assume it's worse than anything from outside the city. Instead of seeming more special, it's less special."

His argument, while unprovable, carries a certain spiritual truth. But I suggest it represents an Edmonton psychological ailment that is slowly fading. The power centres and malls are as busy as ever, maybe busier than ever, and we seem just as flattered when an international brand such as Victoria's Secret or Restoration Hardware opens a store in one of our malls -- they've heard of us and everything! -- but local-ness, Edmontonness, is developing a shape and a flavour, an identity, a swagger.

Jessie Radies, one of the busiest women in the city, owns The Blue Pear restaurant and helps lead the Live Local initiative, a collection of Edmonton independent restaurants and retailers. Her car is less than awesome. She struggles to secure family time. Yet she takes any call to explain why spending our money locally is an intelligent choice economically, socially and environmentally, an argument she's been making for 10 years.

"The money stays in our community," she said at The Blue Pear this week, where her staff was making cheese in-house for dinner. "The economic impact, on Edmonton, is three times greater when you make a local choice."

November is "Shop Local First" month. Ideally, we intercept our now-natural desire to drive halfway to Leduc for an internationally branded Christmas present made in Asia, for Mexican produce, for hamburger patties, for a cup of middling drive-thru coffee, for a romantic dinner date. Instead, we choose a local, independent business, one of those Edmonton places.

Not because it's the right thing to do, like a spoonful of Castor oil, but because the skirts, onions, beef, coffee and grilled lamb sirloin served with goat cheese gnocchi conceived and constructed in Edmonton with local soil, fire and imagination are simply better.

Of course, chain stores are a foundation of our economy, and reflexive snottiness about them is unhelpful. They're major employers, even if the profits are sent to New York and Almhult. But they won't miss you. I checked this week; the parking lots are full.

While it might seem untoward for the City of Edmonton and the government of Alberta to favour one type of business over another, our governments have been exceedingly welcoming to gigantic multinational corporations in recent years; consider the gift of infrastructure at South Edmonton Commons.

There is a small thing they could do, to round up the local creators.

Since 1997, the territorial government of the Yukon and the Yukon Chamber of Commerce have run a very successful and very economical program out of Whitehorse called Created in the Yukon. It's a snowflake logo (cold, yes, but unique as well) affixed to products using a sticker and a tag. Businesses that sell Created in the Yukon products receive window displays.

Anything created by a Yukon artist, artisan or craftsperson is clearly and lovingly marked.

"It covers visual, literary and performing arts, home crafts, jams and jellies, a huge array of products that I couldn't list for you," said Garnet Muething, with the Yukon department of culture and tourism.

"We hear from visitors to the territory looking for unique products, and we want to bridge that gap between consumer and creator. Yukoners, too, love the program, for themselves and when they want to send something to their friends and family outside the territory."

A Created in Edmonton or, perhaps, a Created in Alberta program, simple to develop cheap to administer, would bring together all the disparate elements of the still-nascent "live local" movement, if only by pointing consumers in the right direction.

The potters' guilds, the Handmade Mafia, the farmers' markets artisans in Old Strathcona and, on Saturday, in Winston Churchill Square, novelists, poets, painters and farmers have events between now and Christmas. Bringing them all together, as Radies has done with restaurants and retailers, with a common identification program, might steer a few of us back to the main streets and community halls of the city.

It's so much more pleasant than sitting in traffic. We can walk into the pub for a glass of Amber's or Alley Kat during breaks between buying a novel for Gunther, a hand-knitted sweater for Little Chloe, a vase for Mom and a package of artisan sausage for dirty old Uncle Steve: all imagined and built, brilliantly, here in this parochial town.

Twitter: @babiak

tbabiak@edmontonjournal.com