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The Sopranos Hockey, PQ Bonnie Sherr Klein’s Born Under a Bad Sign Canada’s Game in Quebec’s Popular Culture Not a Love Story by Franco Ricci by Amy J. Ransom by Rebecca Sullivan In The Sopranos, Franco Ricci examines the In Hockey, PQ, Amy J. Ransom examines Bonnie Sherr Klein’s Not a Love Story groundbreaking HBO series and its impact everything from the blockbuster movie provocatively examines the first Canadian as a cultural phenomenon. This is a richly franchise Les Boys to the music of former film to explore pornography’s role in rewarding book for anyone interested pro player Bob Bisonnette, and from the society from a feminist perspective and in the popular television drama, both as soap opera Lance et compte to the fiction offers a fresh assessment of Canada’s entertainment and social commentary. of François Barcelo to establish how women’s movement and the politics of Canada’s national sport has been used to feminist filmmaking during a volatile era. signify a specific Québécois identity.
Understanding Climate Change The Feel of the City Employment Equity in Canada Science, Policy, and Practice Experiences of Urban Transformation The Legacy of the Abella Report by Sarah L. Burch and Sara E. Harris by Nicolas Kenny edited by Carol Agócs Understanding Climate Change provides The Feel of the City exposes the sensory Employment Equity in Canada evaluates readers with a concise, accessible, and experiences of city-dwellers in Montreal the impact of Canada’s employment equity holistic picture of the climate change and Brussels at the turn of the century and legislation on equality in the workplace problem, including both the scientific the ways in which these shaped the social and seeks to understand the past, present, and human dimensions. and cultural significance of urban space. and future of Canadian employment and equity policy.
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Vol. 22, No. 7 • September 2014 Editor Bronwyn Drainie [email protected] 3 Racetrack Man 17 Growth Contributing EditorS Mark Lovewell, Molly Peacock, Robin A review of Davy the Punk: A Story of Bookies, A poem Roger, Anthony Westell Toronto the Good, the Mob and My Dad, by Peter Norman Associate editor Bob Bossin 18 In the Nobel Archives, with Judy Stoffman Joe Fiorito Crackpots Poetry Editor Moira MacDougall 4 Penned In A review of The Stonehenge Letters, by Harry copy editor A review of Surviving Incarceration: Inside Karlinsky Madeline Koch Canadian Prisons, by Rose Ricciardelli J.C. Sutcliffe Kirk Makin Online Editors 19 Faithfull in Her Fashion Diana Kuprel, Jack Mitchell, 6 Making Aid Obsolete A review of Based on a True Story, by Elizabeth Donald Rickerd, C.M. A review of Innovating for the Global South: Renzetti ProofReaders Rebecca Borkowsky, Claire Farley, Towards an Inclusive Innovation Agenda, edited Robin Roger Heather Schultz, Alif Shahed, Robert by Dilip Soman, Janice Gross Stein and Joseph Simone, Rob Tilley, Jeannie Weese Wong 20 Tales from the Barley Field research Larry Krotz A review of The Perfect Keg: Sowing, Scything, Malting and Brewing My Way to the Best-Ever Rob Tilley 8 Codes in Conflict Pint of Beer, by Ian Coutts Editorial Assistant Clare Gibbons A review of Nobility Lost: French and Canadian Michael Ruse Martial Cultures, Indians and the End of New Design France, by Christian Ayne Crouch 22 Can’t Lit James Harbeck Philip Marchand An essay ADVERTISING/SALES Darryl Whetter Michael Wile 10 Saving Medicare [email protected] An essay 24 The Importance of Ernest Director, Special Projects Michael Decter An essay Michael Booth Don Sparling Development Assistant 13 What Remains Michael Stevens A review of The Bells of Memory: A Palestinian 26 Psychiatric Turf War A review of Suspicious Minds: How Culture publishers Boyhood in Jerusalem, by Issa J. Boullata Alastair Cheng Ayah Victoria McKhail Shapes Madness, by Joel Gold and Ian Gold [email protected] Edward Shorter Helen Walsh 14 Storm Warnings 29 A Powerful Thirst [email protected] A review of To the Cloud: Big Data in a Board of Directors A review of The Improbable Primate: How Turbulent World, by Vincent Mosco John Honderich, C.M., Tom Slee Water Shaped Human Evolution, by Clive J. Alexander Houston, Frances Lankin, Finlayson Jack Mintz, Trina McQueen 16 L.M.M. Renée Hetherington Advisory Council A poem Michael Adams, Ronald G. Atkey, P.C., Katherine Cameron 31 The Metaphysics of Math Q.C., Alan Broadbent, C.M., Chris Ellis, A review of Why Is There Philosophy of Drew Fagan, James Gillies, C.M., 16 Sunday Candy Mathematics at All?, by Ian Hacking Carol Hansell, Donald Macdonald, A poem Florin Diacu P.C., C.C., Susan Reisler, Grant Reuber, Michael Pacey O.C., Don Rickerd, C.M., Rana Sarkar, 32 Letters and Responses Mark Sarner, Bernard Schiff, 17 Carried Away The Reverend Doctor William Harrison, Reed Scowen A poem Meghan Murphy, Richard Starr Poetry Submissions Robert Currie For poetry submission guidelines, please see
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2 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Racetrack Man A son tells the story of his father’s checkered career. Joe Fiorito
and it is a particularly North American quest: sheet containing inside information about horses Davy the Punk: A Story of Bookies, Toronto sons sometimes wonder who they are as they get and jockeys and so on—anything that might give the Good, the Mob and My Dad older, and they sometimes look to their fathers for a bookie an edge. Here I merely observe that Davy Bob Bossin answers. would have been a terror on the internet. The Porcupine’s Quill In this case, the elder Bossin was a major-league Davy eventually got out of the gambling busi- 186 pages, softcover character in what was then a minor-league city. But ness. He was one of the few people, it seems to me, ISBN 9780889843691 because of the nature of his work, Davy left little who walked away from the Mob without reprisal. that is tangible behind, with the exception of some More to the point, Bossin’s mother told him that lovely, mostly true stories. Davy got out so that his son would not be drawn to he last time anyone was certain about One of my favourites was reported in Davy’s the life. All this stuff is gold, if you thought Toronto the character of Toronto was in the 1940s obituary in the Toronto Star, and here I should was a dull place. Tand the ’50s, when the city was shut up point out that it is not every denizen of the track I do have some minor quibbles: the book is tight on Sundays and the rest of the week was just who merits a Star obit. It seems Davy once picked built on memory, and on stories told by others, as prim. the correct win, place and show horses eight times but Bossin imagines certain conversations as they In recent years, Toronto has been in flux. We in a row. I do not have a calculator big enough might have taken place. Often these sound forced, have traded our staid WASP stance for a glorious, to figure those odds, and you might be forgiven or over-eager. It seems to me that when men tell riotous international multiculturalism; stories to each other that they have told if we are emphatically not what we used before, the language tends toward the to be, we do not yet know what we will The elder Bossin was a major- subtle or the polished, as opposed to the become. eager—more like prayers than news. In the search for answers there are league character in what was then Nor was I always with Bossin on some many fine books about Toronto’s past, of his explanatory excursions. I do not and even one terrific play—written by a minor-league city. really expect him to outline American former mayor John Sewell about another gangland history. former mayor Allan Lamport—but I have I also wanted more of his lovely always wondered if there was an ur-text to explain for wondering if he somehow knew the results mother, who provides many grace notes in the book. this confounding town, some fundamental docu- beforehand. But that is minor stuff. ment that shows who we really were, once, here. There are other, equally delicious stories, told When Davy the Punk died, the younger Bossin After all, other important cities have had their not of Davy but by him, including one about a man kept his sorrow to himself, as he had been taught to inner lives exposed, and often by newspapermen: who parlayed a $2 bet into winnings of $16,000 and do. Pay attention now—the concealing of emotions the Chicago of Mike Royko, the Philadelphia of Pete then lost it all; when the man’s wife asked how he is not just a WASP trait; it is also a trait of gamblers. Dexter, the Montreal of William Weintraub. had done at the track, he said, “Same as always … And I do not want to give the game away, but Perhaps the best match of scribe and city is New I lost two dollars.” when you read this book, then you will be forced York and Joseph Mitchell, whose magnificent col- A town that produces men like that is a town you to examine the separate worth of patrimony and lection of feature stories, Up in the Old Hotel, and want to know. But what really impels this book is paternity. Other Stories, is full of oyster men, sporting men, the fact that Davy died when Bob was young. Here is something: when Davy the Punk left the cranks and eccentrics; it is a living history of the In order to answer the existential question “who track, he became a booking agent who handled liveliest city on the planet. am I?” Bossin not only looks to his father, but also bands. We have had no such book about Toronto. traces his family’s long hard roots in the Jewish Bossin, of course, had Stringband: was he seek- Until now. diaspora. Some, not all, of this is interesting. But ing some sort of approval, finding a way to be Bob Bossin is a musician and singer who fronted Bossin reminds us of what it was like to be Jewish wanted—a way to be booked—by the bookmaker Stringband, one of the smartest and the sweetest of in Toronto in those old days: the racism was not who left his life too soon? Maybe that is just specu- the folk groups of the 1970s. More to the point, his subtle, and that is important for all of us to know, in lative hooey on my part. father was a Toronto racetrack man known to some light of Toronto’s sometimes not-so-pretty attitudes Bossin writes, “I have often wished I could trade as Davy the Punk. toward immigrants today. some of the time I had with Davy as a boy, for time Davy was a quiet fellow who worked, with If the regular world was not accessible to Jews together man to man. There are so many things we remarkable efficiency, on the shady side of the in Toronto, there were always other ways to make a never talked about … love, or sex, or marriage.” street. He was on easy terms with bettors and gam- living. Gambling was one of those ways, and Davy They may not have talked about those things but blers, touts and handicappers, guys and dolls. He the Punk is a lively primer about how to make a safe Bob, a word—he taught you better than you knew. rubbed elbows with mobsters in this country, and bet, and about how bookies protect themselves In the end, I think what Bob Bossin got from the one to the south of us. from losses. Davy the Punk was his sense of fearlessness, his He died when Bob was in his teens. Also, for a time, Davy ran a lucrative, if legally sharp eye and his willingness to stand up in front of Who was Davy? And who is Bob? The underpin- dodgy, race wire—whenever the results from a others without blinking. ning of those questions is the basis for this book, track were telegraphed in Morse code, they were Do not read this as a father-and-son memoir; intercepted and decoded, and the results made read this book—and you should—if you want to Joe Fiorito is a columnist at the Toronto Star, and available instantly, over the phone, to bookies. The know what Toronto was, once, when there were a the author of the memoir The Closer We Are to service took some of the risk out of the equation lot of smart, tough guys working the phones, fixing Dying (McClelland and Stewart, 1999). for anyone taking bets, and it also came with a tip the races, and calling the shots.
September 2014 reviewcanada.ca 3 Penned In Former inmates tell grim but all-too-credible stories. Kirk Makin
inmate for death, where aligning Surviving Incarceration: oneself with a gang is a necessity that, Inside Canadian Prisons somewhat paradoxically, also enhan- Rose Ricciardelli ces the likelihood of being attacked Wilfrid Laurier University Press by a rival gang. 245 pages, softcover Long-in-the-tooth ex-convicts ISBN 9781771120531 spoke wistfully of the good, old days and opined that a new generation just does not respect the time- n an entirely unexpected honoured code of behaviour, such as exception to its locked-door minding your own business (known Iapproach to the outside world, as “doing your own time”) or defer- Correctional Services Canada agreed ring to older prisoners and lifers. in the late 1980s to let a newspaper Ricciardelli found the primary reporter wander around a protect- ingredients of an inmate’s reputation ive custody cellblock at Kingston to be sexual orientation, masculin- Penitentiary. Not just any protect- ity and type of offence. Fraud, drug ive custody range, but a virtual dealing and violent offences, good; murderer’s row known as H Block, sex offences, bad. It is hazardous to home to almost two dozen of the interfere in another man’s business. country’s worst villains—killers such Flex your muscles when a situation as Clifford Olson, Saul Betesh and warrants it, or else prepare to live the Melvyn Stanton. life of a chronic victim. Some inmates were withdrawn and resistant. tongues with a promise of absolute anonymity and “In the pen, the smallest guy will come stab you Some were voluble. Olson, memorably, jabbered a modest honorarium. While her subjects were up,” one parolee summed up. “Size doesn’t mean at high speed while he hopped about his cell like a located in Ontario, some had spent time behind shit.” spider monkey. Oddly enough, though, my strong- bars in other regions. To be a pedophile or rapist is to remain on high est memory is that of a young man—a relative Ricciardelli’s goal was to extricate prison real- alert at all times. Yet homosexuality is not neces- unknown in this pantheon of killers—who had ity from the grip of Hollywood stereotypes. How sarily perceived as a flaw. As one subject put it: “If recently been transferred to H Block at his own do the approximately 15,000 inmates in Canadian you want to hook up with his dick … I don’t care, anguished request. Skittish and frail, he was the sort federal prisons—roughly 60 percent of whom are right? Just respect the brotherhood enough to know of vulnerable soul who more aggressive inmates in medium security and 20 percent in maximum that there is no fucking holding hands and that shit gravitate toward. security—negotiate their own safety and well-being when you’re out front. I don’t care what the fuck Unfortunately for the timid inmate, H Block behind prison walls? Does incarceration help cure he’s doing when that fucking cell door is closed; just was full to bursting. Under a policy change, he was or merely solidify criminal traits? What is the true don’t flaunt it in my face.” about to be ejected back into the general popula- nature of sexual behaviour within prison walls? For anyone who might have thought that tion. The man shook, wept and moaned, begging How do institutional social hierarchies dictate daily Canadian prisons are far tamer versions of their me to do something to help him avoid what he behaviour? American counterparts, Surviving Incarceration is perceived as certain doom. Ricciardelli, who teaches at York University, replete with references to the tension and danger These are the rare moments that provide piercing came to corrections with an intriguing range of that pervade both maximum and medium security insight into the alternate universe of the Canadian interests. She has written about cosmetic sur- prisons in this country. prison system, a universe to which sociologist Rose gery, attitudes toward wrongful convictions and “Nobody’s safe,” said one parolee. “[I kept] my Ricciardelli gained vicarious entry via exhaustive dementia, and has produced a most intriguing back to the wall; I went to the shower with my shank series of interviews with former prisoners. paper entitled “Masculinity, Appearance and [homemade knife]—went to the shower, wash- Ricciardelli was unable to observe her sub- Consumerism: A Look at Men’s Hair.” This all sug- room, gym, and yard. I ate with my shank, [never jects in their native habitat—the 60 interviews she gests someone with a rich and curious world view. felt safe], stressed all day.” conducted involved male inmates on parole who Interviewing former inmates who have moved Inmates describe some guards as being pro- had spent at least a portion of their sentences in into a non-custodial environment runs the risk vocateurs who purposely goad inmates and spark maximum or medium security—but she came of skewing or diluting their responses. However, violent responses. Others guards are cowed, more away with a wealth of material. She made contact Ricciardelli’s interviewing skills are enviable. likely to close off a range and steer clear than to risk with her subjects through advocacy organizations She evidently put her subjects well at ease, their own safety by quelling internal trouble. such as the John Howard Society, loosening their appearing, if not supportive, then certainly In some cases, interviewees showed unexpected non-judgemental. insight into their culture, such as one who describes Kirk Makin covered The Globe and Mail’s justice In return, relative youngsters described the the baffling intricacy of what conduct is or is not beat for 30 years. Having retired in 2013, he teaches mind-bending transition into prison culture, where deemed acceptable: “It’s so stupid; I never under- and does freelance legal writing. a simple failure to avert one’s gaze can mark an stood it. We go to jail because we can’t follow rules.
4 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada We can’t follow rules, and then we go there and hand knowledge of prisons and prison conditions around an unreconstructed neo-conservative like make up our own rules. Fuck, the guys are so stu- may find much of it too predictable. Black, is there anyone who might not see the same pid. It’s so stupid, it’s ridiculous.” Due to her limited scope, Ricciardelli also leaves light after a few sleepless nights in a cell bunk? Ricciardelli’s subjects almost universally dis- some of the most profound correctional questions Federal policy also runs counter to another miss prison as being a wasteland where lessons in untouched. How can a country that glories in its Conservative tenet—budget reduction. Ricciardelli crime and the law of the jungle gravely off-balance reputation for moderation and social progressiv- notes that federal correctional budgets have shot up the value of therapeutic programs. The battle to ism so slavishly emulate the notoriously repres- an astonishing 36.6 percent between 2005 and 2009, survive dwarfs all else. “You’re either the predator sive U.S. prison system? Do Canadians genuinely reaching a total of $2.3 billion. Much of the increase or the prey,” observed one parolee. “You’re a lion understand—or care—that prison sacrifices the is owed to the inmate population having grown or a cub.” ideal of rehabilitation to the dubious satisfaction of from 12,000 to about 15,000 in the past decade— As a narrator and guide, Ricciardelli’s writing vengeance and containment? notwithstanding a steady decrease in crime rates. style ranges from stuffily academic to breezy (a Many of the author’s formal conclusions are Prisoners who are supplied with effective sub-heading for a section that details her meth- familiar: Alleviate harsh conditions. Provide sens- rehabilitation programs and employment skills odology is entitled: “How I Found the Guys”). At ible skills training and work opportunities behind would be less likely to recidivate, Ricciardelli rea- first blush, the sprawling length of many of the bars. Improve treatment for the host of mentally ill sons, a fact that is, “overlooked or simply ignored.” responses she excerpts suggests lazy writing, but prisoners. Yet there is a good reason we have heard The inescapable inference one comes away with the strength of the material quickly justifies includ- them all before. Denying their truth is as absurd from Surviving Incarceration is that the peniten- ing these imposing, italicized blocks. In fact, many as gainsaying the link between smoking and lung tiary service tolerates—and to some extent, even of the strongest portions of Surviving Incarceration cancer. Prisons are unquestionably the preserve facilitates—the hell of inmate existence so that involve inmates constructing elaborate mental of the mentally ill or deficient, the abused, the inmates who are transitioned to lower security set- images of misery, terror and intimidation. Subjects addicted and those raised in impoverished homes tings will toe the line and do whatever they can to speak of watching as unpopular inmates are stalked by inadequate or absent parental role models; avoid being sent back. in the prison yard or have barbells dropped on their these are findings reached so often that they feel Why have these cynical mechanics not been heads in the weight room. near-axiomatic. effectively conveyed to voters, taxpayers and opin- Unexpected findings are scattered throughout. At the same time, Ricciardelli sometimes con- ion leaders? Who knew, for example, that Ontario prisoners are veys personal views about the politics of incar- The news media face two problems in tackling notably more homophobic than those in Quebec ceration; observations that are both welcome and the Canadian prison system. The first is persuading or the Atlantic region? Who knew that being rendered more credible by her general recalci- editors or producers to buy in. Many news man- unhygienic can quickly result in a serious beating? trance. For instance, she speaks with weary con- agers have serious reservations about the degree Nobody wants to share a shoebox with a malodor- viction about the failure of “get tough” sentencing of interest or sympathy their audiences have for ous cellmate. measures and the costly repercussions they have prison conditions. (As The Globe and Mail’s justice One former inmate offers a shocking reflection had, observing that the Harper government’s signal reporter in the late 1980s, I well remember being about the effect a murder that many are aware is item of tough, correctional legislation—Bill C-10— instructed by a city editor to quit devoting time to coming can have on a cellblock. What really eats at has had serious after-effects and “was not met with prison coverage because the publisher had been inmates is the realization that they will inevitably the opposition it warranted.” getting negative feedback from business readers be locked up for days while police investigate the Ricciardelli also identifies breath-taking cyni- about the Globe’s apparent “liberal bias.”) crime, he said. “Instead of, ‘Oh my God, someone’s cism on the part of a federal government that The second difficulty lies in locating savvy going to die!’ it was more of, ‘Oh, I want to take a cashes in on uninformed public sentiment by stuff- sources who can provide tips and corroborate story shower.’” ing too many inmates into too small a space and angles. Time and again, journalists are compelled When it comes to rehabilitation, those able to ignoring the needs of the mentally ill. In addition, to fall back on a tiny coterie of articulate, forthright qualify for relatively scarce programs often find correctional policy all too often plays to those who critics—correctional investigator Howard Sapers, them largely irrelevant. Inmate dynamics also make believe criminals can be effectively deterred by the criminologist Anthony Doob, Elizabeth Fry Society it dangerous for participants to reflect openly on prospect of lengthy sentences, that punishment director Kim Pate, legal academics Michael Jackson their offences and insights into themselves: reveal alone is a fitting central goal for correctional policy. and Allan Manson. too much and you risk a beating. Contrast that with the born-again reformist Ricciardelli may or may not find a wide audi- Surviving Incarceration is destined to have lim- fervour of celebrated ex-convict Conrad Black. ence for her book, but the expertise she acquired ited appeal. While not overburdened with statistics His recent, post-incarceration conversion to penal in writing it has made her a very useful resource and citations, it remains far from being an August progressive would have been merely laughable for journalists and researchers hoping to tackle this weekend read. Adherents of tough sentencing will had it not carried such symbolic value. If a modest most closed of systems. One hopes her authorita- also find it namby-pamby, while those with first- stint behind bars in a half-decent prison can turn tive voice will be heard often.
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September 2014 reviewcanada.ca 5 Making Aid Obsolete Are enterprising local innovators the future of global development? Larry Krotz
were to cancel such payments, he argued, normal A bit of a reader warning: this is hardly a tome Innovating for the Global South: Africans would not even notice. “Only the function- you will want to take to the beach. It claims to be Towards an Inclusive Innovation Agenda aries would be hard hit.” aimed at a wide audience, but that audience is Dilip Soman, Janice Gross Stein and Joseph What was happening was that the kind of for- specialists, “from governments seeking to foster Wong, editors eign aid we had become used to, and had come to an innovative culture or to design suitable funding University of Toronto Press believe was right and good, was taking a beating models to inventors and innovators seeking to fig- 185 pages, softcover while, simultaneously, something equally extra- ure out how best to scale their innovation for social ISBN 9781442614628 ordinary was taking place. Many of the countries good, and from commentators to practitioners.” It is I had worried about while staring into my plate of (as the language of the above sentence itself attests) vegetables stopped being poor. India, China, Brazil policy wonk stuff, written by people who study hen I was a child, we were told to and a number of African countries suddenly leapt policy and are, for the most part, more comfortable eat our vegetables because people in out of poverty and into some sort of international around the minutiae of technical tweaks than the WIndia, China, Africa (pick one) were middle class. This they achieved not through the broad strokes of geopolitical philosophizing. This starving. The question of how my eating vegetables assistance of foreign aid, but via the good old- is not a bad thing, but should be noted by those of was supposed to help those poor people remained fashioned market system. us who are not ourselves specialists. That said, if unanswered. What we did presume was that they Due to trade and technologies, vast swathes of you are prepared to wade through the statistics and would be helped by missionaries, and then, with populations in countries formerly considered back- technical language, you will get the gist of a novel more up-to-date information, by massive inputs ward and poor were increasingly prosperous, with approach built, yes, on innovation, but also on of something called foreign aid that local, small, entrepreneurial, tech- well-meaning governments like our Demand-side rather than supply-side nology-centred strategies. Where own sent to the governments of the the book is particularly enlightening, needy countries. economics has turned out $3,000 cars, even for the lay reader, is in its item- A few decades on, all those izing of examples of strategies and assumptions have gone topsy-turvy. $300 computers, $30 mobile phones innovations that are changing the At about the turn of the millennium, lives of local populations as well as a raft of studies and books emerged that provide nationwide service for the ways both we and they think. to argue that too much of what was The ideas and the schemes pour forked out as foreign aid was achiev- just two cents a minute. forth loaded with the kinds of buzz ing no good at all. In books such as words we will probably hear a lot in White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid all the material and lifestyle benefits that implied. the next decade: “appropriate technology,” “frugal the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, There was a wrinkle, of course. While countries innovation,” “inclusive innovation,” “integrated by William Easterly, or The Trouble with Africa: Why might no longer be poor, the people in them as innovation,” “embedded innovation.” We are told Foreign Aid Isn’t Working by Robert Calderisi, we well as elsewhere still were and, because of the that “India’s leadership in frugal innovation goes were told that money got frittered away by ineffi- success around them, were now, in fact, less visible beyond downsizing, it involves starting with the cient bureaucrats or found its way into the bank and arguably worse off than ever. This produced needs of poor consumers and working backwards. accounts of kleptomaniac politicians while the an entirely novel challenge, one that a group of Instead of complicating or refining their products, poor remained as desperate as ever. Over a period 14 scholars and researchers—all but one of them Indian innovators strip them down to their bare of 60 years, in Easterly’s estimation, rich countries attached to the University of Toronto—attempt to essentials, making them affordable, accessible, had paid $2.3 trillion for development in poor address in a new book, Innovating for the Global durable and effective.” Demand-side rather than countries only to see children in Africa and parts of South: Towards an Inclusive Innovation Agenda. supply-side economics has turned out $3,000 cars, Asia still dying from entirely preventable diseases Setting out their thesis, Janice Gross Stein, one $300 computers, $30 mobile phones that provide and women still walking kilometres to collect water of the book’s three editors—the others being Dilip nationwide service for just two cents a minute. (It or firewood. Easterly, an American, and Calderisi, Soman and Joseph Wong—writes that established makes you wonder why we cannot have a bit of that a Canadian, had both worked for the World Bank, ways of doing business will not be good enough. over on this side of the world.) as did Dambiso Moyo, a Zambian-born Harvard- Development assistance faces “fundamental chal- Rahim Rezaie, a joint research fellow at the educated economist who weighed in a few years lenges,” she says, reiterating the observation that University of Toronto, makes the obvious point later with Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and the majority of the world’s poor no longer live in that innovations have disproportionately benefit- How There Is a Better Way for Africa. Other substan- poor countries but in middle-income countries ted those of us in high-income countries. The high tial African voices joined the discussion. Kenyan that generally neither receive nor want develop- costs of pharmaceutical research and the attendant economist James Shikwati told the German maga- ment assistance and concluding that “development patent protection brings to mind the fact that cheap zine Der Speigel, “For God’s sake, please stop the assistance is no longer a state monopoly but rather anti-retroviral treatments for HIV/AIDS were not aid,” his main critique being that huge bureaucra- a partnered activity in a field crowded with non- available to high-need Africa until a South African cies were supported by aid money and that corrup- government organizations, foundations, and the court ruled in favour of generics manufactured not tion and complacency were promoted. If the West private sector.” in the West but in India. This changed the world for Is there a way to reach these billions with the AIDS sufferers, although it cost the pharmaceutical Larry Krotz is a writer living in Toronto. His bright light of progress and a better life? The writers multinationals a fortune. latest books are Piecing the Puzzle: The Genesis of the nine essays think there is. But it will involve Sometimes it is best that the West backs off. of AIDS Research in Africa (2012) and The extensive implementation of a notion offered over We are told that it is not just companies in the Uncertain Business of Doing Good: Outsiders in and over throughout the book as well as in the title: traditional West that are innovating, but local Africa (2008), both published by the University of “innovation”—doing things better and with greater initiatives in India, China, Brazil that are changing Manitoba Press. and more efficient impact. the game dramatically. Joseph Wong, who holds
6 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada the Canada Research Chair in Democratization, bicycle taxi businesses, set up barbershops and for their saris in order to eradicate cholera—or Health and Development at the University of the like. building on technologies that have been widely Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs, offers up But back to the book, where a fascinating and adopted—again the medical uses for cell phones. an interesting example. He describes the Aravind enlightening discussion concerns how culture The ultimate question, though, is how to finance it Eye Hospital in the southern Indian state of Tamil can get in the way of making things better or even all. Where the buck stops—or starts—reveals what Nadu whose innovative cataract surgery has gone different. The Tata car in India was supposed to aid is really about. Back in the days of the mission- a huge distance to eliminating needless blind- revolutionize mobility for the poor by making avail- aries when the financing came from nickels and ness by reducing the costs of individual surger- able a cheap car at $3,000. It did not sell. What was dimes collected in western and northern Sunday ies to $30 each from the western standard of up not understood was the degree to which a private schools, the objective was converting the heathen, to $3,000 per eye. My reaction was praise for the automobile is considered a status symbol. With that perhaps hand in hand with pushing the agenda of innovation that the Indians have been able to in mind, nobody wanted to be seen in a cheap car colonialism or imperialism. With government-to- achieve along with dismay that back in Canada or that was available to everybody. Get the price low government aid, the real objective was frequently the United States or United Kingdom the surgery enough, though, and some technological innova- positioning within the larger politics of the Cold still costs a hundred times as much. Again, it is tions prove to be not only democratic but revolu- War or, more recently, the “tied aid” or conditional surely we who need to innovate and learn from the tionary. In Kenya I observed a program where cell aid that worked hand in glove with either foreign Indians—although that is a side issue. phones—virtually universal because program and policy or domestic industrial needs (hence the lar- The small-scale, almost intimate nature of many hardware costs are so far below what we are accus- gest recipient of Canadian government aid over the of the schemes, and the fact that they frequently tomed to in North America—have been put to use in past decade has been Afghanistan, where Canada were initiated without a great deal of self-serving the service of medical care with apps that tell people participated in a decade-long war). fanfare, reminded me of a fellow I know named Ian. when to take or renew their various medications. What is it now? Where will the money come from Ian used to travel back and forth between Canada In the business of development, common and what are its motives? Murray Metcalfe’s essay and Kenya where his job was to provide technical sense and cultural knowledge and sensitivity go on new financing models postulates that develop- support to a University of Manitoba–founded med- a long way. The landscape is littered with ideas ment in the Global South in the 21st century “will ical research clinic. Looking around at the people that were not completely thought through. In the look nothing like what the twentieth-century mod- he was living and working with, he became inter- back corner of a Nairobi hospital I recall seeing a els based on foreign aid and multilateral agencies ested in innovations he believed might improve dusty MRI machine. It had been donated by the envisioned. Instead, real development will stem local lives. His first venture was to take a gas barbe- government of China but came without a service from two familiar forces—technology innovation que from Winnipeg and assemble it for the cooks contract; when the expensive piece of equipment and local, entrepreneurship-focused new enter- at the restaurant he frequented in Kenya to liberate broke down, that was it. One of the chapters in the prises.” To achieve this, he envisions something them from heavy use of charcoal. He then supplied book relates the story of walkers used by people more like the risk capital that financed Silicon more gas burners to a group of non-profit schools with mobility problems discarded outside a hos- Valley. This implies that profits will have to be avail- so they could introduce a breakfast program with- pital in the Gambia. Donated by a well-meaning able (how else will you lure investors?) even if, as out having to use firewood or charcoal. The materi- charity, their tiny wheels rendered them useless in Silicon Valley, a bunch of failures accompany als were purchased locally and presented to the on the rugged unpaved or broken pavement streets every out-of-the-park home run. There is very little school with the expectation parents would in some of Africa. Another white elephant was a thousand discussion—only a mention—of the Grameen Bank way then pick up the ball. “The idea,” Ian told me, “PlayPumps” installed across the continent on the whose micro-loans (much like those my friend “was that the parents would get together every few premise that children frolicking on a playground Ian made) revolutionized the lives of thousands of months to chip in to fill the tank with propane or carousel would simultaneously (and unwittingly) small operators, proved financially successful and butane.” It seems to have worked, the school was perform the chore of pumping water from under- won its Bangladeshi founder, Muhammad Yunus, even able to get a grant from the Bill and Melinda ground aquifers for their mothers to take for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. Gates Foundation to experiment with pawpaw household use. It did not work. “The reality was So where will the substantial investment seeds ground into the maize meal porridge that that children do not play long enough to pump suf- Metcalfe postulates come from? Should we hope would effectively rid the children of worms. The gas ficient water for the needs of the communities, and that the privileged (and inspired) young who march burners sealed the deal as they had a steady supply adult women do not use such pumps because they off to donate time building schools and orphan- of cooking power. Ian followed up with a micro- feel it is undignified to play on a carousel.” ages in Africa will return home to become such finance program out of his own pocket through There are some wonderful examples of low- venture capitalists? Should we be alarmed that which he helped his Kenyan friends purchase video cost miracles, such as $1 incubators for premature governments may be less and less part of the game? cameras so they could film weddings as a side busi- babies, as well as strategies to make existing prac- Answers to these questions are not offered in the ness. When they started paying back their loans, tices more effective—for instance, the filtering book, but it is important that they continue to be he expanded his program to assist others to open of drinking water through the cloth women use asked.
BURNING DAYLIGHT by Christine Fellows artwork by Alicia Smith
Musical theatre meets poetry in Burning Daylight, a poetry collection and song cycle drawing together the Yukon Gold Rush of the early 20th century and the Arctic iron ore mining mega-projects of the modern day. Through a feminist lens, it examines dislocation, isolation, family and frailty, reflected in our relationship with the ever-changing northern landscape. For years now Christine Fellows has been breaking my heart with darkness and sewing it back up with light. Her lyrics have long rewarded close listening; it was only a matter of time before her poetic intelligence found its way to the page. If that wasn’t enough, we have Alicia Smith’s haunting artworks, an inspired accompaniment to the text. Simply put, Burning Daylight is a marvel. Read, look and listen, people. Then read again.—Alissa York
COMING SEPTEMBER 2014 FROM ARP BOOKS
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September 2014 reviewcanada.ca 7 Codes in Conflict Native–French culture clashes during the Seven Years War. Philip Marchand
“narratives about war run the danger of becoming between the French and their Native American Nobility Lost: French and Canadian Martial overwhelmed by their subject matter, which suffo- allies over the Ohio Country. The French basically Cultures, Indians and the End of New France cates by either macabre fascination and the allure wanted to possess the Ohio Country and to mark Christian Ayne Crouch of romantic conflict or by the sheer horror and mag- that possession with the construction of forts and Cornell University Press nitude of pain and suffering.” Better to cultivate the the bestowing of—to the Natives—curious and dis- 250 pages, hardcover understanding of what Crouch calls “the cultures turbing symbols, such as the lead plates inscribed ISBN 9780801452444 of war” than to fall under the spell of the Francis to Louis XV left in river banks and other spots by Parkman school of romantic historical epic. Better Céloron de Blainville in 1749. This activity, Crouch to explore the aristocratic ethos of the French offi- writes, “scarred what the Indians regarded as their n 1757, in the midst of the Seven Years cers who sought to make their fortune and reputa- own spaces.” The Native North Americans allied to War, François Damiens was put to death for tions in the army “as the guardian of France’s honor the French saw no reason for the French to destroy Ihis attempt to assassinate Louis XV. It was as and chivalry,” in Crouch’s words, than to meditate English trading posts, either. “The Iroquois and cruel a death as could be devised—Damiens’s right on the Watteau painting of the glorious death of the the Algonquians possibly reasoned it was best arm was burnt in sulphur, other portions of his Marquis de Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham (a to let the competing Europeans kill each other body torn off by red-hot pincers, and rather than risk their own lives (and so on. In North America, where the English revenge),” Crouch writes. For king’s regulars were then fighting A man’s reputation counted for these Natives the acquisition of trade the English for control of the contin- goods, along with scalps, captives and ent, French officers worried about everything in the borderlands of so on, was quite honourable in itself. how their Native allies might react to North America. “This country is dangerous for the event. To these officers it meant discipline,” commented Louis- that French society had shamefully Antoine de Bougainville, whose produced someone so unspeakably loathsome as mirror image of Benjamin West’s famous painting fellow officers among the regulars noted that mar- to strike at the heart of national order and harmony of the death of General Wolfe). Again, Crouch feels ines saved English lives so they could subsequently in the person of the king. no necessity of dwelling on the personalities of obtain ransom for them. At the end of the war, But they need not have worried. According to these two adversaries—both of them brave, capable writes Crouch, the nobles in the army and at home Christian Ayne Crouch, author of Nobility Lost: professional soldiers bloodied in the wars of Europe in France could not help but be aware “that racial French and Canadian Martial Cultures, Indians before they set foot in America. intermarriage, cultural flexibility, and financial and the End of New France, such ritual torture More important than these two military lead- self-interest in the name of colonial growth had as was visited on Damiens’s body Native North ers, for Crouch’s purposes, is the ever more “rari- flourished among marine officers of the French Americans understood very well and by no means fied and contorted forms of martial honor,” the empire.” On campaigns the nobles saw their marine disapproved of. Torture was one way, for example, development of a school of elegant behaviour on comrades flagrantly violating the school of elegant of giving recompense to the spirit of a slain warrior the battlefield that led to officers feeling a greater behaviour. “The marines,” Crouch writes, “put and assuaging the grief of the community. affinity with enemy officers than with the soldiers unfamiliar practices into play. They bargained for The Damiens incident, then, focuses attention they led. The school, needless to say, found com- Indian aid with gifts and promises. They seemed on a world of cultures, Native North American and mercial pursuits repugnant. It found the behaviour resigned to Native peoples wandering in and out of European, which was strikingly alien to our own. It of Louis XV, bringing his mistress to the battlefield, camp, meeting up with relatives (even relatives who was a world in which the destruction of one’s ene- also unsettling—not that it was not a fine tradition were serving the British) and ‘borrowing’ freely mies was secondary to the preservation of honour for kings to have mistresses, but bringing them to from the supply trains.” in victory or defeat—although honour differently the battlefield suggested that the king did not take Montcalm, in turn, alienated his Indian allies by defined by various groups. the conduct of war seriously, that he put pleasure his generous terms to the garrison of Fort William In keeping with her aim of exploring that world before duty. Henry in 1757. Where were the captives, the com- of vanished martial cultures, Crouch’s history of the Montcalm and the officers of his regular troops modities, the scalps that constituted honourable Seven Years War barely sketches the main events of were imbued with this aristocratic ethos, believing trophies for these allies? The French, according the conflict. She assumes a reader aware of the early their martial behaviour should showcase devo- to Crouch, were horrified by the Native attack on French victories, including the celebrated ambush tion to the king. These were the troupes de terre, as the English the day after the battle, although it was of General Braddock’s British regulars in the wil- opposed to the compagnies franches de la marine, predictable given the absence of such trophies. derness and the fall of Fort William Henry, vividly colonial troops under the Ministry of the Marine The attack reinforced the notion of officers such as portrayed in James Fenimore Cooper’s novel, Last that oversaw the colonies. The marines, long used Bougainville that the real war was in Europe where of the Mohicans. The tide turned in 1758, despite the to Native American diplomacy, displayed behav- combatants still observed battlefield etiquette. successful French defence of Fort Carillon on Lake iour offensive to the aristocratic ethos, chiefly an These nobles, Crouch writes, “envisioned a quick Champlain. That same year Louisbourg in Nova engagement in commercial trading that was part victory in North America and their return to the Scotia fell to the English, clearing the way for James of Indian diplomacy. Such commercial diplomacy main front in Europe.” Wolfe’s great and fatal conquest of Quebec in 1759. was not to be brushed aside—French-Native allian- The English defeat at Fort Carillon the following These are stirring events in the annals of his- ces were weakened when cheaper and better qual- year was an occasion of joy to Montcalm for more tory—so much so that Crouch warns the reader that ity English trade goods flooded the Ohio Country, than one reason. The regulars repelled a straight- traditionally French territory—but there was no forward assault in the grand European tradition Philip Marchand is the author of Ghost Empire: denying trade could also be lucrative for the French without the assistance of any Natives, who disliked How the French Almost Conquered North America officers and civil authorities involved. assaults on fortified positions. (It was a waste of (McClelland and Stewart, 2009) and books colum- Crouch suggests that there was already a dif- manpower.) This was war the way war should be nist for the National Post. ference rooted in commercial considerations conducted.
8 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada The tenets of the school of elegant behaviour writes. Vaudreuil, on the other hand, placed his Crouch rightly draws the conclusion from this that may have helped to nurture resentment against faith in his Native allies and Canadian troops to halt New France was not dead, even after the French sur- the Natives and their manner of war making, but the advance of the English. These Native Americans render to the British in Montreal in 1760. The con- it did not result in simple contempt. Crouch does and Canadians were men ignorant of the school of tinued life of New France on the North American not belabour the point, but the French were never elegant behaviour but they were marvellous bush continent was attested to, not only by the Iroquois in a position to despise their Native allies. French fighters. visit to the French navy in Boston harbour, but officers were struck by the magnificent rhetoric Crouch is lucid in her relation of these cultural also by the existence of mixed French and Native of Native orators, which they saw and recorded, twists and turns. The reader may detect a desire to Americans who built towns in the wilderness and according to Crouch. They were also impressed intellectualize the discourse with use of abstract presided over immense trading networks. Crouch by Native hardihood and agility, an athleticism no terms such as “space,” and with the occasional mentions Charles de Langlade, born of a French fur doubt fostered by their wilderness exercises in hunt- lapse into academic speak. A sentence such as “The trader and an Ojibwa woman, educated by Jesuits, ing and fishing and their brutal games of lacrosse. In multiple readings of the victories and losses that who was present at Braddock’s defeat and pursued the words of one French observer, the Natives were involved diverse participants are accessible only an illustrious career as a warrior on behalf of New “large and well made,” and “tireless, hardened to if we attend to the conflict context from which the France and then later of the British Empire. He pain,” inured to blazing heat and freezing cold. belligerents derived these individuals’ motivations settled in what is now Green Bay, Wisconsin, with The problem was not racial conceit but “mis- and values” is thankfully rare. his family and his employees and his slaves (Native trust on all sides,” according to Crouch—indeed, More frequent in her narrative is a hint of that Americans from west of the Mississippi captured in her book is predicated entirely on the prevalence allure of romantic conflict she dismissed at the out- war) and his great fur-trading enterprise. of mistrust as opposed to simple ill will in Native- set. The last chapter in particular is haunting. It tells Crouch mentions another formidable figure in French relations. That neither side could take the the story of an Iroquois delegation that appeared in what might be called new New France, a soldier intentions of the other for granted meant, Crouch Boston in 1778, having heard that the French had and fur trader said to be the son of Bougainville writes, that “every planned engagement had to be returned. In fact, the French were now allies of the named Louis Lorimier. He married a woman of negotiated anew with Indian allies.” It meant that a American rebels—but what the Iroquois wanted to mixed Shawnee and French blood, Charlotte relatively simple rite, such as the formal adoption know was if these were real French. Over the years Lorimier, and set up, with the help of her access of French officers into Native clans, was liable to be the Iroquois, especially those based near Montreal, to Shawnee trade networks, a thriving community misinterpreted—the French viewed it as recogni- had grown closer to the French, forsaking in many in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. “The reach of formal tion of their leadership, the Natives as a polite ges- cases early bonds with the English. Now these French power in the interior of North America had ture confirming access to trade and gift networks. wanted, an officer observed, “to see for themselves been tenuous at best,” Crouch writes. “It had always Crouch writes of one French officer adopted by the whether we were truly French, to ask to see the depended on prestige among Native peoples to Abenakis—the rite, she observes, combined “inclu- white banner, whose appearance still makes them sustain itself.” The new New France was more resili- sion in the community (and the duties that accom- dance, to hear the Mass, which they have been ent, relying on “well-travelled trading networks panied this) with a generous attempt to remake deprived of for seventeen years.” between indigenous and French Canadian actors one of these strange French men into (in Indian In a way, it was natural that these Native whose reserve cultural currency consisted of their terms) a more civilized, rational, polite Abenaki Americans would be anxious to reclaim an alliance common ties to the old French North American individual.” that they sorely missed. An Ojibwa chief told an empire.” Even before the fall of New France in 1760 These civilized, rational, polite Natives were English trader in 1761 that, yes, he knew the French this resilience carried French cultural influences, repelled by the public bickering between Montcalm king had fallen asleep. “During his sleep you have including religious and commercial influences, far and his civilian counterpart, the Marquis de taken advantage of him and possessed yourself beyond the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River, Vaudreuil, governor of New France. “Iroquoian and of Canada,” he stated. “But his nap is almost at an the ostensible boundaries of New France. Algonquian nations prized a lack of public disputes,” end. I think I hear him already stirring and inquir- In this new world “honour” still mattered, Crouch writes. “Harmony within a community was ing for his children, the Indians; and when he does although not exactly the kind cultivated by French the ideal, and composure was paramount.” No one awake, what must become of you? He will destroy nobles. As Crouch indicates in her illuminating could have informed these Natives that much of you utterly.” book, a man’s reputation counted for everything this public quarrelling stemmed from Montcalm’s That was, of course, wishful thinking, but who in the borderlands of North America. Life there did constant desire for more “Europeanized forms of knew—perhaps these Frenchmen under the royal not permit the illusions fostered by Montcalm. But war,” according to Crouch. Among these forms white banner and still attached to the Catholic valour and intelligence did receive their reward of war were the aristocratic ethos of the Nobles. church had come to resume the intimate engage- in flourishing communities of mixed French and “They believed that how war was conducted and ment with war making and trading that had been Native American communities—until these com- how soldiers behaved should carry as much weight interrupted 20 years ago. No other Europeans had munities were destroyed by land-hungry American as the defense of France’s imperial borders,” she appeared to restore that intimate engagement. settlers in the 19th century.
Echo Soundings: Essays on Poetry and Poetics Jeffery Donaldson —available this October Also check out The Mystery Shopping Cart: Essays on Poetry and Culture by Anita Lahey, former editor of ARC Poetry Magazine —available now
www.palimpsestpress.ca
September 2014 reviewcanada.ca 9 Essay Saving Medicare As costs steadily rise, we need to build a healthcare system outside hospitals. Michael Decter
n the mid 1990s, when the government of Ontario was closing hospitals and laying Ioff nurses at a brisk pace, Saint Elizabeth Health Care, a leading homecare provider, was going around hiring as many laid-off “wound care specialists” as it could afford, thinking they might come in handy in the burgeoning field of home care. Wound care specialists are usually registered nurses specially trained to deal with the aftercare from surgeries; emergency procedures and such work had traditionally been done during a patient’s post-op stay in hospital. Saint Elizabeth, which had begun in 1908 with four nurses who visited Toronto patients on foot or by streetcar, initially imagined it would send its newly acquired staff out to patients’ homes, but soon realized that was not a very effi- cient strategy. So they rethought the process. Instead of having these wound care specialists— who are both expensive and highly skilled—visit six or eight patients a day, Saint Elizabeth set up wound care clinics. Many people who go home from hospi- tal with a wound are ambulatory. And even if they are not at first, they are ambulatory after a few days, universe includes at a minimum these six com- doctor, and most Canadians did, and you knew and capable of coming to see the follow-up spe- ponents: primary health care including family the location of your local hospital, you had a good cialists in a clinical setting. Clinics also mean that doctors, home care, community pharmacy, com- chance of getting excellent care or at least the best more patients can be seen per day. Saint Elizabeth munity paramedicare/ambulance, palliative care care available. operates 22 clinics that provided 113,000 wound and rehabilitation. Forty-five years later hospitals and doctors rep- care visits in 2013/14. In addition they provided I will discuss several of these components later resent less than 45 percent of total health spending. 598,510 homecare visits for wound care. Improved in this essay, but first, a little history. Drugs, home care, long-term care, public health, wound care in the community allows shorter hos- complex chronic care and a vast array of other pital lengths of stay and better patient outcomes. n the 1920s, Canadians had a life expectancy services make up the majority of health spend- The kind of innovative thinking and pioneering Iof 55 years. By the 1950s, life expectancy had ing in Canada. And the insurance to cover these work in this field that is being adopted by individ- increased to 65 years. Now, in 2014, life expectancy additional health services is a patchwork quilt. For uals and organizations across Canada is the mis- is well over 80 years of age. The challenge is that we example, 500,000 Canadians have no drug coverage sing answer to our country’s healthcare problems. are not living longer in perfect health. We are living either public or private. Improving the medical work and environment in longer—much longer than our grandparents and In the 1990s we shifted 80 percent of hospital hospitals is essential, but a combination of fac- our great grandparents—but we are living, in the surgery to day surgery. We did not follow the lead tors—primarily the aging of the population, the vast majority of cases, with one or more chronic of other developed countries that moved day sur- rise in chronic conditions and our slower-growth diseases and disabilities. Diabetes, asthma, heart gery out of hospitals. Now we need to revisit that economy—is forcing us to get serious about the disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease decision. other massive piece of the healthcare puzzle: out- (emphysema) are the worst and most prominent Many observers and experts who have studied of-hospital care. culprits. the Canadian healthcare system—most recently And by that term, I do not mean simply home The other part of the historical background in Don Drummond and Jeffrey Simpson—describe visits by nurses and doctors. The out-of-hospital Canada is this: what we proudly call Canadian it as somewhat expensive and not very efficient. medicare began as a public insurance program The basic principles of Canada’s medicare are not Michael Decter is the board chair of Patients for hospital services. The second step was public in doubt: access to care for the whole popula- Canada, Medavie Blue Cross and The Walrus insurance for doctor services. Both these steps were tion is a goal of every developed country including, Foundation. He has served as Ontario’s deputy supported by the Government of Canada through at long last, the United States. What, then, is the minister of health and chair of the Canadian 50/50 cost sharing. By paying hospitals and doctors problem? Institute for Health Information. He is the author through government, a genuine partnership was Recently the Canadian Institute for Health of Healing Medicare: Managing Health System established between the provinces, which had the Information published a study that underscored Change the Canadian Way (McGilligan Books, constitutional responsibility for health care, and the unevenness in Canadian healthcare delivery. 1996), Four Strong Winds: Understanding the the federal government, which had the money to It focused on efficiency and patient outcomes Growing Challenges to Health Care (Stoddart, allocate for health services. When this arrangement across all Canadian health regions. The study’s 2000) and the co-author with Francesca Grosso of was successfully achieved in the late 1960s, hospital conclusions—which even I, a veteran of the medi- Navigating Canada’s Health Care: A User’s Guide and doctor services represented more than 80 per- care wars, found startling—were that “if all health to Getting the Care You Need (Penguin, 2006). cent of all healthcare spending. If you had a family regions were able to maximize their efficiency,
10 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada U.S. Healthcare Costs fewer than 50 percent of people who call 911 are transported to hospital by ambulance. How does Community Hospital Emergency Percentage of Savings in Nova Scotia manage to do this? First of all, the Urgent Care Cost Room Cost Community Urgent Care paramedics have a skill level at which they can do Allergies $97 $345 72% some basic diagnosis, and, second, they can attach Acute bronchitis $127 $595 79% the patient to monitoring equipment, so that a Chronic bronchitis $114 $665 83% remote cardiologist or other specialist can read the same information he or she would be reading in Earache $110 $400 73% the emergency room. Pharyngitis $94 $525 82% Medavie Extended Care Paramedics (ECPs) are Pink eye $102 $370 72% also providing timely enhanced medical services Sinusitis $112 $617 82% in nursing homes; in 17 Nova Scotia long-term Strep throat $123 $531 77% care facilities, ECPs carried out 1,890 patient visits under the supervision of a physician collaborative. Upper respiratory infection $111 $486 77% Seventy-four percent were treated and released, Urinary tract infection $110 $665 83% 3 percent were immediately transported and Source: Medica Health Plans in 22 percent of cases transfers were facilitated. This is vastly better than a complete separation deaths due to treatable causes could be reduced cations for diabetes but little early intervention to of ambulance, where all cases are transported to 18% to 35%, on average. This translates to the limit the rapid growth of this disease. hospital as a matter of policy. This innovation has potential prevention of 12,600 to 24,500 premature Why do we need innovation in health service been recognized with national awards for leader- deaths in Canada per year, without incurring addi- delivery? Why do we need a robust out-of-hospital ship and innovation from the Institute of Public tional costs.” In other words, sustainability means healthcare system? Simply put, without such innov- Administration in Canada and Deloitte. moving healthcare delivery to the highest level of ation we will not sustain our health services. In addition to more highly skilled paramedics, efficiency that already exists. Better management Healthcare systems, it is necessary to point Medavie EMS added call centres to make outbound and governance, not a miracle cure, are needed. out, always seem unsustainable. If you take any calls (811) to patients, as well as receiving inbound Canadians rightly value their hospitals and view healthcare system at any point in time and you (911) calls from patients. In addition to their ambu- the blue “H” atop them as a beacon of health care project forward using the existing techniques, exist- lance duties, paramedics in Nova Scotia are staffing and hope. But hospitals do not hold the answer ing medications and existing surgical techniques emergency rooms of smaller hospitals and also to keeping our healthcare services sustainable. and match what we can do against the mounting undertaking homecare visits. Their ability to stabil- Many services ranging from day surgery to cataract burden of illness, you conclude that the system is ize patients is expanding the capacity of the out-of- surgery to urgent but not emergency care remain unsustainable. Yet we always innovate our way out hospital healthcare system. trapped in hospitals due to history and tradition. of this unsustainability. Sometimes it takes us a The inertia of collective agreements, the power of long time, during which the existing health system Home Care vested interests and the comfort voters derive from gets overwhelmed. Sometimes it happens faster. In Wound care, as noted above, is a central and dom- the presence of their nearby community hospital our parents’ generation there were many people inant activity of home care. Sixty percent of home- are all factors. who lost their life or had a withered limb from care visits involve wound care. What else can home The cost figures in the table above are from polio. Now, thanks to the Salk vaccine, it would care contribute to a robust out-of-hospital care? American health care. They show a vastly lower cost be very surprising in Canada to see a case of polio An early pioneer of home care in Canada, Evelyn of treating minor but urgent conditions in the out- and yet, in the 1940s, there was a legitimate fear Shapiro, understood that independent living would of-hospital setting. that polio would swamp our entire health system. enable seniors to avoid costly institutional care. She Canadian costs are not available but the per- In the 1990s, HIV/AIDS had the same overwhelm- convinced the Manitoba government to introduce centage saving would likely be in line with the ing effect. Although no vaccine has yet emerged, a province-wide homecare service in 1974. Shapiro American numbers. And these costs in Canada will medications have converted HIV/AIDS to a largely also understood that to remain in their homes low- cause a needed pressure to move more minor ser- manageable “chronic” disease. income seniors needed help with minor repairs vices out of hospital. and renovations. That was built into the system. A We need to focus on building our out-of-hospital o what are some of these innovations that stand generation of Manitoba seniors benefitted greatly healthcare system. And the encouraging factor Sa good chance of making the Canadian system by remaining in their homes and receiving the care here, as the CIHI study underlines, is that many of sustainable? they needed. Taxpayers benefited from a less costly the necessary elements to accomplish this already program than institutional long-term care. exist. It is largely a challenge of reforming and Community Paramedicine Following in Shapiro’s innovative footsteps, reimagining the role of existing health services and Is anyone innovating their way out of the incredible Michelle Todoruk-Orchard of the Winnipeg Health focusing on meeting patients’ needs in their homes pressure on emergency rooms these days? I would Authority leads a nurse-led homecare and clinic and communities. say yes. The innovator I have in mind is George team dealing with wound care. Their focus is treat- When Tommy Douglas set out to publicly insure McLellan, former president and CEO of Medavie ing post-operative wounds such as Caesarean sec- first hospital services and then physician services EMS, which operates the ambulance services in tion incisions, pressure ulcers, diabetic foot ulcers a decade later, he had a simple goal. He wanted to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward and venous leg ulcers. Their seven-day-a-week remove the financial barriers between those need- Island. According to McLellan, Medavie is not program has provided many patients with excellent ing care and those providing care. Decades later an ambulance company; it is an out-of-hospital care without a return to hospital. Douglas described what still needed to be done: healthcare service. A third area of essential homecare activity is “Phase number two would be the much more diffi- In Don Drummond’s recent study of Ontario end-of-life care. The vast majority of Canadians cult one and that was to alter our delivery system to government spending, he recommended that would like to die at home. Meeting this deeply held reduce costs and put an emphasis on preventative Ontario should adopt what he called the “Nova desire requires pain management in the home medicine.” Medicare’s founder wrote that in 1979, Scotia model,” essentially what Medavie has done. provided through homecare nurses. Absent qual- but in fact we are only beginning to face up to his It began with reimagining what one could do with ity care in the home, the burden on families and phase-two challenge today. an ambulance paramedic, if that paramedic had patients is too much for them to bear and hospital- If we try to cope with the rising tide of chronic more training and could handle a certain level of ization results. disease in our hospitals, the quality of care will crisis, and possibly would not have to drive every decline, costs will skyrocket and our hospitals patient to the hospital emergency room. St. John’s Pharmacies will be overwhelmed. There is already a mountain Ambulance is known for training volunteers but it Another place where innovation is expanding the of evidence that we are intervening at the final also provides training to professional paramedics. role of out-of-hospital care is in your local drug- stages of chronic disease, not early on when man- McLellan bought the St. John’s Ambulance train- store, but not without a sometimes fierce tug-of- agement is possible. We are becoming very efficient ing operation in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, war. The power struggle between physicians and at replacing hip and knee joints worn out by an and was able to start training advanced paramedics pharmacists has centuries of history. In England epidemic of obesity. We have expensive new medi- to a higher skill level. Now in parts of Nova Scotia, these battles took the legal route and, in extreme
September 2014 reviewcanada.ca 11 cases, physicians smashed the shops of apothecar- Palliative Care such as proper funding for hospice and negative ies who they believed were dispensing dangerous A fully developed and properly funded palliative attitudes about death with dignity. treatments to patients. For more than a century care system is an essential element of the out-of- doctors dominated this field but the role of the hospital healthcare system. More than 80 percent of here are nervous times ahead for Canada’s pharmacy is once again expanding, largely because Canadians surveyed would prefer to end their life in Thealthcare system. The reduced Canada of the time pressure on physicians and the primary the comfort of their own home. Yet most Canadians Health Transfer due to take effect in 2017/18 will care system. still die in the discomfort of hospitals. This failure to force more efficiency across the country, although Pharmacies of today would astonish doctors of meet the final wishes of patients is not only unfair; the 2015 federal election could change things. As even a few decades ago. The range of medicines it is also extremely expensive. Palliative care is far proposed by the Harper government, the reduced both over the counter and prescription, the level better organized in Europe and even in the United transfer will cut in half what provinces have been of information technology, and the diagnostic States. Aetna’s Compassionate Care (Palliative) receiving. The increase will fall from 6 percent per tests and equipment available exceed those of a Program has achieved 82 percent reductions in year to a formula based on GDP growth with a guar- small hospital at the outset of Canadian medicare. inpatient hospital bed use at end of life and 77 per- anteed increase of only 3 percent. Provinces will be Filling prescriptions and advising patients on how cent reductions in emergency room visits. forced to flatten provider pay and find major econ- to use them is only a part of what omies. The fiscal pressures requiring pharmacies do today. Vaccinations our health care to live within a slower are being offered for the flu by many Pharmacies of today would astonish growth path will not abate. They are pharmacies. The blood pressure cuff deeply rooted in our demographics. has become ubiquitous in Canadian doctors of even a few decades ago. Canada urgently needs to build dispensaries, so people can keep an a much more robust out-of-hospital eye on their own BP levels. Prescription renewal When Doctors’ Hospital was closed in down- system to meet the current and expanding demands by pharmacists eliminates the need for repeated town Toronto in 1997, an innovative entrepreneur of an aging population. Fortunately, major com- physician visits. In several Canadian provinces named Brian MacFarlane built a community health ponents of the needed system already exist and pharmacists are reimbursed for reviewing medi- centre, palliative care centre and surgical services are being made more effective through innovation cations. This is particularly important when our out of its remains. Dubbed the Kensington Health and the leadership of pioneers. Taken together, over-65 population averages five or six medications Centre, it runs a first-class hospice, with tangible reworked primary care, home care, telemedicine, each, dramatically increasing chances for error or benefits for its own end-of-life patients and for the pharmaceutical services and an expanded role for adverse drug interaction. patients now able to access freed-up beds in paramedics form a viable foundation. Increasingly It is true that in the old days a woman could the city’s other hospitals. And the Windsor branch scarce healthcare dollars need to go to services, not buy a pregnancy test at her local drugstore (or a of Saint Elizabeth Health Care has expanded in- to layers of bureaucracy imposed on top of service more distant one if she had reasons for keeping the home end-of-life pain management to the extent delivery. What is needed are passionate, vision- information strictly private). Now pharmacies also that 80 percent of its patients are able to die, as they ary leaders and a willingness on the part of health sell a whole range of diagnostic tools from digital wished, at home. care’s stewards—both financial and regulatory—to thermometers to diabetes test strips. The pharmacy Palliative is a crucial piece of the puzzle and facilitate transformation, not to block it. Only with with wide distribution and proximity to population much more innovation in this area needs to be a transformed approach to health service delivery is a well-located centre for diagnostic and self-care encouraged and funded. However, there is a great will medicare be sustained for our children and support. deal of inertia and many obstacles to be overcome, grandchildren.
FASCINATING STORIES AND HISTORIES… MALCOLM LOWRY XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX IN BALLAST TO XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX THE WHITE SEA XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX A Scholarly Edition XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX A Novel by Malcolm Lowry XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX EDITED AND WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY PATRICK A. MCCARTHY ANNOTATIONS BY CHRIS ACKERLEY FOREWORD BY VIK DOYEN, MIGUEL MOTA AND PAUL TIESSEN N ALS OTEWIE SEA TO BALLAST WHITE THE IN XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
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In Ballast to the White Sea Death Sentences Petun to Wyandot: The Ontario Old Man’s Playing Ground: By Malcolm Lowry By Suzanne Myre Petun from the Sixteenth Century Gaming and Trade on the Plains/ A Critical Edidion Translated from French (Canada) By Charles Garrad; Edited by Plateau Frontier Edited, with Introduction and Textual Notes, by Cassidy Hildebrand Jean-Luc Pilon and William Fox By Gabriel M. Yanicki; by Patrick A. McCarthy; Annotations by Wry, witty, touching, and refreshing, with The turbulent history of the Wyandot tribe, With contributions by Allan Pard, Chris Ackerley; Foreword by Vik Doyen, unpredictable plots and quirky characters who the First Nation once known as the Petun. Henry Holloway and Art Calling Last Miguel Mota, and Paul Tiessen cope with death in their own curious ways, Beginning with the tribe’s first encounters Games as a way of making peace. This is what The first-ever edition of In Ballast to the White Death Sentences is the first translation of Mises with French explorer Samuel de Champlain in the Napi, or Old Man, taught various nations Sea, the autobiographical novel by Malcolm à mort, the fifth short story collection from 1616, Charles Garrad’s unique work traces their in southern Alberta and what Hudson’s Bay Lowry, known to most only through the critically acclaimed French-Canadian author route from their creation myth to their living Company surveyor came across in 1792. highly romanticized story of its loss in a fire. Suzanne Myre. descendants scattered from southwestern In fact, the typescript itself has probably Ontario to Kansas and Oklahoma. been read by at most a dozen people since Lowry scholars learned that it was deposited at the New York Public Library. www.Press.uOttawa.ca Facebook.com/uOttawaPress Twitter.com/uOttawaPress
12 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada What Remains Remembering Palestine with love and sadness. Ayah Victoria McKhail
the Palestinians were demanding that the British of the Palestinians and it means “The Catastrophe.”) The Bells of Memory: suspend Jewish immigration and begin negotia- Expressing his agony, he writes, “I saw the Nakba A Palestinian Boyhood in Jerusalem tions to form a national government for Palestine. eat away at my country, destroy the fabric of my Issa J. Boullata A sense of solidarity was palpable as all Arab shops society, and disperse my people in different dir- Linda Leith Publishing were closed; all Arab buses and trucks had ground ections as Israel rose to become a new nation, a 87 pages, softcover to a halt; all Arab workers refrained from unloading Jewish state, immediately recognized by the US and ISBN 9781927535394 shipments of imports and loading cargoes for other countries, while the truncated remnants of export; and all Arab trading had ceased. Palestine languished in disarray.” Shortages of staples such as rice, bulgur, lentils As I read that, I was struck by the sense of power- escribed as “a love letter to and flour were ubiquitous and accessible food was lessness and regret that Boullata describes, which Jerusalem,” the historically significantThe scarce. As Boullata recalls, seems to echo Edward Said’s 1979 manifesto, The DBells of Memory: A Palestinian Boyhood in Question of Palestine: “the fact of the matter is that Jerusalem chronicles the life of some- today Palestine does not exist, except one raised in the holy city during the Boullata’s memoir recalls the as a memory or, more importantly, as period of political upheaval that led an idea, a political and human experi- to the establishment of Israel and the harmonious relations that existed ence, and an act of sustained popular dispossession of the Palestinians fol- will.” lowing the end of the British Mandate amongst Jerusalem’s inhabitants, even Boullata explains that he was for Palestine on May 14, 1948. The unwillingly made into a person with- title itself is evocative of a city where in times of adversity. out a country and that he has been the Palestinian presence continues to forced to bear the consequences diminish, yet where ringing reminders of a distant once in a while, a butcher appeared in our of this reality until the present day. For example, past remain ubiquitous, in this case, for an octogen- neighbourhood, slaughtered a sheep clandes- as a result of Al-Nakba, he notes that more than arian who now calls Montreal home. tinely deep in Karm Karimeh, a grove of olive one million Palestinians sought refuge outside of Writing in eloquent prose, Issa Boullata’s trees on the incline by the main road next to Palestine. In his case, while some members of his heartfelt recollections of his formative years are our home, hung the carcass on a tree, and was extended family fled to the West Bank, others built vivid. As the eldest of six children, he describes his swarmed by neighbours wanting to buy fresh new lives for themselves in Jordan, Egypt, America childhood in a loving, patriarchal and Orthodox meat; he had to finish his business quickly and Canada, leaving behind all they had lost, their Christian household with parents who did their before he was discovered by the roving livelihoods, homes, lands and properties. Boullata utmost to shield their children from any feelings of members of the “national committees” who himself stayed in the Christian Quarter of the Old insecurity amid the climate of fear that prevailed. enforced the strike. City, working as an accountant and studying law, A gleeful child, Boullata was an earnest and going abroad to study Arabic in London, returning shrewd pupil. He reminisces about the sense of Despite the tension, Boullata continued to to Jerusalem and eventually leaving for good in wonderment he experienced on his first day at attend school. In fact, the most profound memory 1968, a year after the Six-Day War. Thawri Elementary School for Boys and Girls, he cherishes from his days at Thawri School for Unsurprisingly, Boullata found his calling in which was situated in a predominantly Muslim Boys and Girls is that around eight years of age, he academia; first as a professor of Arabic and Islamic neighbourhood atop a mountain. It was an autumn succeeded in reading his first book from cover to studies at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut and day in 1934 and his teacher had just prompted cover in one sitting. Entitled Al-Dajaja al-Saghira then in Montreal, where he was a professor of the students to recite the first prayer in the Quran, al-Hamra’ (The Little Red Hen), it signified the Arabic literature and Quranic Studies at McGill Al-Fatiha (The Opening), which they did in uni- beginning of a lifelong passion for literature. University from 1975 to 1999. He continued post- son. Boullata quickly realized the words he was Boullata grew up to be a voracious reader and retirement teaching until 2004. Of his siblings, two hearing were of a prayer different from the Lord’s developed an insatiable thirst for knowledge, live in London, one lives in Berlin, and although Prayer, which he had been taught at home by his delighting in his interactions with his teachers and one passed away in Bethesda, Maryland, another parents and was accustomed to dutifully repeating fellow classmates, many of whom he would often remains there. Successful lives, perhaps, but this at daybreak and nightfall. Nevertheless, he learned vie with in class when questions were being posed. poignant memoir illuminates an experience that Al-Fatiha and began reciting it aloud with his fellow As a high school student at the Collège des is shared amongst generations of Palestinians—of classmates. It is an anecdote that characterizes the Frères, which is an international Catholic teach- identity and, undeniably, of loss and exile. pluralistic nature of Jerusalem’s society at the time, ing order, faith continued to play a fundamental In the preface, Boullata writes that the experien- in addition to the harmonious relations that existed role in Boullata’s life. “As far as I could in my boy- ces in his book speak of the city he has loved infin- amongst its inhabitants, even in times of adversity. hood,” he writes, “I clung to my Orthodoxy, with itely and will love to the end of his days. Moreover, For example, during the 1936–39 Arab revolt, my parents’ guidance, and I attended the Divine based on the premise that he is deeply rooted in which took place across Palestine against the Liturgy at the Cathedral of Mar Ya’coub (St. James) Jerusalem, readers are given a rare glimpse into a British Mandate, Boullata recounts how a general near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, on the Palestine that has in a sense long been gone, but strike, which began in April 1936 and lasted for Sundays when I had no school, especially during has not been forgotten, despite the passage of time six months, brought life to a standstill. At the time, the summer holidays. This cathedral was the main and the current intractability that defines Israeli- parish church of the Arab Orthodox community of Palestinian relations to the present day. Ayah Victoria McKhail is a Toronto-based freelance Jerusalem to which my family belonged.” Ultimately, this is a hauntingly beautiful account writer with a post-graduate degree in journal- Boullata was 19 years of age when Al-Nakba of the bells of memory that still toll for so many ism from Ryerson University. Her main interest is occurred in 1948. (This is the Arabic term that refers Palestinians wherever they may find themselves on Middle Eastern politics. to the establishment of Israel and the dispossession this earth.
September 2014 reviewcanada.ca 13 Storm Warnings Cloud computing’s hidden environmental and human costs. Tom Slee
To the Cloud: Big Data in a Turbulent World Vincent Mosco Paradigm Publishers 272 pages, softcover ISBN 9781612056166
he computer industry generates buzzwords faster than an extroverted T20-year-old sends status updates, and “the cloud” is one of the more evocative ones. It is where your digital music, photos, e-books and personal documents live (or will live). No longer stored on a computer in a corner of the living room, Amazon and Apple and Microsoft now keep your stuff for you so that it can be fetched over the internet when- ever you need it, right to whichever device you are using. It is the infrastructure that lets people flit from smartphone to tablet to e-reader to personal computer and have access to their data wherever they are. To mix metaphors, there is a second string to the cloud’s bow. Amazon has always seen itself as a technology company rather than a bookseller, and was the first to grasp that it could make a com- mercial offering out of the infrastructure it uses to run its own global business. The last few years have seen a huge growth in major companies renting out access to computing resources in the form of indi- eal clouds are nebulous and fuzzy, and the thousands of computers while consuming “more vidual computers as well as databases, messaging Rmetaphor suggests that you do not need to power than a medium-sized town.” And of course services, large-scale permanent data storage, and worry about the concrete details of where and how they are getting bigger all the time. Mosco high- more. all this computing is happening. But Vincent Mosco lights Chinese company Baidu, which is investing Amazon’s computers rent out for less than does worry, and the theme of To the Cloud: Big Data $1.6 billion to build the world’s largest data centre, 10 cents per hour, so computations demanding in a Turbulent World is the gap between the digital where 700,000 computer chips will work tirelessly thousands of computers have become widely promise (what Mosco calls “the digital sublime”) in a building the size of 15 football fields, making affordable for the first time. I am an occasional (and and reality. it one of the largest buildings in the world by some not expert) user of these services and like many Mosco focuses on three “dark clouds” of the measures. And that is just phase one. others have come away marvelling at the power industry. One of those is the gap between our image Locating these massive projects is becoming a that is on offer for pennies at a time. of a pristine post-industrial technological world political issue. Companies search far and wide for Amazon’s cloud services are now a big business and the environmental reality. The cloud metaphor the right location and drive hard bargains to get in their own right. Its cloud data centres are relied evokes an ethereal alternative to grimy industrial cheap rates for power and water (for cooling) in on by many of this generation of start-ups, and technologies. No forests are harmed in the making return for their often much-needed investment. ironically have been used by both Wikileaks and the an e-book; no exhaust-spewing trucks are needed Rural locations with plentiful water and a cold cli- CIA. They are even used by competitors such as to deliver email. But cloud computing does have its mate have obvious appeal, and Canada is becom- Netflix, whose movies are streamed from Amazon’s own massive industrial infrastructure, even if most ing a popular destination. computers. While Amazon remains several lengths of us never see it. It has energy-intensive data cen- As Mosco describes, the tensions do not stop ahead of the field, Microsoft, Google and others tres, power-hungry computer networks, sprawling when the building is complete. Locals do not are spending massively on their cloud services to warehouses and a global workforce of millions who appreciate clouds of black smoke from diesel- catch up. mine exotic minerals, assemble our gadgets and powered backup generators, and companies deliver online orders to our door. haggle over contract disputes and fines. While Tom Slee has worked in the software industry for Mosco starts with the “cloud” itself: the build- some data centres run on renewable energy 20 years. He has been invited to contribute on ings where our data is stored. The size of today’s sources, Greenpeace has been leading efforts to questions of technology and politics for numerous data centres is startling. The largest are run by the “name and shame” companies with data centres publications and conferences. big internet companies and house hundreds of that run on fossil fuels. This is a story that will
14 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada become more important in the coming years. nology book (although Simon Head does cover Business’s move to the cloud is not without Unfortunately, Mosco skims over the many overlapping ground in his recent Mindless: Why consequences—retail companies will gather social advances in data centre design and efficiency, Smarter Machines Are Making Dumber Humans). media data and mine it in targeted marketing from plumbing to power distribution to low-power Mosco highlights the conflicts arising around these efforts for example—but it is playing second fiddle. servers. These improvements lead proponents to new labour forces in one of the best parts of the The consumer world is, if anything, driving the claim that moving computing activity into cloud book—the militancy of Chinese labour and the rise business computing world in what is called, to use data centres cuts overall energy use, so major data of an international trade unionism are particularly another buzzword, “the consumerization of IT.” centre companies position themselves as friends of striking. The outcome of these conflicts may shape the environment. how technology’s role evolves. As with his environ- ore on target is the material on privacy and Mosco’s concern is with the other side of the mental concerns, raising these issues is a timely Mrelated concerns, the third of Mosco’s dark efficiency coin: as computing gets cheaper, low reminder of continuity: old issues such as labour clouds and also the subject of his final chapter. prices drive increasing demand. Put the exploding standards are resurfacing in new guises. All that data about our location, our habits, our power consumption together with the consumer interests, is collected in those data centres, and side (charging all our gizmos, and the increasing ot all Mosco’s subject choices are so for- the collectors find it irresistible to do things with it, power demands of always-on devices) as well as Ntunate. He devotes significant space to the whether it is selling it to advertisers or, in the case the power needed to deliver all that data over the language referring to the cloud. He investigates of the National Security Agency’s very own cloud networks themselves, and Mosco data centre in Utah, using it for sur- says the computing landscape will veillance. consume 30 percent of the world’s Mosco highlights Chinese company Beyond the whole issue of surveil- electrical grid in eight years’ time, and Baidu, which is building the lance, Mosco fears the way that cloud 45 percent within 20 years. computing brings with it particular What will happen to overall power world’s largest data centre, where ways of knowing, which are now consumption as the tug-of-war con- collected under the umbrella of Big tinues between efficiency gains and 700,000 computer chips will work Data. Mosco is concerned with a increasing demand? Or the similar growing “digital positivism,” with the tension between the efficiency of tirelessly in a building the size of consequence that “large data sets and sharing computing resources among massive computational power will … many users and the requirements 15 football fields. replace narrative with correlation and that those resources be continuously … ask only or mainly those questions powered on, ready for use at all hours of every day? the selling and marketing of cloud offerings, and that big data can handle.” He sees this happening Mosco is explicit about his critical agenda, set- takes us through a reflection on the cloud as meta- in public policy, in business and in academia too, ting out to highlight “the major problems associated phor, from Aristophanes’ comedy The Clouds to a where the “digital humanities” and social media with cloud computing.” He sees cloud computing as guide for 14th-century monks called The Cloud of data analysis threaten to displace more established “a prism through which to view problems facing Unknowing to David Mitchell’s novel Cloud Atlas. techniques and approaches. societies confronting the turbulent world of infor- The material is original, but for me it gives Probably the most widely read introduction mation technology.” In tackling the environmental too much weight to the metaphor. Despite the to Big Data is a 2013 book of the same name by story behind our sleek new computers, Mosco occasional foray into mainstream advertising Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Kenneth Cukier. raises an important issue, not widely discussed in (the book’s title comes from a Microsoft TV ad), They claim that today’s huge data sets are often a a trade book format. If he does not convince me “cloud computing” remains mainly an industry substitute for traditional data collection and analy- that, as he quotes one power industry consultant, phrase. Internet companies try to sell us on the sis. They also argue that, even if correlation is not “it’s just not sustainable. They’re going to hit a brick services they offer, not the infrastructure behind causation, a focus on correlation is good enough for wall,” he does at least convince me that there are it. Mosco’s take is that the cloud metaphor is used many purposes. problems here that will be the site of struggles and to sell an aspirational future, but more often than For example, when Walmart looked through conflict in the coming years, and that makes the not such considerations are not mentioned at all in its sales data it found that shoppers would stock book a valuable contribution to the debate. consumer advertising. Although he claims that “the up on Pop-Tarts just before a storm. The authors The scale of today’s computing infrastructure cloud is an enormously powerful metaphor, argu- argue that it is not so important to understand why is new, but the inspirations behind cloud comput- ably the most important developed in the short his- people do this, just that they do, and Walmart takes ing have a history that Mosco, a sociologist with a tory of the IT world,” it may already be falling from advantage of the knowledge by displaying Pop- long career studying these developments, recounts favour to be replaced by “Big Data” (of which more Tarts conveniently near the checkout when a storm ably. One vision is of computing as a utility, like below), the “Internet of Things” and more. is forecast. Other prominent examples of Big Data gas or electricity, accessible where you want it and In his take on marketing and selling the cloud, analysis are Google’s use of a massive corpus of when you need it. Another is the promise of cen- Mosco focuses on the world of business comput- translated texts (instead of sophisticated grammat- tral planning made possible by smart algorithms ing: the information technology departments and ical analysis) in its machine translations, and the and ubiquitous data collection. Not surprisingly, computer systems that companies use to run their same company’s 2009 prediction of flu incidence in these visions have socialist origins: the USSR, the accounting, human resources, supply chain and so North American cities from the flu-related search cybernetics project of Allende’s Chile and France’s on. He is interested in the way industry analysts and queries that users submit. Minitel service. It is ironic that these visions are others push companies to move their operations These claims are provoking significant pushback now being realized by private industry. from their own data centres to the cloud—basic- from social scientists, and Mosco joins in with an ally, to outsource and automate their IT operations. effective critique, especially on the dangers of spur- he world of work is the second of Mosco’s dark And he is concerned with the possible “demise of IT ious correlations and overfitting. His arguments are Tclouds. The workforce of modern computing labor” if these efforts are successful. bolstered by the fact that the Google flu experiment goes far beyond highly paid programmers in mod- I should acknowledge here that my employer is a has succumbed to these problems: in more recent ern, light-filled buildings. The 1.4 million employ- large company that supplies business software and years its predictions of flu incidence were way off. ees of Chinese gadget-maker Foxconn are nothing that is mentioned three times in this book (views As political scientist David Lazer has written, “the if not an industrial workforce, and there is nothing expressed here are, of course, my own). But I am not initial version of [Google Flu Trends] was part flu green about the mining of tin and tungsten, gold here to defend the practices of business comput- detector, part winter detector.” and tantalum, which are welded into our integrated ing. I share To the Cloud’s suspicions about where As a broad critique of the technological tide circuits. Amazon’s warehouses are gaining reputa- digital technology is taking us. No, Mosco’s focus from a sceptical standpoint I did prefer Astra tions to match Walmart’s superstores as low-wage in these sections misses the bull’s-eye because Taylor’s The People’s Platform: And Other Digital and high-pressure workplaces. There is even a new personal computing, rather than business comput- Delusions, reviewed in these pages a couple of precarious workforce in the shape of a freelance ing, has been setting the pace. Business computing months ago. But despite its shortcomings, To the contracting landscape where individuals can hire demands the patching together of complex and dis- Cloud is a valuable contribution to digital debates, themselves out over a website to carry out more or parate systems around the world in an environment and Mosco’s decision to highlight emerging labour less menial tasks. with little room for error (accounts must balance, and environmental conflicts in the world of cloud Again, these are uncommon topics for a tech- sales transactions must be recorded). computing promises to be farsighted.
September 2014 reviewcanada.ca 15 L.M.M. Sunday Candy
Take down Volume II, the last years when she was happy. Those mornings in bed you pray The tiny woman in the pince-nez, the veiled black hat, somehow they’ll let you stay home: black gloves, and a smartly tailored suit stares out at the then you think of the moment reader. Her thoughts, too, were veiled: from her husband, Sunday school ends, those fifteen minutes her congregation, her readers, who expected only sunshine before the grown-ups sing their final hymn — from their favourite writer. Only in her journals could she how you’ll run across the street let off steam, as if she were a volcano about to erupt, words to the tiny candy store (there’s one flowing from her pen like molten tears. across from every church) and give half the offering your father She wished for an hour out of the past, a time when she pressed into your hand was happy but didn’t know it. She wished to go back to to the old agnostic behind the counter. Park Corner, when she was still young and hopeful: before her father died, her husband fell into madness, Frede died, This is money for God. and the world changed. But your religion’s the faith of candy — so you give it to the old man still She wrote about that hour out of the past, turning back in his slippers and bathrobe. to a time when the world seemed safe, before motor cars, Miraculously, each weekend, this world wars, madness, death. She gave her readers marriage second allowance has arrived: in the final chapter, the happy-ever-after ending. you’ve made a choice, stolen half the tithe, now stand pointing out She wrote about marriage failures, war, despair, madness, chocolates and licorice death. The anger we carry in our bones because life cheats behind finger-smudged sheets of glass. us, steals what we hold most dear, gives us back our dreams He crams them in a small brown paper bag. with tarnished corners. The secrets we never reveal. You cram them down your gullet Katherine Cameron before the long ride home.
Riding a sugar-rush all the way, a delicious ride home from church: in the back-seat, the blood in your veins thickly renewed, and yes, yes, riding the sweet rapture of sin.
Michael Pacey
Katherine Cameron teaches English and writing at Concordia Michael Pacey lives in his hometown of Fredericton. University College in Edmonton. Her first collection of poetry, Signature Editions published his full-length collec- Strange Labyrinth, will be published by Oolichan Books in October tion, The First Step, in spring 2011. “Sunday Candy” 2014. She is currently reading Richard Greene’s Boxing the Compass is from his next collection, Electric Affinities, to be and Voices from the Asylum: Four French Women Writers, 1850– published in spring 2015 by Signature. His poems 1920 by Susannah Wilson. have appeared in many Canadian literary periodic- als, such as the Malahat Review, The New Quarterly, Exile, Prairie Fire, Descant and The Fiddlehead. He is working on a collection of poems inspired by H.D. Thoreau’s Journal, titled “Nature Is My Bride.” He is currently reading Ringing Here and There: A Nature Calendar by Brian Bartlett and Crimes Against My Brother by David Adams Richards.
16 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Carried Away Growth
Hendon, the prairie village where my father bought grain, Flora violates nourishing soil, where my mother groused at the wood stove while I squirmed thrusts in roots that blunder deeper, at the kitchen table, all the good pictures done shove away pith to make path in my colouring book. I needed to go to school. until a shudder and collapse “Next year,” she said, “when we move to the city.” or one rogue root extruding Would we have a car then, I wondered, from its flesh a solo blossom something to ride us away to a lake, a river, bucks the fragile plan. a city park with monkey bars and a paddling pool? When my mother tucked me in for the night Instruments of darkness she drew her chair close to my bed, her voice toil in thick dirt. hardly a whisper as she told of the skyhorse Predators of root and bedrock that would land by my window, its giant wings burrow underfoot. settling and folding, its saddle glazed by moonglow Traveller, beware: and empty, ’til my foot hit the stirrup and I hoisted the patch of earth your boot imprinted myself onto his back, his wings lifting, hovers on pockets of nil. and we rose over the village, the prairie stretching farther than I’d ever seen, dark Peter Norman shelterbelts and sloughs gleaming with moonlight, scattered farm houses, kerosene lamps in their windows. Stars surrounding us, I gripped the reins, his mane in my face and the cool night air, his shoulders heaving, wings rising and plunging as I fell slowly to sleep. I knew it could happen. Anything could happen now. The next day I climbed to the kitchen counter, stretched for the mason jar on the top shelf, reached and had it. Took what I was daily forbidden to touch. I walked away from the village, started the fire that spread, fanned by giant wings, smoke rolling, wind driving the flames back toward Hendon.
Robert Currie
Robert Currie lives in Moose Jaw, where he taught high school English Peter Norman is the author of two collec- for 30 years, where he once edited Salt, and from where, during the tions of poetry, At the Gates of the Theme years 2007 to 2010, he travelled Saskatchewan as the province’s third Park (Mansfield Press, 2010) and Water poet laureate. His most recent book is the novel, Living with the Hawk Damage (Mansfield Press, 2013), with a (Thistledown, 2013). His next book of poems, The Days Run Away, will third forthcoming in 2015 from Icehouse. His be published by Coteau in 2015. He is currently reading Sun under first novel, Emberton, was published this Wood by Robert Hass and God Telling a Joke, and Other Stories by year by Douglas and McIntyre. He is reading Dave Margoshes. Telegraph Avenue, by Michael Chabon, and Broom Broom, by Brecken Hancock.
September 2014 reviewcanada.ca 17 In the Nobel Archives, with Crackpots Harry Karlinsky’s playful second novel teases the reader. J.C. Sutcliffe
owner. Florence loves the stones, both sentiment- metafiction?), this novel charms with its games The Stonehenge Letters ally and intellectually (the fictional Florence writes and connections. To the uninitiated, the topic Harry Karlinsky a book called A Sentimental and Practical Guide to or the prose might sound dense, but Karlinsky’s Coach House Books Stonehenge, as did the real Florence), and Nobel writing, already lively, makes good use of quirky 253 pages, softcover falls for her. tangential detail: “After a second Lanchester [car] ISBN 9781552452943 This fictional relationship is intriguing: Freud proved as unreliable as the first, Kipling bought a would find plenty to say about Karlinsky’s desire to German-built Daimler, which he named Gunhilda.” pair up Nobel with a more suitable woman, albeit The footnote to this sentence turns out to be a list arry Karlinsky likes a good mys- at an unreachable distance (Florence is married of the names of all Kipling’s other cars. Elsewhere tery. In his first book, The Evolution and safely across the sea; they never meet again Karlinsky displays one of his flashes of humour: Hof Inanimate Objects: The Life and although they correspond). As our narrator reads Collected Works of Thomas Darwin (1857–1879), through the letters between the pair, it becomes It was decided that any unanswered question he wrote about the youngest son of Charles, who clear that the five crackpot letters are related to a concerning Stonehenge would be viewed as a was unknown to history until Karlinsky, clinical deathbed promise Alfred made to Florence to offer legitimate “mystery” for solution…: professor of psychiatry at the University of British a prize to the person who could solve the puzzle of —Who built Stonehenge? Columbia, discovered both his existence and the Stonehenge. —When was Stonehenge built? reason for his being hidden: severe mental delu- In the first half of the novel Karlinsky combines —How was Stonehenge built? sions that caused him to apply his father’s theory biographical details, legal and executorial pro- —Why was Stonehenge built? of evolution to cutlery. So convinced was Thomas cesses, and quotations from Freud (some of which, —What did Stonehenge represent? that cutlery was subject to natural selection that he Karlinsky points out in the acknowledgements, There was one awkward moment. When submitted papers about his theories to the science were actually said by other people) to create a con- Sjöberg [one of the three committee mem- journal Nature. He ended his days in an asylum. vincing, and surprisingly interesting, second nar- bers] suggested that Where Stonehenge was Now in his new book, The Stonehenge Letters, rative frame. The submissions themselves, all from built might also be considered a “mystery,” it Karlinsky has uncovered another puzzle. In Sweden Nobel laureates, form the next level of the story. was initially assumed he was either joking or to research why Sigmund Freud never won the Ivan Pavlov is first to respond, with perhaps the introducing a nuanced consideration to the Nobel Prize despite multiple nominations, he soon most unconventional solution: determine the age discussion. Regrettably, neither assumption learns that someone else has already tracked down of Stonehenge by means of earthworms. Kipling’s would prove correct. the answer. However, the Nobel archive yields appearance is well orchestrated, with his vague other treasures: the knäppskalle (or crackpot) submission to the committee comprising a won- In The Evolution of Inanimate Objects, the “joke” file—unsolicited nominations for the prizes, many derfully wide-eyed pastiche of Puck of Pook’s Hill: is that by intelligently applying perfectly logical from individuals apparently suffering from psychi- reasoning to the evolution of cutlery, Thomas atric illness. Thinking he might fruitfully pursue a “Was it the Druids who brought the stones Darwin demonstrates the full extent of his mental psychopathological investigation into their symp- here to Amesbury?” asked Dan. “Was it their delusions. His theory is so absurd yet deeply satis- toms, Karlinsky begins a systematic study of the file, magic that did it?” fying the reader almost wishes it could be true. only to have his interest snagged by five letters with “It must have been magic,” said Puck, The newer novel works less coherently as its own two things in common: all but one are written by “magic more powerful and black than a thou- self-contained world since the “solutions” to the Nobel laureates, and all relate to solving the mys- sand Merlins could conjure. But I was a wee mystery of Stonehenge feel too plausible, and are tery of Stonehenge. thing then and did not see it done. Not even slightly undermined by the inclusion of Lockyer’s In fact, everything I have written so far is only I know the story of the stones.” theory, which he had actually proposed. Ultimately partly true. Both books are actually novels, linked the second narrative frame—the correspond- by their exploration of the boundary between stor- Next up is Theodore Roosevelt, who requests ence, the biographical details, and the setting up ies and fact in terms psychiatric, historical and funding for an expedition to demonstrate both the and judging of the prize—rather than the solutions literary. The narrator of The Stonehenge Letters—not origin and the transportation method of the stones, to the mystery is the best part of this whimsical and in fact Karlinsky, but an unnamed retired psychia- followed by Marie Curie, whose proposal involves intelligent novel. trist—is intrigued by the link between the Nobel using the newly discovered technique of radiomet- It is almost a shame to try to work out the seams Prize crackpots and Stonehenge. Reading through ric dating. between fact and fiction; there is an undeniable the files and correspondence, he learns that Alfred The fifth solution, proposed by Norman Lockyer pleasure in spotting the connections Karlinsky Nobel himself connected the two. After sketch- (coincidentally, also the founder of Nature. quietly inserts, as well as a few his subconscious ing out Alfred’s disappointments in love and his Coincidence? Freud would not have believed that slips in (the correspondence between Karlinsky propensity to fall for unsuitable women, Karlinsky for a minute), is instantly filed in the knäppskalle and the Nobel-awarding Karolinksa Institutet is invents a further love affair. Needing land in without even making it to the prize committee’s intriguing), but there is also a joy in indulging one’s England to test missiles, Alfred hears of 1,300 acres deliberations. Lockyer’s outlandish proposal? That ignorance and deliberately not investigating the in Wiltshire for sale—1,300 acres that happen to Stonehenge was a sun temple built to observe the precise borders of fact, fiction and no man’s land. include the ancient monument of Stonehenge. He sunrise on the longest day of the year, and can there- A novel lives far beyond its pages, the influence of is shown around by the intelligent and highly edu- fore be dated by measuring how far the point of the this work is spreading far beyond its author’s ability cated Florence Antrobus, daughter-in-law of the midsummer sunrise has moved since it was built. to contain it. Each time I tried, while writing this Like The Evolution of Inanimate Objects, The review, to check whether certain connections were J.C. Sutcliffe is a writer, editor and translator. She Stonehenge Letters is a work of fiction made to real or fictional, the top search-engine results never blogs about current books at Slightly Bookist at look like a stylish retelling of historical fact. Not changed: links to The Stonehenge Letters filled the
18 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Faithfull in Her Fashion A roman à clef about an obnoxious English celebrity. Robin Roger
Price discovers the ghost writer and level head she tender gestures does not conflict with her even Based on a True Story needs. A screwball comedy of misadventures shared more impressive Waugh-like irony. The culminat- Elizabeth Renzetti by the reluctant collaborators ensues. Together they ing moment, when Charles actually expresses filial House of Anansi Press travel to Los Angeles, where Augusta spectacularly concern for his mother, nearly kills Augusta, as 306 pages, softcover bungles every opportunity, at the same time as she it diverts her attention from the lethally bucking ISBN 9781770893139 stalks her former partner and putative co-parent, mechanical bull she is riding, hurtling her toward a Kenneth Deller, and her estranged son, Charles. literal and figurative hard landing. Manchester-born journalist Kenneth Deller While it was clear to anyone who knew her ovelists have often used public knows he is a descendent of the morally comprom- that Lady Ottoline Morrell was the person being figures as models for their characters, ised characters in Evelyn Waugh’s 1948 novella, The depicted in their works, none of the writers publicly Nsometimes thinly veiled, other times Loved One, which depicts the British Hollywood said so, which meant that readers could judge the more disguised. The record-holding model in lit- colony’s attempt to capitalize on their accents while literary creations without reference to a known per- erature is probably Lady Ottoline son. By announcing that Marianne Morrell, who was caricatured, Faithfull inspired Augusta Price, often unkindly and unfairly, by Renzetti’s ability to render these tiny, Renzetti invites comparison. D.H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, Doing so may enhance publi- Graham Greene and Alan Bennett, tender gestures does not conflict with her city for the book, but it does not among others. Although she man- even more impressive Waugh-like irony. enhance the reading experience, aged to withstand her unflattering for two reasons. Renzetti does not caricatures with grace, others have really draw on the more specific not found it so easy. Arnold Schoenberg was so controlling their brand. “There are jobs that an and compelling aspects of Faithfull. Making Price mortified by the character of Adrian Leverkühn in Englishman just doesn’t take” is a resonant phrase an Italian immigrant’s daughter is bland compared Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus that he accosted that Augusta reads to Deller when she finds her old to Faithfull’s fascinating descent from the Sacher- a mutual acquaintance of his and Mann’s in their copy of Waugh in his possession. He is still besotted Masoch family who gave us, via Sigmund Freud, local supermarket to protest that he never had with her, and devoted to the son he cannot be cer- the term “masochism.” Situating Price in the world syphilis. tain is his, but his career as a journalist has left him of stage and television rather than the rock scene Ottoline Morrell’s larger-than-life qualities—her in a similar place to Augusta, posing as a relation- excludes the vivid colour and drama of Faithfull’s six-foot stature, flamboyant apparel, amply stocked ship maven under the name of Mr. Romance while raunchy, road-trip world. Also, Renzetti chooses stable of lovers including Bertrand Russell and working on a book that Augusta fears will reveal her not to portray the true darkness of Faithfull’s life, Augustus John, her high-powered salons, combined maternal shortcomings. including the loss of custody of her child and with her outspoken pacifism during two world wars It is around these maternal failings that the periods of severe mental illness. Although she is and intense religiosity—define the essence of the action revolves. The otherwise shameless and not obligated to render Faithfull literally detail for literary model. Excess, outrageousness and notori- unrepentant diva is so aghast that Deller might detail, when she piques the reader’s interest with ety offer much for an author to describe while also reveal how remiss a mother she has been that she public comparisons to her she raises expectations pondering a character’s inner life. stops at nothing to get her hands on the manu- that she does not fulfill. Marianne Faithfull has provided this kind of script. Charles was sent to boarding school at eight, Notwithstanding, Augusta Price stands wonder- inspiration for Based on a True Story, Elizabeth after Deller found him lining up lines of laundry fully well on her own. With her unflagging gusto for Renzetti’s venture into fiction after a long, suc- detergent to snort as he had seen his mother do her downward trajectory, and her blithe exploita- cessful career in journalism. The singer and for- with other powder. Charles has cut off communi- tion of all resources including everyone around her mer paramour of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, cation with Augusta, whose only reaction is to feel as well as her own physical endowments, Price is a whom Renzetti interviewed in 1994, is refigured as unjustly neglected. She recalls her time with the refreshing and resilient character whose obnoxious Augusta Price, née Anna Maria Ferragosto, a time- newborn as unremitting torture: “Each day had a narcissism is redeemed by her dim awareness that ravaged but still beautiful actress who squandered hundred hours in it, and in each of those hundred she needs to be a better person. Her eventual striv- her early success through substance abuse, reck- hours she’d been awake holding an egg in both ing toward atonement is genuine and results in less licentiousness and the kind of prima donna hands.” She harbours no sentimental memories hard-earned self-understanding. Landing back in behaviour that made her persona non grata with of mother-son bonding. When reminded by both another “wellness retreat,” she admits to Frances producers, directors and fellow cast members. Deller and Charles that she created the estrange- that “I see all my failures behind me, like a trail of After being expelled from yet another rehabilita- ment herself by forcing 16-year-old Charles to breadcrumbs” and advises her to “save … the kind- tion program, and while trying to secure a re-entry choose between her or his supposed father, she has est and most resourceful part (of yourself), for your- part on television, Price finds that she is more in neither a memory nor any remorse concerning the self.” If Oscar Wilde is right that a cynic knows the demand as a memoirist-cum-self-help writer than incident. price of everything and the value of nothing, then as an actor. Coming face to face with her offspring and her Augusta Price becomes Augusta Value. When the forlorn journalist Frances Bleeker, a failings creates no dramatic transformation, but it Renzetti has been kinder to Faithfull than Californian seeking autonomy and adventure in does initiate some minor twitches of concern in Lawrence et al. were to Morrell, possibly because London, interviews her for a newspaper profile, Augusta, although misdirected toward her loyal her encounter with Faithfull was a brief profes- companion and co-author, Frances: “Augusta sional one. But the gentle portraits of each of the Robin Roger is a contributing editor to the LRC, a slid a hand onto Frances’s shoulder, patting awk- characters in Based on a True Story suggest that founder and senior editor of Ars Medica: A Journal wardly. A strand of dark hair had escaped from Renzetti simply has a warm heart. If I were ever to of Medicine, the Arts and Humanities and a her ponytail, and Augusta had the sudden urge to find myself portrayed by a novelist, I would like it psychotherapist living in Toronto. tuck it in.” Renzetti’s ability to render these tiny, to be by her.
September 2014 reviewcanada.ca 19 Tales from the Barley Field One man’s quest for the perfect pint. Michael Ruse
local nursery and say “I’d like a hundredweight of by the English, and so curried favour with the The Perfect Keg: barley please.” And when you do find it, and it is the equally oppressed francophone civil servants who Sowing, Scything, Malting and Brewing My right kind, you’ve got to plant it. Back in the 1970s oversaw his business. Way to the Best-Ever Pint of Beer Mrs. Ian Coutts (Catherine) and some friends right Was it cheating to use another man’s barley? Ian Coutts out of college bought a farm in the Ottawa Valley. Who cares? How can you criticize a chap who Greystone Books Rather than just fantasize about organic farming, then went to work, in period costume, at the Black 210 pages, softcover she and friends actually did it. There was land to Creek Pioneer Village, in order to learn how beer ISBN 9781771000086 spare. All it needed for the planting was a Victoria is made authentically? “On Catherine’s insistence, Day weekend, ten loads of cow poo from an obliging I had not trimmed my beard or hair for several neighbour and a huge amount of hard work. weeks. This, she assured me, would make me look ome change really is progress and beer Hops were easy enough to start but then wilt more authentic; I told myself it made me look like is the perfect example. The Campaign for struck. This is not a character from a Tom Sharpe the Unabomber. But that was too flattering.” On SReal Ale, which started in checking himself in the mirror, Britain in the early 1970s, was a Where do you get your yeast? Well, “I had that same, sheepish, self- protest against the homogeniza- conscious expression you see on tion of beer that was a function of apparently you get it from bakers. And a dog’s face when you dress it up the big brewers buying up the in a shirt and tie.” But he did learn pubs and filling them with wishy- where do they get their yeast? Well, all sorts of wonderful things about washy products. And then came mashing and worts and more. the era of micro-breweries. Real apparently from brewers. Very helpful. (And if you want to know what cask ale—no filtering, no pasteur- these are, buy the book, because ization, secondary fermentation, no nitrogen or comic novel, but an insidious form of disease that the man really has earned it.) carbon dioxide. attacks hops. The cure apparently is a mixture of Where do you get your yeast? Well, apparently Which brings us to Ian Coutts, author of The baking soda and “manure tea.” Don’t ask. The real you get it from bakers. And where do they get their Perfect Keg: Sowing, Scything, Malting and Brewing problem is that hops need a year or two to mature yeast? Well, apparently from brewers. Very helpful. My Way to the Best-Ever Pint of Beer. On the evi- and you don’t get much at first. A lot of care and I am very glad and rather proud to say, to add the dence of this book he is one of the funniest, brav- worrying went into their well-being. But then it was personal touch, that for advice Ian Coutts turned est, most interesting and resourceful men on this the turn of the Japanese beetles. You know, there is to the Ontario Agricultural College, part of the planet. And best of all, he is a beer lover. So much something to be said for going to the mall and buy- University of Guelph of which for 35 years I was so, in fact, that he set out to make his own beer from ing it all in cans. Especially when an August drought a happy member, and a former colleague (Ron scratch. I do not know about you, but my idea of comes and your barley is starting to go under and Subden) came to his rescue. I always say that if you making beer from scratch is to go to a little store in so you are connecting up hoses used for the lawn want to know about yeast or about philosophy head the mall, where I buy a can of this and a package of and you are worried that the pump in the basement west from Toronto about a hundred kilometres. The that, and then they put it all in a boiler for me and is going to burn out because you are forcing the Coutts’s brew was off and running—or should one I come back a couple of weeks later to bottle it. Not water not to your nearby bathtub but halfway to say bubbling? Ian Coutts. He really does start from scratch—water, Toronto and uphill all the way. I will pull back now. Read all about malting and barley, hops, yeast. An interesting thing one learns And so it goes. I won’t spoil it for you by telling that sort of stuff for yourself. The guy even searched from Mr. Coutts is that hops is, relatively speaking, a you about the trip to a real brewery to learn some out a real keg to put his beer into. I remember recent addition to the brew. It was only in the ninth of the tricks of the trade. I will, however, share when I was a student at the University of Bristol, we century that some German monks discovered that one of the gems that Coutts discovered. “Beer started by being able to buy real kegs for our par- adding hop flowers to the mixture not only stopped should never be taken rectally.” Which, in fact, ties, but then about halfway through it all changed it from going off but also gave it an interesting fla- leads me to wonder, why not? I had a graduate and aluminum was the order of the day. I am sure it vour. One more good reason to be thankful for not student once from California who would wax hap- was all better for us or some such thing, but I didn’t living in the eighth century, quite apart from the pily on the subject of tea enemas. So why not beer? believe it then and I don’t believe it now. Beer Viking raids. Not that I plan on finding out, you understand. should come out of a wooden barrel. And that is Well, how do you start from scratch? Water is Although I suppose there must be some use for what happened to Ian Coutts’s perfect pint. fairly straightforward. What about barley? First of Bud Light. I will leave our author with the penultimate all, you’ve got to find it. You do not just go into your Back on the farm, the hops were doing fine, word concerning that historic barrel: but the barley was a disaster. “Everything I had Michael Ruse, a refugee from compulsory retirement read about barley had been false. No problem with The keg itself is sitting downstairs right now. laws, now living and working in Florida, was for weeds; just stick it in the ground and it comes on There is still some beer in it. The international 35 years a professor of philosophy at the University up. Oh, and it doesn’t need to be watered. Lies, beer expert suggested seasoning it by filling it of Guelph. He has written many books on the his- lies, lies.” Fortunately a chap in Quebec came to the with whiskey. A good idea, I think—especially tory and philosophy of Darwinian evolutionary rescue, and a sufficiency was obtained. Ian Coutts if I distill it myself. theory. With Socrates, he believes that good food did at least harvest it himself. I was amused to learn and drink are highly conducive to deep philosoph- that the grower in Quebec, living on government And perhaps, if we are lucky, turn that experi- ical thought. subsidies, pretended to be Scottish and oppressed ence into a book as well.
20 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Coming up in the LRC
Who should pay for Canadian culture? Robert Sirman The fracking fracas Jessa Gamble Managing information overload Clive Thompson Prairie riches Rana Sarkar The Ever After of Ashwin Rao, by Padma Viswanathan Ava Homa Canada’s ’95 referendum revisited Andrea Lawlor Recovering from rape Clare Pain Unions’ impact Frances Woolley The good stories of Toronto Michael Valpy
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September 2014 reviewcanada.ca 21 Essay Can’t Lit How English departments impair creative writing in Canada. Darryl Whetter
t is hard to find a Canadian visual arts grad ignorant of a technical term like negative Ispace, but it is very easy to find a Canadian creative writing grad ignorant of, say, free indirect style or nested narration or unreliable narrators. For decades in Canada, university education in the visual arts and music has been crucial to the careers and the creativity of artists and classical musicians. With the University of British Columbia celebrat- ing the 50th anniversary of its creative writing program, writing workshops in Canada are hardly new. Nonetheless, a Canadian writing education is distinct from its cousins in painting and music in at least two ways. Those latter programs have not recently experienced exponential growth in enroll- ment, and Canadian creative writing pedagogy remains, despite its institutional expansion and costs to national and personal truth telling. The departments do not respect living Canadian writ- endorsement, wildly scattershot from program to number of graduate writing programs in Canada ers, let alone writers who teach writing. However, program and even instructor to instructor. Pursue a doubled within the last decade; yet various factors in the majority of Canada’s writing programs, cru- Canadian bachelor of fine art in visual arts, and you within the Canadian academy (not the internation- cial decisions such as hiring, genre concentration, are sure to study colour theory. Pursue a writing ally popular discipline of creative writing) find most prerequisite qualifications, and so on, are managed undergrad in Canada and you are sure to study— Canadian writing programs devoted more to the by English professors (many of whom are profes- well, there will be words, and, probably, characters. head than to the heart and managed, not coinci- sionally anglophilic Canadians). The bouncer’s role Twenty years ago, Canadian visual artists stud- dentally, by English departments. Our writing grads that Canadian English departments continue to ied their craft at university, but writers often did are much more likely to be versed in Elizabethan play with the very students and studies that could not. Writers educated in the 1980s such as Douglas celibacy or Victorian diarists than what Faulkner revitalize them suggests that far too many of our Coupland, Lisa Moore and Margaret Christakos so rightly describes as “the human heart in conflict gatekeepers of writerly education have replaced a actually majored in visual arts, not writing. Now, with itself.” I have taught writing for more than a love of literary wisdom with the lesser love of being graduate writing programs offer mentoring and decade at four Canadian universities and am wor- well-paid literature professors. peer critique (at a time when book editors are ried that—with English professors predominantly Unchecked discipline hostility appears to be one too busy marketing) as well as exposure to visit- calling the shots—few Canadian programs teach reason Canadian universities have not responded ing authors, experience on literary journals and or even entertain core writerly skills such as social- to the frankly insistent market for more Canadian financial assistance. When Canada has more full- emotional intelligence; revealing, engaged and PhD programs in creative writing, of which Canada time Canadian artists (140,000) than auto workers accurate dialogue; dramatic tension; comedy; and, only counts two—at the University of Calgary and, (135,000), we are long past delusions about writ- most notably, plot. The current practices of our en français, at Université Laval—while Australia ers shivering in garrets and need to consider the writing programs and funding agencies generally counts more than 20. In a July 2005 issue of various realities of what Mark McGurl rightly calls ask writers to be scholars who simply drop the foot- Harper’s, American author and semi-reluctant creative writing’s “program era.”1 notes, while graduate creative writing education in writing professor Lynn Freed referred to gradu- Canada’s art historians and musicologists do the United States, the United Kingdom and equally ate creative writing programs as “the cash cow” of not design and manage the education of our visual post-colonial Australia values the unique fusion of the humanities. As the website of the U.S.-based artists and composers, but English professors (who personal and cultural truth available to the creative Association of Writers and Writing Programs says, have rarely published books of poetry or fiction writer and his or her reader. “creative writing classes have become among the themselves) routinely control the education of our During a two-year stint as the coordinator of the most popular classes in the humanities.” Amazingly writers. These tweedy vampires do so with obvious creative writing program at Dalhousie University, (and to national costs), Canadian humanities pro- I repeatedly noticed our national preference for a grams are uninterested in this cash cow. The trade Darryl Whetter is the author of four books and has colonial ownership of creative writing by an English secret for becoming an English professor in Canada taught at four Canadian universities. His books department. First and foremost, the program there is simple (although regrettably homogenous): do include the novels Keeping Things Whole (Nimbus has no permanent faculty. The cart of individual your PhD at the University of Toronto. The faculty Publishing, 2013) and The Push and the Pull careerism was characteristically put before the pages of various Canadian departments of English (Goose Lane Editions, 2008). For more information, horse of national literature in 2009–10 when find the University of Toronto supplying more pro- see
22 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada professors who will not recognize that they need institutional environment, the research university. us … with templates, mental maps for emotional to change their product, not their marketing: if we Creative writing, by contrast, might seem to have life.” phone applicants, if we blog about the program, if no ties at all to the pursuit of positive knowledge. A national creative writing education that priv- only we had a better poster. Twitter!! English profes- It is, rather, an experiment—but more accurately, ileges literary analysis over literary production sors, not student demand or even national funding, an exercise—in subjectivity.” Canada’s institutional shuns interpersonal intelligence. One can hear retard the conception and growth of Canada’s doc- fear of the inner life wants arguments, not poems, the trendy phrase “rhizomatic poetics”—a term, toral research in creative writing. and rarely aesthetic arguments at that. English as a popularized by Deleuzians, that signifies the con- With the federal dollars available to young subject in Canada remains hostile or indifferent to nection between two points without the burden Canadian writers shrinking, and with our small evaluative criticism. CanLit scholars are notorious of beginnings or endings—in any Canadian uni- presses either closing or contracting a finite num- for assigning books that are supposedly influential, versity English department (including those that ber of books two or three years into the future, not good (from As for Me and My House to The Book offer creative writing); one rarely hears the word graduate writing programs offer junior writers of Negroes). “empathy” or, in the context of empathy, the excite- crucial development time, space and money. The The political fallout of Canada’s creative writ- ment that attends to rhizomatism. We adore the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council ing hostage taking extends beyond where and fragmentary but disparage feelings. In Emotional of Canada is theoretically just as willing to fund a what is studied by whom and includes, perhaps Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More than IQ, PhD thesis that is a Canadian novel instead of a dis- most significantly, what is written. The academic Daniel Goleman rightly called social-emotional quisition about a Canadian novel, yet rarely fulfills preference for arguments over art making risks a intelligence “a meta-ability, determining how well this promise. Instead, crucial state institutions like hyper-rational ghettoization of graduate creative we can use whatever other skills we have, includ- SSHRC prefer a junior writer’s schol- ing raw intellect.” In a land of arly potential, not his or her creative methodology, thesis defences, output. In Muriella Pent, Russell Canadian English departments do not bibliographies and Kenneth Smith’s satire of the culture of culture, Goldsmith’s institutionally an application form for a Toronto respect living Canadian writers, let alone celebrated “uncreative writ- artistic residency overtly states “DO writers who teach writing. ing,” the crucial meta-ability of NOT ATTACH A WRITING SAMPLE.” emotional intelligence fostered This preference for explanations over by literature is not meeting its art is funny in Canadian satire, yet sad in public writing material. For almost half a century, Susan maximum audience. Who would decree that engin- policy. The very real SSHRC does fund master’s Sontag’s essay “Against Interpretation” has pro- eers should never actually build a bridge? Canadian and PhD students (including creative writing stu- posed that “in place of a hermeneutics we need English professors. dents), yet its application similarly forbids a writing an erotics of art”; yet we keep steeping our writing Story schools tell stories, and ours is not very flat- sample. SSHRC applicants submit a bibliography, students in hermeneutics, not aesthetics, focusing tering. Without significant overhaul, the ballooning but not their own writing. Come, come, Ms. O’Keefe. on buzz terms like pataphysics and palimpsests. To writing programs that could save CanLit from its Put these canvases aside and tell us who you’re going its credit, the University of New Brunswick’s annual yarns about yesteryear or saccharine imagistic to paint like. Poetry Weekend invites its current creative writing somethings are simply going to waste more of our SSHRC could be a significant patron of CanLit. students to read poems alongside published faculty money and hope. Good writing educations can be In 2008–09, it doled out more than $300 million and alumni. Notably, though, those students always found here, but they are too scattershot. I learned in grants and fellowships to graduate students, invoke Jacques Derrida when reading their poems. far more about writing, both fiction and poetry, in faculty, institutions and research projects, yet very Contemporary musical acts such as The National one full-year undergraduate acting class than I did little of that money went to storytellers and their and Iron & Wine (or Canada’s Field Assembly) are in countless undergraduate and graduate classes traffic in social-emotional intelligence. The search- known for their moving lyrics; none of them cites devoted to faddish, B-grade literature or nothing able awards database at the SSHRC site finds fewer music scholars while they sing. When university more than professorial whim. Our students come to than five fiction projects out of 121 in its Research/ writing programs deny emotion, novice writers eas- university with almost no respectful attention given Creation Grants in the Fine Arts program for fac- ily succumb to affectedly marginal voices to recover to the creative arts, and when they arrive multiple ulty. Projects in this formerly biennial half-program it. For example, university-trained (American) factors show them that writing about novels is much for artists have budgets as large as $95,000. Write writer Sandra Cisneros states overtly that when she more important than writing novels. Even when the about complex, vibrant characters, write like Alice wrote her breakthrough novel, The House on Mango production of literature is taught, it is almost always Munro or Mordecai Richler, and you are not likely Street, she consciously used “a child’s voice, a girl’s a marginal discipline, merely an indulgence from to win a SSHRC grant. Nano-splice language poetry voice” as an explicitly “anti-academic voice.” The the colonizer (e.g., an English department). A lack into genes, wire the project to maybe record trace marginalization of emotional complexity within of respect breeds a lack of rigour. As a university movements and put it on the Web, and SSHRC so-called humanities disciplines can additionally discipline, creative writing should be a thinking opens the coffers. Not funding stories means not distance the marginal voices many professors claim and communication tool, and it deserves a place at funding characters and, arguably, emotions and to serve (as when women write as girls). every Canadian institute of higher learning. the inner life. Canada’s disregard for emotional complexity Unacceptably, however, writing in Canada is Our national preference for argumentation and creates a creative writing pedagogy that denies managed (and sometimes even taught) by profes- citation over emotion in creative writing pedagogy students literature’s fundamental work with sors who have never published creative writing or is further manifest in the oral thesis “defences” empathy. Scottish writer Andrew O’Hagan’s novel have not published it in decades. Not even Canada required in Canada’s hybrid English writing MAs. Be Near Me (too intimate to be a Canadian title) would short-change its music or fine arts students The title and ritual of a “defence” suggest that has the best, and shortest, definition of education in this way, yet we will appoint unqualified English candidates can argue the merit of their collections I have ever read: “managed revelation.” Too often professors to direct or even teach story writing. of poems or stories instead of simply presenting in Canada, a creative writing education involves The Association of Writers and Writing Programs stories or poems that are their own argument. At conscripted decorum or endless reading lists from knows: “in addition to advancing the art of lit- Columbia University, the largest and arguably most some elsewhere (whether it be England, the past, or erature, creative writing workshops exercise and influential master’s of fine arts program in creative the developing world) instead of “managed revela- strengthen the resourcefulness of the human will, writing in the United States, a thesis passes or fails tion.” Days after 9/11, Ian McEwan published an and it is the exercise of will not over others, but for exclusively as a written document. If it passes, the article in The Guardian that hinged on literature’s others, as stories and poems are made as gifts committee then meets with the student at a “thesis stimulation of empathy: “Imagining what it is like for readers and listeners.” Canadian university after conference” to discuss strengths and challenges. to be someone other than yourself is at the core of university in province after province has created a Canadian thesis defences are a clear hangover from our humanity. It is the essence of compassion, and writing education that cheats its paying students of the aped scientism of New Criticism (the zombie it is the beginning of morality.” Aesthetic theoreti- what Henry James calls the “great generosities” engine of English). In The Program Era: Postwar cians and cognitive psychologists recognize the of literature and social-emotional intelligence. Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing, Mark ways in which literature, especially narrative lit- McGurl warns, “with its penchant for specialized erature, allows us to expand our minds by thinking vocabularies and familiarity with the less-traveled like others. In a section of The Art Instinct: Beauty, Note 1 See Mark McGurl’s The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and regions of the library, literary scholarship is at Pleasure and Human Evolution called “The Uses of the Rise of Creative Writing (Harvard University Press, least partly in sync with the scientism of its wider Fiction,” Denis Dutton concludes: “fiction provides 2009).
September 2014 reviewcanada.ca 23 Essay The Importance of Ernest A faded Canadian naturalist becomes an enduring Czech passion. Don Sparling
hundred years ago, wild, becoming an expert on Ernest Thompson the province’s animal life (later ASeton was a household named the Official Naturalist to name in Canada, the United the Government of Manitoba, States and many places in he held the title until his death Europe, his books bestsellers. in 1946). It was in Manitoba, too, One of the inventors of the that he met and came to know realistic animal story, he was his first Indians, as Seton always also a key figure in the Boy referred to them. His growing Scouts, played a pioneering reputation as a naturalist and role in what would later wildlife artist led him to pursue become the environmental his career in the United States, movement and took the and it was there that he really lead in defending and took off. indeed celebrating Native His popularity with the North American culture. A general public began with visionary, he was more in tune the publication of his first with concerns of the early short story, “Lobo, the King 21st century than the late of Currumpaw,” in the mass Victorian world in which he grew circulation Scribner’s Magazine up and developed his ideas. in 1894. The dramatic tale of Nowadays almost forgotten in a magnificent wolf he had Canada and the United States hunted down and trapped, it (which became his adopted met with instantaneous success. home), he remains a continuing (Ironically, the experience source of inspiration in parts of of killing Lobo had radically Europe, above all in the Czech altered Seton’s views; ever since Republic. the early years, there was a widely shared view that then, he later wrote, “my sincerest wish has been to In many countries in the western world, at this would lead to a kind of peaceful coexistence impress upon people that each of our native wild the end of the 19th century there was growing of these different but equal movements with their creatures is in itself a precious heritage that we have concern that young people—and particularly boys varied methods and aims, but in the end the road no right to destroy or put beyond the reach of our and young men—were becoming “soft,” “spoiled,” taken was one of amalgamation on the one hand children.”) “Lobo” was followed by many further “indifferent to traditional values.” The reasons for and marginalization on the other. tales, the publication in 1898 of his first book, Wild this were many, among them the rapid growth of In this process, Seton had a head start. Born in Animals I Have Known (three of the stories harked industrialized cities (which reduced young people’s England, he emigrated to Canada with his parents back to his Toronto adolescence), and from 1901 physical activities and divorced them from the in 1866 at the age of six. After a short interlude in a regular column in, of all places, Ladies’ Home natural world) and the growing regimentation which the family tried, and failed, to restore their Journal, where Two Little Savages began serial of young people’s lives, in particular through the fortune by farming, they moved to Toronto. But the publication in 1903. expansion of compulsory education. Equally brief period in the Ontario countryside had marked Seton made programmatic use of Ladies’ Home important, a growing sense of nationalism sought the young Ernest indelibly. Partly in response to Journal to promote the ideas of a movement that he to mould young people everywhere into patriotic a deep love of nature, partly as a means of getting was simultaneously working out theoretically and defenders of national or imperial “interests.” One of away from his harsh, demanding father, he took to implementing in practice, the Woodcraft Indians. the responses to this “crisis” was a search for new exploring the wild areas that still lay within easy He drew on many strands, some common at ways of bringing young people together in voluntary reach of the city—the great pine forest of Erindale; the time, others his personal passions. Among the organizations where they could be infused with the Castle Frank, then still a wooded hill; the Don River former were such things as a belief that children right “spirit.” Many different groups were created Valley. There he spent hours observing the local were naturally good, with a host of strong positive in response to this widely felt need, all competing wildlife and employing his rapidly developing skill instincts (love, curiosity, pride, a constructive for the attention and loyalty of young people. In as an artist to capture their appearance. It was this social spirit) that contemporary society tended talent that gained him a scholarship at the Royal to deform; that the world of nature held the key to Don Sparling is a Canadian who has taught Academy in London, but impoverishment and personal development; that the aim of education in Czechoslovakia/the Czech Republic, first at overwork broke his health, forcing him to return should be to enable children to discover their own language schools and then at Masaryk University in to Canada. There followed two years in Manitoba, talents. Among Seton’s more personal passions Brno since 1969. where he spent days and weeks on his own in the was a conviction that Native North Americans had
24 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada understood how to live properly in, and respect, ing to a culture that is still vibrant today. In the ecstatic: “The critical moment has arrived … when the world of nature—something he increasingly years before World War One, the emergence of we will stand face to face with the man who has saw as essential for human survival—and that the Woodcraft and Scouting movements in the shown us our life’s path … Brothers and sisters, they had a far superior relationship with their United States and Britain did not go unnoticed in Black Wolf is coming!” The five-day whirlwind visit children and a more profound understanding of the Czech lands. The first Scout troop appeared was a triumphant success, culminating in a special how they should be brought up, views he had been there in 1911, followed three years later by the broadcast on Radio Prague to the Czech nation, the developing through personal friendships since his formal establishment of a scouting organization. somewhat surprising content of which was a plea days in Manitoba. There was also an admiration Simultaneously, the Czech Woodcrafter move- for peace and understanding among nations, based of the principles of socialism (most likely initiated ment was taking shape thanks to the secondary on Seton’s own experience in coming to know the by James Mavor, a professor of economics at the school teacher Miloš Seifert. Originally attracted “Redman.” University of Toronto, and strengthened by a to the budding Scouting movement, as a natural The next 50 years, however, were not propitious meeting in that city with the Russian anarcho- scientist and pacifist he soon found his model in for western-inspired youth movements in communist Pyotr Kropotkin on a visit the latter Seton rather than Baden-Powell. Early in 1913 he Czechoslovakia: both the Nazi and the communist made to Canada in 1897). He had an intense dislike wrote to Seton, who in return sent him a copy of the regime banned the Scouts, Woodcrafters and of any social institution that smacked of hierarchy latest edition of The Birch-Bark Roll. Within months YMCA and imprisoned their leaders. But they went and discipline imposed from above or that divided Seifert had established a boys’ group inspired by underground, continuing their activities by taking society into privileged and unprivileged groups. Seton’s principles, in fact the first Woodcrafter on the official guise of Young Pioneers or youth Seton’s Woodcraft Indian movement, founded group in Europe; that summer, they erected the first hiking divisions of sports clubs. The tramps, with officially in 1902, soon became the leading teepee seen in the Czech lands. no organizational structure and no leaders, could young people’s organization in not even be prosecuted or closed the United States. It was on a visit down. And rather amazingly, at to England in 1904 to publicize Seton was later to comment acidly: “My this time new groups influenced by it that he learned of efforts by Seton took shape, in particular the Robert Baden-Powell to promote aim was to make a man; Baden-Powell’s Czech Indians. Other individuals what seemed like a similar youth was to make a soldier.” influenced by Woodcrafter ideas movement there. The two men managed to establish nature agreed to cooperate, but their conservation groups that became visions of what this cooperation should be like Following the 1914–18 war, the youth movement the core of the later environmental movement in were radically different. It seems that Seton foresaw exploded in the newly independent Czechoslovakia. the country. Throughout all this, Seton’s works Baden-Powell’s Scouts as being limited to Britain, In addition to the Scouts and Woodcrafters, the themselves continued to be published, and in 1970 while he would continue organizing Woodcraft newly established YMCA flourished, and there there appeared, under the title The Book of Forest Indian “tribes” in the United States. Baden-Powell, were also significant numbers of young people Wisdom, an anthology of selections from The Book however, was clearly more ambitious as well as who, rejecting any kind of organizing from above, of Woodcraft and Indian Lore and The Birch-Bark both devious and ruthless: his Scouting for Boys, gave birth to a unique Czech phenomenon called Roll. This became a treasured possession for many published in 1908, contained huge amounts of “tramping.” Referred to originally as “wild scouts” young Czechs. I well remember watching with material taken or adapted from Seton’s Woodcraft and later as “tramps,” these young people went astonishment when, with the aid of a dog-eared Indian organizational manual, The Birch-Bark Roll, out into the countryside on the weekends and copy of this book, my elder son and his teenage with only the most general acknowledgement of during their holidays, meeting round campfires, friends, as members of a young people’s hiking the source. singing songs and sleeping out under the open club, sewed a series of full-size teepees for their Thus began a process of growing alienation skies, as close to “nature” as possible. All these summer camp one year toward the end of the between the two men, the two movements and groups shared a broad base of shared practices and 1980s. their backers. When the Boy Scouts of America was cooperated extensively at the personal level, Following the end of the communist regime in formally established in 1910, it included a wide and the main element that linked them was 1989, all of the various organizations once again range of groups, the Woodcraft Indians included. Seton and the Woodcrafter philosophy. emerged from hiding and resumed their activities. Seton’s pre-eminence ensured him the position of Seton’s writings were first translated into Remarkably, even the Czech Woodcrafters chief scout, but it soon became evident that this Czech as early as 1909; by the mid 1930s, more reconstituted themselves; at the present time they was largely honourary: the real power lay with the than 80 editions and re-editions of his works appear to be the only organization on the European supporters of Baden-Powell, who shared with him had appeared. Most importantly, these Czech continent adhering officially to the Woodcrafter the concept of “scout” in its military sense—a translations comprised more than just his animal heritage. More widely, Seton continues to resonate soldier employed to scout out the enemy. Seton’s stories—they included The Birch-Bark Roll of in the Czech Republic. The translations have kept understanding of the term—an Indian scout, Woodcraft and Two Little Savages, in which the appearing. Seton’s name, and his ideas, can be fully at home in the natural world—took a back basic principles of the Woodcrafter movement are found everywhere on the websites of young people’s seat. Seton gradually became marginalized in the presented in the form of an instructional manual groups. The Czech Indians, who have been inspired rapidly growing movement: as World War One and a narrative story, respectively. These ideas in so many ways by Seton’s vision of indigenous approached, his socialism, his rejection of efforts to shaped all the young people’s movements in the people as a role model, continue to thrive. Soon instil patriotism in the young, his quarrel with the country. There was a central emphasis on frequent after the fall of communism they actually played Scouting movement’s quasi-military aspects and and regular activities in the outdoors, climaxing in host to three Cree and Ojibway elders from his increasingly passionate defence of aboriginal the annual summer camp: the young people left Manitoba whom they had invited to take part in people, made him less and less acceptable to the behind “civilization” and its comforts, set up their their annual summer camp. The 1995 Zemma board of governors (who were goaded on by Teddy camps themselves “in nature,” and practised the Pictures/NFB coproduction If Only I Were an Roosevelt). Seton was later to comment acidly: skills that Seton had described so appealingly in Indian captures well the three guests’ amazement. “My aim was to make a man; Baden-Powell’s was his books. The insights and practices of indigenous As one of them, Barbara Daniels, an Ojibway elder, to make a soldier.” When efforts were launched peoples generally (and those of North America in put it, “this trip was one of the highlights of my life. to incorporate the Boy Scouts federally, Seton’s particular) were stressed, with the teepee and the I’ve never been so proud to be a Native Indian as nationality—he was still a British subject (only in ceremonial campfire becoming key fixtures of most I have been with these Czech Indians.” Seton, too, 1931 did he become an American citizen)—was camps. The aim was to acquire lesní moudrost— would undoubtedly have been proud, although used as a pretext to marginalize him even further. “forest wisdom,” Seifert’s brilliant translation of the probably not surprised. For him, Woodcraft was Finally, in 1915, Seton resigned as chief scout word “woodcraft,” suggesting as it does a whole something approaching a philosophy of life, its and withdrew his Woodcraft Indians from the approach to life. central concern a respect for “all living things,” a organization, establishing them as an independent Given that his ideas permeated the activities respect that included both the natural environment body. of young people and their organizations in and the great diversity of people and peoples in the interwar Czechoslovakia, the announcement in world. At its deepest, the Woodcrafter movement aden-Powell’s opportunistic and militaristic 1936 that Black Wolf (Seton’s Woodcrafter/Indian was/is an effort to view the world in holistic terms. Btendencies notwithstanding, Seton’s ideas name) would visit the country aroused intense Or, in the words of one of Seton’s favourite maxims, enjoyed a quiet triumph in a distant land, lead- anticipation. Woodcrafter circles were particularly “Woodcraft is lifecraft.”
September 2014 reviewcanada.ca 25 Psychiatric Turf War Social versus neurological explanations for delusion. Edward Shorter
rosyphilis to manic delirium. Delusional disorder But at a more profound level, the task the Golds Suspicious Minds: itself, however, is quite specific. have set themselves requires several sleights of How Culture Shapes Madness The Golds’ thesis is that psychiatric illness hand. One is erasing the line, pretty firm in biologi- Joel Gold and Ian Gold (“madness”) is shaped by culture. They start with cal psychiatry, between illness and wellness. It was Free Press a “short history of madness,” moving then to an an article of faith among the psychoanalysts that 352 pages, hardcover analysis of a kind of delusion called “the Truman we are all the “walking wounded,” all of us a little ISBN 9781439181553 Show.” The main body of the book then links the bit ill with just degrees of severity rather than high various kinds of delusions to culture, in a series of walls separating us. The line between mental health chapters called “the social life of madness.” and illness is not that distinct, the analysts say. “The oel and Ian Gold are brothers. Joel, a psy Truman Show delusions involve the idea that challenge,” say the Golds, “is keeping the craziness chiatrist and psychoanalyst, teaches in New everyone in the world is looking at you. This riffs on at bay, under careful watch of the saner aspects of JYork. Ian, a PhD in psychology and philoso- a 1998 film starring Jim Carrey called The Truman ourselves. It doesn’t take much for anyone, you and phy, is at McGill University. They are part of a Show, in which the protagonist believes that he is me included, to become mad.” These sentiments movement to drag psychiatry away from neuro- “being watched by the whole world … [living] with are perfectly laudable, in terms of destigmatizing chemical thinking and to restore a place for social every moment of his life being captured by thou- mental illnesses. causation of illness, rather than just neurotransmit- sands of cameras located around Seahaven,” the But are they true? ters that are out of whack. island where he resides. Joel Gold, the psychiatrist The vast majority of us will never develop a Is this overdue? Yes. I am going to have a brother, saw several of these patients in New York psychotic illness, meaning delusions and halluci- few critical things to say about the Golds’ book, and is clearly fascinated by them. nations, aside maybe from a febrile delirium in a Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness, but The Golds maintain that such delusions can be childhood infection. All kind of lesser things can I want to make clear up front that it should be seen as better understood through social science than neu- go wrong for us, including substance abuse, mood a kind of intellectual landmark, disorders and chronic stress with social psychiatry launch- After a slew of books on the miracles of reactions. At any point in time, ing this well-written, often about 1 percent of the popula- amusing and frequently con- the neurosciences, it is refreshing to see a tion has a delusional disorder. vincing counterattack on the But that 1 percent tends to neurotransmitter gang. After a reaching back to the older principles that remain the same people. Most slew of books on the miracles of individuals are not really at the neurosciences, it is refresh- once animated psychiatry as a social science. risk of developing a delusional ing to see a raised eyebrow, a disorder, and the cheerleading mouth downturned in scorn, a reaching back to the roscience. They argue that evolution has equipped from the Golds about social causation has the effect older principles that once animated psychiatry as a us with a kind of early-warning device they call of obscuring this reality. social science as well as a neuroscience. the Suspicion System to pick up threats. Some Moreover, the Golds make an important point, The Golds undertake this mission using the parts of this system are innate, in that we are born and then proceed to ignore it. They say you have to Trojan Horse of delusional disorder, a technical with them, while others are culturally moulded. distinguish between the form of psychiatric illness diagnosis in psychiatry meaning holding fixed, false “Suspicious states … are responses to cues that are (whether psychosis or not) and the content: what beliefs. “Paranoia” is often a synonym. The belief analogous to the rustle in the forest or the footfall in specific psychotic views the patient holds. And that the CIA has implanted a microtransmitter in the alley.” And when the Suspicion System goes into the specific content of psychosis changes a lot with your teeth would be an example of delusional dis- hyperdrive, you have delusional disorder, causing culture, no doubt about that. In the 19th century, order: you function perfectly well in most of your us “to see malign intent where there is none.” patients were often deluded about having smeared life; you are not “crazy” or demented, but when the A lot of cheerleading goes on in the book, excrement on the Cross and other sacramental out- subject comes around to your “secrets”—which you encouraging us to think that delusional disorders rages (when in fact they had not actually done so). are convinced the CIA wants—you clam up and are really very common and actually not that much But that kind of delusion does not occur so often become uncommunicative because you know the of a problem. The perspective is “client-friendly”: today because most people are rather indifferent CIA is listening to every word. we are all a little bit messed up and it is because we to the imagery of the Cross. If you have not been Delusional disorder is different from a lot of inhabit an environment that makes us suspicious, exposed to an idea, you will not become delusional other psychiatric diseases that look vaguely similar. not because we have too much dopamine on board. about it. This is why lots of patients in India have It is not schizophrenia, where patients do indeed What the Gold brothers are attempting to do is delusions about demonic possession, few here. So have delusions, but the false ideas are fleeting to drag delusional disorder away from the clutches culture does determine content. and inconstant, and your entire universe of cogni- of the biological psychiatrists and restore it to the But culture does not really determine the tion is affected. It is not the delusions of psychotic care of people who at least think sympathetically form of illness. Melancholic depression, a form, depression, where the melancholic mood overrides about Freud’s psychoanalysis, rather than rejecting is remarkably similar in all parts of the world, everything else (in delusional disorder you may be it as rubbish. although the presence of such features as suicidal quite jolly if, for example, you have the erroneous There are problems with the Golds’ thesis. In ideation (which we in the West have lots of) is belief that someone else is in love with you). There the first place, Truman Show beliefs strike me highly variable. Yet the Golds go on to construct are, in other words, many kinds of delusions, found pretty well as a garden-variety delusion, although elaborate subtypes of delusional disorder, and the in a range of bodily and mental illnesses, from neu- somewhat extravagant in conception—that one core of the book is a discussion of the different is starring in a show being watched by the entire “forms of delusion”—such as delusional jealousy, Edward Shorter is a professor of the history of medi- world—and I can see no reason to single them out persecutory delusions, grandiosity and so forth— cine and a professor of psychiatry in the Faculty of from other delusions, no matter how amusing the except that those are not forms at all. They are Medicine of the University of Toronto. patients’ stories. content. We are transported back to the psychiatry,
26 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada not of Sigmund Freud, but of the early 19th century, logical stress and the neurotransmitter dopamine. chatter about these issues. The reading public, how- when delusional disorders received elaborate clas- Sure, why not? We know so little about how the ever, may find the many vignettes more gripping sifications on the basis of such content as “murder- brain works that this could be true, as could any than the Suspicion System and similar speculative ous monomania.” In the official diagnostic roster of of a number of other competing models. Sexual academic concepts with which the latter part of the psychiatry, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual trauma is obligatory in these models, but one is a book abounds. When one brings a psychoanalyst of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric bit surprised to see the authors throw in early can- brother and a psychology brother together on such Association—currently in its fifth edition—content- nabis use. One can make such models much more an afternoon, the conversation is bound to be lively; delusions still persist in the form of such diagnoses specific with techniques such as path analysis that ideas fly all over the place. The expostulation, “Yes, as “pyromania,” now an “impulse control” disorder, weight each component, and the authors’ model is that’s it!” will be common. Yet the knowledge base once a delusional disorder, or a “monomania” in really just a list of what they think is important. But in neither psychiatry nor psychology will support the language of the day. But for the most part, psy- the Gold brothers are smart guys, and what they such extensive timbering. It is the mind, not the chiatry has gone over to diagnoses based on form think important is worth listening to. brain, that has a psychology of its own. But much rather than content. Schizophrenia has a way of creeping into the psychiatric illness is driven by the brain. The core message of the book is that delusions discussion, when it is useful to fortify the “social Still, Suspicious Minds is an important book, have a psychology of their own, and much specu- influencing” hypothesis. Yet delusions in schizo- even if some of the psychologizing is off the deep lation is given over to exactly what this might be. phrenia are usually considered different from the end. The important thing is to wrest the discus- I have to light a warning sion in psychiatry away lamp here. It is possible Most individuals are not really at risk of from the extreme biologi- that delusions, like much cal reductionism that has other psychiatric illness, developing a delusional disorder, and the befallen the field for the do not really have a psy- last 30 years and to direct chology, that they result cheerleading from the Golds about social the conversation back to from some kind of auto- society, where it was left matic brain phenomenon causation has the effect of obscuring this reality. in the 1970s when social in the way that catatonia and community psychia- does not really seem to have a psychology—which fixed, systematic delusions of delusional disorder, try began to fade. The social and community envi- is to say, a distinctive mental activity of its own. A where the brain and mind seem otherwise all right. ronment we inhabit plays an unquestionable role common symptom of catatonia is the alternation In schizophrenia, the delusions are less stable and in giving our illnesses content—meaning what we of stupor and agitation, and in neither phase does more fragmentary, and they come and go quickly. think—even though these factors may not be so much thinking seem to occur on the patient’s part. They may well result from a different brain mecha- important in shaping the form of illness or in deter- In stupor, patients are unresponsive to all save the nism, and the dragging in of schizophrenia gives mining the response to treatment. What has been most vigorous external stimuli; in agitation they the impression that the authors are a bit needy of missing in particular these last three decades has are heedless of admonitions not to smash all the evidence. been keen interest in psychopathology, the exact windows of the ward or to stop hitting the other The Golds’ commitment to social shaping does signs and symptoms that patients have. DSM is a patients. And afterwards, they cannot remember lead to some curious calls. They consider erotoma- disaster for the study of psychopathology because anything. nia—the delusional belief that someone else is in the illnesses are carved off in great chunks, or even Delusions may not reach this level of automatic love with you—as an example of grandiosity. Hmm. worse, in the wrong chunks. behaviour, but still, one wonders at the authors’ These patients can be dangerous, and sometimes What the Golds are doing is directing atten- Socratic query of why the forms of delusion are try to kill their love object after an imagined rejec- tion back to psychopathology. They have taken related to the social. The answer is that not all of tion (which is why stalkers are a menace rather delusional disorder almost as a case in point and them are. Somatic delusions, the belief that one’s than a nuisance). Yet it is not that the erotomania are saying, hey, how do we break this down? What bowels have turned to concrete or that vermin are patient considers himself equal to the princess: different kinds are there? And the big question that creeping over one’s skin, are common, yet not really he is not necessarily grandiose. He knows that the they do not ask but that is hugely relevant is: are “social” in nature. princess is in love with him. Yes, this is delusional there differences in response to treatment? We wade into academic waters in the discussion disorder without doubt. But since the authors insist There are other big questions here that will ani- of what social factors might cause delusional disor- on breaking delusional disorder into these sub mate other rainy November afternoons across the der. It is a mixed bag. “Psychosis is a brain disease,” categories, the insistence that this is grandiosity land. The many case studies are riveting. And they say. No argument there. And then the authors strikes me as a miscall. the Golds are full of ready wit and clever prose. offer a “vulnerability-stress” model to explain delu- On a rainy November afternoon, the seminar I think that for these reasons the book will be widely sional disorders, one that draws equally on psycho- room at McGill could well be filled with excited read by serious people.
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28Ab Consultation LRC.indd 1 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review2014-06-27 of Canada 2:44 PM A Powerful Thirst Water drove human evolution, argues a controversial new book. Renée Hetherington
itself a human-conceived percept. But The Improbable Primate: there is more to this story. How Water Shaped Human Evolution Finlayson’s second barrel, his water Clive Finlayson optimization hypothesis, is introduced in Oxford University Press the preface. Returning to Middle Earth, 202 pages, hardcover he identifies its core as the “cauldron ISBN 9780199658794 of human evolution.” It is here that we discover his key to the explanation of human evolution, the patchy distribution aleoanthropologists, and some of water across arid and semi-arid evolutionary ecologists, study the landscapes and Homo’s ability to locate Pprehistory of our human past, take it, utilize it and, more recently, develop it. the stuff of excavations—ancient skulls, So there you have it, Finlayson’s fossil bones, stone tools—and create theory of human evolution: first, one a narrative, or theory, to fit it. This is a species from Homo erectus on and, long-standing practice. And now, there second, an innovative response to aridity is a new theory that is sure to draw both by that species. Gone is the former criticism and acclaim. It comes from Clive paleontological definition of species, Finlayson, the co-director of the Gibraltar Caves debates, with mixed success. Although his work in which species are determined by physical Project and 2003 member of the Order of the British may be controversial and, at times, in need of more differences in the fossil record, replaced with Empire (for archaeological and museum services supporting evidence, his theory is a brave one and Finlayson’s definition: “two lineages that produced in Gibraltar), as presented in his new book, The worthy of consideration. viable offspring in significant numbers would Improbable Primate: How Water Shaped Human In the book’s preface, Finlayson loads up his … be part of the same species.” Gone, also, is Evolution. shotgun. It is clear on the very first page that he is “the typological classification of stone tools” for The title leaves little doubt what Finlayson has in on the team of Ernst Mayr, a leading evolutionary determining the evolution of Homo species and store for the reader with this double-barrelled work biologist of the 20th century and author of human behaviour—for how could we say “that of popular science. The first barrel, the improbable Systematics and the Origin of Species, which outlines we are cognitively superior to our parents and primate part, refers to Finlayson’s hypothesis—that the biological concept of species and genetic drift. grandparents and their own parents who may not there is, and only ever was, one Homo species, an We know Finlayson is on the lumper team when he have had aeroplanes, fridges, or the Internet?” improbable one from which we evolved; the second quotes Mayr: “Never more than one species of man Gone, as well, are the concepts of anatomical and barrel, the water part, relates to Finlayson’s “water existed on the earth at any one time.” He further behavioural modernity “when what we really mean optimization” hypothesis—that our evolution was quotes Mayr in justification for calling the new is most recent.” driven by the changing environment and, most genus Homo an “improbable primate”: “the arrival And that is just the preface. critically, by access to water. of the fully upright human marked a significant and Finlayson spends the balance of the book Archaeology is a messy business, and I am not unprecedented departure from anything that had hurtling through time, from seven million to just referring to digging in the dirt; conflicting come before.” 21,000 years ago and later, from Australia to Lake opinions are rampant. Entire academic careers are That is Finlayson’s first barrel, that all Chad and beyond, justifying his premise that “the built on hypotheses that have been passed down by Homo species—Homo erectus, Homo ergaster, thread of human evolution over 1.8 million years generations of student acolytes. Paleoanthropology Homo neanderthalensis, Homo heidelbergensis, ago has therefore been one of adapting to an is no different; here it is the “lumpers” and the Denisovans and so on—although highly variable, increasingly arid world while being tied down to the “splitters” that vie for supremacy. “Lumpers” were all capable of interbreeding and producing need to drink water regularly.” place all hominins into one, or a very few, Homo viable offspring, and thus are lumped into one In Chapter 1, Finlayson introduces “The species; “splitters” prefer to create a new species for species.3 We are related to them all, he is saying, Inverted Panda.” The giant panda succeeded in significantly varied fossil hominins.1 Chris Stringer, with the possible exception of Homo floresiensis. the world of Pliocene meat-eating pandas by an eminent British anthropologist and proponent Furthermore, as he intends to prove, our existence becoming a specialist herbivore that eats bamboo. of the splitter theory, proposed in his “Out-of- is highly improbable. Humans, like the panda, changed their behaviour Africa” model that modern humans originated Throughout The Improbable Primate, Finlayson radically from our ancestors, but unlike the panda, in Africa around 200,000 years ago and then, much refers to an area that extends across much of went from largely plant eating to a more general more recently, dispersed throughout the world southern Asia, Africa and Australia as “a region diet that included meat. Hence, Finlayson labels replacing all other earlier Homo species including of relatively continuous human presence,” and omnivorous humans “inverted pandas,” which the Neanderthals.2 Moreover, in evolutionary another in Eurasia between 40° N and 50° N, which left me wondering what he might call human biology, an ongoing debate rages between genetic was colonized from a core in northeast Africa and vegetarians. Reverted inverted pandas? versus environmental determinists—or nature the Middle East. And although he calls these regions To continue with the dining experience, versus nurture. Finlayson blasts into both of these southern and northern “Middle Earth” respectively, Finlayson identifies the critical importance of this is not a story from Lord of the Rings. patchily distributed resources because it was Renée Hetherington’s most recent book is Living in At this point you might be forgiven for under these conditions that our ancestors’ a Dangerous Climate: Climate Change and Human thinking this book is simply about semantics; how lightweight, gracile bodies behaved optimally. Evolution (Cambridge University Press, 2012). paleoanthropologists define the concept of species, High-quality, patchily distributed foods promoted
September 2014 reviewcanada.ca 29 “problem-solving, information storage and retrieval the sole survivors after 1.4 million years because which preventing overheating and preventing abilities of good brains,” as well as the tendency to of water. We appeared at the same time the world dehydration fed off each other.” work in groups. The result: a bipedal, meat-eating was experiencing increased climate variability, Not all the changes that humans underwent primate in an open savannah. combined with an overall cooling and drying. in our evolution were a consequence of natural By identifying environmental factors as causal Open, drier areas along with reduced rainforest selection picking and choosing genes. It is true in stimulating human emergence, Finlayson firmly resulted in the increasingly patchy distribution of that the amount of hair in humans is heritable, propels himself into the nature-versus-nurture water. hence adaptational and gene-determined. Long debate. Unfortunately, however, although overall limbs extend the skin area, and in hot climates this At this point you might ask what about the other the planet may have been drying and cooling creates greater evaporative cooling of perspiration; primates that exploit patchily distributed resources 1.4 million years ago, do we know whether it was thus limb length, being heritable, is considered in groups. Why didn’t they become big-brained like that everywhere across Finlayson’s Middle an adaptation. However, much about humans too? To which Finlayson would respond, the key is Earth? is present due to behavioural and physiological cooperation. He then adds, with understated black Probably not. Previous research identifies places emergences. The best physiological example of humour, that our big-brained ancestors entered into where the reverse was likely the case. For example, this in the context of Finlayson’s work is sweating: a brain “arms race.” Stimulated by working in groups a 122,000-year time-series climate simulation humans acclimatize to high temperatures by we became “better interpreters and manipulators indicates that cooler temperatures 116,000 years reducing perspiration rates, thereby saving water. of society.” (These statements echo the thesis my ago brought the onset of glaciation.5 However, they Marginal geographical areas are where the colleague Robert Reid and I propounded in our also brought a significant reversal in precipitation thrust of evolution occurred, Finlayson wisely 2010 book, The Climate Connection: Climate Change patterns across Africa and the Middle East. While argues, because this is where populations are and Modern Human Evolution, where we named northern Africa and the Middle East experienced most stressed. Although he does not explain three key factors—crisis, communication and decreased precipitation relative to today, central why, previous research does. Climate change and collaboration—as critical in generating innovative Africa experienced increased precipitation. By expanding populations can generate stressful human adaptability, about which more later.) 110,000 years ago, although temperatures were still conditions. According to Robert Reid in Biological Moving at warp speed, in the chapter entitled cool, at about 2° C colder than today, precipitation Emergences: Evolution by Natural Experiment, “And the World Changed Forever,” Finlayson patterns in Africa had flipped again. Central Africa stress stimulates emergences. Emergence refers covers 2.68 million years in 15 pages, with the experienced decreased precipitation relative here to progressive, or emergent, evolution—the title forewarning of an impending drama. Here to today, whereas Northern Africa, the Middle sudden appearance of something new, such as he boldly states that our “remote ancestors of East and South Africa experienced increased when overcrowding causes locust hoppers to 7–6 million years ago … would have already held precipitation. become epigenetically stimulated to fly, or when the potential for cultural development.” Thus, although Finlayson recognizes “changes overpopulation stimulates the sudden emergence Why is that a bold statement? in geographical range of humans,” his broad of carnivorous salamanders that consume their Although Finlayson does not delve into this, climate and resource distribution statements normal vegetarian brethren. geneticists already know that there is very little need to be tempered with evidence of regional Finlayson recognizes Homo sapiens’ ability to variation in the DNA at the nucleotide level between climate variations through time and space. Such respond to a changing environment, specifically a bonobo chimpanzee and a human: 1.2 percent to conditions would have had an impact on vegetation a reduction in the availability of water in a drying be precise, which is little more than the average productivity, water availability and the capacity for climate. Some of those changes were long- 0.2 percent range of variation within Homo sapiens. various regions to support hominins. term genetic adaptations, others were abrupt Given that very little of the difference between our Finally, Finlayson’s innovative ideas are physiological or behavioural self-modifications, ancestors of seven or six million years ago and somewhat weakened by the fact that he does such as Finlayson’s inverted panda exemplifying ourselves occurs at the level of our nucleotide DNA, not draw a distinction between adaptation and changes in our eating behaviour, as well as what makes us different? adaptability. Although he intimates the importance sweating, and Homo sapiens’ ability to cooperate The most distinct differences between bonobo of the environment in human evolution, he is quick and work in groups. Adaptability, the capacity to chimps and us are hair loss, our increased ability to to retreat to natural selection as the essential factor, self-modify, allowed early Homo sapiens to survive walk on two legs, new hand anatomy, reduction in and that does not fully explain the developments he and thrive in a rapidly changing environment; facial bone growth and the relative expansion of our is charting in this book. adaptability will allow humans to survive a rapidly neocortex. These all mainly involve differences in Adaptations are genetically fixed mutations; changing future. the distribution in space and time of hormones and adaptability, on the other hand, is what an The Improbable Primate is worth reading, not their receptors, and not changes at the molecular organism does to physiologically or behaviourally because you will necessarily agree with Finlayson’s level. As humans we also possess complex change. Adaptation occurs over the very long theory in its entirety, but because he has created structured language, artistic abilities, empathy and term; adaptability happens in a virtual instant. an opportunity for critique, discussion and debate. the potential to perceive and analyze problems. Adaptation, through natural selection, allows And because he has the courage to create a new From the time the first Homo sapiens appeared organisms to thrive in a specific habitat; unlike generative human origin theory, one worth telling, around 200,000 years ago, the human brain has adaptability, it does not provide the opportunity reading and bandying about. not become larger or more complex in its overall for organisms to adjust to sudden environmental anatomy. However, it could have reorganized change. For example, the structure of the head is at the cellular level, with some areas becoming an adaptation, and because anatomy is genetically Notes differentiated, perhaps with an increase in the fixed, very little modification is possible. As 1 Hominin refers to the group consisting of modern number of neurons or in complexity.4 Finlayson recognizes, not all genetically fixed humans, extinct human species and all our immedi- So what is bold is that Finlayson pushes the changes are suitable to the prevailing environment. ate ancestors (including members of the genera Homo, Australopithecus, Paranthropus and Ardipithecus), potential for neural complexity back six or seven Survival, or at least success, would depend on an whereas hominid refers to the great apes. For a nice million years, giving the seven-million-year-old organism’s degree of physiological and behavioural clarification, see this explanation from the Australian central African fossil hominin Sahelanthropus adaptability. Adaptability, in contrast to inflexible Museum:
30 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada The Metaphysics of Math A philosopher asks why it counts to think about numbers. Florin Diacu
mathematicians seem to be immune to philosoph- axioms. All the attempts to find a proof failed until Why Is There Philosophy of Mathematics ical thought when engaging in research. But this is the 1830s when two young mathematicians, János at All? just an appearance. They unconsciously follow the Bolyai and Nikolai Lobachevsky, independently Ian Hacking philosophical approach embedded in their minds showed that the claim was not true. If Postulate 5 is Cambridge University Press during the training years. Nevertheless, while the replaced by the axiom “through a point lying out- 304 pages, softcover huge benefits of mathematics to our society are not side a given straight line, we can draw at least two ISBN 9781107658158 in doubt, what is the contribution of mathematical parallels to that line,” a new geometry emerges. That philosophy? Without ever asking this question this new axiom transcends imagination is irrel- (except obliquely in his title), Hacking is on a pur- evant. It matters only that the new geometry is free very field of human endeavour exists suit to show why this activity matters. of contradictions. Bernhard Riemann showed some for a reason, but often its origins get lost The beginnings of the link between philosophy three decades later that yet another geometry can Ein the mist of time. Mathematics is no and mathematics can be traced to the ancient be built with the axiom “through a point lying out- exception. The most ancient mathematical texts Greeks. The Pythagoreans were both philosophers side a given straight line, we can draw no parallel that made it to us (from ca. 2000 BC) do not men- and mathematicians, in the modern sense of the to that line.” These developments opened the door tion how mathematics appeared, although this is words. They attached physical meaning to the five to more geometries and to a novel way of thinking. not difficult to guess. Keeping track of domestic Platonic solids (earth to the tetrahedron, water to Without these mathematical achievements, animals and performing commercial transactions the cube, etc.), and apparently went through an Einstein could have never come up with his general are some of the activities likely responsible for the existential crisis when learning that there are num- relativity, which led to our current understanding birth of arithmetic. Geometry of the large-scale universe. These probably sprouted from needs The birth of democracy in the city-states developments also influenced related to the division of agri- literature, the visual arts, in cultural land and the building of of the Peloponnese put argument above fact our entire culture. And this large constructions. The curious mathematics was catalyzed by mind of the prehistoric thinker the rule of autocracy, a social change that the philosophical idea of impos- then got detached from practical ing axioms, a fact that underlines purposes and started investigat- also influenced mathematical thought. the importance of mathematical ing the properties of numbers, philosophy. Although obscure triangles, circles and other abstract mathematical bers, such as 2, that cannot be written as fractions. and with few actual practitioners (mathematicians objects, a process that continues today at a much Until then, they strongly believed in the existence are not inclined to philosophize and few philoso- higher level and with incredible benefit for our of a unit of measure√ that can be used to precisely phers know enough mathematics to analyze it), civilization. Without mathematics, we would still evaluate every length, a belief that collapsed after the philosophy of mathematics has offered several live in the Bronze Age. this discovery. times in history the spark that kindled new research So much for “why mathematics exists at all.” Ian The Greeks also made a crucial philosophical directions or was the fuel that kept alive the interest Hacking, a former professor of philosophy at the step when requiring proof for every mathematical in certain mathematical questions. University of Toronto and the Collège de France, statement. The birth of democracy in the city-states Ian Hacking does a good job in treating many of chooses for a title of his latest book an even more of the Peloponnese put argument above the rule the problems that concern those few thinkers who intriguing question: Why Is There Philosophy of of autocracy, a social change that also influenced pursued them, whether they had been trained as Mathematics at All? The answer is not difficult to mathematical thought, which in turn kept the taste philosophers or as mathematicians. While I do not give. Every field of human endeavour is divided for justification alive in society. Earlier cultures, always agree with his views, and sometimes find into schools of thought grouped around a set of such as Babylon and Egypt, had stated theorems as his mathematical background shaky (as when he answers to some basic questions. In mathematics, facts, with no attempt to defend them. But an even mixes up algebra with arithmetic while discuss- for instance, it is natural to ask: Do we discover or more important development flourished from the ing Descartes’ making of analytic geometry), the invent mathematical objects? Or, more specifically, idea of proof: Euclid’s imposition of the axioms (or deeper my reading progressed, the more I enjoyed do the numbers 1, 2, 3, etc., exist independently of postulates) to which every theorem of geometry his book. Unlike most philosophers who venture us, like the laws of physics, or are they the product had to be reduced by logical reasoning. In Euclid’s into this field, Hacking does not restrict himself to of our brain? Those who accept the former answer view, an axiom was a self-evident statement, such the foundations of mathematics, but dares to cover are the Platonists; the others are the materialists (or as “through any two distinct points we can draw both the breadth and the depth of mathematical naturalists). No matter whose side we take, by pur- only one straight line.” philosophy. From the various visions on the con- suing questions like this we have entered the realm The philosophical idea of reducing every proof cept of proof to the apparent contradiction between of mathematical philosophy. to some axioms imposed not only an unpreced- determinism and chaos, he takes the reader to A more difficult question to answer is: why ented level of rigour, but also allowed the lifting of exotic places surrounded by new questions, which would anyone care about the philosophy of math- mathematics to levels that would be impossible to look like rugged mountains impossible to climb. ematics? Unlike physics, which can be made or reach otherwise. An illuminating example is that In spite of Hacking’s good writing, this volume is unmade by philosophy (Einstein came to his theor- of the attempts to eliminate Euclid’s Postulate 5, not for everyone: the nature of the subject is forbid- ies thanks to his novel philosophical approach), which is equivalent to saying that “through a point ding. Without a solid background in mathematics lying outside a given straight line, we can draw a and a keen interest in philosophical reasoning, a Florin Diacu is a mathematician at the University single parallel to that line.” To Euclid this statement curious reader would abandon this book early. But of Victoria and the author of several books of and was obvious, but his followers tried for more than those who have the necessary skills will enjoy it. about mathematics. two millennia to show that it follows from his other They should not miss the opportunity.
September 2014 reviewcanada.ca 31 Letters and Responses
Re: “Hedgehog Gospel,” by Rankin themselves as “sex workers” or “sex worker allies.” My thesis is that for the first 70–80 years of Sherling (July/August 2014) It alludes to the radical notion that we the people Confederation federal transfers to the provinces thank Rankin Sherling for his vigorous review don’t need to be saved from ourselves by those (such as they were) were guided by the politics of Iof In Praise of Mixed Religion: The Syncretism who know better—what we need is to be free from the moment to the detriment of the less populous Solution in a Multifaith World. However, Sherling the systems and the violence that oppress us. (and therefore politically weak) provinces. For seems to be confused about my purpose. Far from The phrase resonates with progressives—per- about 30 years at mid century, Canadian pol- trying to impose a universal system on the world, haps the poor, the marginalized, the abused do iticians from all provinces and political stripes I propose a method that embraces openness and know how best they would like to avoid subordina- worked with the federal government to devise a resists premature closure. I do not have a clear and tion. But, for a number of reasons, not least of system of fiscal transfers that would enable all inevitable end in view—only ideas about how to which being the dampening of radical ideology provinces, regardless of their economic strength, navigate today’s complexities. and movements through identity politics, it has to provide comparable levels of public services My definition of religion is not as rare as been used to silence the voices of those who push such as education and health care. The middle Sherling supposes. It is merely different from back against the sex industry. part of the book deals with that evolution, while the weak and limited definition, based upon a It isn’t true that only those who publicly iden- the latter chapters are devoted to describing notion of Christianity, that we inherit from the tify as sex workers have the right to speak or have the backlash against that transfer system that Enlightenment. I have provided a way of thinking an opinion on the issue of prostitution. Because has dominated the debate over the past several about religion that comfortably includes indigen- prostitution is not a matter of personal identity—it decades and has seen major federal per capita ous religions, Buddhism, Taoism and many other is a women’s issue; the same way abortion and transfers to Alberta and Ontario increase at about traditions on their own terms, along with the rape and domestic abuse are “women’s issues.” double the national average. This has taken place Abrahamic religions. Many people think of lives Prostitution exists because we live in a world despite the commitment to equal citizenship devoted to money or power as devoted (religious) that sees women through a male lens. which section 36 of the Constitution Act, 1982 lives. Sherling’s language of “christening” (why a It’s natural. Men have needs. It’s just a service— defines as “reasonably comparable levels of public Christian word?) other ways of life is inappropriate. like getting a haircut. Even the term “sex work” services” at “reasonably comparable levels of Sherling assumes that I am trying to simplify normalizes and sanitizes the existence of what is taxation.” the world and cause it to move in one, standard- and has always been a violent, exploitative indus- Mendelsohn’s review is too concerned with ized direction—in a Marxist-style determinism. try. The conversation has been manipulated and identifying slights against Ontario even to discuss Therefore, he is disappointed when my approach women and the feminist movement have suffered section 36 in the context of growing inequality multiplies complexities, instead of reducing them. as a result. of provinces. Instead, he dismisses the whole However, Sherling misunderstands my argu- Sexual labour is something all women learn. matter by implicitly accepting as inevitable the ment. I propose a method in which people recog- We work, in marriage, to “keep our man happy” ability of some provinces (notably Alberta) to nize both the reality and possibility of syncretism, so he doesn’t stray, become surly, complain to offer better quality public services at lower levels and approach other religions with “critical open- his friends, divorce us or beat us. We work to stay of taxation while claiming that there is no evi- ness.” This means not reducing others to simple youthful and sexually appealing, literally cut- dence “Canadians in the Maritimes are suffering tags, such as “Muslim.” Precisely because everyone ting our bodies up into pieces, removing excess, from ‘unequal citizenship’.” That startling claim is influenced by a variety of religious ways of think- replacing parts that don’t meet the standards makes sense only because he narrowly equates ing and being, we must be careful when making pornography and pop culture have set for us with equal citizenship with access to public services assumptions about others from their labels. Labels new ones. We think of sex as being something we while ignoring history and the other metrics may be necessary, but they can be misleading. do to make men happy; we expect him to orgasm, referenced in section 36—comparable rates of Gandhi was officially a Hindu, but he was killed by but don’t expect the same of ourselves. taxation and a reduction in “disparity of oppor- a Hindu because Gandhi believed different things The sex industry is both a product of this reality tunities.” Notwithstanding section 36, the rates and acted in different ways under the influence and a foundation for it. of provincial taxation in the long-established of a different syncretism—and we can learn from Prostitution isn’t about identities—who is able equalization-receiving provinces (the Maritimes, him. We need to be open to hearing from people to or chooses to publicly identify as sex worker—it Quebec and Manitoba) are higher and levels of of other religious traditions, because their wisdom is about a deeply rooted system of oppression that income and wealth remain lower while regional can enrich our lives. However, just as food is good, shapes the very foundations of our lives as men economic development targeting the poorer but not all food in any amount at any time, so and women. We all have a right—and, as feminists, provinces have been all but abandoned. Even on some assertions made by other religions can be an obligation—to speak out against that. the issue of access to services, the reviewer should destructive for us. We need to be open, critically. Meghan Murphy go back and reread the chapter of the book that Far from taking a “no questions asked” www.feministcurrent.com does present evidence to that effect (drug coverage, approach, I welcome inquiry and provide numer- for example), and that points out that even as the ous examples of religious syncretism. The medi- Re: “The East Wants In,” by Matthew populations in the Maritimes and Manitoba age, eval Celtic example that Sherling derides is only Mendelsohn (June 2014) creating greater need for health services, those one; I treat it primarily as a reflexive syncretism, t is not too surprising that Matthew Mendelsohn, provinces have been disadvantaged by the current in which Celtic religion reminds Christianity of Ias head of a think tank dedicated to furthering regime of federal transfers. some emphases that it has forgotten. I do believe the provincial interests of Ontario, would disagree Mendelsohn concludes his review by criticizing that syncretism happens everywhere; denying its with the interpretation of the evolution of federal- this author’s failure to “understand the narratives occurrence means ignoring important historical provincial fiscal relations described in my book, of other parts of Canada.” I disagree with that, but evidence. Equal as Citizens: The Tumultuous and Troubled even if true, his review is an example of what my The point of my work is not to arrive at a reduc- History of a Great Canadian Idea. However, even grandmother used to describe as the pot calling tionist determinism, but to suggest a method a biased reviewer should be careful not to twist, the kettle black. that resists closed systems and opens our eyes to distort and ignore. Right off the top Mendelsohn Richard Starr astounding complexity. misrepresents the book when he dismisses it as Dartmouth, Nova Scotia Reverend William Harrison a “long march of slights against Atlantic Canada.” Huron, Ontario My intent was to chronicle the political struggle to The LRC welcomes letters—and more are available provide equal public services in a decentralized on our website at
32 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada NEW FROM UBC PRESS
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