Reviewing the Impact of the Confederation Bridge
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Fixed links and the engagement of islandness: reviewing the impact of the Confederation Bridge GODFREY BALDACCHINO Island Studies Program, University of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown PEI, Canada C1A 4P3 (e-mail: [email protected]) Islands are the challenging targets of a global pursuit Les liens fixes et l’engagement de l’insularit´e: bilan in the closing of gaps, their distinct geography so far de l’impact du Pont de la Conf´ed´eration having seemingly eluded and mocked both human Les ˆıles sont les objectifs ambitieux d’une quˆete a` ingenuity and terra firma. This article seeks to l’´echelle mondiale visant a` combler tous les vides. deconstruct the concept of the bridge as more than Leur g´eographie distincte leur a permis jusqu’ace` just a value-free symbol of inexorable technological jour d’´echapper et se moquer de l’ing´enuit´e humaine progress, and uses islands as the reference point to et de la terre ferme. Cet article propose une flesh out such an argument. Bridges impact on the d´econstruction du concept du pont au-deladu` subtle balance between the characteristic symbole neutre associ´e au progr`es technologique, et ‘local–global’ nature of an island identity; such an prend les ˆıles comme point de r´ef´erence pour reposer impact is multi-faceted, complex and case-specific. un tel argument. Les ponts ont des incidences sur These ideas are applied to the specific case of the l’´equilibre subtil entre le caract`ere ‘local’ et ‘global’ Confederation Bridge, the 14-km structure linking de l’identit´e insulaire. L’impact se ressent a` multiples Prince Edward Island to New Brunswick, and which niveaux, est complexe et d´epend de chaque cas celebrated its tenth anniversary in June 2007. particulier. Ces id´ees sont appliqu´ees au cas du Pont de la Conf´ed´eration, qui est une structure de 14 km reliant l’ˆIle-du-Prince-Edouard´ au Nouveau-Brunswick, et qui fˆete son dixi`eme anniversaire en juin 2007. The Canadian Geographer / Le G´eographe canadien 51, no 3 (2007) 323–336 C / Canadian Association of Geographers / L’Association canadienne des g´eographes 324 Godfrey Baldacchino Introduction: A Contentious Affair ance between the characteristic ‘local–global’ na- ture of an island identity; such an impact is Valentia is a small island off County Kerry, on the multi-faceted, complex and case-specific. southwest coast of Ireland. A recent count for the island’s permanent population is around 650. A Separated or Apart? ferry operates daily from 1 April to 30 Septem- ber. However, should you visit outside this pe- Social scientist Georg Simmel (1994, 10) observed riod, there is a bridge (the longest opening span that a human being is ‘a connecting creature bridge in Ireland). One may thus be pleased to who must always separate and cannot connect note that all-season access to/from Valentia is without separating’. In connecting two objects, available. Yet, bridge technology can also arouse we simultaneously acknowledge and underscore passionate responses: what separates them; in separating two objects, we underline their connectedness. Thus, as Sim- There are some who have swapped their birthright mel argued, in the act of bridging two items, for a stretch of tar. we actually underline their distinctiveness. Insu- A bridge that will allow their cars larity and connectedness are but two sides of to link with roads the same coin, their meanings forever entangled that lace mainlanders together, (Gillis 2004, 147). permitting islands to become Moreover, Simmel observes (1994, 6) that like a landlocked place. it is only human beings who differentiate be- Surrendering their separateness tween two objects—say, the opposite banks of to loop with these larger shores, a river—as either being apart or else as being becoming both part separated. ‘Apartness’ is static, a non-relational and prisoners of the whole. statement of fact; in contrast, ‘separation’ is a Bridge to Valentia, dynamic condition that betrays a need for, or by Donald S. Murray (Murray 2003) interest in, connection. Castells (Susser 2002, 359) goes further. He reminds us that apartness A bridge, a stretch of tar, is a contentious sub- and separation are predicated on two different ject, especially for islands and islanders. Murray spatial logics. Apartness concerns locale-specific (2003) does not mince his words: the conve- but scattered, segmented places, unrelated to nience of the bridge is obtained at too high each other, unable to share codes; their oc- a price, since it irrevocably transforms other- cupants proud in their defiant expressions of wise whole islands into mere parts, fractions of difference, of nationalism, of defining fundamen- mainlands. Thus, the island not only loses its talism. Churches, resource-based communities geographically, historically and culturally defining (like hunting, fishing, mining) and monoethnic islandness; it also becomes a small and insignif- nations (like Iceland or Portugal) could be such icant appendage of, and therefore hostage to, a places apart. In contrast, separateness concerns a much larger whole, for which the island is but networked and a-historical ‘space of flows’ (after a nondescript peninsula or cul-de-sac. The tech- Castells) or ‘spaces of pause’ (after Deleuze nology of the automobile conspires with that of 1989): ‘non-places’ that exist as conduits, as sites the bridge in transforming local identities, and of diverse people in transit. Escalators, streets, in privileging mobility above place. The outcome stations, airports, institutions, workplaces—as is one other example of ‘space-time compression’ well as bridges, tunnels and causeways—could (Harvey 1990, after Janelle 1969); ‘the end of ge- constitute such indeterminate spaces. ography’ (Virilio 1997, 17) and of a move towards A bridge thus symbolizes either the connec- a ‘zero-friction society’ (Flyvbjerg et al. 2003, 2). tion between what is separated; and the sepa- This article seeks to deconstruct the concept ration between what is connected (van Houtum of the bridge as more than just a value-free sym- and Struver¨ 2002, 145); but would be next to bol of inexorable technological progress, and uses meaningless to two locations, which are merely islands as the reference point to flesh out such apart. This observation is important because it an argument. Bridges impact on the subtle bal- presumes that a bridge or some other ‘fixed link’ The Canadian Geographer / Le G´eographe canadien 51, no 3 (2007) Fixed links and the engagement of islandness 325 is merely a next, and not the first, technological How then do islands, in particular, become plat- step in the evolution of the connectedness of forms of contestation in the ‘great war of inde- two places. As my ancient English dictionary tells pendence from space’ (Bauman 1998)? me (Webster’s 1942, 126), a ‘bridge’ is a struc- ture erected over an obstacle, and not just in and Rooted Identity, Nested Mobility over uncompromised space. Bridges make sense in progressively reinforcing connections, in im- Islands suggest separation and aloofness; but, as proving communications, but not in summarily Beer (2003, 33) reminds us, once islands are reg- establishing them. ularly inhabited, they are never enclosures only: they are crossroads, markets for exchange and Semiotics and Graphology open to the sea (King and Connell 1999). No island is insular, meaning ‘entire unto itself’: Such a nuance is not self-revealing. The meta- Donne (1624) got it all wrong in his oft-quoted phoric diversity in which the word bridge is statement. The fallacy recurs today among such nowadays used—in such phrases as ‘building eminent gurus as competition strategist Michael bridges’; ‘not burning one’s bridges’; or ‘bridg- Porter who uses the term ‘insular’ to describe ing the gap’—belies nevertheless a deeper com- nations, which grow complacent, arrogant and monality: the message is consistently and clearly inward looking in relation to the urge to remain in favour of either establishing or improving ac- competitive (Porter 1990, 171). Islands are con- cess by means of the bridge, without discriminat- nected to continents. Islands are part of the main. ing between one and the other. The difference, Islands are separated but rarely apart, and then though subtle, is fundamental. One must not as- only in an incestuous and unsustainable way. It sume that any two places, any two people, are is rather the mainlander view of the sea as dark necessarily separated if they are apart. There is and sinister (and therefore an obstacle) which no inherent benefit, nor any obligation, in impos- is suspect and questionable. When an island is ing connectivities. I will return to this idea later completely isolated, a world apart, it has no life, on. no present and no future: the tragic history of The choice of stylized bridges to grace the ob- Easter Island is all about the non-viability of iso- verse of the euro notes—now the currency of 400 lation (Bahn and Flenley 1992; Diamond 2005). Is- million Europeans—should therefore not surprise lands aren’t really insular (Gosden and Pavlides us. The European Union is a grand project of 1994). connectivity (and therefore of separateness) but Thus, the topos of an island appropriately con- also of apartness. While there are strong move- veys the complex relations between a given iden- ments in favour of a deepening and widening tity and the estrangement from this same identity of European-wide initiatives, as is the very no- (Bongie 1998, 18). In its double identity of open- tion of a single European currency, the European ness and closure, an island is on one hand rooted Union remains at the same time a platform for in tradition, isolation, culture and history; a place the advancement, protection or trading of stub- of refuge, engulfed in claustrophobia whose only bornly national interests—and more evidently so escape is exile (ex-isle).