Jeff Burgar
Going back to early days of this newspaper, we have always supported big ideas that would drive the regional economy.

The ideas come from everywhere. Local citizens thinking there are alternatives to farming or cooking, outsiders looking for a good location for their “wow” industrial idea, governments near and far announcing they are looking for a location for a new facility.

So it happened there was a big push for what was called at the time a rapeseed processing plant. Rapeseed, now known as canola, is grown for its oil properties. High Prairie competed long and hard to be a location for a new plant. Eventually, the plant was built at Sexsmith, where it subsequently went bust.

Other unsuccessful activities were developing an oilpatch service industry. Apparently, that idea died back in the late 1950s. There were a couple of alfalfa plants. High Prairie city fathers were the first to promote a newsprint manufacturing mill using aspen. That wound up in Whitecourt where it still makes prized product. The reason for that location was scarcity of water locally, although why using water from Lesser Slave Lake was never suggested is unknown.

There was aspen processing into oriented strandboard, which eventually brought Tolko to the area. Most everybody said it couldn’t be done, but former High Prairie mayor Diana Oliver proved them wrong with her tireless work.

Another worthwhile project is the Integrated College, a new facility combining Northern Lakes and local schools.

A tourism idea batted about since the 1980s is the Cree Interpretive Centre. This is indeed an ambitious project.

For comparison, consider the magnificent Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology at Drumheller, or the even bigger Buffalo Bill Center of the West Museum in Cody, Wyoming. These are serious museums that draw hundreds of thousands of visitors each year.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your point of view, museums tend to be expensive affairs that usually end up needing government money for life support. Case in point is the Reynolds-Alberta Museum in Wetaskiwin, a private facility now owned and operated by the Province of Alberta. Soon to be on the list might be the brand new $34 million Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum at Wembley, near Grande Prairie.

The Currie has many lessons for such projects. It is entirely possible facilities like the Currie and Tyrrell could not exist without provincial support. That is no reason to not consider them. Culture and history do not always pay their way.

An added argument for northern Alberta is the old one, and honest one, of the two-metre pipeline of money and resources flowing south, and the garden hose coming back. Hewing wood and hauling water and pumping oil and gas are not the only things we do in northern Alberta. The Cree Centre and the Integrated College concept both continue to be ideas worth working for.