RURAL PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT 133 



lator — he is elected to carry on the executive duties of local govern- 

 ment, under a system based on the best principles that can be devised 

 by the expert advisers of the central government of the country. 

 By-laws, both in England and in Canada, have the defect that they 

 have to be specific in their character and general in their application. 

 They can make no allowance for special cases. What is good for one 

 party and condition must, according to a by-law, be good for another 

 party and condition. Some more elastic and discriminating method 

 is needed to control development, and there should be more co-opera- 

 tion and inter-dependence between the provincial government, with 

 expert municipal administrators, and the local council. 



Lack of Co-operation Between Municipal Authorities 



Lack of co-operation between rural and urban municipalities, 

 in the interests of health, is another cause of bad suburban develop- 

 ment. Urban authorities often refuse to give facilities for extending 

 their public services into adjacent rural areas, even when suitable 

 financial arrangements can be made. The natural desire of the urban 

 authority to conserve its population and prevent its overflow into 

 rural territory is largely responsible for this attitude. The general 

 experience, as may be seen around Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Winni- 

 peg, Vancouver and other large cities, is that this desire does not pre- 

 vent the overflow, but that it injures both the migrating population 

 and, indirectly, the city from which it comes. In a paper read before 

 the conference of Medical Officers of Health of Nova Scotia, Dr. 

 A. C. Jost, the Medical Officer of Health for Guysboro, N.S., refers 

 as follows to a case of lack of co-operation of a kind that is altogether 

 too common in rural communities in all the provinces: — 



"I have in mind a community in my own municipality. Along 

 its entire waterfront the land is owned by a corporation. Above 

 this, on the steep hillside, are rows of lots, several tiers in depth, sep- 

 arated by streets which parallel the waterfront. The owners of the 

 properties facing the lands owned by the corporation are prevented 

 from draining their land through or on the corporation-owned lands. 

 The rear of their own lots, separated by a narrow street from their 

 immediate neighbours in the next higher tier, is liable to contamina- 

 tion, and, not from their neighbours alone, but from all the properties 

 above them on the hillside. The accumulated refuse of all is washed 

 down the hill during the progress of a rainstorm or a spring freshet, 

 overflowing the property on the waterfront, after endangering every 

 immediate holding in its passage. . . . What must be the condition 

 of the water derived from wells in a community such as this, where 

 the houses have been huddled together on the hillside and where 

 settlement took place some score of years ago?" 



