The Sorensen’s barn is one of the old ones, built in the 1860s. Its roof of patterned and painted tin shingles, gleaming in the late afternoon sun, is the first thing I see as I drive along the country road from Sand Bay Corners toward Mallorytown, just west of Brockville.

John Sorensen, sole proprietor of Ballycanoe and Co., collects and sells architectural antiques. His barn is full to overflowing with fixtures dating back to the early eighteen hundreds -- doors, porch posts, mantelpieces, tin ceiling tiles, iron fences, banisters, wooden entrance ways, including a beautiful one with side windows and an overhead fantail, roof slates, banisters, ornamental cast-iron floor grills, and seemingly endless hardware, including porcelain door knobs, patterned iron hinges, rare, S-shaped, hand-forged shutter hooks, tools, and even square-headed nails. His clients extend to Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, California, Georgia, and New York City.

He takes me through the barn, favouring a knee sprained wrestling a heavy item into place, lovingly shifting things so I can see them better, giving their genealogies, explaining their times. This Georgian door, for instance, is low -- 1.7 metres high -- not because people were short, says Sorensen, but to trap warm air in the room during those cold winter days.

Picking up a 1.3-metre section of a hollowed-out pine log, about 15 centimetres in diameter, bound with three iron straps, he  marvels at the self-reliance of the people who lived 175 years ago. This was a water conduit pipe. ``It would really hurt me to throw this out,’’ he says. ``Maybe, someday, someone will find a use for it. But I’ll probably have it until the day I die.

``I like handling something old,’’ he adds. ``It’s a connection to the past. And it’s important, because we are what we were. If we don’t respect our past, then we’re essentially rootless. And if we’re rootless in a time of great change, such as we’re in right now, then we’ll flounder.’’

Back then, he says, people could fix things. ``They threw out very little. It teaches us that one answer for our future is that we need to return to that kind of self-reliance. I don’t mean we should return to horses and buggies.” What he means is that communities should focus on providing goods and services for their own areas. Sourcing their food locally. Repairing what’s worn out or doesn’t work. Making what’s needed.

That’s what communities did in the nineteenth century. He’s not suggesting a replica for now, Instead he’s saying the model of self-reliance and self-sourcing is important.

``In small communities we need as many different kinds of jobs as we can get. It’s like nature. The more complex it is, the healthier it is. If you have a rural community with a whole bunch of ways to earn livings, then you have a healthy community.

He points out that the provincial government is proposing construction of a casino in his area, near where the Thousand Islands bridge connects to the United States. ``One of the more potent arguments for a casino is that it will give the community an economic boost.’’

But a casino to smaller communities is like what monoculture plantations are to nature -- unhealthy, he says.

In nature, ecosystems can withstand calamities and change because of their biodiversity. It gives them resilience.  One aspect can falter, without bringing down the entire ecosystem. And because of the complexity and interconnectedness within the ecosystem, it can recover.

Sorensen is saying the same applies to communities. They need the diversity that only self-rel once can bring. Casinos don’t bring stability. They bring reliance on a single, vulnerable undertaking.

I think he’s right. That kind of reliance is neither healthy nor smart.