What Hanna Taught Me About Canada
Part III — What Has Changed
Communities do not disappear all at once.
They change gradually.
A store closes.
A family moves away.
A school consolidates.
A building sits empty for a few years before someone finally tears it down.
Looking back, it is difficult to identify exactly when Hanna began to change. Like many Albertans of my generation, I watched it happen one small step at a time.
When I was growing up, most of us assumed our hometown would always be there much as we remembered it. Main Street businesses seemed permanent. The arena would always be full. The church would always have volunteers. The Legion would always host weddings, dances, and community events.
Of course, none of those things were guaranteed.
As Alberta changed, so did the small towns that had helped build it.
The oil industry created tremendous opportunities for the province. It created jobs, attracted investment, and helped fuel decades of growth. Families earned higher incomes. Businesses expanded. New industries emerged. There is no honest version of Alberta’s history that ignores those benefits.
But growth often has consequences that are not immediately visible.
For many young people, success increasingly meant leaving.
Parents encouraged their children to pursue higher education. Teachers encouraged them to chase opportunities. Families wanted their sons and daughters to have choices that previous generations never had.
And they did.
The problem was that many of those opportunities existed somewhere else.
Calgary.
Edmonton.
Red Deer.
Later, perhaps Vancouver, Toronto, or beyond.
The result was a quiet migration that repeated itself across hundreds of communities. The children who had grown up together left to build lives elsewhere. Some returned. Most did not.
I was one of them.
At seventeen, after graduating from high school, I left Hanna for Red Deer. At the time, Red Deer had a population of roughly 27,000 people. Today it is more than four times that size.
That story has repeated itself across Alberta.
As cities grew, many small communities struggled to maintain the institutions that had once anchored them.
Family-owned businesses closed when their owners retired. Often there was nobody willing or able to take them over. Schools were consolidated. Hospitals faced staffing challenges. Recruiting doctors, nurses, teachers, and other professionals became increasingly difficult.
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Some buildings disappeared.
The Seymour Hotel disappeared.
The National Hotel disappeared.
Yet it would be unfair to suggest that Hanna simply faded away.
Many of the buildings remain. Walk down Main Street today and you will still recognize much of the town. What changed were the businesses occupying those storefronts. Grocery stores gave way to professional offices. Lawyers, accountants, insurance agencies, and service businesses replaced many of the retailers that once served the daily needs of residents.
The town itself continued to evolve. New homes were built. Older homes were renovated. My brother Ernest spent much of his career helping families build and improve their homes, making a good living in the process. Municipal facilities changed as well. The fire hall moved to a new location, and community investments continued where resources allowed.
In many ways, Hanna adapted just as thousands of small communities across Canada adapted. The challenge was not survival. The challenge was remaining complete.
As the population became more mobile, people increasingly travelled elsewhere for services. A shopping trip to Drumheller became routine. Accessing specialized healthcare often required travel to larger centres. The convenience of those centres brought new choices, but it also created new dependencies.
Healthcare provides another example of how life changed in rural Alberta.
When I was growing up, most small towns had hospitals, local physicians, and healthcare services that met many of the community’s day-to-day needs. Not every procedure could be performed locally, but much of life happened close to home.
Today, many residents routinely travel to Drumheller, Red Deer, Calgary, or other centres for specialist appointments and treatments. For younger people with reliable transportation, that may be little more than an inconvenience. For seniors, it can be something else entirely.
A winter appointment often begins long before the actual visit. Weather forecasts are checked. Road conditions are monitored. Travel plans are made. Missing an appointment may mean waiting weeks or even months for another opportunity, so people often feel compelled to make the trip even when conditions are less than ideal.
The appointment itself can become only part of the expense. Fuel costs, meals, and sometimes a hotel stay must be considered as well. Those fortunate enough to have family living in larger centres may have a place to stay. Others do not.
None of these challenges are dramatic on their own. Yet they illustrate how services that once existed closer to home have gradually moved farther away. The healthcare itself may still be available, but access to it has become more complicated for many rural residents.
The railroad was gone. Bus service eventually disappeared as well. For people who no longer drove, even a routine medical appointment could become a source of stress and uncertainty.
What became harder to notice were the small services that quietly disappeared.
Some losses were less obvious. Electronics repair shops became rare. Technical support often moved to distant call centres. Specialized services that once existed locally became difficult to find. When something broke, the solution was increasingly to replace it rather than repair it.
These changes were not unique to Hanna. They occurred across much of rural Canada. Each decision made sense on its own. Each change improved efficiency somewhere. Yet taken together, they gradually reduced the self-sufficiency that many communities once enjoyed.
Yet looking back, I realize the buildings were never the real loss. The real loss was something much harder to measure.
Over time, we lost some of the places where people naturally gathered. They were the places where neighbours met without planning it, where friendships formed, where young people learned from older generations, and where communities quietly renewed themselves year after year. The buildings themselves were important, but what mattered most was what happened inside them.
Technology brought extraordinary benefits. We can now communicate instantly with people almost anywhere in the world. Information is available in seconds, and opportunities that once required a move to the city can increasingly be pursued from almost anywhere. In many respects, life has become easier and more convenient than the world I grew up in.
Yet there is a strange irony in all of that. We are more connected than ever before, but many people seem to feel more isolated. We have access to more information than any generation in history, yet often know less about the people living next door. We can maintain relationships across continents, yet sometimes struggle to know our own neighbours.
I do not believe the past was perfect. It wasn’t. Life was harder in many ways. Healthcare was less advanced, travel was more difficult, and opportunities were often limited. But there were things we did well. We knew how to build communities. We knew how to create places where people felt they belonged. We knew how to make room for one another and how to look after people when they needed help.
Those lessons are worth remembering, not because we can recreate the past, but because they may help us build a better future.
When I think about what we lost, I do not think first about hotels, theatres, or even businesses. I think about trust. I think about knowing the names of the people who lived on your street. I think about children walking to school together, volunteers who gave their time because they cared about their community, and the quiet confidence that if life became difficult, someone would notice.
Perhaps that is the real loss. Not the buildings. Not the population. Not even the jobs.
It is the gradual weakening of the connections that once made a place feel like home.
And that may be the next lesson Hanna taught me about Canada.
Part IV — What Hanna Taught Me About Canada https://medium.com/@rbuchfink/what-hanna-taught-me-about-canada-bd2fa1675b8f
