Borduas’s revolution • Alzheimer’s dilemmas SPUR FESTIVAL Ottawa and Vancouver preview! $6.50 Vol. 22, No. 4 May 2014 Lawrence Hill Uncovering the chains The black and aboriginal slaves who helped build New France. ALSO IN THIS ISSUE Jocelyn Maclure Why democracy needs protests Candace Savage A prairie pilgrimage Jonathan Kay Reviving the Enlightenment PLUS: NON-FICTION David Milligan on debunking our “historical illiteracy” + Christopher Dummitt on a West Coast riot + Molly Worthen on coexistence through religious limits + David MacDonald on a made-in-Canada church + Jennifer Jeffs on regulating the markets since 2008 + Denise Donlon on the Tales of Bachman Publications Mail Agreement #40032362 FICTION Claire Holden Rothman reviews Wonder by Dominique Fortier + Roger Seamon Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to LRC, Circulation Dept. reviews Life Class by Ann Charney PO Box 8, Station K Toronto, ON M4P 2G1 POETRY Shane Neilson + Elizabeth Ross + Crystal Hurdle + Kayla Czaga Literary Review of Canada 170 Bloor St West, Suite 710 Toronto ON M5S 1T9 email: [email protected] reviewcanada.ca T: 416-531-1483 • F: 416-531-1612 Charitable number: 848431490RR0001 To donate, visit reviewcanada.ca/support Vol. 22, No. 4 • May 2014 EDITOR Bronwyn Drainie [email protected] CONTRIBUTING EDITORS 2 Outthinking Ourselves 15 May Contain Traces Mark Lovewell, Molly Peacock, Robin A review of Enlightenment 2.0, by Joseph Heath A poem Roger, Anthony Westell Jonathan Kay Kayla Czaga ASSOCIATE EDITOR Judy Stoffman 4 Market Rules 18 Under the Volcano POETRY EDITOR A review of Transnational Financial Regulation A review of Wonder, by Dominique Fortier, Moira MacDougall after the Crisis, edited by Tony Porter translated by Sheila Fischman COPY EDITOR Jennifer Jeffs Claire Holden Rothman Madeline Koch 7 The Memory Thief 19 Making It ONLINE EDITORS Diana Kuprel, Jack Mitchell, A review of The Alzheimer Conundrum: A review of Life Class, by Ann Charney Donald Rickerd, C.M. Entanglements of Dementia and Aging, by Roger Seamon PROOFREADERS Margaret Lock, and The Memory Clinic: Stories 20 Democratic Unrest Heather Schultz, Robert Simone, Rob of Hope and Healing for Alzheimer’s Patients Tilley, Jeannie Weese An essay and Their Families, by Tiffany Chow Jocelyn Maclure RESEARCH Gregory Marchildon Rob Tilley Public Peace through Private Gods EDITORIAL ASSISTANT 9 Taking Care of Business 23 A review of Fighting over God: A Legal and Clare Gibbons A review of Tales from Beyond the Tap, by Political History of Religious Freedom in DESIGN Randy Bachman Canada, by Janet Epp Buckingham James Harbeck Denise Donlon Molly Worthen ADVERTISING/SALES 10 Reluctant Nationalist Hero Michael Wile 25 Spiritual Rambling [email protected] A review of Paul-Émile Borduas: A Critical A review of The Road Is How: A Prairie Biography, by François-Marc Gagnon, translated DIRECTOR, SPECIAL PROJECTS Pilgrimage through Nature, Desire and Soul, by Michael Booth by Peter Feldstein Trevor Herriot DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANT Martin Laflamme Candace Savage Michael Stevens Chains Unearthed EDUcaTIONAL OUTReacH COORDINATOR 12 26 Made-in-Canada Faith A review of Canada’s Forgotten Slaves: Two Mary Kim A review of A Church with the Soul of a Nation: Hundred Years of Bondage, by Marcel Trudel, PUBLISHERS Making and Remaking the United Church of translated by George Tombs Alastair Cheng Canada, by Phyllis D. Airhart, and Growing [email protected] Lawrence Hill to One World: The Life of J. King Gordon, by Helen Walsh 14 An Able Physiologist 1: Robin Eileen R. Janzen [email protected] Pecknold Descends the Steps of David MacDonald BOARD OF DIRECTORS John Honderich, C.M., Pennsylvania Hospital in 1786 28 Does History Matter? J. Alexander Houston, Frances Lankin, A poem A review of Canadians and Their Pasts, by Jack Mintz, Trina McQueen Shane Neilson Margaret Conrad, Kadriye Ercikan, Gerald ADVISORY COUNCIL Friesen, Jocelyn Létourneau, Delphin Muise, Michael Adams, Ronald G. Atkey, P.C., 14 Placebo Q.C., Alan Broadbent, C.M., Chris Ellis, David Northrup and Peter Seixas A poem Drew Fagan, James Gillies, C.M., Elizabeth Ross Ian Milligan Carol Hansell, Donald Macdonald, Following the Sheep P.C., C.C., Susan Reisler, Grant Reuber, 15 Ms. Letitia Henry, English Teacher, 30 O.C., Don Rickerd, C.M., Rana Sarkar, Marks Candace Hunter’s Haiku A review of Trouble on Main Street: Mackenzie Mark Sarner, Bernard Schiff, King, Reason, Race and the 1907 Vancouver Reed Scowen A poem Riots, by Julie F. Gilmour Crystal Hurdle POETRY SUBMISSIONS Christopher Dummitt For poetry submission guidelines, please see <reviewcanada.ca>. 32 Letters and Responses LRC design concept by Jackie Young/INK Cover art and pictures throughout the issue by David E. Smith, Martin Collacott, Founded in 1991 by P.A. Dutil Lindsay Campbell. Christian Pearce, Neil Boyd The LRC is published 10 times a year by the Literary Review of Canada Inc. 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All rights, support of the Government an initiative of Ontario Media including translation into other languages, are reserved of Canada through the Development Corporation. by the publisher in Canada, the United States, Great Canada Periodical Fund of Britain and all other countries participating in the Universal Copyright Convention, the International the Department of Canadian Copyright Convention and the Pan-American Copyright Heritage. Convention. Nothing in this publication may be repro- duced without the written permission of the publisher. ISSN 1188-7494 The Literary Review of Canada is indexed in the Canadian Literary Periodicals Index and the Canadian Index and is distributed by Disticor and Magazines Canada. May 2014 reviewcanada.ca 1 Outthinking Ourselves Political progress requires restraining 200,000-year-old instincts. JONATHAN KAY they began to look for alternatives. Enlightenment 2.0 The result is that, even to this day, Joseph Heath in liberal arts faculties, the most appal- HarperCollins ling sort of mystical, anti-r ationalist 432 pages, hardcover gobbledygook often will get a respect- ISBN 9781443422529 ful reception if it is couched as a quasi-mystical alternative to dominant intellectual paradigms. (In this regard, n early 2014, when Canada’s min- Heath provides no better example than ister of state for democratic reform, the self-proclaimed “intergalactic” IPierre Poilievre, began making the truths of feminist guru Mary Daly. Her case for tightening the vote-eligibility “Gynocentric” intellectual method provisions contained in the Elections promised the “methodicide” of all Act, he cited the problem of voter “patriarchal disciplines” that interfered fraud, as described in a special report with her “entry into a New Realm of prepared by independent elections Qualitative Leaping through galaxies expert Harry Neufeld. of mindspace.” This is mind-blowing One problem, though: that report bullshit. Yet Heath tells us that when actually said the opposite of what he was in grad school, plenty of his col- Poilievre claimed. According to leagues took it seriously.) By the time Neufeld, “there was no evidence of Ronald Reagan became U.S. president fraud whatsoever” in the cases he had in 1980, and began reciting homespun examined. Poilievre was effectively just fairy tales as if they were true anec- making things up. What’s worse: even dotes, the anti-rationalists of the left when he got caught, Poilievre kept were in no position to complain. on spouting nonsense, and, indeed, In fact—putting aside Heath’s con- proudly proclaimed his intention to ventionally leftist positions on a long continue spouting nonsense. “We are going to keep Another example Heath supplies is 2012 list of contemporary issues—it is apparent that quoting Mr. Neufeld’s report because it contains the Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum, the author has a healthy respect for the original facts that obviously support our position,” he told who told the party faithful: “In the Netherlands, principles of conservatism developed by Edmund the House of Commons, when confronted. people wear different bracelets if they are elderly. Burke in the shadow of the French Revolution. That This is the sort of thing that drives author And the bracelet is: ‘Do not euthanize me.’ Because revolution dissolved into chaos and terror, Heath Joseph Heath absolutely batty. The left-leaning, they have voluntary euthanasia in the Netherlands argues, because its engineers conceived of rational- hyper-rationalist University of Toronto philosophy but half of the people who are euthanized—ten ism in a sterile, individualistic manner: Robespierre professor looks around North America and sees percent of all deaths in the Netherlands—half et al. imagined they could create a perfect society dozens of important public policy problems that of those people are euthanized involuntarily at out of whole cloth. Burke correctly noted that this cry out for well-considered forms of collective hospitals because they are older and sick. And so sort of social engineering is doomed to fail because action. Instead, as he complains in his new book, elderly people in the Netherlands don’t go to the societies and economies are too complex to submit Enlightenment 2.0, we get simplistic solutions from hospital.