This book discusses how small communities can survive and flourish. It celebrates and critiques the dynamics of innovation, governance, and culture in place. Case studies from both sides of the North Atlantic illustrate episodes of “turning around”: the evolution, transformation, and visionary strategy that breathe new life into the term “think global, act local.”

Buy From Black Horses to White Steeds

The book’s chapters focus on the strength of local initiatives, the impacts of collective power, and re-envisioning local assets. They explore how various “black horses”–including minorities, small towns, peripheries, Aboriginal communities, those with little money, status, voice, or political leverage–can rise to the occasion and chart livable futures.

This publication emerged from the 2015 CRRF-North Atlantic Forum Conference held in Summerside, Prince Edward Island. The book is edited by Laurie Brinklow (University of Prince Edward Island) and Ryan Gibson (University of Guelph & CCEDNet Board President).

Contributors to the publication include:

• Changing the narrative: Rural as resilient and sustainable (Ryan Gibson and Laurie Brinklow)
• Community-based resilience in Canada: Critical reflections from the rural development perspective (David Douglas)
• Building community resilience: Innovation, governance and culture in place―the case of IRD Duhallow in South-West Ireland (Maura Walsh)
• “Our Islands Our Future”: Purposeful opportunism at its best? (Andrew Jennings)
• Digital technology adoption in resilient remote First Nations (Brian Beaton, Franz Seibel, and Lyle Thomas)
• Community centres as spaces for sport, recreation, and resiliency: Case of the Trout Creek Community Centre (Kyle Rich and Laura Misener)
• Helping women get on TRACK: Building resiliency through a business mentoring program for women entrepreneurs in Prince Edward Island (Virginia McGowan and Hannah Bell)
• “The best thing that ever happened to Summerside!” … and the creation of the Aerospace industry on Prince Edward Island (Shawn McCarvill)
• Building resilient coastal communities in the context of climate change (H. Carolyn Peach Brown, Randy Angus, Derek Armitage, S. Brown, Anthony Charles, Luna Khirfan, and Josh MacFadyen)
• Building rural community resilience through project-based education (Kim Kennedy)
• Exploring environmental governance in the Gulf of St. Lawrence: Contested political relations in a Canadian inland sea (Peter Clancy and Mario Levesque)
• Raumpioniere in Germany: Lights in the nowhere, parallel universe in the periphery, or rescuers of rural space? (Peter Dehne)
• Fishing for the future: How coastal and island fishing communities in Maine and Newfoundland remain in place  (Emily Thomas)
• Idea Tourism: Modelling an information-based tourism product (Angela Pollak)
• Planning the resilient rural community: The case for using “living” Green Infrastructure (GI) as a foundation (Paul Kraehling)
• Surviving or thriving? Perceptions of rural vitality in Ireland (Brendan O’Keeffe)