Editorial

August 5 2026

The power of one, together

Sometimes it takes one person to remind a whole community what it can be together.

That’s not because that person does everything alone; quite the opposite. The gift is often an ability to see what others need, begin before every answer is known and make the work feel possible enough that neighbours step forward, too.

That is what Stewart “Stewie” Wilmott did in Sherbrooke. He did not build community by talking about it. He helped with roofs, leaks, furnaces, groceries and walkways. He co-founded the Sherbrooke Saturday Market and then showed up, week after week, to do whatever needed doing. When he died suddenly last week, hundreds of people came to the market despite a rainy start. Yes, they were mourning one man, but they were also recognizing themselves in what he had made possible.

There is a paradox here. We often speak of “the power of one” as if it were a hymn to individualism. In rural communities, it is usually something else entirely. It’s the power of one person to notice a need, act before permission arrives and invite others to climb aboard the hopeful bandwagon.

This week’s edition offers another reminder. In Boylston, a volunteer-run housing association is learning to manage a six-unit building and mapping a path to 60 or 70 units beyond that – the scale at which paid staff and sustained growth may become possible. That is infrastructure built first from resolve, then with walls.

Elsewhere in our recent pages, a small dementia support effort in Guysborough has grown into something families can lean on: doctors, lawyers, psychologists, caregivers, memory cafés, music, conversation and a place where people living with dementia are welcomed rather than hidden. It began because one person went looking for answers and decided others should not have to search alone.

These acts do not make government irrelevant. They make community indispensable. Municipal officials can approve grants. Provincial departments can design programs. Ottawa can announce funds. None can replace the neighbour who sees the leaking roof, the housing demand, the frightened caregiver or the need for a place to gather – and says, simply, let’s begin.

Often, that first act is modest: A market stall, roundtable chat, a place to sit. But the cheerful miracle is that one person’s initiative rarely remains one person’s work. A market becomes a weekly institution. A housing group becomes a plan for a county. A support circle becomes a lifeline.

That is not individualism. It is leadership in its oldest and most useful form: an idea offered freely, a hand extended, a task shared.

Rural Nova Scotia has survived because people here understand this, even when we forget that we do. Our strength does not arrive from above, neatly packaged. It rises from kitchens, church halls, workshops, market stalls and front steps. It begins with one person, sure. But it endures when the rest of us answer.