Foreword Vii 
     
    
   
   
    
       
     
    
   
   
    
     We have not been without some envy of your adopted 
     
     neighbourhood because of its natural pre-existence as a 
     
     community (its struggle to survive yielding bonds of 
     
     identity as a by—product, at a cost we would probably 
     
     flinch from paying ourselves), and we have not been 
     
     without pride at being associated with your work in 
     
     bringing the process into awareness. Now we can react 
     
     to its articulate form. 
     
    
   
   
    
     Face-to-face discussion and the telling of stories 
     
     precipitated this account of the qualities you discovered 
     
     to be essential in the community life of Tignish. I cannot 
     
     discern which ingredients wove which strands, but it 
     
     seems clear that in your survey the need to express and 
     
     the need to question would have to be inextricable. Such 
     
     intimacy of talk can never be transformed into a 
     
     commodity. Its dimension runs, independently of the 
     
     omnipresent economic factors, through the extinction and 
     
     survival of small towns, and throughout the thriving from 
     
     diversity which constitutes or is lacking from the life of 
     
     wider social and civic entities. 
     
    
   
   
    
     Clearly, the concepts and questions you trawl 
     
     through the shoal of Tignish experience will harvest 
     
     lessons of vital interest to other small communities. But 
     
     adversity to the personal community life of urban 
     
     villagers who seek adult education in liberal studies will 
     
     perhaps lead them to seek to know better those qualities 
     
     that you and your participants valued enough to observe 
     
     and report. 
     
    
   
   
    
     Gert Morgcnstcm, President 
     
     Thomas More Institufejbr 
     
     Research in Adult Liberal Studies