THE INDEPENDENTS: Broadband is the best rural youth (and business) retention strategy

THE BROOKE TELECOM HEADQUARTERS in Inwood, Ont. is also the local Canada Post office. We’re hard-pressed to think of many other such arrangements as quintessentially small-town. Inwood (a village in the municipality of Brooke-Alvinston, pop. 2,500) is about halfway between the far larger centres of London and Sarnia, but when you step outside the broadband provider’s headquarters/post office, just about all you can see are farmer’s fields and a handful of homes. Yet, it provides big-city speeds and connectivity to many of those homes – and barns – to say nothing of the businesses in and around them. Those who...