The Animals Next Door What We Owe Our Zoological Kin
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Charlotte Gray: The even stranger afterlife of Weird Willie PAGE 4 $6.50 Vol. 25, No. 4 May 2017 Lisa Bryn Rundle The Animals Next Door What we owe our zoological kin ALSO IN THIS ISSUE Martin Patriquin The mythical Quebec Devon Smither Canadian art’s people problem Navneet Alang Cory Doctorow’s Fukuyama moment PLUS: John Semley on Mordecai, Rambo and me + Patrice Dutil on electoral reform (RIP) + Anne Marie Todkill on the Neanderthal mommy track + Sandra Martin on killing eulogies + Nicholas Köhler on a single-cell graphic novel + Eugenia Zuroski on a literary recipe Publications Mail Agreement #40032362 trove + Renée Hetherington on the ultimate road trip + Donna Bailey Nurse on Toronto’s Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to LRC, Circulation Dept. musical awakening PO Box 8, Station K Toronto, ON M4P 2G1 WHO’S NEXT? LRC Who's next U of R Press.indd 1 2017-04-17 3:02 PM Literary Review of Canada 170 Bloor Street West, Suite 706 Toronto ON M5S 1T9 email: [email protected] reviewcanada.ca T: 416-531-1483 • F: 416-944-8915 Charitable number: 848431490RR0001 Vol. 25, No. 4 • May 2017 To donate, visit reviewcanada.ca/support EDITOR IN CHIEF Sarmishta Subramanian 3 “I Love Arguing!” 19 Shadow Stories [email protected] In profound appreciation of Anthony Westell Mother issues 40,000 years ago, and now MANAGING EDITOR (1926–2017) Anne Marie Todkill Michael Stevens Bronwyn Drainie ASSISTANT EDITOR 20 upstairs the dogs howl Bardia Sinaee 4 Haunted A poem ASSOCIATE EDITOR The remarkable afterlife of our weirdest PM— Bob MacKenzie Beth Haddon and what we want from politicians 21 Goode for All Infermitys POETRY EDITOR Charlotte Gray Moira MacDougall Accounting for tastes in a collection of 17th- COPY EDITOR 6 The Animals Next Door century recipes and remedies Madeline Koch What do we owe our zoological kin? Eugenia Zuroski CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Lisa Bryn Rundle 23 Who, Us? Mohamed Huque, Andy Lamey, Molly Peacock, Robin Roger, Judy Stoffman 8 This Catechism of Possession Debunking the mythical Quebec A poem Martin Patriquin ONLINE EDITORS Diana Kuprel, Jack Mitchell, Klara du Plessis 24 How Love Settles Donald Rickerd, C.M. 9 Why Trudeau Abandoned Electoral A poem PROOFREADERS Reform Carla Hartsfield Patricia Treble The case against change RESEARCH 26 Alone in a Room Rob Tilley Patrice Dutil An artist’s arresting vision of a life in captivity, DESIGN 11 Speaking of Dying and of how power shapes our world and our James Harbeck Do public rituals of grief ever help us mourn? selves ADVERTISING/SALES Sandra Martin Nicholas Köhler Michael Wile [email protected] 28 Against the Flow 13 No Nudes, Please—We’re Canadian DIRECTOR, OPERATIONS Our national artistic fixation on landscapes Race, radio and Canada’s musical coming of age Michael Booth came at a cost Donna Bailey Nurse ADMINISTRATOR Devon Smither 29 Autumn Christian Sharpe The Outside Man A poem PUBLISHER 15 Helen Walsh Maya Tevet Dayan A celebrity memoir from a uniquely talented art- [email protected] ist on the edge of fame, and Hollywood itself 30 Where We Have Been BOARD OF DIRECTORS John Semley A bumpy, warp-speed view of the ultimate road George Bass, Q.C., Tom Kierans, O.C., trip—humanity’s Don McCutchan, Trina McQueen, O.C., 17 The Post-Scarcity World Jack Mintz, C.M., Jaime Watt Capitalism meets its cyber-hippie match in a Renée Hetherington ADVISORY COUNCIL bountiful future that redefines class, politics and 32 Letters and Responses Michael Adams, Ronald G. Atkey, P.C., personhood itself Antanas Sileika, Christopher Labos, Mark Q.C., Alan Broadbent, C.M., Chris Ellis, Carol Hansell, Donald Macdonald, P.C., Navneet Alang Lundy C.C., Grant Reuber, O.C., Don Rickerd, C.M., Rana Sarkar, Mark Sarner, Bernard Schiff, Reed Scowen POETRY SUBMISSIONS For guidelines, please see reviewcanada.ca. LRC design concept by Jackie Young/INK Founded in 1991 by P.A. Dutil The LRC is published 10 times a year by the Literary Review of Canada Charitable Organization. ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION RATES Individuals in Canada $56/year plus GST/HST. (Libraries and institutions in Canada $68/year plus GST/HST.) Outside Canada, please pay $86/year for individuals, or $98 for libraries and institutions. Cover art and pictures throughout the issue, unless otherwise indicated, by J.S. Godfrey. SUBSCRIPTIONS AND CIRCULATION J.S. Godfrey is a freelance illustrator based in Toronto. Find more from him at jsgodfrey.com. Literary Review of Canada P.O. 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ISSN 1188-7494 We acknowledge the The Literary Review of Canada is indexed in the financial support of the Canadian Literary Periodicals Index and the Canadian Government of Canada. Index and is distributed by Disticor and Magazines Canada. May 2017 reviewcanada.ca a national festival of politics, art and ideas CALGARY June 1 – 4 Geopolitics • Economy • Environment • Culture • Health • Science Are the real risks we face—as Canadians and as global citizens—the ones we worry about, or do we look too narrowly, through our own preconceptions? Against the backdrop of Canada’s sesquicentennial plans and the darkening clouds of “populist” intolerance gathering in the United States and around the globe, Spur asks: What we are willing to risk in order to build a more equitable society? And what are the ideas, people and examples that will inspire us to build the kind of society of which we can be proud? BOOKS THAT SPUR: CATHERINE GRAHAM ON QUARRY 1:00 pm | June 4 | Memorial Park Library Spur sits down with award-winning poet Catherine Graham to discuss her fi rst novel, Quarry, at the newly renovated Memorial Park Library in Calgary’s Beltway. See spurfestival.ca for more featured events For further information and for tickets and passes, visit spurfestival.ca (LRC subscribers receive a 25% discount. Use the promo code LRCSUB.) NATIONAL PARTNERS AND SUPPORTERS www.spurfestival.ca facebook.com/spurfestival @spurfest #spur17 2 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada “I Love Arguing!” In profound appreciation of Anthony Westell (1926–2017) BRONWYN DRAINIE uardian angel” are the words that out to be me, for the next twelve years, followed by “ come to mind when I think about my gifted successor, Sarmishta Subramanian. Gmy friend and mentor Tony Westell, When Tony and I first met in 2003, at his although he would be the first to scoff at the religious Toronto apartment, I was daunted by his name nuance of the phrase. (Tony was a serious atheist.) and reputation and more than a little terrified I did not know Tony in the early stages of his by his braininess and brusqueness. He could see rich and eventful life: a stint as a cub reporter in I was a greenhorn at this editing business, and he England, during which he worked his way up to the hounded me mercilessly for the first three or four London Evening Standard; next, a permanent leap years. My display copy—headlines and such— across the pond with his wife, Jeannie, to the Globe lacked “zing.” Could I not make the effort to find and Mail, eventually heading up its Ottawa bureau; some better artwork? I was crafting the pieces too a lateral move to the Toronto Star as national col- short so we would end up in competition with the umnist; and then a change of hat when he joined Globe and Mail (“where I would not want to be,” he Carleton University’s faculties of journalism and said) instead of the New York Review of Books. It Canadian studies, and began passing along his seems, though, as I read back through our email skills and passions to the next generation. correspondence of those early years, that I could It was at Carleton in the 1990s that Tony first handle the barrage of criticism and even thrive on assumed his role of guardian angel for a small and it. “Keep the feedback coming,” I wrote. “It always struggling publication called the Literary Review feels like a nice bracing cold shower.” of Canada, conceived and nurtured for its first five Of course, along with the wasp-tongued critiques years by a determined and optimistic intellectual came a treasure box of advice, encouragement and named Patrice Dutil. Tony was involved almost warnings: “Mixing scholarship and journalism on from the beginning, helping Patrice raise his current affairs subjects, that was the formula I had ungainly literary child and then, when Patrice felt in mind for the LRC but could never pull off.” “When the need to pass the torch, negotiating a transfer to writers send in letters attacking the ‘incompetence’ Image courtesy of Dan Westell Carleton University Press in an attempt to keep the of the reviewer, they are also attacking the editor view did not make him popular with commenta- frail creature alive.