“If you’re off by yourself, the normal rules do not apply,” said Malcolm Gladwell, inaugural keynote presenter of the Northern Insights Speaker Series, Wednesday at MacDonald Island Park. “You may not want to be as isolated as you are, but it’s a gift.

“You’re not a suburb of New York,” he continued, explaining the region is free to grow and shape its image without external influences pressing in. The highway that separates Fort McMurray from the rest of Alberta may be a nuisance more often than not, but it also provides a sort of cultural buffer, isolating, but protecting the region within.

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