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$6.50 Vol. 23, No. 10 December 2015

Joe Berridge Modernist looking glass How a city hall helped grow up

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Ramona Pringle Netflix and chill

Jen Gerson Battling the PMO

Marty Gervais Literary geography

PLUS: non-fiction Lisa Tomlinson on Austin Clarke’s immigration to Canada + Michael W. Higgins on a Canadian priest in Latin America + Wendy McElroy on pink Viagra + David M. Malone on Pearson and the Suez + D.B. Krupp on psychopathology myths + Aritha van Herk on Helen Humphreys’s Publications Mail Agreement #40032362 Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to ­naturalism + John Lownsbrough on a writer’s companion parrot + Allan C. Hutchinson on legalese LRC, Circulation Dept. PO Box 8, Station K + Michael Taube on campaign backrooms + Ibi Kaslik on Wab Kinew’s memoir Toronto, ON M4P 2G1 fiction Oakland Ross on Ronald Wright’s The Gold Eaters + Shelley Boyd on ’s The Heart Goes Last poetry Louise Carson + Larry Tremblay + Eva Tihanyi Live Souls Citizens and Volunteers of Civil War Spain Serge Alternês & Alec Wainman Alec Wainman, a lifelong humanitarian and professor at UBC, was a young medical volunteer in the Spanish Civil War. His memoir, along with 210 of his striking b&w LIVE SOULS photos, long thought to be lost, offers a stirring account of the opening act of WWII. Citizens andnd VVoolunteers ofo Civil War Spain Serge Alternês puts the civil war into a global perspective with a preface and afterword.

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THETHE FIRSTF I R ST EUROPEANE U ROP EAN TOTO EXPLOREEXPLOR E THETH E SALISHSALIS H SEAS EA Uncharted Waters Hannah & the Wild Woods The Explorations of José Narváez (1768–1840) Carol Anne Shaw The Explorations of José Narváez (1768–1840) Jim McDowell In the third novel in the series, Hannah is on the West Coast cleaning up refuse from the Japanese The first complete biography of the overlooked Spanish tsunami of 2011 when a mysterious Japanese girl mariner who explored and mapped much of the Pacific with a secret past as a spirit fox appears, longing Northwest Coast, including Vancouver harbour — before for mortality. Captain Vancouver. With 40 b&w photos and maps. 978-1-55380-440-6 (PRINT) 978-1-55380-434-5 (PRINT) JIM McDOWELL 978-1-55380-441-3 (EBOOK) 276 pp $11.95 978-1-55380-435-2 (EBOOK) 322 pp $24.95

The De Cosmos Enigma Hope’s Journey Gordon Hawkins Jean Rae Baxter A fascinating account of B.C.’s second premier, The fifth novel in the “Forging a Nation” series the man who did much to unify the two Pacific sees Hope Cobman in 1791 searching for her colonies and bring B.C. into Confederation — father and brothers who fought for the British. but who is now largely forgotten. Little does she know she must help them recover THE 978-1-55380-353-9 (PRINT) from the wounds of war. ENIGMA 978-1-55380-354-6 (EBOOK) 978-1-55380-446-8 (PRINT) GORDON HAWKINS 170 pp $17.95 978-1-55380-447-5 (EBOOK) 238 pp $11.95

FootstepsF ttt Footsteps of the Past The Journal of the past Philip Resnick Lois Donovan These poems reflect on the modern human Kami, a 13-year-old Japanese-Canadian girl, is condition, probing its cultural and political thrown back in time to 1929 where she meets her underpinnings with cool detachment and hero, Emily Murphy of the “Famous Five,” and unrelenting honesty. discovers racism even among those who are most 978-1-55380-431-4 (PRINT) progressive. 978-1-55380-432-1 (EBOOK) 978-1-55380-350-8 (PRINT) PHILIP RESNICK 116 pp $15.95 978-1-55380-351-5 (EBOOK) 204 pp $11.95

The Arrow of Time Eco Warrior Bruce Meyer Philip Roy

In these poems, Meyer explores how a random The seventh volume in the “Submarine Outlaw” element — love, beauty or desire — changes series follows Alfred in his homemade submarine the flow of events, allowing us to gain small to the Southern Ocean where he joins Paul victories in life’s challenges. Watson of the Sea Shepherd Society in fighting 978-1-55380-428-4 (PRINT) off the Japanese whalers. 978-1-55380-429-1 (EBOOK) 978-1-55380-347-8 (PRINT) 112 pp $15.95 978-1-55380-348-5 (EBOOK) 234 pp $11.95

Goethe’s Goethe’s Poems Mouse Pet Poems Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Story: Philip Roy / Art: Andrea Torrey Balsara Translated by Graham Good The third volume in the “Happy the Pocket Mouse” series tells how Happy informs John that he wants Following on from his best-selling translation a most unusual pet, and then decides that the pet of Rilke’s poems, Graham Good offers a STORY BY Philip Roy ART BY Andrea Torrey Balsara needs a pet. What or who will it be? splendid rendering into English of the poems of Germany’s Shakespeare. 978-1-55380-443-7 (HC) FULL COLOUR Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 978-1-55380-356-0 (PRINT) TRANSLATED WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY Graham Good 32 pp 9 X 9 $12.95 978-1-55380-357-7 (EBOOK) 186 pp $18.95

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December 2015 reviewcanada.ca 1 2 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada City Maker How the new city hall transformed Toronto. Joe Berridge

the renowned architect who, Civic Symbol: temporarily absent from the Creating Toronto’s New City jury room, returned to insist on Hall 1952–1966 the eventually winning design Christopher Armstrong making the short list (some- Press thing he had done the previ- 203 pages, hardcover ous year as juror in the design ISBN 9781442650275 competition for the Sydney Opera House, with a result the world well recognizes). an a single building Fine civil servants made the make a city? building actually happen— C Perhaps for George Bell, Ray Bremner, Matt Toronto it is true. Christopher Lawson—it is good to see them Armstrong, in Civic Symbol: get the praise they deserve. And Creating Toronto’s New City the undoubted heroes: may- Hall 1952–1966, provides the ors Phillips and Givens, both evidence that the creation of Jewish, who broke the strangle- New City Hall was the moment hold of the Orange Lodge and modern Toronto was born. He let fly the city’s better angels, tells a fascinating story of how both of them leading from the the Toronto of the 1950s—a reli- front and ultimately paying pol- ably dull provincial city of no itically for their boldness. And, importance lost in the middle of course, the winning Finnish of a secondary country—trans- architect Viljo Revell, the “huge, formed itself into a global metropolis, a city that a safe haven both from sovereigntist fervour in shy, kindly shambling man” who gave us his unique even those who might cringe at the phrase “world Quebec and from racial and anti–Vietnam War fer- creation, suffering financially and physically in the class” must acknowledge is now lodged in the top ment in the United States. And the 1967 changes to effort, dying a month after his last visit to see his dozen most important cities in the world. His book the Immigration Act transformed the complexion building topped out. makes a strong case that 50 years ago the extended of the city. Those external shots of energy and the The bad guys? Mayors Somerville and Dennison civic drama that culminated in Viljo Revell’s magic of immigration changed Toronto forever, and who tried every which way to block the building, masterpiece was Toronto’s pivotal moment. How New City Hall was there to welcome them. countless callow councillors, a know-better press, did it happen? In the preceding decade, for once we had made protectionist architectural associations, sullen A few writers and fewer academics have tried to our own luck. An extended, often fraught and tax-averse voters. But the struggle for the building chart that rise. Robert Fulford comes closest, with uncertain process resulted in a building that gave triumphed, albeit by an agonisingly narrow margin. a great book, Accidental City: The Transformation Toronto a whole new idea about itself. And it was For once the big idea did not die. of Toronto, based on the thesis that the city’s rise Torontonians themselves, led by a few notable cit- Armstrong’s compelling book takes us through to prominence was not through any grand plan izens and politicians described in generous detail the drama from its beginning in 1952. Councillors but rather as a consequence of benign neglect and by Armstrong, who made it happen. and civil servants had long known they needed to actions off-stage. It is a convincing idea. A large It could have come unstuck so many ways. find more modern accommodation to replace the measure of the city’s success is a consequence of Deciding whether to go ahead with the project, cramped and dysfunctional quarters of Old City omission rather than commission. Toronto did not whether to have a design competition, whether Hall. Land had steadily been assembled in the make the mistakes of American cities: it did that competition should be open to the world or district to the west known as the “Ward,” a storied not build many urban expressways; it did not restricted to Ontario or Canada as the architects’ neighbourhood with much the character of today’s destroy many inner city neighbourhoods through associations lobbied, securing the budget, getting Kensington Market. The replacement city hall was urban renewal; it did not build vast swathes of council to agree on the details again and again and originally to be designed and procured the good public housing. It did not do all these things often again, wrestling the complicated project to comple- old-fashioned way; indeed a cabal of prominent not for lack of intent but largely because its diffuse tion—all these were acts in a decade-long civic local architects had already produced a design, governance process just could not get around to it. drama. And like any good drama it had its cast of shown by Armstrong, of stultifying pragmatism. In the late 1960s and early ’70s that civic sloth good guys and bad guys, heroes and villains. And, Nathan Phillips had a bigger idea both for the New combined with geopolitical luck. The city offered wonderfully, well past Act Five, the good guys won. City Hall and for Toronto. He wanted an inter- The good guys? Eric Arthur, the worldly, politic- national design competition, not just for a building Joe Berridge is an urban planner and partner at ally savvy University of Toronto architecture pro- but for a major civic space to make real his hopes Urban Strategies, a Toronto-based firm working fessor who managed the competition and brought for the city. Phillips was lucky that mayoral terms across Canada and the world. in a top rank international jury. Eero Saarinen, had just been extended, giving him the time to

December 2015 reviewcanada.ca 3 skilfully manage divided opinion in the city. That, submission. They are instantly recognizable as the and the shrewd selection of Eric Arthur, forced his building of today. bold idea through the endless doubters. Phillips Revell’s design did not win a unanimous vote, THOUGHTFUL even wrote the foreword to the competition brief, only carrying the jury three to two. A minority report Early Intervention finally issued in 1957, in words almost foreign today expressed practical concerns about the inefficiency James Hughes in their clarity and purpose. The New City Hall, he of the internal office layout, about excessive sum- 978-1-4594-0877-7 insisted, must be “the most important element in mer heat gain, about the separation of civic staff $22.95, paperback the life of the city, a symbol of Toronto, a source of space between two towers. Everyone who works in pride and pleasure to its citizens.” Armstrong has a City Hall, as I did a few years after it opened, knows Using an evidence- based approach, James wonderful photo of Phillips walking up the stairway these criticisms to be true. And everyone is equally Hughes makes the of Old City Hall carrying delighted to suffer for case for early interven- a model of the New. His the pleasure of occupy- tion in areas of social face is beatific. A large measure of ing a work of art. policy from child care to mental health Phillips’s demon- The decade after its stration of civic char- Toronto’s success is a opening saw a flour- acter was matched by ish of civic energy and Givens, mayor as the consequence of omission excitement that has building reached com- rather than commission. marked the city to this pletion. Givens per- day. David Crombie ENGAGING sonally sought out the at age 36 was elected How We Changed sculptor Henry Moore for a major work befitting mayor, proceeding to advance a whole new vision Toronto the new square. Council turned down his maquette for the city. Jane Jacobs came to town and turned John Sewell and budget with derisive scorn. Givens then raised the place on its head. The arts, theatre and music 978-1-4594-0940-8 the money by putting together a consortium of scenes exploded. The utterly original Eaton Centre $29.95 hardcover private donors, so impressing Henry Moore he rescued a declining downtown. Contemporary “John Sewell’s legacy lowered his fee. The resultant work, “The Archer,” Toronto was born, and Revell’s unique design was can still be seen in the stands today as a perfectly positioned counterpoint its catalyst. physical city of Toronto. to the scale and design of both square and building. Armstrong has given Toronto a fine book, assidu- Sewell got things done. This book tells how.” The city received more than 500 submissions to ous in scholarship, rich with archival illustrations — Max Allen, Grange the competition, creating some unique logistical and a compelling read. He also reminds us that Community Association problems for competitors in making their entries there is nothing so permanent as character, in cit- and for jurors in reviewing so many architectural ies as in people. The debate continues in our town: models and drawings. One submission failed to pragmatic mediocrity against international aspira- meet the due date, stranded on a beached freighter tion, protectionism against a leap to the future, in the St. Lawrence, such were the perils of pre- cuddly and correct against bold and beautiful, good FedEx times. The only place large enough to display enough against great. And the book reminds that ILLUMINATING all the submissions was one of the big buildings the nightmare of Mayor Rob Ford, who summoned Canada after at the Canadian National Exhibition. Jurors were dark spirits from deep inside Toronto, has long and Harper so worn out moving from scheme to scheme they tangled roots in our past. Edited by Ed Finn, were eventually all issued wheelchairs on which to The Fords are too easy a caricature. But high- introduction by scoot around. aspiring good guys/gals are not that easy to spot in Ralph Nader 978-1-4594-0943-9 Armstrong shows us all the detailed entries from the contemporary city. Even the progressives are $22.95 paperback the second competition round of eight shortlisted reactionaries. There is no chance Toronto would architects, a list that included international stars today contemplate clearing an inner city neigh- David Suzuki, Ralph such as I.M. Pei and Kenzo Tange. Hindsight is easy, bourhood for a multi-block, modernist, foreign Nader, Maude Barlow, Kevin Page and others but to contemporary eyes Revell’s scheme was the arrival. The public art committee would smother on Harper’s damaging clear winner even from the first round. Remarkably today’s Henry Moore in a heartbeat. Our now global legacy and how to fi nd his winning second-stage design varied very little city retains the suspicious instincts of a village. The new directions for the from his first. Its confident, relaxed modernism, great achievement of Armstrong’s book is that it lets country its use of utterly original shapes, the clean design us have faith in a less obvious but no less resilient of the square: all seem to have arrived complete aspect of our civic character. Just over 50 years ago in one creative moment. The only significant later against all the odds some remarkable people made INFORMATIVE change was to move the higher of the pair of curved the most extraordinary thing happen, creating the towers from east to west. Civic Symbol includes city we enjoy today. A great city is built by great Charter of Rights some elegantly simple line sketches of the build- people reaching for great things. It is as simple and and Freedoms ing and its interiors drawn by Revell as part of his as complicated as that. Ian Greene 978-1-4594-0661-2 $24.95 paperback

The key cases where the Charter has been invoked by citizens, lawyers and judges to implement funda- mental changes in Canadian life

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4 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada NATIONAL BEST SELLER

“The story of sustained evil done “An exemplary piece of writing and by our government to Indigenous reporting that merits attention from peoples … discomforting reading, the country’s many non-fiction but essential.” John Ralston Saul writing prizes.” Quill & Quire “A must read.”

“This isn’t a typical political tome, “If you read only one book about ghostwritten to aggrandize the Canada’s Indigenous children, politician .... [It’s] the story of it should be Children of the young people’s struggle for a better Broken Treaty.” Embassy News life.” Doug Cuthand, CBC News

DecemberLRC Broken treaty2015 national bestseller.indd 1 reviewcanada.ca 2015-09-11 4:46 PM5 Life in the Barrios A radical priest’s career among the poor of Haiti and Latin America. Michael W. Higgins

intimidated opposition and an all too frequently preferential option for the poor, the prioritization Rebel Priest in the Time of Tyrants: compliant Roman Catholic Church. of justice over traditional privilege, and a new social Mission to Haiti, Ecuador and Chile Lacaille, a diocesan priest and member of and political awareness, a conscientization, that Claude Lacaille the Quebec Foreign Mission Society, provides a was nothing short of revolutionary. Translated from French by Casey Roberts choppy narrative outlining his desire to serve in The elites—political, economic, military, and Baraka Books the politically turbulent world of Latin American ecclesiastical—smelled the stench of Marxism. 230 pages, softcover strongmen and in the crazed universe of Duvalier’s Although the continental Catholic hierarchies ISBN 9781771860390 Haiti. Nothing in English novelist Graham Greene’s or regional episcopates of Latin America would evocation of 1960s Haiti in The Comedians, with its approve the call for justice and equity at their major morally seedy politics, ubiquitous and menacing conferences held both in Medellín, Colombia, in uebec missionary and cleric Claude Tonton Macoutes and general hopelessness of the 1968 and in Puebla, Mexico, in 1979, the actual Lacaille shoots from the hip: “Wojtyla populace is gainsaid by Lacaille. He tasted the ter- application of the new thinking proved threatening Qand Ratzinger had left us naked and ror directly. to them, if for no other reason because the Rome exposed to the savage repression of our It is, however, this very choppiness, with scant of John Paul II had no sympathy for any critique of tyrants and had delivered the shepherdless sheep attention paid to chronology and encumbered by society that employed Marxist categories of analysis to the wolves. The Church’s history will record that non sequitur argumentation and reflexive slogan- and discourse. these men were a formidable obstacle to the evan- eering, that combined get in the way of the reader’s John Paul’s premier theologian in the Vatican, gelization of the continent.” appreciation of the author’s passionate struggle for the formidable Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect of the This stark and severe judgement of the two justice. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, would pontificates that preceded the current papacy of Ordained a priest in 1962, the year of the opening issue two highly critical documents of liberation- Francis—that of John Paul II and Benedict XVI of the transformative Second Vatican Council, from ist methodology, seeing the potential of liberation respectively—is without nuance, historical bal- the outset Lacaille was inspired by the revolution- theology in dark terms as undermining magister- ance or measured scholarly assessment. But it is ary charisma of Pope John XXIII, eager to accept his ial authority, generating political unrest, shifting precisely what Lacaille believes and is a consistent summons to bring Christ to the developing world Catholic thought from its conventional and time- thread that winds itself through the searing disclo- and edified by the work of such missionary orders honoured focus on doctrine to a social science sures and oracular proclamations that define Rebel as the Oblates of Mary Immaculate and the Society application of dubious genesis, and sowing doubt Priest in the Time of the Tyrants: Mission to Haiti, of Jesus. The Quebec church was on the cusp of the in the corridors of Catholic ecclesiastical certitude. Ecuador and Chile. And the author has his reasons. Quiet Revolution but still commanded daunting Although the harsh and wholesale condemna- Part memoir, part testimonial, part screed and influence in every aspect of life in the province, had tion of liberation theology by the Roman magis- part homily, Rebel Priest in the Time of the Tyrants is more vocations to the priestly and religious life than terium would soften throughout the pontificates at its best when recounting the experiences of a mis- any other jurisdiction save Ireland and Poland, and of John Paul and Benedict XVI—one of the reasons sionary priest identifying with, and emulating the sent scores of its clergy and committed laity to serve why Lacaille’s blistering denunciation of the two courage of, the persecuted peoples of the Caribbean in far and distant lands. popes is too categorical—the hounding of the and Latin America. Lacaille is not without courage, The Catholic missionaries motivated by the exponents of liberation theology, academic and deep empathy and solid conviction as he struggles spirit of the Second Vatican Council, however, activist, pastoral and devotional, had devastating with the underclass against the tyrannies of Papa were unlike most of their Protestant, specifically consequences for its most fervent followers. Doc François Duvalier of Haiti, presidents José Evangelical, contemporaries in that they saw their Lacaille chronicles the various ways in which his Maria Velasco Ibarra and Guillermo Rodríguez Lara role increasingly defined by priorities quite differ- own work was hampered if not terminated by dis- of Ecuador, and Augusto Pinochet of Chile. ent from those of a traditional missiology. trustful bishops and religious superiors, prompting These dictators were pitiless in their suppression The schools of liberation theology that mush- him at one point to declare: “My deepest emotional of any creed or person they considered socialist or roomed in the last quarter of the 20th century can ties, my comrades in the struggle during these years crypto-communist; they were the successful archi- be traced back to the ferment following the Second of solidarity, my participation in the biblical move- tects of the national security state; and they were Vatican Council, in particular the graduate faculty ment and liberation theology, I had been cruelly cut the trusted allies of an increasingly fearful United of social sciences at Belgium’s Louvain University, off from all of it.” States. After all it was the Cold War era. Thecau - a much favoured Catholic institution that dis- Recalled to Quebec, a religio-political world that dillos owed their power to the military and private gorged a multitude of bright clerical doctoral stu- is markedly different from the one in which he was militias that ensured their protection. And they dents who brought back to their native lands freshly trained, Lacaille reconceives himself as a priest owed their ruthless control of the levers of gov- honed analytical skills that when applied would carrying on the liberationist principles that defined ernance to an acquiescent upper middle class, an quickly turn Catholic social ethics on its head. his ministry in the land of the tyrants save that now, Liberation theologians such as Gustavo Gut­ rather than scurrying through the barrios avoiding Michael W. Higgins is a professor of religious stud- iérrez, Juan-Luis Segundo, Ernesto Cardenal, the police, triaging the wounded, instilling hope ies and vice-president of Mission at Sacred Heart Leonardo Boff and Jon Sobrino wrote prolifically in the deflated revolutionaries, he is comforting the University, Fairfield, Connecticut. His most recent and influentially, small Christian communities sick, counselling the dying, and learning from book is The Unquiet Monk: Thomas Merton’s called communidades de base developed exponen- the mentally and emotionally challenged what it is Questing Faith (Orbis, 2015) and his new one, to be tially, parish priests and lay leaders were radical- to be human. published in March 2016, is Jean Vanier: Logician ized, and a few bishops supported an emerging A fitting way for a “rebel priest” to spend his of the Heart (Novalis). regime of theological thinking that established a twilight years.

6 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Against the Tide Austin Clarke’s latest memoir revisits his early years in Canada. Lisa Tomlinson

nialism” and instead relied on the colonial tongue, part due to the years in the late 1960s and early ’Membering French, for their literary expression. 1970s when he taught in several American universi- Austin Clarke Smoothly transitioning from his colonial Barba­ ties. African American literary and political culture Dundurn dian environment to a cold and alien Canadian seem to have had a great impact on his cultural 491 pages, softcover society, he begins a more comprehensive narrative development and self-definition. This means that ISBN 9781459730342 of his Canadian experience, first as a student and he tends to reference the work of African American then as a journalist, when he recounts receiving a writers as paramount as his source of inspiration. rejection letter that blocked his desire to become No doubt his interaction with African American riday, September the twenty-ninth, a Canadian citizen. His experience in Canada is writers stemmed from his own frustration with the “ in 1955, was a dramatic day in my life. then illuminated through various lenses, primarily lack of recognition he received from Canadian writ- FI arrived at the airport in Toronto, bound, a Toronto-centric one. ing circles whose members perhaps misinterpreted as a student, for the University of Toronto.” His use of what is perceived as distinctly the Black activism that was married to his writing. So Austin Clarke tells us in his new memoir, Canadian language becomes especially effective There are some interesting stylistic aspects ’Membering, in an introductory chapter entitled as he tells us of his introduction to “Canadianness” to Clarke’s storytelling. Unlike many Caribbean the “The Little Black Englishmen,” which helps through the distinctive pronunciation of Toronto— diasporic writers, he does not fully utilize food to set the tone for his journey from to Toranno—as well as use of the colloquial interjec- to demonstrate longing for his native country, Canada and his life thereafter. Using hurricanes as tion “Eh.” He humorously demonstrates this mini although at the book’s beginning he does sprinkle a marker at the start of his voyage, he draws on the language lesson via his Trinidadian friend as he a list of Caribbean treats to take us back to his child- names of female acquaintances hood days of play and enjoyment. in order to recollect the names ’Membering does not follow a typical Perhaps food’s relative absence of the different storms. With the here is because of the attention aid of flashback, he recounts his linear narrative format. Instead, Clarke Clarke has paid in other books early school years in Barbados and to the links between food and demonstrates a love-hate relation- draws on what Caribbean poet‑historian memory. Surprisingly, he uses ship with the colonial mother Caribbean creole only sparingly country. There are points in this Kamau Brathwaite refers to as tidalectics. to capture the tropical sounds of recollection of his time as a stu- the city streets of Toronto. He does dent at Barbados’s Harrison College where he mar- tirelessly spends hours practising the pronuncia- however use a full range of musical genres. vels at the classic English education he received. tion of the word Toronto in order to position him- A more unexpected revelation is the insight he Although appreciative of his heavy exposure to self as a true Canadian. gives us into his short stint in politics with his dar- literature, he expresses occasional resentment of Throughout the book Clarke balances his ing run for the Toronto mayoralty in 1969. A story the British and their colonization of the Caribbean. knowledge and appreciation of the Euro-western that could have come across as braggadocio proves Possessing a greater sense of Caribbean identity literary canon with that of non-canonical writ- instead to be genuinely engaging, as he draws than many early West Indian writers, Clarke gains ers. As his time in Canada lengthens, journeying on his campaign experience and its aftermath to an initial awareness of racism that has a similar becomes a recurring trope. Especially effective is show his candidacy’s impact in opening doors to feel to some others, especially the Jamaican author his description of his first excursion to the United other African Canadians to participate in what he Claude McKay upon his visit to Britain. Both men States, and his introduction to what was then the terms the “all-white reservation of elective politics.” become conscious of their skin colour through rac- urban capital of Black American culture. Thanks He also gives a brief history of political participa- ist terms and voyeuristic stares they receive from to Clarke’s descriptions, we are exposed to the tion by African Canadians, though disappoint- whites in their new surroundings—most memo- rhythmic sounds and vibrant culture of the Harlem ingly he mentions the name of only one woman, rably in Clarke’s case loud catcalls on Toronto’s Renaissance and to Harlem as a cultural and Rosemary Brown. subway: “Look the nigger!” or “Spook!” political hub. Harlem comes alive through Clarke’s ’Membering is not Clarke’s first memoir. What To contextualize this racism, Clarke creatively prolific naming of famous black cultural artists most distinguishes this book is its emphasis on his intertwines his own perceptions with those of the and activists who once resided in the city and with life in Canada as well as the fact that it does not protagonist Mary Mathilda from his – whom he established friendships. follow a typical linear narrative format. Instead, winning novel . He also uses this He then allows the reader to accompany him Clarke draws on what Caribbean poet-historian novel to critique his own shortcomings as a writer, on trips to interview prominent and controversial Kamau Brathwaite refers to as tidalectics, “the as he candidly discusses having to develop his own African American figures. We experience the roller movement of the water backwards and forwards voice through the characters themselves. In this coaster ride as Clarke nervously awaits his ground- as a kind of cyclic … motion, rather than linear,” way, he displays a departure from his colonial edu- breaking interview with Malcolm X, whose uneasi- which, as Elizabeth Deloughrey writes, “provides cation. He also does so by ironically critiquing the ness and impatience are drawn out on each page. a dynamic methodology for approaching island way early Negritude writers failed to claim the use The exhaustion of searching for and the disappoint- literatures.” The final chapters most illustrate this of their own “language as a weapon, as the justifi- ment of missing the opportunity to interview James tidalectic flow and give the memoir what may seem cation of their anger against such a system of colo- Baldwin is also keenly portrayed. Similarly, Chinua like an incomplete feel. Given Clarke’s admiration Achebe’s coldness and arrogance during a memo- of African American and Caribbean writing style, Lisa Tomlinson has taught at universities and rable interview garner our sympathy for our excited which has intentionally departed from a colonial colleges throughout the Greater Toronto Area. She and then deflated narrator. literary approach that emphasizes a linear model of specializes in literary and cultural studies of the Clarke exhibits an immense sense of admiration progress, this comes as no surprise. It also provides Caribbean and African diaspora. She is currently a for as well as an affinity to the African American the source of his brilliant free-range style of writing, lecturer at the University of the West Indies, Mona cultural and literary community, while a similar which is enfolded in discussions of ideas, interac- campus in Kingston, Jamaica, where she teaches affinity is underdeveloped in his discussion of tion with other writers and fragments of his own undergraduate courses in literature and film. African Canadian cultural production. This is in memories and reflections of ’membering.

December 2015 reviewcanada.ca 7 Bunker Boys How Dalton Camp and Norman Atkins changed Canadian politics forever. Michael Taube

Camp started out his political life as a Liberal. Their association with Bill Davis was more The Big Blue Machine: His skills as a writer impressed New Brunswick complicated. Davis’s 1971 Ontario PC leadership How Tory Campaign Backrooms Changed premier John McNair and Frank Bridges, a mem- campaign did not include either Atkins or Camp Canadian Politics Forever ber of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie because of what was seen as Camp’s “enduring J. Patrick Boyer King’s cabinet. Camp would become politically toxicity,” but Davis and the powerful duo patched Dundurn active and wrote a column for the party’s political things up and formed a highly effective alliance 528 pages, hardcover journal, Liberal Review. “Apart from giving his ego from 1971 to 1985. Atkins would also chair Brian ISBN 9781459724495 a solid boost,” Boyer points out, it “confirmed for Mulroney’s successful 1983 Tory leadership cam- Dalton that the writing he most relished was not paign, thanks to Davis’s recommendation, and reporting news, but instead reflecting on events helped guide him to two majority governments. here was a time, not too long ago, and commenting on what they forewarned.” It was How did the big blue machine achieve its goals? when Ontario’s Progressive Conservative a perfect training ground for Camp’s eventual role Canada’s Conservatives traditionally adopted Tpolitical strategists liberally used the term as a newspaper columnist for publications such as views and practices from their British Tory cousins. “big blue machine” to describe themselves. The Toronto Star, not to mention serving as valu- In contrast, Camp and Atkins admired American During the era of Premier Bill Davis, experi- able preparation for his more celebrated role as a political methods, which they viewed, quite rightly, enced backroom boys such as Dalton Camp and political strategist. as being far more applicable in the Canadian con- Norman Atkins were skilled political operators Over time, he became disenchanted with text. This orientation was shown by their hiring of with sharp wits and keen minds. They kept their the Liberals. While he had originally viewed the an American go-between, Philip Lind, whose job boss high in the polls and popular with the Ontario party as being guided by the twin philosophies was to build ties with U.S. Republican Party opera- electorate. (There is a certain irony that left-leaning of “charity and compassion,” he came to believe tives and gain greater insight into their sophisti- Red Tories controlled this machine, but I digress.) that it had been corrupted by the expediencies of cated polling and communication techniques. It Yet, as former federal Progressive Conservative power. Hence, he reached the dramatic conclu- was due to the big blue machine’s adoption of these member of Parliament J. Patrick Boyer writes in his sion that “Liberalism had become not a faith but a techniques that they found their way to Canada, intriguing new book, The Big Blue Machine: How command.”­ first in aid of the federal PCs. Tory Campaign Backrooms Changed Canadian In 1949 he shifted to the New Brunswick Tories. The big blue machine also exhibited an unusual Politics Forever, their influential hand stretched As a new convert, he quickly became a proponent of degree of secrecy. During the 1967 federal PC party much further. The roots of the Camp/Atkins alliance an activist line of attack against his former party. “If leadership campaign, for example, machine insid- go back to the 1950s and involve several provincial the [Liberal] machine could intimidate people,” he ers used code names such as “Mother” (Camp) and federal elections. While distinctly Canadian in later recalled, “we had to intimidate the machine” and “Father” (Robert Stanfield), while perfecting a outlook and style, there were also dashes of British and that meant a need to “fight fear with fear.” It was lingo—including key words such as “research,” “the and American influence. this determination that made Camp an important agency” and “the bunker”—to cloak their tactics Camp and Atkins had similar upbringings. player in John Diefenbaker’s rise to political power and actions. Camp was a Canadian who grew up in the United in 1957. The two men had strikingly similar politics, Its organizational skills were also second to States and then returned to New Brunswick as argues Boyer, and whatever differences there were none. This is primarily due to Atkins. Former col- a young adult. Atkins’s parents were American between them were easily set aside when they league Dianne Axmith described him as someone Canadians, both born in the Maritimes. They were battling their common enemy, the Grits. who was “big on organization, structure, and job moved to New Jersey during World War One, where It was this same determination that helped descriptions,” who “lived with flow charts,” and Atkins was born, but the family maintained a close Camp go on to build the big blue machine. He picked “the right people for the responsibilities.” association with Canada, returning to their New was joined on this political journey by Atkins. His This allowed him to devise political messaging Brunswick cottage each summer. younger disciple, who had served in the military, and polling practices and to conduct opposition It was during one of those annual excursions was now connected to Camp by family ties, as research in the war room. It was masterful, bril- that the six-year-old Atkins, trying to pull his Camp had married Atkins’s sister, Linda, in 1943. liant—and, above all, way ahead of the curve in our wooden toy wagon up a slope, found himself being In Boyer’s words, the two men “complemented country. helped by Camp, then a young Canadian soldier. rather than overlapped one another, with Norman Boyer notes that the big blue machine was The meeting turned into a lifelong friendship. As he increasingly absorbed in operational practicalities hardly unassailable. Camp and Atkins had suc- once described it, Camp would pride himself on the that held less interest for Dalton.” Together, they cesses, but also made their share of mistakes. Still, key role he played in turning a “snotty-nosed kid” created a political institution that became almost through it all, they were able to road-test political into a political operator. He went as far to say, “if I’d completely fused with the Tory party itself—an innovations that often kept them ahead of their become a socialist, Norman would have followed institution centred within the fabled confines of the rivals. At the same time, their organization main- me.” Ironically, Camp appeared, for all intents and Albany Club as well as the office of Camp’s advertis- tained an impressive corporate memory—which purposes, to make this shift in later years. Atkins ing agency. allowed them to make the most of these innova- did not follow. To be sure, there were mixed opinions about tions as they evolved and became more refined them. Camp’s mighty struggle against Diefenbaker’s over time. Michael Taube is a Sun Media columnist, leadership did not endear him to a large number of Even if one does not support the Red Toryism Washington Times contributor and former speech- federal and provincial party members, as shown that Camp and Atkins espoused, it is hard not to writer for Stephen Harper. He holds a master’s by the fact that Joe Clark opted not to seek his admire how ground-breaking the big blue machine degree in comparative politics from the London or Atkins’s counsel after becoming federal party actually was. In many ways, it was the beginning of School of Economics. leader. the Conservative revolution in Canada.

8 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Pink Pills How the pharmaceutical industry is medicalizing women’s sexuality. Wendy McElroy

nificant critique of the medicalization of women’s ings about social or sexual attitudes cannot be gen- Big Pharma, Women and the Labour of Love sexual problems in the sexual pharmaceutical era eralized from one location to another. Both the size Thea Cacchioni unfolded in academic, media, and activist circles, of Cacchioni’s sample and the limitations of loca- University of Toronto Press I could not help but notice how infrequently we tion should have made the data nothing more than 167 pages, softcover heard from women who identify as having sexual an intriguing glimpse that could indicate promising ISBN 9781442611375 problems.” areas for further research. But Cacchioni’s reconstruction of sexuality uses The list of invalidating flaws scrolls on and on. the voices of women simply as vehicles to advance Cacchioni wants to argue that women’s sex- ig Pharma, Women and the Labour of Love the politics of gender feminism. ual dysfunction is not a matter of biology but by Thea Cacchioni is a timely and acutely Cacchioni is a living embodiment of gender of choice—bad choices that block their func- Bdisappointing book that makes some feminist research methodology, which differs tioning. She concludes Big Pharma with the excellent side points. observation, “although many [of Cacchioni, a sociologist at the the 31 participants] engaged in the University of Victoria, begins with Is human sexuality being reduced to a labour of love [heterosexual sex] an important question: is human as an immediate way of dealing sexuality being reduced to a med- medical problem by “disease mongers” with sexual dissatisfactions, their ical problem by “disease mongers” who want to peddle expensive pills? wishes were much deeper.” who want to peddle expensive Earlier in the book, however, pills? She takes a refreshingly Cacchioni states of the partici- skeptical approach to Big Pharma’s claims about sharply from the traditional focus on objectivity and pants, “the majority remained firmly entrenched in the millions of women who are said to suffer from experimental controls. Indeed, her book’s introduc- a heterosexual identity.” If the majority expressed a sexual dysfunction. Unfortunately, the book is really tion freely admits this fact. “The style of qualitative solid heterosexual identity, then Cacchioni could a political tract that builds on shoddy research and research I conducted,” she writes, “was informed by only discern their deeper wishes by knowing more the flawed ideology of gender feminism. my feminist and social justice principles, ‘empha- about their sexuality than they did. In other words, The Food and Drug Administration in the United sizing non-exploitative, non-hierarchal approaches having heard the voices of the ignored women, she States has just approved “Pink Viagra,” which is the to research subjects’.” proceeds not only to ignore but also to contradict main focus of Cacchioni’s book. From now on a pill Adherents disagree on the specifics of feminist them. It is difficult to understand why Cacchioni for women will sit on pharmacy shelves beside the methodology but the basics were fairly rendered bothered with the research at all, given she knew estimated 26 different pills available to men with in a 2000 book by Michèle Ollivier and Manon the proper results in advance. erectile dysfunction. Tremblay, Questionnements féministes et méthodol- But, of course, the purpose of the research was The timing is good for pharmaceutical compan- ogie de la recherche. The authors identified three to establish a basis and hook for the book. The pur- ies. Pfizer’s patent on Viagra has expired in several defining features: a basis in feminist principles, the pose of the book is to argue against heteronormality­ countries and it will fizzle out in the United States construction of “new knowledge” aimed at achiev- and to challenge even the “firmly entrenched” sex- in late 2019. America alone is said to be a market ing cultural change (that is, social justice), and a ual identities of women. worth $2 billion a year for that one drug. Forbes focus on sexual diversity, which means including The most frustrating aspect of Big Pharma? predicted in 2013 that “owing to generic intrusion, populations deemed to be marginalized. Cacchioni offers flashes of insight that could the global market for branded erectile dysfunc- From reading many feminist papers, I could have been expanded into a fascinating book. For tion drugs is forecast to decline at a compounded add several characteristics that are common if not example, she correctly challenges the statistics annual rate of 4.5% from 2013 to 2019.” Generic defining. One is the excessive quoting of studies floated by advocates of medicalizing sexuality. A intrusion has also battered Eli Lilly and Bayer, the and papers that support the researcher’s political widely circulated one is that 43 percent of women producers of Cialis and Levitra, which compete bias. In one paragraph of 15 lines, for example, are dysfunctional. Cacchioni claims the number with Viagra. Cacchioni cites ten works that appear to be as comes from a 1994 survey published in the Journal Suddenly, Big Pharma has noticed women. politicized as her own and, therefore, arguably as of the American Medical Association. Women were Big Pharma is not primarily an attack upon the flawed. Nevertheless, the hyper-citations gives the asked if they had experienced any sexual problem outrageous misuse of patents or power by drug impression of research that is thoroughly done. over the last twelve months. A list of broad prob- companies. Instead, the book attempts to construct Cacchioni’s work is not. lems was identified, including a lack of interest, an alternative theory of female sexuality in order to The study Cacchioni conducted upon which anxiety about performance or the absence of an explain the “dysfunction” that is being medicalized. Big Pharma is based has problems that extend far orgasm. If any option was chosen, then the woman The goal of sketching alternatives is worthwhile. To beyond my disagreement with feminist research was classified as sexually dysfunctional. Other this reader, Cacchioni’s approach at first seemed methodology. It is shoddy by any methodological plausible explanations for her reactions, such as intriguing. Her introduction opens with: “As the sig- standards. The work is already being hailed as pion- being overworked or in a bad relationship, were not eering by politically kindred spirits but Cacchioni’s explored. Wendy McElroy is the author of ten books, two data are useless for the purposes to which they are A book on that theme would have sparkled. If anthologies and three co-authored works. She is a put. that is the next book from Cacchioni, then I would freelance writer for a wide range of publications The study was conducted with 31 female par- be an eager reader. I would not even mention that from Penthouse to . She lives ticipants in Vancouver, a notoriously upper-middle Cacchioni holds the 1994 survey up to higher stan- with her husband on a farm in rural Ontario. class city. The last point is significant because find- dards than she applies to her own research.

December 2015 reviewcanada.ca 9 Mind Games The inventive powers of the imagination infuse the work of a famed mathematician. Mélanie Frappier

a system that can compute anything computable. confident, rule-ignoring genius with unkempt hair Genius at Play: To the biologists, economists, physicists and phil- who walked the streets of the university town with a The Curious Mind of John Horton Conway osophers who appropriated it, the game proved a helmet that enabled him to see the world as a four- Siobhan Roberts fascinating example showing that complexity and dimensional object and who constructed comput- Bloomsbury organization can spontaneously evolve from simple ers out of flush toilet parts. 441 pages, hardcover deterministic systems. In her lively and engaging prose, Siobhan ISBN 9781620405932 The Game of Life has somewhat eclipsed Roberts, who has already won the Euler Prize for Conway’s other achievements in group theory, knot her biography of the geometrician Donald Coxeter, theory, number theory and combinatorial theory. takes us from Conway’s student days (when he was nterviewed for Scientific American about And it is not for him to fail to integrate play in the recognized as a brilliant mathematician despite Genius at Play: The Curious Mind of John rest of his work. After spending countless hours quite ordinary exam results) to his time teaching IHorton Conway, the biography of his life auth- watching a British champion play Go, Conway real- at Cambridge (where he avoided his messy office ored by Canadian journalist Siobhan Roberts, the ized that the end of any game of Go was nothing but by playing games with students in the common renowned mathematician reminisces about his a set of smaller games. It turned out that these end room), to his move to Princeton University (where encounter with the fabled French he attempted to find a connec- mathematician Nicolas Bourbaki. Genius at Play is the biography of tion between the indeterminable This would have been a meeting behaviour of quantum systems of the minds. Bourbaki had been someone who is just a figment of the and human free will). If Roberts behind the “New Math” movement had hoped that the years of care- that briefly swept the American imagination—but what an imagination— ful research she dedicated to school system in the wake of the Genius at Play would allow her a Sputnik crisis. Meant to bring that of John Horton Conway himself. glimpse into the thoughts of the the American mathematical cur- “real” John Conway, she must riculum on par with the Soviet one, the movement games are similar to the end games found in other have been bitterly disappointed. As Conway neither introduced school children to Boolean mathemat- games, such as Hackenbush, where two players kept a diary nor preserved his correspondence, ics, set theory and other high-end mathematical successively take away the coloured lines compos- nor has archived his work, she had to rely on his concepts. ing a childish drawing. These sets of games, Conway confessions as her main source of information, and Bourbaki’s abstract approach to mathematics soon understood, are nothing but numbers. From Conway has worked too long on his public persona must have appalled Conway who, for all his bril- his study of Hackenbush, Conway recuperated not to let any of us into his private life. Genius at Play liance, often made little mistakes of great conse- only both the real numbers, represented by the reveals little about the motivations behind his phi- quences, such as inverting the plus and minus points on a line, as well as all of Cantor’s infinite landering, his divorces, his relationships with his signs. He once poured his cup over the coffee spill numbers, but all the numbers, including a new kind children, his suicide attempts or his refusal to pay he had just made because he was thinking that of numbers: those existing between the two clos- attention to mundane tasks. As he readily admits more, not less, coffee was needed on the floor. est points on a line and the ones existing between to Roberts: “I’ve been trying to remember things as Unsurprisingly, Conway refuses to get bogged infinite numbers. In a child’s game, Conway had they were but it’s very hard. Sometimes I remember down in mathematical proofs. Against those who, found the so-called surreal numbers. the story better than the facts.” like Bourbaki, emphasized the elegance of set So a meeting between the set theoretician But what stories. A generous biographer, Roberts theoretic derivations, Conway offers brain teas- Bourbaki and the eclectic Conway would have gives Conway the space he needs for his tales. ers and games as the surest way to interest bright been explosive if it had ever taken place. But the Thanks in part to long verbatim quotes, which are minds in mathematics.­ fact is that Nicolas Bourbaki never existed. It was set in their own font, we are able to experience Games have made Conway famous—so much so the pseudonymous name chosen by a group of pri- Conway’s charisma and love of mathematics on a that he is one of the few living mathematicians marily French mathematicians who came together personal level. Roberts’s research and interviews to have gained popular fame. If you had a computer to rigorously redefine mathematics in terms of set with Conway’s family and colleagues then add in the 1970s or early ’80s, you probably remember theory. For that matter, the John Horton Conway some much needed perspective without a prying his “Game of Life,” a so-called cellular automaton presented in the book’s pages does not really exist eye. Roberts obviously understood from the very that simply consists of a grid of square cells that are either, which makes Genius at Play one of the odd- beginning that Conway would never collaborate on all attributed one of two initial states, alive or dead. est, most enticing biographies I have ever read. The a book that went behind his public persona and she The grid is then left to “evolve” according to simple biography of someone who is just a figment of made the conscious decision to act as an uncritical basic rules such as “death by overpopulation,” stat- the imagination—but what an imagination—that spokesperson. This was ultimately the right deci- ing that any live cell surrounded by more than three of John Horton Conway himself. sion. As shocking as the thoughts, actions or feelings live neighbours should die, or a “” For there is a man named John Horton Conway. of the private Conway may be, they simply would rule that brings to life any dead cell surrounded by Born in Liverpool on December 26, 1937, the young not have created the same contagious enthusiasm more than three live cells. It takes but a few itera- John could recite the powers of two at age four and, for mathematics and games as the public Conway tions to realize that complex, stable patterns can by the time he was 15, could readily calculate the has been able to convey, and this excitement for emerge from a random distribution of live cells. For day of the week corresponding to any date in his- mathematics and games is the reason for Conway’s Conway, the Game of Life was interesting because tory. Even as a child, Conway seems to have had loyal following. So consider yourself warned. Even it proved to be a universal Turing Machine—that is, but one ambition: to become a mathematician. But if you think you do not like mathematics, Genius at his childhood, marked by bullying, was difficult. Play may very well convince you to spend count- Mélanie Frappier is the director of the History When he finally boarded the train for Cambridge less hours doing nothing but playing backgammon, of Science and Technology Programme at the University where he had been accepted on a schol- solving Sudoku puzzles or, like Conway, creating University of King’s College in Halifax. arship, Conway decided to recreate himself as a your own Game of Life.

10 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Canada to the Rescue Recalling a high-water mark in the history of Canadian diplomacy. David M. Malone

policy, O.D. Skelton (whose selected letters were ring until 1955. By then, Eden was well past his The Diplomat: reviewed in the LRC in June 2014), but he enthusi- prime, often irascible, erratic, deluded and, fol- Lester Pearson and the Suez Crisis astically contributed to the outcome. lowing a botched operation, under the influence of Antony Anderson The book shifts into high gear when dealing with amphetamines. He viewed the Suez crisis as a life Goose Lane Editions Pearson’s chairing of key UN debates provoked by or death one for Britain, so dependent on Middle 400 pages, hardcover the United Kingdom’s precipitated post-war with- East oil. Because Ottawa kept registering caution- ISBN 9780864928740 drawal from Palestine. Pearson helped develop ary notes against the use of force, Eden and his UN support for the partition of Palestine into a colleagues saw Canada as desperately “wet.” More Jewish and an Arab State, which triggered all-out worryingly for London, Washington’s position was n September 2015, United States presi- war and the displacement of hundreds of thou- even more reserved. And the U.S. response could dent Barack Obama, on the margins of the sands of Palestinians in 1948 when Israel declared not be dismissed.­ IUnited Nations General Assembly, presided independence. He displayed none of the condes- But the United Kingdom and France were over a meeting of 50 or so countries determined cension and hostility toward Jews and the project prepared to do so in what they saw as an existen- to reinforce the UN’s capacity to mount effective of a Jewish homeland that so many in the world of tial struggle to sustain their waning international peace operations. If they deliver, the outcome international diplomacy then held. This episode power. Pearson, who operated largely by intuition could prove a major boost to the and calculated improvisation, UN’s overstretched 120,000 or so appreciated that these volatile peacekeepers. Pearson, brilliant in diplomacy and circumstances created diplomatic Lester B. Pearson would have space for Canada, which enter- approved. arguably highly effective as a minority tained close ties to all three coun- Antony Anderson, a broadcast tries. While he consulted widely, producer and writer, has written prime minister a decade after the Suez ultimately he alone, with great tac- a volume centred on Pearson’s drama, is front and centre throughout. tical flair and creativity, adapted manoeuvres in 1956 to rescue his evolving proposals to a variety London from its folly in the Suez of challenges. His key objective crisis. Having never pulled off the documentary ushered in Canada’s reputation as a fair-minded was to avert a full-scale British and French occu- he had hoped to draw from this episode of diplo- and autonomous middle power. All of Anderson’s pation of Egyptian soil by advancing the idea of a matic history, Anderson has turned the extensive enviable journalistic skills are on parade, as he UN “police force” with encouragement from the research he carried out into book form. shifts from capital to capital through the writings United States and other UN members. Meanwhile, Too much of The Diplomat: Lester Pearson and and statements of a fascinating cast of characters another major crisis broke out over the Soviet inva- the Suez Crisis is given over to Pearson’s early life, interacting with his protagonist. Pearson realized sion of Hungary in late October. The atmosphere a charmed one dominated by a youthful passion before most others that the casualties absorbed by throughout the UN, at grips with two significant for sports and great academic facility. After joining the UN in Palestine, including the assassination of international upheavals, was electric. And Pearson Canada’s young foreign service he rose rapidly to its early mediator, Count Bernadotte, argued for a was steering the ship on Suez. become Canada’s first ambassador to the United larger, better armed and equipped UN field pres- On November 6, 1956, having at last assembled States in 1945. Long admired by Mackenzie King, ence in subsequent crises. Therein lay the seeds the fleets and troops necessary to do so, France and he was appointed Canada’s second solo secretary of his idea that the contending forces in the Sinai Britain shelled Port Said in an attempt to “enforce of state for external affairs, when the first, Louis should be separated in late 1956 by a sizable force peace” colonial-style, inflicting considerable loss Saint-Laurent, replaced King as prime minister. of military personnel rather than the unarmed, of life. But with Egypt and Israel offering ceasefires, The Diplomat introduces Pearson as an affable weakly protected observers who had been sent and with global public opinion and their most and quietly brilliant man who worked well with by the Security Council both to Palestine and to important ally clearly against them, they had waded others and whose private life seems to have been Kashmir, in each of which they proved largely into waters too deep. Among other problems, unimpeachable. ineffective. Washington had blocked UK access to International Although these early pages make for somewhat Drawing on archives as well as news sources, Monetary Fund resources vital to propping up dull reading, interesting themes emerge, notably Anderson does a brilliant job of isolating nuggets sterling, which was under great pressure in finan- the irritation of many Canadian politicians and of political and diplomatic life in Washington, cial markets. Although the French wished to fight diplomats with the continuing imperial claims London, New York and Ottawa that breathe energy on, Eden had little choice but to acquiesce in a emanating from London, even after World War into the daily grind of crisis management and dip- ceasefire.­ Two shattered British capacity to project power lomatic routine. (One deficit: there is little material The solution was Pearson’s brainchild, the UN at the global level. During the first half of the 20th on a major actor in the Suez drama: France.) Emergency Force, which, by deploying an early century, a number of Ottawa politicians and man- A key figure in the narrative, the British Con­ vanguard faster than might be possible today, darins managed quietly to cut the umbilical cord servative politician Anthony Eden, appears here as saved face all around. It endured on an ambitious that had caused London to loom larger in Ottawa’s a tragic one. Privileged, rich, assured, handsome scale for over ten years, but fell victim to Nasser’s diplomatic policy calculus than did Washington. and talented, he stood on the right side of history misjudgements in 1967 leading to the Six-Day War. Pearson, an admirer of British political culture, in the run-up to World War Two, resigning as a After a slow start, Anderson delivers a brisk, was not as single-mindedly committed as was the young foreign minister to protest one of London’s gripping yarn making excellent use of his research, mastermind of Canada’s early autonomous foreign serial capitulations in the immediate pre-war including multiple interviews with surviving actors years. Typically, Pearson, not yet a political figure in the drama. Meanwhile Pearson, brilliant in dip- David Malone, under secretary general of the himself, somehow found himself playing tennis lomacy and arguably highly effective as a minority United Nations and rector of the United Nations with Eden during those early years and maintained prime minister a decade after the Suez drama, University, earlier served as a Canadian ambas- a connection with him subsequently. Winston is front and centre throughout. He emerges as sador to the United Nations. He has lived or spent Churchill, who clung to power as prime minister engaging but elusive. That Anderson captures him considerable time in Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Syria. into his dotage, kept Eden waiting for the brass so well is a tribute to his metier as a storyteller.

December 2015 reviewcanada.ca 11 a national festival of politics, art and ideas

SAVE THE DATE Annoucing our confi rmed 2016 spring festival dates TORONTOTORONTO APRIL 7–10 WINNIPEGWINNIPEG MAY 12–15

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12 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Netflix Nation Will TV as we once knew it survive, and does anyone care? Ramona Pringle

leaves a revealing trail of Post-TV: digital breadcrumbs that not Piracy, Cord-Cutting and only depict our interests, but the Future of Television in some respects also our Michael Strangelove entire personality. University of Toronto Press He explicitly addresses the 360 pages, softcover challenge this transformation ISBN 9781442614529 poses to traditional players. “Can an industry that has been built on the pretensions he future of tele- of owning eyeballs, control- vision is here, hap- ling audiences, and force- Tpening all around feeding advertising to viewers us. Are we paying enough sufficiently transform itself in attention to notice, and if the age of networked digital so, is there anything we can media consumption?” do? In his new book Post-TV: Strangelove analyzes the Piracy, Cord-Cutting and the phenomenon of piracy from Future of Television, Michael a number of angles, includ- Strangelove, who teaches ing the way in which tech- communication at the nology makes it ludicrously University of Ottawa, provides easy to copy. However, he a powerful attempt to help us also emphasizes the political understand this new future. dimension: “When millions For most of us, TV is still of young consumers choose a video-based medium. But this assumption is who we are, of our society. Therefore, not just TV is to behave in a certain way there is little, if anything, becoming quickly outdated. Increasingly, the CBC, changing: so are we. that governments and industry can do.” Strangelove YouTube, Netflix and The Pirate Bay (an online In Strangelove’s words: “As television diffuses argues that the idea that piracy can be stopped at all directory, which, as its name suggests, facilitates throughout the social landscape it is morphing is a “statement of faith in the belief system of cap- peer-to-peer sharing of media content) are all tele- into something quite different from what it was italism” and not grounded in empirical or technical vision. Strangelove is interested in examining how and what it did in the twentieth century.” In par- reality. TV is being transformed by the internet. One could ticular, the medium has escaped control of regula- “The problem is not the lack of legitimate digital argue that the transformative effect works in both tory and industrial regimes. Strangelove cites the services, fair pricing, or usability,” he says. Users directions: the internet is changing TV while TV is proliferation of piracy and how much easier it is to just do not want to pay for content, especially if changing the internet. New technologies are push- access pirate media platforms than it is to access there is a means of not doing so. He goes on to ing the boundaries of narrative forms, be it fiction, legitimate or official ones. Content industries are argue that “piracy has been a source of incredible documentary or news, just as the creators of nar- all struggling to retain once lucrative advertising innovation in the marketplace and leads to lower rative forms are pushing the technologies beyond and revenue models, in an ecosystem that favours prices and more convenient services. No wonder their original intent or capabilities. the open over the closed and the borderless incumbent industry players hate piracy.” “Television is no longer associated with author- over the proprietary. And restating what is now a “This means that as long as hundreds of millions ized and regulated production systems, a universal veritable cliché, Strangelove notes that “either by of consumers want to engage in digital piracy, there and familiar device, or any device at all,” argues design or by accident, online media content in all will be legitimate and illegitimate businesses will- Strangelove. And yet, despite the disappearance of its varieties wants to be free.” ing and able to facilitate mass online piracy.” And the TV set as a device that we congregate around, He offers insight and speculation on how that he goes further to argue that “we are in the age of we find ourselves in the golden age of television as control might be reasserted. In particular he cites mass piracy.” a medium. the role of software programmers and what he calls This is especially the case given that “the incum- And because it is more than just a medium of adaptive agent designers—services such as Netflix bent television industry has failed to offer free entertainment or education, it is not just TV going and YouTube, with their reliance upon algorithms online access that matches the flexibility and ease through these growing pains. It is a reflection of to recommend videos for us to watch. Such algo- of use experienced by the online pirate.” rithms mean there will still be curators for content, Strangelove is also deeply critical of the indus- Ramona Pringle is a professor in the RTA School of only now the curators are software-based and more try’s response, both in terms of its willingness Media at Ryerson University and creative director adept than traditional curatorial methods at incor- to adapt to the seemingly inevitable change and of the Ryerson Transmedia Zone, an incubator for porating the needs and habits of the viewer. its heavy-handed battle against piracy. He also the future of media. She is an interactive producer, To that he cautions that “it is a small step from believes that attempts to control piracy will fail: creating work for multiple platforms, and a fre- having our needs served to seeing our actions con- “representatives of the entertainment industry quent contributor to national media on issues of trolled.” Traditional TV watching was in the privacy and financial advisers insist that piracy will be social media and digital culture. of our own home. TV watching on the internet reined in and cord-cutting will remain marginal,

December 2015 reviewcanada.ca 13 but the possibility of significant disruption due quantify how our viewing habits are changing. to uncontrolled digital plenitude remains.” But Yet the fact that these comments are anonymous Literary Land citing extensive research, he demonstrates that in seems problematic. Any argument can be backed Claims this age of mass piracy “the Internet has created up by anonymous internet commentators. At one The “Indian Land a globalized gift economy that directly competes point Strangelove quotes “Baloo, an anonymous Question” from with capitalism’s market economy.” Internet commentator.” Yes, it may be too much “What is it about digital piracy,” Strangelove to source Baloo, and find out who he or she is, Pontiac’s War to asks “that causes industry lobbyists to engin- and get their consent to comment on the record. Attawapiskat eer misinformation campaigns, governments But would it not be possible to find other people Margery Fee to engage in gross acts of legislative overreach, willing to go on the record and comment on their secret trade negotiations, and misguided policy habits or preferences? goals, and the entertainment industry to be will- At a time when events such as VidCon, a con- ing to alienate pretty much the entire Internet vention for YouTubers, attract tens of thousands $38.99 paperback; 328 pages; 10 b/w illus.; Indigenous Studies series; 978-1-77112-119-4 community?”­ of makers, advertisers, broadcasters and agents, For Strangelove this era of copyright infringe- the absent voices of these independent creators Romantic nationalist thinkers saw a distinctive ment does not spell doom, just a reconfigura- of online video content feel like the missing link. literature as legitimating a nation’s claim to both civilization and territory. Indigenous people, then, tion of the industry’s infrastructure. “Television Just as broadcasters are slowly coming around to were to be assimilated, and their lands put to proper content must now compete against a vast army televising extreme sports events and video game use. This book reads works produced between 1832 of independent (indie) film-makers who use the tournaments, chasing the crowds, and in turn the and the late 1970s to show how the white settler Internet to distribute their films, often for free.” money, so too is the established world of broadcast literary land claim needs rethinking in conversation with Indigenous writers and thinkers and within Yet this is where the argument in Post-TV asks looking to the success stories of the digital market- Indigenous frameworks of respect for the land and more questions than it answers. Readers would place to reveal new strategies and best practices. everything living on it. have benefited if Strangelove had offered more The superstars of Vine, YouTube and Twitch tangible solutions. He skilfully depicts the role of are not anonymous sources; they are, in fact, the television in shaping the 20th century, influencing new stars of the industry, eager to share their The New “public policy, consumer values, and our percep- wisdom in exchange for greater audience reach. Canadian tion of everyday reality,” and in his own words Strangelove acknowledges this shift: “Sites like admits confusion about how—or who—is shaping Vimeo and Daily Motion enable film-makers to Pentecostals the century ahead: “As it is, we are still coming to earn money through voluntary donations and Adam Stewart grips with what our crazy kids are doing with the pay-to-view and provide further examples of Internet and television today. Can anyone claim the online business models that are promoting to fully comprehend what is occurring right now more funding for independent video projects.” in the television system?” Acknowledging the growth of online audiences, Post-TV presents a smart argument about an he quotes journalist Jeff Bercovici, who suggests ecosystem in shift, but where Strangelove presents that “it’s a good time to be an independent film- $29.99 paperback; 208 pages; 5 tables; the issues facing the industry in a post-TV land- maker on the web.” Editions SR series; 978-1-77112-140-8 scape, he presents few paths forward. Is arguing Post-TV could have gone from interesting that piracy has become normal so controversial analysis to essential guide for those struggling to “Skilfully braiding sociological, historical, and ethnographic perspectives, this book deploys care- that it requires such a thorough analysis? Perhaps figure out what to do next in the post-TV land- fully culled statistics and dates but also introduces more controversial, or at least uncomfortable for scape if Strangelove had talked to those independ- live, talking, thinking bodies. On the one hand, the traditional powers that be, is the reality that ent creators themselves, to find out why it is such the scope is as big as one of the world’s largest piracy is unavoidable, and entirely new processes, a good time to be doing what they are doing, and countries. On the other, the book fi nely details three congregations in a single region. Adam is an systems and relationships between content con- what their own independent processes are. insider with an outsider’s eye who deftly balances sumers and providers need to be established. Unfortunately, this book, like a lot of academic both perspectives. He is also unfl inchingly candid, What Strangelove does well is entirely debunk writing, lacks an evocative narrative. So it is some- making this required reading for anyone wanting to the industry and government narratives that are times unclear as to why our relationship with TV understand Canadian Pentecostalism.” – Ronald L. Grimes, Ritual Studies International biased and not grounded in empirical reality. has changed. The story is there, along with a smart Where he leaves the reader wanting is in the argument, but the author has not made enough lack of an articulated alternative or clearly pre- effort to draw things out in a way that presents The Fence sented argument as to what that alternative could cause and effect in a domino manner than can be: What models are being fostered, if not by the inspire action and change. It is only by under- and the traditional television industry, then by paral- standing our relationship with the media we use, Bridge lel industries? In an ecosystem without gates or and the platforms we engage with, that we can Geopolitics and borders, how can content be monetized? Where identify new solutions. Our collective love of TV, is there value, to audiences and users, and to past and present, is inextricably tied to the human Identity along advertisers and brands? What role do commun- capacity and desire for storytelling, and the story the Canada– ity building and fandom have in a sustainable, of our relationship with content also holds the key US Border post-TV ecosystem? And how does the blurring to where content is destined, post-TV. Heather N. Nicol line between viewer and creator affect the rela- In an era when TV habits are changing, this tionship between content consumer and content kind of book needs to be accessible not only $42.99 paperback; 308 pages; 59 b/w illus. provider, with regards to profit? In an economy to scholars and academics but to practitioners 978-1-55458-971-5 where the only constant is change, is television and industry stakeholders as well. As television formats evolve or risk becoming obsolete, so too The Fence and the Bridge is about the development truly doomed, or is it simply evolving, and, if that of the Canada–US border-security relationship is the case, how can the surrounding established does the traditional way they are reviewed and as an outgrowth of the much older Canada–US models and systems evolve in step? analyzed. relationship. It suggests that the Canada–US border Given the proliferation of creators and the rich- There is no question that there is a very real relationship has been both highly refl exive and need for more research, and more analysis of how hegemonic over time, and that such realities are ness and variety of content online, the fact that embodied in the metaphorical images and texts that so much of the alternative presented in the book our relationship with TV is changing. However describe the Canada–US border over its history. depends upon anonymous internet commenta- that research and work has to be presented in a tors misses an opportunity to highlight changing way that is inclusive of all creators, with an aware- practices and emerging communities in the same ness and respect for evolving media publishing WILFRID LAURIER UNIVERSITY PRESS 1-866-836-5551 | www.wlupress.wlu.ca rigorous manner as Strangelove explains current practices and standards, so that it is accessible Available from: challenges. and relevant to the young people who Strangelove UTP (Canada) 1-800-565-9523 Ingram (USA) 1-800-961-8031 On the one hand, it makes sense that the voices claims will revolutionize TV and be the future of facebook.com/wlupress | twitter.com/wlupress of average internet users would help inform and media.

14 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Monsters of the Night The rhetoric and reality of the psychopaths around us. D.B. Krupp

a Psychopath Is Made.” From there, Williams remarks, claims to objectivity, appeals to authority The Myth of the Born Criminal: could be reduced to a calculating brute. Anything and equivocal language in the work of Robert Hare, Psychopathy, Neurobiology and the Creation about him, including “his trademark focus” (as a a professor at the University of British Columbia of the Modern Degenerate Maclean’s article put it), could be reinterpreted as and the best-known figure in psychopathy research. Jarkko Jalava, Stephanie Griffiths and Michael evidence of a man lacking conscience. Yet examples of each of these offences abound in Maraun The “adjustability” of the psychopathic con- their own writing. They invoke a threatened lawsuit University of Toronto Press cept is a central concern of The Myth of the Born to discredit Hare, the word “obvious” to silence 279 pages, softcover Criminal: with the right motivation, any behav- debate, writer David Foster Wallace for expertise ISBN 9781442628366 iour can be sculpted to appear psychopathic. On on rhetorical trickery, and the words “reflect” and this front, the authors deliver what can only be “bases”—which, they tell us, may be intentionally described as an embarrassment of riches, bring- ambiguous and rhetorically useful to scientists—to he word “psychopath” gives the ing to light the criminal psychopath, the corporate suggest causation. Elsewhere, the compact phrase impression of an unscrupulous character. psychopath, the (1950s) hipster psychopath, the “the obvious metaphysical and Judeo-Christian TSomeone without any sense of shame, postmodern psychopath and the visionary psycho- bases of the entire psychopathy discourse” man- guilt or remorse. Someone who sees your inclina- path. If the label can be applied so broadly, what ages to tick three rhetorical boxes: objectivity tion to trust as his or her personal playground. does it mean? (“obvious”), equivocation (“bases”) and overstate- Someone profoundly amoral. And there is the Questions of this nature are worth pondering, ment (the “entire” discourse). growing feeling that psychopaths are everywhere and a sharp exposition of popular and scientific The Myth of the Born Criminal also suffers from around us. They are the neighbours who drag down notions of psychopathy—such as Jon Ronson’s The serious—and, once again, predictable—conceptual property values with their tasteless landscaping and Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness flaws. Like many critics in the tradition, Jalava, garish Christmas decorations. They are the cowork- Industry —could be a valuable counterpoint to the Griffiths and Maraun use biology to mean genetic ers who got ahead by throwing you, or someone liberal usage that worms its way into newspapers, and physiological rather than the study of living you respect, under the metaphor- things. Consequently, they com- ical bus. They are the monsters of The Myth of the Born Criminal fits into mit themselves to several absurd the night, dressed in human skins, stances. They suggest that we on the prowl for an easy mark. the decades-old tradition of “cultural should not investigate the gen- The portrayal of the psycho- etics of psychopathy because they path as omnipresent bogeyman is critiques of human social biology.” are too complex. That biological a sore spot for Okanagan College causes are “inborn.” That the brain and Simon Fraser University professors Jarkko magazines, blogs and academic discourse. But The develops “following a genetic blueprint.” That the Jalava, Stephanie Griffiths and Michael Maraun. Myth of the Born Criminal aims to be much more causes of our behaviour can somehow exist outside In The Myth of the Born Criminal: Psychopathy, than this. It positions itself as a blistering attack of our brains. That “psychopathy as a behavioural Neurobiology and the Creation of the Modern on the inferences drawn from scientific work in disorder is theoretically coherent only insofar as Degenerate, they suggest that the concept of psychological assessment, behavioural genetics Judeo-Christian morality is a coherent theoretical psychopathy tells us more about our own beliefs and brain imaging. The result, sadly, is a predictable framework.” and fears than it does about monsters hiding in disappointment: a book thick with exaggeration Science is the only method we have ever had plain sight. Psychopathy is ill defined, deeply mixed and self-contradiction. to unpack complexity, and its success has been up with Judeo-Christian theology and (to put it What makes this disappointment so predictable great by any measure. Along the way, we have mildly) unhelpful. Even the biological foundations is how neatly The Myth of the Born Criminal fits into come to understand that biological causes are not on which it is ostensibly based—differences in both the decades-old tradition of “cultural critiques of inborn, genes are not blueprints and everything neural and genetic architecture—are shaky. No one human social biology,” a polemical niche rooted in that causes our behaviour must do so via the brain, is born a psychopath; psychopaths are pressed into the humanities. Jalava, Griffiths and Maraun devote for the brain is what makes behaviour happen. the mould by social forces. seven of nine chapters to making the “sins” of We have also come to recognize that claims about Consider, as Jalava, Griffiths and Maraun have, psychopathic inquiry, past and present, everyone’s cultural specificity require evidence. I, for one, am the case of Colonel Russell Williams, former com- problem. As if out of a playbook, they trace a line hard pressed to locate any culture in the anthropo- mander of CFB Trenton. In 2010, Williams pleaded from the racist pseudoscience of Lombroso and logical record that gives complete strangers the guilty to 88 criminal charges: a string of break-ins, his 19th-century contemporaries through the Third moral licence to steal from, rape and murder two sexual assaults, and the murders of Jessica Reich’s obsession with degeneracy, on to Richard women. Lloyd and Corporal Marie-France Comeau. Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s arguments about There are moments of genuine insight in The Although no formal diagnosis has been offered the heritability of intelligence in The Bell Curve: Myth of the Born Criminal, especially those that to the public, several news outlets characterized Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, highlight problems of inference. As the auth- Williams as a psychopath. The Globe and Mail, for and ending with the modern marriage of “Judeo- ors point out, differences between the brains of instance, ran a piece on Williams entitled “How Christian theology with mainstream science.” They psychopaths and others say nothing about the refer to a diversity of scientific research as “the relevance of the environment. Again, every cause D.B. Krupp is an adjunct professor of psychology psychopathy research program” and a diversity of of behaviour must go through the brain. Likewise, at Queen’s University and leads the Program in theorizing on which this research is based as “the they show that we cannot rely on statistical proced- Evolution and Governance at the One Earth Future biological theory of psychopathy,” all of it packaged ures to tell us whether psychopathy is real, because Foundation in Broomfield, Colorado. He studies tightly into a single “program” with a leading, con- statistics tend to be incapable of detecting causa- the evolution of cooperation and conflict, mainly in spiratorial “the.” tion; this is precisely why we conduct experiments. humans. This review is dedicated to the memories It is ironic that so much of The Myth of the Born But, in the book, these insights are buried under of Grant Harris and Marnie Rice, a remarkable pair Criminal is concerned with exposing rhetoric, given layers of embellishment, misunderstanding and of scientists who devoted years of their lives to the that so much of the book depends on it. In a telling misrepresentation. No reader should have to work study of psychopathy. paragraph, the authors fuss about ad hominem that hard to separate rhetoric from reality.

December 2015 reviewcanada.ca 15 Snow Fort in Carport What It Is

Pausing in the carport by your snow fort, taken for granted year after year, It is the secret that stars carry, and the sun, I think about getting in. and anything that burns.

As usual you’ve piled the snow around my metal-topped workbench, left it It is the piercing red of geraniums in summer, open at one end to make an entrance. Your shovel stands nearby. the smell of ancient stones in the heat.

When I parked, ice glittered in the fort: coloured blocks. We put It is mazarine sky and the bliss of birds, food-dye and water in yoghurt containers, left them out overnight. the broken light of rainbows.

Thawed, out slid your magic thoughts to be displayed on my chopping It is the reckless, brilliant river block: a wedge of wood; your altar; your stumpy kitchen table. carving its way home.

On all fours I bend my head, have to look at my knees to fit, feel fear rise It is stupor and it is imperfection, in my throat. the energy of shadows.

It’s cramped in here where the child still lives. It is the tiger sniffing the breeze behind the curtains of your gracious life. Louise Carson It is destiny’s calligraphy drawn by angels, the unconsummated strangers in all of us.

Eva Tihanyi

Louise Carson’s Rope: A Tale Told in Prose and Verse (2011) and Mermaid Road Eva Tihanyi’s eighth poetry collection, The Largeness (2013) were published by Broken Rules Press. A poetry collection entitled A Clearing is of Rescue, will be published by Inanna Publications being published in 2015 from Signature Editions, from which “Snow Fort in Carport” in spring 2016. She has also published a volume of is reprinted with permission. Her poetry collection A Clearing and a mystery, Executor, short stories, Truth and Other Fictions (Inanna, were both published by Signature Editions in 2015. Louise lives near Montreal. 2009). Tihanyi has taught at Niagara College since 1989 and divides her time between St. Catharines and Toronto. She has just finished reading Shawna Lemay’s Rumi and the Red Handbag and is cur- rently reading Two Minds by Harold Rhenisch, The Ongoing Moment by Geoff Dyer and The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker.

16 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada J’ai parfois affaire au temps. I sometimes deal with time. Aux racines. Aux os. Au suc. With roots. With bones. With marrow. Au scintillement du secret. With a scintillating secret. À l’odeur des vieux chandails. With the body odour of old sweaters.

J’ai parfois affaire au vide. I sometimes deal with the void. À l’inspide du sable. Mon poids. Mes pas. With sand’s insipidness. My weight. My footsteps. À l’indifférence des kilomètres. With miles of indifference. À l’horizon qui n’a jamais rien su. With a horizon that never had the slightest inkling.

Larry Tremblay translated by Norman Cornett

Larry Tremblay is an award-winning writer, dir- Norman Cornett, PhD, is an educator, religious studies ector, actor and kathakali specialist. The author scholar and art critic who lives in Montreal and teaches at of 30 books, his plays include War Cantata, universities throughout North America and Europe. He is Abraham Lincoln Goes to the Theatre, L’Enfant the subject of Professor Norman Cornett, a documentary by matière, Burger Love and The Ventriloquist. Alanis Obomsawin. His translations appear in leading liter- He has published several novels, including ary journals including , Rampike, ARC The Bicycle Eater (published by Talonbooks in and the Windsor Review. More information is available at English in 2005), The Obese Christ (published by haveyouexperienced.wordpress.com. Talonbooks in English in 2014) and The Orange Grove (published by Biblioasis in 2015).

December 2015 reviewcanada.ca 17 How the Mighty Inca Fell Ronald Wright’s novel chronicles disease, butchery and betrayal in Peru. Oakland Ross

has explored the serial treachery inflicted upon Indian trading vessel, and is quickly captured at The Gold Eaters Amerindian culture during the more than five sea by a small force of these foul-smelling Spanish Ronald Wright centuries of neglect or oppression that followed degenerates, tacking down from Panama in search Hamish Hamilton the European conquest. The same concern pulses of a rumoured empire of gold. 367 pages, hardcover through his latest book, in which he reimagines the The story unfolds from there, and Waman ISBN 9780670068265 toppling of the mighty Inca empire that once dom- spends so much of the tale in the company of inated much of South America, until it fell victim to Castilians that he halfway morphs into a sort a combination of European diseases, Spanish greed of ersatz Spaniard himself. He travels with his cap- t is known as el Cuarto del Rescate, or and Old World weaponry. tors to Seville, nearly perishing of smallpox along the Ransom Chamber, and it is located in Granted, the Incas did not exactly make matters the way, and even cultivates a wispy beard, to be ICajamarca, a green and pleasant city perched difficult for the Spaniards. Shortly after Pizarro—a more like his leonine mates. high amid the cloud-draped Andes of northern dull-witted but stubborn thug in Wright’s depic- Although central to the novel, Waman also Peru—a town with a history. tion—arrived on the scene, the Inca world was embodies what is possibly its greatest challenge. In the early 16th Century, an Inca prince named plunged into civil war, as two sons of the fallen After learning to speak Spanish, the boy is Atawallpa promised to fill the room in question emperor, Wayna Qhapaq, turned their armies enlisted to serve as Pizarro’s interpreter, a duty with ornaments of gold, while also stock- that has him collaborating with the ing two similar cubicles with silverwork, Once Atawallpa was dead, the Spaniards in their lethal forays through all in a bargain to save himself from these strange new lands. In short, he is execution at the hands of the alien Europeans had his priceless an insufferable turncoat. Spaniards. To gull his people into complacency, The gathering of so many riches took artifacts melted down into ingots, he repeatedly lies about the conquerors’ months to accomplish, but Atawallpa intentions. Then the hapless Indians are was as good as his word, while his con- for ease of transport. massacred, eventually leaving Waman querors fell far short of theirs. with the blood of hundreds, possibly They killed the poor man anyway, by stran- against one another. As you might expect, the thousands, on his hands. gling him—a “mercy” conferred by their leader, Spaniards were only too happy to take full advan- Somehow, Wright manages to maintain the Francisco Pizarro, after Atawallpa underwent a last- tage of this ill-timed family feud. reader’s sympathy for this New World anti-hero. minute conversion to Christianity. Otherwise, they By the time the two princes fell out, pitting Although he transgresses time and again, Waman would have burned him at the stake. Atawallpa against his half-brother Washkar, the also suffers in his heart for his sins, and that seems This sorry episode occurred after the Spaniards Incas and their many vassal states were already enough to keep him from slipping beyond the had already slaughtered at least 5,000 of Atawallpa’s in a miserable condition, laid low not by Spanish moral pale, if only just. finest soldiers, relying on cavalry, artillery and mus- arms but by European sputum, a deadly froth Among the many difficulties of historical -fic kets to make short work of men armed mainly with clotted with pathogens against which they had no tion is the ticklish task of getting the diction right, hatchets and slingshots. defence—mumps, measles, chickenpox and, of and The Gold Eaters succeeds gloriously, for the Once Atawallpa was dead, the Europeans had course, smallpox. most part. Wright surely exults in the possibilities his priceless artifacts melted down into ingots, for Some conquest. of language, and so does this narrative, bursting ease of transport. For himself, Pizarro claimed the Before the carnage was mostly over, fully nine with wonderful if uncommon words—flump, flens- weight in gold of more than 13 men. tenths of the indigenous population were dead ing, corbelled, spraint, susurration, fetor, finial, Nowadays, the Ransom Chamber still stands— from disease, not war. Forget about Iberian valour: skeins, gonfalon, architrave, embrasures, writhen, the last remaining Inca building in Cajamarca and the Spaniards could have seized these lands merely scrim—that impart an antique, otherwordly tone among the city’s main tourist attractions. by coughing, spitting and sneezing. But, of course, to the novel. For more on this unsettling theme, either book they did much more. At times, however, the British-born Wright has your passage to the Peruvian Andes or else turn For one thing, they ate gold—or so it seemed to his mostly Castilian characters speaking or musing your attention to The Gold Eaters, Ronald Wright’s the Incas. How else to explain their insatiable appe- in an arcane anglo argot that seemed kind of jarring masterly new account of the Incas’ demise, a chron- tite for the stuff? Meanwhile, they killed, they raped to me. icle of disease, butchery and betrayal that brims and they plundered, without mercy or restraint. At one point, a character named Candía (admit- with life in the shadows of death. An epic if horrifying tale, the conquest of the tedly, a Greek rather than a Spaniard) wonders if A celebrated journalist, essayist and novelist, Incas has long called out for a full-blooded fictional Waman is “getting too churchy for the bints.” (Too the British Columbia–based Wright has trained his treatment, a version of history related at first hand, prudish for sex, I think.) A paragraph or so later, sights on Peru before, notably in his first book, Cut propelled by the hearts and minds of those who Wright refers to “the loathsome jakes,” a phrase— Stones and Crossroads: A Journey in the Two Worlds lived it. new to me—with just one citation on Google, dat- of Peru, published in 1984. And now along comes Wright, whose powerful ing from the late 1500s. It means latrine. In that opus, as in subsequent works, Wright re-enactment of those searing times is conveyed As for Waman, he eventually comes to his senses primarily through the eyes of an Indian boy named and renounces the Spaniards, once and for all. Oakland Ross is a former Latin America corres- Waman, an adolescent when the novel begins. The trigger for this decision is a series of Spanish pondent for The Globe and Mail who later reported Not an Inca himself, Waman dwells in a coastal crimes that give a new, literal meaning to the term on the region for the Toronto Star. Among other village and speaks Tallan, a local tongue, as well as “cold feet.” These misdeeds are at once so casually books, he has written two historical novels set in Quechua, the language of the highland-dwelling presented and so shocking that I will not spoil the Mexico—The Dark Virgin (HarperCollins, 2001) Incas. A headstrong youth in many ways, he soon effect by revealing them here. and The Empire of Yearning (HarperCollins, 2013). runs away from home, finagles passage aboard an You will have to read the book.

18 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Prisoners of Home Margaret Atwood’s imagined society is grounded in the current abuses of capitalism. Shelley Boyd

in the search for home. Stan The Heart Goes Last is initially hesitant about the Margaret Atwood terms of Positron’s contract, but McClelland and Stewart Charmaine is convinced that this 308 pages, hardcover is their best chance for happi- ISBN 9780771009112 ness. She longs for security, which she equates with stylish home furnishings and a healthy bottom ulitzer Prize–winning line. After living without running author Carol Shields once water and fearing for their safety, Pstated “that language that car- Stan and Charmaine have found ries weight in our culture is very often their salvation. The fluffy bath fuelled by a search for home, our towels supplied in the Consilience rather piteous human groping toward home “clinched the deal.” Yes, that metaphorical place where we can Positron’s promises are enticing. be most truly ourselves.” Margaret The company’s PowerPoint sales Atwood taps into this fundamental pitch doles out phrases such as “A desire for belonging and refuge in MEANINGFUL LIFE” and offers her latest novel, The Heart Goes Last. an image of a golden egg in a nest, This work of speculative fiction offers which to Stan’s mind, is a symbol both literal and figurative notions of of hope—a new beginning for a what constitutes the ideal home in a prosperous future. world plagued by economic ruin, uncertainty and lished on the internet by Byliner. The now complete But for Atwood’s more skeptical readers, this an appetite for superficial pleasures. novel uses sudden turns in plot and chapter-ending golden nest egg invites questions. Literally, nest Atwood is known for her skilful imagining of cliffhangers typical of the serial form. Yet at the eggs are real or artificial eggs placed in the nest to utopian/dystopian societies, in books such as her heart of the book lies Atwood’s profound commen- encourage hens in their egg laying. Later, readers recent MaddAddam trilogy and the classic The tary about the longing for home and the role that discover that the Positron prison boasts an ever Handmaid’s Tale, which prompt readers to reflect our emotions play in either realizing or undermin- growing egg farm, and it is unclear who benefits on how their own worlds may be improved. The ing this individual and collective dream. from the project’s entire profit-making scheme. imagined society that Atwood creates in The Heart The novel’s main characters, Stan and Charmaine, Certainly the citizen-prisoners are not reaping the Goes Last is at once familiar and strange. The are a husband and wife who have lost their home rewards. They are merely kept busy and reasonably novel’s dire economic circumstances resonate with and salaried jobs in the wake of a socioeconomic content with fresh eggs for breakfast. Positron’s the 2008 global financial crisis, while other features, collapse. Living out of their car, selling their blood brand of egg symbolism also brings to mind the such as her depiction of an elaborate sex robot for petty cash, and dumpster diving for food, the pair cautionary folk tale about the goose that laid industry, favour the bizarre. work to survive but the stress is taking its toll. While the golden egg. Of course, that story ends badly Atwood opens with a series of epigraphs Stan and Charmaine often flee nighttime attacks for the goose when the owner, driven by short- (including an excerpt from a review of a masturba- from thieves and would-be rapists attempting to sighted greed, kills the bird in order to find the tion device designed like a piece of furniture) that break into their vehicle, society’s wealthiest sleep source of the gold and ends up empty-handed. serve as measured reminders that sex machines soundly, “floating around on tax-free sea platforms In this light, the Positron Project has the visual and fantasy substitutes, rudimentary or not, are just outside the offshore limit.” Hope eventually trappings of prosperity, but it is merely a well- nothing new and certainly not science fiction. arrives in the form of an advertisement inviting packaged replication of the outside world with its The novel’s defamiliarizing effect pushes readers, down-and-out citizens to sign up for “the Positron gross socioeconomic disparities. In Positron, the therefore, to revise their perspectives, to see their Project” in the town of Consilience—a closed com- collective good of its citizen-prisoners remains own world anew and reassess the complexity and munity in which residents are guaranteed a comfort- secondary to the financial interests of the project’s force of human desires, especially during times able home, food on their plates and employment. top “investors” who operate outside the rules of of socioeconomic uncertainty. A unique feature of The only catch is that their living arrangements will the system and use its ideological confines and The Heart Goes Last that distinguishes it from rotate: for one month, they will live and work in the persuasive strategies for their own benefit. In this Atwood’s other speculative fiction is that this story town and enjoy their comfortable home; for the next way, Atwood’s imagined society is firmly grounded first appeared, in part, as a serialized narrative pub- month, they will be segregated into male and female in the current abuses of capitalism by the wealthiest Positron prisons while their “Alternates” exchange one percent. Shelley Boyd teaches Canadian literature in the places. When citizens join this for-profit social Ultimately, how you create your home comes English department of Kwantlen Polytechnic experiment, they can never leave and are prohibited down to choices: the choices that you make and the University in Surrey, British Columbia. She is the contact with the outside world. In other words, choices that you are not at liberty to make. It is most author of Garden Plots: Canadian Women Writers Positron and Consilience come with a life sentence. fitting, then, that in a story that revolves around the and Their Literary Gardens (McGill-Queen’s In The Heart Goes Last, material comforts human longing for home that the woman in charge University Press, 2013). must be weighed against individual freedoms of Positron’s surveillance was a former English

December 2015 reviewcanada.ca 19 major whose thesis focused on John Milton’s poem Paradise Lost, a retelling of the biblical story of Adam and Eve. “Sufficient to have stood but free to An anniversary special fall,” Adam and Eve are lured by the snake and their own desires, resulting in a precarious life when they are cast out of Eden. Clearly, powerful forces can sway individuals’ aspirations and judgements in a world governed by greed and threatened by fear. In Atwood’s novel, the prison system becomes the sad solution for the desperate, while the rest of the popu- lation seems equally enslaved to a system-of-getting that brings no altruistic benefit to the larger human community, leaving the majority homeless. Even if you have enjoyed relative security and comfort for the better part of your life, Atwood Our story begins in 1991, when author and academic cautions that this may not always be the case. Her book asks us to reflect carefully on our larger Patrice Dutil founded the LRC to be a magazine of serious societal home, its values and how it treats the most discussion about books, politics and the important ideas of our vulnerable. In Charmaine’s world, prior to the economic collapse, she worked as the entertain- time. Since then, we’ve been committed to presenting reviews ment and events coordinator at the Ruby Slippers and essays from some of Canada’s most prolifi c writers. Home and Clinic, a chain of assisted-living homes for seniors that uses the ironic motto “There’s no place like home.” While the elderly and infirm are In 2016, the LRC turns 25. To mark the occasion, we are unable to return to their one-time homes, their profound yearning persists and cries out for com- asking you, our devoted readers and supporters, to contribute passion. Instead, they are met with callous, for- the names of the most infl uential Canadian books published profit solutions. If the journey through life is rarely straightforward, then the figurative home can be as since 1991 that have had a lasting—or at least seminal— precarious as the physical shelter. In this regard, the infl uence on the development of Canadian thought, politics or superficial paradise that operates within Positron’s confines also reflects the surface-level order that culture in the broadest sense. Whether you choose a book on masks the discontent often experienced within the boundaries of committed, long-term relationships. history or public policy, a memoir or novel, we are compiling a Narrated through Stan’s and Charmaine’s alternat- list of the 25 most infl uential Canadian books published in the ing points of view, The Heart Goes Last exposes the couple’s distant and discordant perspectives. The last quarter-century, to be presented in a special anniversary two fail to communicate, and Charmaine admits issue next year. that there has never been a lot of passion in their marriage. Theirs was a “different kind of love. Trusting, sedate. It went with pet fish … and with cats, perhaps. And with eggs for breakfast, poached, Submissions will be considered until December 31, 2015. snuggled inside their individual poachers. And with babies.” This marital home front quickly unravels Titles must have been published after January 1991 to be when Stan begins lusting after the mysterious considered. You can vote by tweeting @LRCmag using the female Alternate only to discover that his wife has been having an affair with the male Alternate on hashtag #LRC25years or posting on our Facebook page. their monthly switch-over days. Eventually the divided couple is caught up in an elaborate plot We are also accepting titles by email directly at editor@ devised by internal and external forces working to reviewcanada.ca. If your suggestion is selected to be included disrupt the Positron Project for its human rights violations and other criminal activities. In a world in our fi nal list, you will receive a 25% discount off a one-year where superficial perceptions and immediate self- print/digital subscription to the LRC. gratification rule the day, readers begin to question if authentic, long-term human relationships are possible, especially if Positron’s sexbots and mind- Over the coming weeks, we will feature the recommendations manipulation treatments will eventually replace partners with automatons. of some of our contributors and other prominent Canadians Through Stan and Charmaine’s “piteous grop- on the books they feel should be included in the list. Visit ing” to find shelter for their lonely hearts, Atwood has crafted a powerful dystopian parable that reviewcanada.ca/the-lrc-turns-25 regularly! exposes humanity’s selfishness and short-sighted failings. Ultimately, The Heart Goes Last pushes readers to contemplate the choices that they make We invite you to take part in this special and the limits that are imposed on their choices milestone with us because the LRC has by life circumstances, by others, and by pervasive “ ideologies that have shaped their own perceptions. always been more a community than Home, in all its forms, requires careful scrutiny, just a magazine. And it has been our altruism and responsibility. In the end, we must readers who have carried us through be attentive to our heart’s desires but also keep these past 25 years. our most selfish impulses in check if the sought- ” after security and comfort are to be realized and —Mark Lovewell, Interim Editor sustained. Only then, will we be truly connected as a society that is “at home” with ourselves and with each other.

20 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada MANY WORDS ONE WORLD

Can Indigenous literature be written in the language of the Memory Serves gathers together twenty years of oratories colonizer? By uncovering traces of ancestral languages in by Lee Maracle. With great eloquence, she shares her selected writings, Mareike Neuhaus positions these works as knowledge of Stó:l history, memory, philosophy, law, part of a rich, established body of Indigenous literature. spirituality, feminism, and the colonial condition of her people.

newestpress.com uofrpress.ca

DecemberShared Ad ad 2015 for LRC 2.indd 1 reviewcanada.ca 2015-11-12 9:11 21AM Tour Talk One of Canada’s best-known literary editors takes us on the road. Marty Gervais

This digressive structural shape Across Canada by Story: of the writing by one of Canada’s A Coast-to-Coast Literary best-known editors is what makes Adventure this book so appealing. It is con- Douglas Gibson versation, like gossip or good old ECW Press fashion storytelling. It is like a 327 pages, softcover Sunday ride through a country ISBN 9781770907799 that is completely unfamiliar, and at every turn there is a surprise and with Gibson there is always ouglas Gibson has that little reward. This is a man that insatiable desire to who loves chinwag. Loves a good Dshare with the world the yarn. Can’t forget a remark, or things that occur to him. It may even the pub, or coffee shop, or begin with a simple, quirky remark a park, or bookstore or reading from a writer that has left him where a detour into such banter amused for days on end, or some- suddenly assumed paramount thing that has gone awry with his significance. After a while, you own travels across the country that anticipate it. This is where Gibson has caused him to be downright shines. That is not to say the book annoyed. For example, it could be lacks structure. Its chapters mirror triggered by a moment in Kingston the author tour he took when pro- when, at an Indigo bookstore, he was forced to tating incidents that involve the sheer boredom that moting Stories About Storytellers. compete with a deafening cappuccino machine authors often find themselves trapped in when, at One of the first things that became apparent that finally silenced him. Gibson knew he had met book signings or events, they are confronted by the to Gibson on that cross-country journey was the his match. He ceased to address the crowd, but also curious who clearly are more interested in them- realization that for years he had extended caution- resolved never to return to that city to promote his selves than anyone else, notably the writers. Gibson ary advice to authors about how “terrible … things book. He designated the city a “Gibson-free zone.” has bumped into his share of them on his cross- would happen to them, and their books, in book- I met Gibson in Windsor when he was on tour country tour to regale audiences with anecdotes stores, in newspaper reviews, among their friends, for his book Stories About Storytellers: Publishing of editing the giants in Canadian literature. These in interviews, and so on.” And now on his first tour , Robertson Davies, Alistair MacLeod, included W.O. Mitchell, Alistair MacLeod, Hugh of his own first book, this literary maestro was tast- Pierre Trudeau and Others. He had put together MacLennan, Robertson Davies, ing some of what he had prepared for them. Gibson a one-man show that flashed a quirky draw- and Alice Munro. was surprised at how rankled he was becoming ing of each of the authors he had chosen to talk So along the way, one spots those wily souls who when old friends would pause at the front of the about, and he would pace at the front of the room, emerge from the crinkly wallpaper of book festivals queue of book buyers to chat “amiably” but would recounting what it was like to know and guide these like bugs to ambush authors. Gibson recalls, for never actually pick up and buy “the damned book!” authors’ works into publication. The stories were example, encountering a woman There was also a Toronto woman—“a nice, rich endlessly intriguing, and gave us all a glimpse of who assured him that she, too, had a gift of writing, lady”—who proffered a book for him to autograph, these characters that we might never find beneath but acknowledged the one thing that stopped her but when Gibson folded back the cover, he spotted the lines of their short stories or novels. They was the inability of “putting ideas into words.” that it was a Toronto Public Library copy. “I can’t afforded us a picture of them not so much as icons On the other hand, there are times on a book sign this!” he told the woman. She was clearly for our literature but as people. tour when a fan confesses to an obscure tidbit that offended, and marched off in a huff. In his new book, Across Canada by Story: blossoms into the most astonishing and surprising But again, the stories behind the stories are A Coast-to-Coast Literary Adventure, Gibson tells a tale. A woman in Montreal left the ever-loquacious always what is far more interesting. Writers are for- somewhat different story—about the tour itself. His Gibson “speechless” when she confided that she ever admonished to dig a little deeper, to plumb words once again touch upon the most intimate was Hugh MacLennan’s daughter. The woman for those treasures beyond the surface and turn behind-the-scenes moments, including those irri- went on to explain that her mother, a married up the extraordinary among the ordinary. And woman, had carried on with one of Canada’s most here is someone with a deep understanding of the Marty Gervais is a writer, publisher and former famous novelists for a number of years. She also lives of so many of Canada’s best and most famous newspaper columnist whose journalism, includ- said she had a cache of letters that revealed the writers. Gibson, like no one else, grasped their writ- ing his writings from Iraq, has won him honours. particulars of that long-standing affair. Much later, ing habits, obsessions, weaknesses, the flaws that His most successful book was The Rumrunners: Gibson arranged to meet this woman who handed defined them and seemingly maybe made them A Prohibition Scrapbook (revised and reissued over several “heavy bags” of documents, and more human. That may explain his loyalty to them, by Biblioasis, 2009). Gervais is a recipient of the ­correspondence, which, in combination with her and the profound friendships developed in guiding Harbourfront Festival Prize and the Queen’s Jubilee resemblance to MacLennan, convinced Gibson she these writers to recognition. Medal. was telling the truth. I think of Alistair MacLeod in his final days

22 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada before he passed away in April 2014. The Windsor- sink stood a terrified young female summer student based writer had suffered a debilitating stroke that in flimsy pyjamas, foaming at the mouth—no, wait, a national festival of January, and it had left him bedridden. Gibson brushing her teeth. It was a bad moment … We politics, art and ideas made the trip to Windsor, not only to see the dra- pleaded literary necessity, set up our cameras, and RADIO matic stage presentation of No Great Mischief, but got the shot out of the window.” also to see his old friend, the man from whom he Ironically that was not the picture that was used. literally had to wrestle the manuscript that would The photographer saw another moment when the Spur Radio become that award-winning novel. Gibson’s crew was retreating across the quad. memory of that visit is filled with emotion: “When Of course, other times, this insightful editor the time came, my friend and I shook hands left- betrays how star-struck he can be by the presence of now available at spurfestival.ca handed, and his handshake was significantly long some of these writers whose literature he has helped Currently featuring podcasts from these Spur 2015 and strong, and his brown-eyed gaze direct and shape into fame. You can see this in Gibson’s story as events: Currently featuring podcasts from meaningful. At this moment of dumbstruck high he suddenly regards their books in an entirely new these Spur 2015 events: emotion, I remembered the MacLeod family motto light. For example, he walks in awe through W.O. above the piano at his home. ‘Hold fast,’ I blurted Mitchell’s childhood home. The silence nearly thun- o u t .” ders in his heart. This is also evident in visiting Alice “Alistair made a farewell gesture between a Munro “country,” where Gibson begins to notice wave and a thumbs-up sign. ‘All right,’ he said, and the bones of her stories in the landscape of those nodded. I like to think little towns and villages Divded No More: that it was more than a in southern Ontario. It Bridging the Gap between casual response. I like Along the way, one spots reminded me of a time Racialized Communities to believe that in fact when I visited James it was the considered those wily souls who Reaney’s farm outside recorded at Spur Winnipeg view of a fond husband of Stratford, Ontario, emerge from the crinkly Featuring: and a father of six fine and we walked the full Dr. Cornel West children who knew that length of the property, Shahina Siddiqui all things considered, wallpaper of book saw the pond, or the Clayton Thomas-Muller including a few mil- festivals like bugs to open area between Rosanna Deerchild lion admiring readers, the house and the barn, his life, now drawing ambush authors. or the laneway leading to a close, had gone all up to the farm itself, right.” Indeed. and all of this prompted Gibson, however, returns to Alistair throughout a recounting of the poet’s boyhood life here. The The Suez Crisis this collection of tales. The book ends on a story world of Reaney’s literature suddenly came alive in and the making of from the Writers Union of Canada annual general a new way. Lester B. Pearson meeting where he is asked to pay tribute to his old In a sense, this is what is happening in this friend who died “as the sun rose on Easter Sunday.” book. Gibson dips into the places and scenes that recorded at Spur Ottawa Gibson regards this opportunity as “a perfect end- form the backgrounds to the lives of these fictional Featuring: ing for a book about Canadian writers and writ- characters, except now he is meeting these people Antony Anderson ing.” The point that he is making in telling it is this: in the streets and town halls and coffee shops in Roland Paris “[Alistair] … is not really gone. Because as everyone every corner of the country. Gibson rightly believes in the room realizes … writers have found a way to that “books supply a special sort of passport in this cheat death, to allow you to meet them long after country.” They permit access to the world outside their death. The work lives on. And what also lives of one’s own backyard. The author becomes the on is the impact of lines like the unforgettable final tourist. So does the reader. The journey is what is The Guelph Lecture words of No Great Mischief: ‘All of us are better shared. It is a Kodak moment for both. On Being Canadian when we’re loved’.” Loyalty had other faces too. Gibson’s journey recorded at Spur Guelph across the country strides into the neighbourhoods of writers everywhere, and that intersection into Read well Featuring: their lives as an editor is the substance of both Jaron Lanier Lee Maracle books, this latest about the tour itself, and theFor at great any readingsize. at any size former more specifically his relationship with the authors. Sometimes there are priceless flashes of humour. And good storytelling necessitates those moments of levity, a device that delights and keeps one listening. This is something to which Gibson Measuring Canada’s gravitates. His love of a good tale is illustrated by his Middle Class account of struggling to come up with a cover part of the LRC Presents series for Rebel Angels by Robertson Davies. He hired a photographer, and proposed the idea of using “the Featuring: Michael Den Tandt distinctive roof-line of Trinity [College], set against a summer night sky.” Well, the exigent endeavours being executed to capture this, especially the moon against the dark sky, proved challenging. Gibson Currently featuring podcasts from these Spur 2015 assisted the photographer in finding the best van- events With more podcasts arriving weekly at Currently featuring podcasts from these Spur 2015 tage point for the picture: “We decided that the events: perfect place for a shot in five minuteswas from a spurfestival.ca/multimedia window upstairs. I dashed up and discovered that + soundcloud.com/spur-radio it was in a washroom, with windows that opened. The presence of urinals encouraged me to believe @SpurFest that it was a male washroom, so our midnight visit facebook.com/SpurFestival would not present a problem. Yet when we crashed reviewcanada.ca through the door, behind our heavy cases, at thevisit the new reviewcanada.ca December 2015 reviewcanada.ca 23 It Moves A Canadian writer’s meditation on the river that flows next to her home. Aritha van Herk

backwater that ebbs and flows with the season, and ment. We hear the river, its pitch and cadence, how The River that evokes a complex history, geological, biologi- it sounds when it is high in the spring, and how it Helen Humphreys cal and human. Her metaphorical unfolding of the sounds in the fall when it is low: “It feels and sounds ECW Press moods and spaces of the river matches her desire like an argument, whereas the high and silent river 240 pages, hardcover to know the river on its own terms, “not as a surface seems like a decision.” ISBN 9781770412552 on which to project my own struggles and desires.” The fictional fragments that intersperse the Her “research” into the river becomes a document memoir are tangential to the river’s story, but rel- of discovery without evaluation, recording without evant in their exploration of how different humans elen Humphreys’s The River pays hom- intervention. Intelligent artifice plays throughout, meet Nature (with a capital N). They include a age to a Canadian preoccupation with in Humphreys’s movement between observation botanist and a captain, an apothecary and an Hhow landscape sculpts the country’s and investigation, and in the sudden bloom of a immigrant and a plume hunter. Some are quint­ imagination. Canada’s rivers perform as arteries fictional fragment only tangentially connected to essentially Canadian, but they roam beyond the and veins in this country’s body, a con- “settler” mode of Roughing It in the ceit that Humphreys uses to fine effect Unfettered by genre, The River Bush to show how the trees and water in her meditation on the Napanee River, of Canada have travelled the world. a river that she lives beside, swims in juxtaposes fiction, history, The book offers as well fascinating and observes. The more subtle aspect details: that “a leaf moves downstream of this intense and deliberated work is potamology, memoir, observation, at .3 miles per hour,” and how “bal- the intelligent distillation that this river last waifs” (seeds that migrated in the is as indifferent to her scrutiny as she is lists, maps and photographs. ballast sand) took root here, and that scrupulous in her observation. waterfalls produce a high concentra- Humphreys’s observation that “Nature was a Depot Creek, but that deepens and enriches the run tion of “negative ions” that have been found to proper noun, with a capital N” establishes her care- of the river through the pages of the book. contribute to positive feelings. Most powerfully, ful distance and yet respect for nature. She does not I cannot help but think of Kenneth Grahame’s for all that the book appears to chronicle an incipi- say overtly that we now approach nature as a body The Wind in the Willows, and Mole’s first experi- ent peacefulness, it aligns water and darkness, an we have the right to autopsy, our surveillance akin ence of the river: “So—this—is—a—river!” he says, awareness that what is below its plainsong can also to that we give to an animal we have accidentally with wonderment, and Rat corrects him. “THE be sinister. run over, our sorrow at its dying and a mea culpa– River,” then goes on to amplify: “It’s brother and One of Humphreys’s most interesting strands esque regard rotating around our own reactions sister to me, and aunts, and company, and food relates to how humans use rivers to dispose of what and sensibilities. We are the dangerous animal, our and drink, and (naturally) washing. It’s my world, is not wanted. “The water feels like a sort of moving anthropocentrism the death warrant that we issue and I don’t want any other. What it hasn’t got is not darkness, capable of hiding and taking everything to all in our way. worth having, and what it doesn’t know is not worth away without consequence.” I am reminded of In that light, the many sanctimonious books that knowing.”­ the inexorable force and character of water, how seek to encapsulate and to profit from our newly Immersion is the means by which Humphreys humans may believe they can predict what it will focused interest in “nature” have become an irritat- follows her desire to know. She swims in the river, do, but can never be assured of its behaviour. My ing glut. Armchair naturalists, we gobble up books canoes on the river and explores the river, following city, Calgary, learned that in the flood of 2013. about nature from Walden to The Sixth Extinction: its drift as it follows the fault line from Depot Lakes Despite her many awards, Helen Humphreys is An Unnatural History as avidly as we have gobbled to Lake Ontario. She works with the factual river, an under-appreciated writer who runs as quiet and nature itself. the living river, the geological river, but it is “the subterranean as water. She has authored four books Thankfully, The River does not adopt a mission- deepening green song of the river” that threads her of poetry, six novels and two works of creative ary position. Its form contributes to its beguilement words, and she is always aware of the impossibility non-fiction, most especially The Frozen Thames, a and its aesthetic exploration is as intrinsic to the of her task. “The fact of the river is that it moves. brilliant exposition that gathers together short fic- result as its observational bent. Unfettered by genre, It moves itself and all its cargo constantly down- tional vignettes detailing the 40 times that the river the book juxtaposes fiction, history, potamology, stream. Because it moves, it can’t be contained, Thames has frozen. That work serves as a bookend memoir, observation, lists, maps and photographs. and this means too that it can’t be contained with to this book, about a Canadian river, which man- It is a visual feast, and the images and sketches words.” ages, despite our climate, never to freeze. almost overshadow the text. The effect is deeply sat- And so The River, a container that fights con- The River evokes as well Margaret Laurence’s isfying: its untarnished eloquence smites the reader tainment, refuses to contain, and in that ruptur- river in The Diviners, and how it seems to flow both on a level of intimate innocence so beautiful that at ing consummates a collection, an assemblage, a ways, the “seiche” effect. Despite Canada’s great riv- times it leaves the reader breathless. miscellany, which in the course of its unfolding ers, books about them, such as Hugh MacLennan’s Humphreys has taken as her subject the part enchants the reader. We discover how humans The Rivers of Canada, Lawrence J. Burpee’s By of the Napanee called Depot Creek, an almost- have employed rivers, as livelihood and as roads, Canadian Streams and Myrna Kostash’s Reading although now they have become obstructions to the River: A Traveller’s Companion to the North Aritha van Herk is a novelist and non-fiction the roads we use. We see the river polishing the Saskatchewan River, are rare. Kevin Van Tighem’s writer. Her latest work, Prairie Gothic (with George bones of dead animals and dead humans, eroding Heart Waters: Sources of the Bow River has just Webber; Rocky Mountain Books, 2013) explores the the edges of broken plates and bottles, lost articles. appeared. But these are too few traces of those convergence of place and imagination. She lives in We watch how humans try to make rivers do their arteries that connect our watersheds and our Calgary. bidding, harness their force for energy or move- dreams, our diving and our thirst.

24 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada My Parrot and I A prize-winning memoirist continues the tale of an animal-filled life. John Lownsbrough

clearly as neither boy nor girl. It took 20 years—and trickster. Moreover, as a descendant of the dinosaur, Tuco: The Parrot, the Others and a much torment suffered at the hands of bullies and Tuco represents a hardy vestige of tens of millions Scattershot World sexual predators—before he learned his medical of years of evolution. Brian Brett condition had a name: apparently, the Kallmann The theory and process of evolution and what Greystone syndrome, as that condition was known, can be Charles Darwin called its natural selection holds 328 pages, hardcover caused by a damaged pituitary gland “and in my Brett in thrall. Tuco by virtue of his presence in the ISBN 9781771640633 case appears to have had an impact on the hypo- household, often seated atop Brett’s shoulder peer- thalamus gland beside it, a gland that affects emo- ing with him at his computer, becomes a cynosure tional equilibrium.” for this fascination. his is the story that wrote me,” The diagnosis led to testosterone treatments; the A recurring theme is Brett’s indignation at “ observes Brian Brett of his engaging scrawny youth became a burly man. He would go how human hubris and the greedy and heedless Tramble of a book, Tuco: The Parrot, the on to find love with a mother of two young boys— impulses accompanying it have created tragic Others and a Scattershot World. It is a story that they married after living together 27 years—and consequences and, in many instances, irreparable combines personal observation and reminiscence become an author and farmer. But certain wounds environmental damage. Of the 372 species of par- with scientific argument and speculation, all in the from those early years never properly healed, both rots that exist today, for example, about one third service of exploring how human- face extinction. The pet trade is kind, in assuming (and, by assum- Tuco, Brett’s parrot, emerges as quite called out as a scourge. But Brett’s ing, asserting) its superiority over compass is much broader as he all other life forms on the planet, a character. He is his “spirit guide,” cites the evils of factory farming, has gone astray and imperilled its trophy hunting and the many own future as a species. It is a story possessed of a 500-word vocabulary, a other predations he adduces arguing for empathy and respect and calls to account. Nor has he toward these other life forms. lover of junk food, an excellent mimic much time for the sentimental- In his classic man-and-animal ity of the anthropomorphizers or memoir My Dog Tulip, British and a trickster. those “Samaritans” who capture author J.R. Ackerley had won- wild cats, provide them with food dered, surveying the anxious suitors for his Alsatian in the physical sense (osteoporosis, a corollary of and care, and then release them to prey again on bitch of the title, “Did they suffer from headaches?” the Kallmann syndrome, started to bedevil him in endangered birds and animals. His empathy for A seemingly innocuous question containing his teen years) and in the psychic sense—Brett con- birds and animals is born out of respect from one profound implications. tinues to struggle with post-traumatic stress disor- who has been a killer of birds and animals himself. And just as Ackerley attempted to understand der. Recognition of the syndrome produced its own The memory of a robin he slew as a boy with his the nature of the canine, Brett turns his attention anxieties, not least the time a doctor informed him new bow and arrow remains fresh. To Brett the to Tuco, his pet African grey parrot of 25 years, at he was unlikely to live past age 40. (He is now in subject of killing should involve considerations the same time allowing his thoughts to ponder the his mid sixties.) “He thought he was being honest,” about necessity, methods and respect for your vic- many other Others, the diverse species that are part writes Brett. “Instead, he was cruel and probably tim. Most of us, however sympathetic we may be to of what he calls—a bit too repetitiously perhaps— had no idea that those casual words sent a flaming the holistic and empathetic approach at the core of this “scattershot” world. The current volume is part wound into my heart and forever changed the way Brett’s philosophy, remain distant from the actual of “a three-headed memoir,” the first being Uproar’s I looked at the scattershot world.” mechanics of producing, say, the food we eat or the Your Only Music, a mix of poetry and prose address- In those difficult, pre-diagnosis years, Brett clothing we wear. ing the first two decades of his life, and the second had to learn survival skills. He was helped in this Distance allows us to shield our minds from Trauma Farm: A Rebel History of Rural Life, an by a father whom he describes as “a one-legged thoughts about the holocausts of the chicken fac- account of his life on a farm on Salt Spring Island illiterate Virgil leading me up through hell,” a father tories and the abattoirs. But this does not let us off sometime later. Trauma Farm received the 2009 continually exhorting him to “be a man,” tough love the hook. Brett urges a reset of our awareness of the Writer’s Trust of Canada Non-Fiction Prize. Tuco Brett now looks back on with possibly more appre- extraordinary varieties of intelligence in the world represents a continuation from the earlier works ciation than he may have felt at the time. around us. To go on as we are, he suggests, raises and a kind of summing up. The explorations he But the years of childhood and adolescence the possibility of our own extinction within the makes, the conclusions he draws, invariably lead were often hellish. “Born mutant,” he felt himself evolutionary continuum. back to his own turbulent beginnings. the complete outsider, a sense of alienation that “This is a memoir not a treatise,” Brett declares. Brett’s fascination with this idea of Otherness fostered his early interest in bird life and grow- Well, yes and no. Sometimes the scientific argu- clearly reflects his extraordinary and often stormy ing identification with their Otherness. A eureka ment and history, not to mention the quotations life as an Other. He grew up in British Columbia. moment of sorts occurred at age 17 when he dis- cited from an eclectic bibliography, threaten to His father was a London cockney who lost his covered a quotation from the poet Arthur Rimbaud, overwhelm the memoir-as-memoir. Still, I came to left leg in an accident as a youth and somehow the poster child of Otherness. “Je est un autre,” enjoy the digressions and unruliness of narrative. fetched up in Canada peddling potatoes. Brett declared Rimbaud—an exhortation to become They seemed an apt metaphor for Brett’s idea of was born an androgyne, meaning his testicles what you write about. For Brett, his words became entropy as the governing principle of our “scatter- were undescended; he was an intersex, defined a moral as well as an artistic imperative. shot” existences. There is despair and anger in Tuco emerges as quite a character. He is Brett’s these pages to be sure but there is also much joy— John Lownsbrough is an author and journalist “spirit guide,” possessed of a 500-word vocabulary, and hope. Life, Brett is saying, is full of wonders. His based in Toronto. a lover of junk food, an excellent mimic and a book helps to remind us why.

December 2015 reviewcanada.ca 25 Style and Substance What happens when we view legal judgements as literary documents? Allan C. Hutchinson

received wisdom of law-and-literature scholars judgement may be less about its rhetorical style and Creating Legal Worlds: such as Richard Weisberg and James Boyd White more about its substantive politics. Story and Style in a Culture of Argument that good style not only enhances the moral quality Throughout the book, but especially with regard Greig Henderson and virtue of judicial opinions, but also is part of to his extended discussion of Denning’s judge- University of Toronto Press their moral character. He is adamant that “beauti- ments and, to a lesser extent, with the contributions 180 pages, hardcover fully crafted judgments can be morally vicious.” This of American jurist Benjamin N. Cardozo, I could not ISBN 9781442637085 is a welcome and important insight. Sometimes, it shake the feeling that, despite Henderson’s insist- really is the case that, as the song goes, “someone ence to the contrary, rhetoric was not as crucial to ain’t pretty, she just looks that way.” the judicial enterprise as he asserts. As Henderson’s rying to get your head around what There is much here to enjoy for both novice own text and commentary reveal, if you do not like is going on in judicial opinions is no easy and expert. Henderson does a good job of teasing the normative bottom line, then no amount of rhet- Ttask. The legal world is professionally out and explaining the rhetorical devices—figure, orical persuasion will convince you otherwise. opaque and often deliberately so; it is as though story, imagery, analogy, audience, etc.—that judges Regrettably, his own style can be a little clot- there was a continuing and ill-disguised conspir- use, often unknowingly, in the best (and worst) ted and dry at times, especially in his concluding acy against the laity. Furthermore, because judges examples of judicial opinion writing. Rather than chapter where he pursues the philosophical impli- come in many, but not all, shapes and sizes, so cover a vast stretch of territory, he concentrates on cations of his view of law as rhetoric. Indeed, he do their judgements—they can be eschews the touted virtues of nar- good, bad and indifferent in style Although Henderson is far from clear rative style throughout most of the and substance. As such, it is fair to book; he can be a little preachy and say that law libraries are not gen- or unconditional in revealing his own professorial about good and bad erally regarded as repositories of examples of legal writing. Although ­literary style and engaging reading. hand, he does seem to suggest that it is this is in some ways refreshing, it That said, there has been, for the does not fit too well with the overall last couple of decades, a growing rhetoric all the way down. Burkean (as in the American liter- tendency to view law as literature ary theorist Kenneth, not Edmund) and to explore judicial opinions in literary and several familiar cases in the common law. Relying thrust of his rhetorical perspective that “narrativity rhetorical terms. For some, this reveals the poor on a good amount of Canadian material and, with … is at the core of human signification.” If he is tell- or contentious quality of judicial writing and pro- appropriately healthy extracts from the chosen ing a story, it is a very dense and detached one. fessional style. For others, this offers a rich and judgements, he leads readers through the rhet- Perhaps the most challenging as well as per- transformative window not only on the dynamics of orical dynamics of judgements on sexual assault, plexing part of the book is his concluding effort judicial opinion writing, but also on the very nature causation, segregation, murderous intent and other to address the broader philosophical and juris- of what law is. Is law merely illuminated by viewing forbidding legal chestnuts. The minefields are many prudential implications of treating law as a rhet- it through literary spectacles? Or is law actually a and Henderson proves himself to be reliable and orical exercise. Is the law-and-literature approach rhetorical practice and little else? informative as he negotiates them. intended to be another way, among many, of look- In Creating Legal Worlds: Story and Style in a One of the supposed great stylists of the law is ing at law and its judicial elaboration? Or is it meant Culture of Argument, Greig Henderson, a profes- Lord Denning. His writings are renowned in the to demonstrate that law is simply a rhetorical prac- sor of English at the University of Toronto, makes legal canon, even though his judgements often tice and it is rhetoric all the way down? his own predominantly Canadian foray into this come off as more Hardy Boys than Hamlet. But Although Henderson is far from clear or uncon- crowded field. He comprehends law as literature Henderson is not taken in by their superficial appeal ditional in revealing his own hand, he does seem to and views rhetorical style as less a supplementary and demonstrates the dubious politics that lurk suggest that it is rhetoric all the way down. While flourish to law, but more a constitutive element behind some of his more celebrated judgements. he is too intent on distancing himself from post- of it: “the realm of law is a realm of rhetoric.” For However, an important caveat that Henderson does modernism and its allegedly nihilistic tendencies, him, therefore, law is a rhetorical practice in the not mention is that most of Denning’s judgements he still maintains that there are no fixed founda- grand Aristotelian tradition. Holding no brief for were not written, but delivered spontaneously and tions on which the law stands or could stand; any the essentialism of Plato and his followers, he elu- orally from the bench. One must be mindful that perceived foundations are themselves constructed cidates how legal judgement functions as “first and narrative dynamic and structure likely vary from and reconstructed within, not beneath, law’s rhet- foremost a story” that bridges the divide between written to oral exposition. So to say that “old Tom orical practice. Law is what you persuade people it the necessary and the contingent: the force and Denning was a writer” is open to doubt on several is and should be. cogency of judicial opinions gain traction within fronts. For me, a less arcane way to express that central the law’s culture of argument. As much as he demonstrates that good rhetor- insight is to point out that law is not simply what Although Henderson is ploughing familiar ter- ical style can be persuasive, Henderson occasion- is left after lawyers and judges have gone through rain, he cuts his own path by disagreeing with the ally downplays the extent to which good legal rules their rhetorical routines and produced their pro- can flow from badly written legal judgements; there fessional renditions: law is an inescapably organic Allan C. Hutchinson is Distinguished Research is, as he otherwise concedes, no necessary con- exercise in which the doing is as important as what Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School at York nection between rhetorical style and legal merit. that doing produces. Law is a culture of argument— University and author of Is Killing People Right? However, this concession seems to put in doubt little more and little less. At his best and more Further Great Cases That Shaped Society, forth- some of Henderson’s basic insights about under- lucid, Henderson to his credit has offered further coming from Cambridge University Press. standing law as rhetoric. The persuasiveness of a ­illustration of that.

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December 2015 reviewcanada.ca 27 Settling Accounts A former civil servant’s memoir highlights intrigue and betrayal in Ottawa. Jen Gerson

After a long and varied career within the fed- The post was pegged as a poisoned chalice. Few Unaccountable: eral civil service ranks, Page was appointed to senior careerists in the civil service even considered Truth and Lies on Parliament Hill the unenviable role which made him famous in the role, he alleges. Page, however, was a different Kevin Page 2006 under the auspices of Harper’s first minority kind of creature, even though he had spent almost Viking government.­ three decades working for various government 216 pages, hardcover While in opposition, Harper espoused the need departments and agencies. ISBN 978067006816 for more transparency in Parliament. He cham- It would be easy, here, to suggest that Page was pioned a parliamentary budget office similar to motivated by a kind of partisan fury. Indeed, a glim- the Congressional Budget Office in the United mer of affection for the NDP can be inferred from t has become too easy to dismiss the most States. Such an office could provide politically certain passages in his book. But, on the whole, his florid criticism of Stephen Harper, whose leg- independent economic data to parliamentarians, motivation to captain the ill-fated office seemed Iacy after almost a decade in power will con- which would help them to hold the government to much more nuanced and entirely human. tinue to be examined in the coming months and account by giving them access to information free In 2006, Page lost his son, Tyler, to a freak freight years. of political finagling. train accident. He admits that the bereavement Much like Godwin’s Law, caused his work at the time to which states that as any online Without a strong, competent and suffer. More interestingly, grief discussion grows the probability seemed to have imbued the of a comparison to the Nazis or to empowered civil service—the caste of mild economist with a kind of Hitler approaches one, the Harper damn-the-torpedoes attitude. Derangement Syndrome (HDS for people who actually conduct much of the Instead of fading into a respect- short) has gained a kind of inter- able retirement, Page applied for net slang inevitability. Spend too day-to-day running of the government— the damned job. much time raving about Harper’s And rather than merely panto- evils and, eventually, you will be Harper’s defeat becomes a hollow one. miming the part of a PBO—which accused of suffering from it. would have allowed the govern- The early post-election reviews of the Harper In the theory of the Westminster parliament- ment to maintain its promise of an independent regime have not been positive, but most Conserva- ary system, even government members of Parlia- officer without facing any inconvenient additional tives have glossed over the near-frantic opprobrium ment are not beholden to the dictates of the prime scrutiny—Page, shockingly, decided to actually be with a shrug and an eye roll. minister, but are rather representatives of the con- a PBO. This is not to say that Harper’s time in office stituents who elect them; this kind of independent This is where all the trouble began. was impeccable. It has not been. Rather, his worst information, then, not only empowers them—it is Page did not shy away from controversial sub- transgressions seem to most offend wonkish souls; crucial to what they are sent to Ottawa to do. That jects. One of his first projects, estimating the cost there is no great sin, but a steady accumulation of is the theory, anyway. of Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan, stuck a smallish, hypocritical ones that led to his eventual In practice, the office of the prime minister has brutally quantifiable pin in a government adven- undoing. This means that while many ordinary vot- become a force unto itself. Canadians are often ture that had thus far been justified by appeals to ers have an overwhelming sense that the Harper hazy about basic civics; they conveniently forget honour and duty. Conservatives are bad news, all but the most dili- that they elect MPs rather than prime ministers. His office tried to post its supplementary materi- gent observers of political minutiae are often hard This ignorance, along with U.S.-style leadership als online. Page’s book is almost slavishly devoted pressed to explain just why. races that poll the will of party membership rather to defending the PBO’s integrity. Transparency, for Kevin Page gives an explanation. than caucus, have allowed parties to grow ever him, was an opportunity for Canadians to see the Depending on whom you ask, Page is either a more hierarchical. underlying data behind his clear-cut analyses. Post- Canadian hero, a partisan hack or a milquetoast Our prime minister now has all the power of a ing much of this on a website—a notion that should bureaucrat turned rebel who managed to dance president, but with few of the pesky checks that keep seem instinctive to civil servants at this point—was over every line of parliamentary propriety during his American contemporary comparatively impo- how he hoped to maintain his sense of honour his tumultuous five years as this country’s first tent. The PBO, then, was a throwback to this older amid what would inevitably become a series of parliamentary budget officer. His book, Unaccount- ideal of a Westminster system, one in which MPs partisan firestorms. able: Truth and Lies on Parliament Hill, ably dis- really could confront and even oust their leaders. Opposition to these tactics was not limited to the sects what happened. Alas, it turned out that the Stephen Harper of government in question, but included the civil ser- Page is an economist, and he writes like one. opposition was an entirely different creature from vice that enabled the government and its ministers. Straightforward and unsentimental, his prose is the the Stephen Harper who found himself at the head He recounts the flak he took from the Library of work of someone who has spent a very long time of the government. Parliament and various senate committees, which writing very important analyses for very important Although the Conservative leader carried seemed institutionally incapable of yielding to the people—in other words, a civil servant. through on his promise to create an independent kind of openness and transparency that the last But he is an angry civil servant, and an indiscreet budget officer, Page contends that the office was two decades have imposed on the rest of our social one, and that makes him interesting. doomed from the outset. The government gave it orders. The ashen-faced Conservative backbench- neither the budget nor the autonomy within Parlia- ers who would see Page as an enemy of the king Jen Gerson is a writer and editor with the National ment to become as effective as the Congressional also receive no succour here. Post. Budget Office. Page’s economic coup de grâce came in 2011

28 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada when he tabled a report alleging the governing offers an important history of the dysfunction of on public bureaucratic dissent, with such talk often Conservatives were not releasing enough data to the Harper regime, but his true critique is aimed at by people who do not understand the nuanced allow him to fairly tabulate the cost of their tough- a civil service that has been so totally and pathetic- relationship between civil servant and elected min- on-crime bill, or the pending purchase of the F-35 ally cowed by successive Liberal and Conservative ister. Instead of seeing these people as victims of a fighter jets. governments. government now overthrown, Page’s book invites He even went so far as to accuse the government The brilliant British political sitcom “Yes, Min- us to consider them as failures. of trying to mislead the public about the lifetime ister” is often a better primer on civics than most If so, this presents a much more complicated costs of the planes. courses. There is an applicable quote, often attrib- set of problems for the Canadian electorate to It was these allegations that would lead to a uted to the writer of that series, Antony Jay: “Te address—problems that cannot be fixed merely by historic ruling against the government: contempt Opposition aren’t really the opposition. They’re the election of a more attractive prime minister who of Parliament. The Conservatives’ minority govern- just called the Opposition. But, in fact, they are the promises, yet again, to repair the rot in the capital ment was dissolved. But the electorate returned opposition in exile. The Civil Service are the oppos- created by his predecessor. Page’s assessment is with a ruling all its own, a majority parliament. ition in residence.” not sunny. He has little hope of reform, but instead Rather than take that vote of confidence in stride, If more civil servants were like Kevin Page or looks toward renewal in the capital to gradually the Conservatives only seemed to intensify the Munir Sheikh—the head of Statistics Canada who come through a turnover in the ranks of the civil culture of secrecy, centralization and personal resigned in protest over the Harper government’s service. vendetta. painfully imbecilic decision to cancel the long form After his term ended, Page was replaced with an In the following year, Page would face the con- census—we would have had a very different dec- officer who had neither the talent nor the inclina- sequences of his dissent. “Unbelievable, unreliable, ade in Ottawa. With a stronger, more robust civil tion to follow in his predecessor’s footsteps. The and incredible,” said finance minister Jim Flaherty, service, one more willing to pick fights in private, PBO has been out of the headlines ever since. attacking him personally. the Conservatives would have been far less able to Page himself landed a role as the Jean-Luc Pepin “It’s hard to describe what it feels like to be sin- continue their very public excesses. Research Chair at the University of Ottawa and gled out on national television as incompetent, but Indeed, Page describes a mewling bureaucracy seems in no hurry to retire or stay quiet. I had almost grown used to the personal attacks. It built of a class of careerists fundamentally opposed In Unaccountable, Page writes that he still hopes was yet another salvo that had nothing to do with to the kinds of transparency, openness and reform for renewal at the hands of a younger cohort of fed- the issues or actual economics of the matter at that are utterly inevitable. It is no wonder he was so eral bureaucrats. In the meantime, once the after- hand,” Page writes. unpopular. glow of the Liberals’ historic success begins to dim, But to castigate Harper’s government as some It has become very fashionable to think that I suspect we will yet again be left to contemplate the kind of anomaly would be folly. the problems in Ottawa are the result of one ideol- futility of ideology in a system that concentrates so Harper could not have gotten away with the gov- ogy, or one regime. We are happy to forget that the much power in the hands of so few. ernment he created if not for an entrenched culture latest such regime—the Harper one—was built on Without a strong, competent and empowered in Ottawa that has become paranoid, insular and a principled movement that went to the capital civil service—the caste of people who actually tribal. with a mandate for reform, only to allow some of conduct much of the day-to-day running of the Page reserves his most scathing critique not for the problems they originally battled grow more government—Harper’s defeat becomes a hollow the government of the day. To take fire from the endemic and entrenched under their tenure. one. Whether in the next four years, or the four after enemy is one matter, but to be attacked by your It has become rote to talk about Harper’s role in that, the excesses of the previous government will own kind leaves the wound that festers. Page’s book muzzling government scientists or clamping down inevitably be visited upon us once again. Ideas that Stand Out

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December 2015 reviewcanada.ca 29 Father Complex A First Nations celebrity dissects his complicated paternal heritage. Ibi Kaslik

difficulty connecting with him until he is an adult, Kinew feels deep ambivalence toward his father. The Reason You Walk and past his turbulent adolescence and brushes This ambivalence occasionally manifests itself in Wab Kinew with the law. a flat, uninspired writing style that seems overly Viking It is easy to relate to why having an extro- careful and self-conscious about eulogizing his late 268 pages, hardcover verted and famous father like Ndede, an elected larger-than-life parent and less invested in sustain- ISBN 9780670069347 leader and traditional chief, would be challenging. ing the tension explicit in fiction andnon-fiction. ­ Due to the genocide of the First Nations people and Yet, even with its lack of tension, The Reason You destruction of their culture and language, Ndede, Walk is a valuable memoir for anyone interested in he recent conclusion of quantita- like many of his generation, failed to learn how to First Nations studies and culture. It not only pro- tive research on epigenetic inheritance, parent. Although he was never physically abusive, vides readers with the broad yet intimate strokes of Tthe concept that environmental influ- he is quick to judge and yell at his children. He over- Ndede’s incredible life, but also tells his and Kinew’s ences from everything from smoking to stress comes alcoholism and self-defeat, and successfully story from a position that raises new and vital ques- can affect the genes of one’s children—and even grows intellectually, spiritually and psychologically tions and issues about the intergenerational con- grandchildren—is likely no news to flicts among First Nations people, a Wab Kinew. As a public personality It is easy to relate to why having an topic rarely explored in mainstream and broadcaster, Kinew, whose aloof culture. father’s experiences informed his extroverted and famous father, an Two examples that stand out life and choices, is acutely aware of both revolve around Kinew’s own how inherited trauma has shaped his elected leader and traditional chief, one-step removed relationship to own life. the residential school experience. This awareness is recreated in would be challenging. The first occurs when he threatens the early chapters of his memoir, to quit his CBC job in 2008 when the The Reason You Walk, which narrates early life throughout his life. But his constant struggle with national broadcasting corporation makes it clear of Tobasonakwut—Kinew’s father—in residential his only living son indicates that, as a father, Ndede that its aim is to reflect the government’s policy: schools in northern Ontario. Called “Ndede” (pro- is a difficult and complex man. to refer to residential school survivors as “former nounced “egg”), Tobasonakwut suffers physical, Perhaps this complexity is best illustrated by students” and not “survivors.” His inflammatory mental and sexual abuse, all under the Canadian Ndede’s penchant for adopting other sons and reaction, although justified, is reframed when one government’s implemented policy to “kill the brothers—interestingly, he adopts no women, of his sisters acknowledges that Kinew is doing Indian in the child.” Additionally horrifying is although he fathers another daughter in the United the right thing but that it is too bad he will lose his the fact that at St. Mary’s Residential school in States, outside his marriage with Kinew’s mother. good job as a consequence. Sharing his political Kenora, Ontario, Tobasonakwut is subject to nutri- Most dramatically, Ndede adopts the Roman knowledge, Ndede advises diplomacy: “You can’t tional experiments payrolled by the Canadian Catholic bishop of Winnipeg to show his dual aim to humiliate your opponent. You have to give government. These experiments were performed Christian and Anishnaabe spirituality; this act is them a way out.” on indigenous children from 1942 to 1952, and pitched as a gesture of good faith in the truth and This same theme reappears when Kinew is con- involved feeding starving indigenous children reconciliation effort. fronted by a residential school survivor, after Kinew banned food additives to measure the nutritional For the most part, Kinew makes no comment on states to a crowd of young Canadian students that and dental effects of malnutrition. his father’s semi-celebrity status; Ndede’s seeming none of them is personally responsible for residen- Kinew enters his father’s story in 1982, dur- difficulty in honouring his numerous personal and tial schools. The elder later attacks Kinew after his ing Tobasonakwut’s second marriage and third political commitments is not an issue for Kinew, talk. Kinew becomes “no longer a public figure or family—Tobasonakwut fathers his first child in as it is for some of his siblings. Although Kinew [a] good Anishinaabe who respects his elders,” as residential school, with his girlfriend, but the baby acknowledges his father had a following with the he argues that his own, although removed, resi- is taken away and adopted by an Anishnaabe family Lakota, which accounts for his many absences from dential experiences are also part of the systematic near Owen Sound. Born to a policy analyst and the family, he finds it hard to accept another reason genocide. In this powerfully raw exchange Kinew’s academic referred to only as Kathi, Kinew is raised for Ndede’s absences—the pouring of his know- own experiences of racism are dismissed and under the shadow of his father’s many traumas— ledge and energy into American indigenous people, diminished. In his trademark gentle fashion, Kinew namely the loss of his only two other sons to suicide creating a sort of Native brain-drain effect: acknowledges that Stephen Harper’s 2008 apology and an accident—and the glow of Ndede’s enor- and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of mous spirituality and personality. Ndede is not just I was jealous of those people … what the hell Canada will always be inadequate, and humbly aloof; he is absent and angry as a father. Kinew has Ndede was doing down south teaching these accepts the fact that it is not his place to offer for- things to people he had only known a short giveness on survivors’ behalf. Ibi Kaslik is a novelist, writer, editor and teacher. time while I drove hundreds of kilometres on The fact that Kinew is half-Canadian and Her most recent novel, The Angel Riots, is a rock ’n’ my own to learn more about our ways. half–First Nations makes his story relatable to any roll comic-tragedy and was nominated for Ontario’s first-generation immigrant Canadians who may Trillium award in 2009. Her first novel, Skinny, was Through his own fatherhood and Ndede’s cancer find their own experiences eclipsed by the horrors a New York Times Bestseller. A native of Toronto, diagnosis, Kinew’s own maturity and involvement and privations of their parents. What can older Ibi teaches creative writing at the University of with his indigenous culture evolves. He undergoes generations of trauma offer younger ones? How Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies and works spiritual peyote quests and Sundance piercing rit- can younger generations learn from the travesties as an arts educator. She has helped write, men- uals with Ndede, which allow him to come to terms of the past to never again re-create oppression and tor and publish award-winning books for Inhabit both with his father’s beautifully flawed humanity genocide? These questions are always of the fore- Media, an independent Arctic publisher, based in and his enormous role in his own life. As with most front of Kinew’s memoir and they are the reason we Iqaluit and Toronto. difficult yet much-loved parents, it is clear that breathe, we live, we walk.

30 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Letters and Responses

Re: “Fault Lines,” by Antanas Sileika “remarkable indifference to the struggle against ruption of power, in all its pretexts. By all means (October 2015) totalitarianism.”­ let us shape and erect rocks and lumps of metal for ntanas Sileika decries how some commenta- It also helps to explain the controversial deci- remembrance, if we think it will do any good, but Ators have politicized the Harper government’s sion to dedicate the monument to the victims let us label them effectively for that purpose, not plans to construct a memorial to the victims of of communism, rather than the victims of cer- politically. communism. What Sileika ignores, however, is tain tyrannical communist regimes. As Ludwik Paul W. Conway that it was the Harper government that is most Klimkowski, chair of the Tory-linked charity Northern Bruce Peninsula, Ontario responsible for politicizing the project. In a fiery sponsoring the memorial has stated, the real evil public speech defending the memorial in May, lies not with any particular regime but with the Antanas Sileika responds: Stephen Harper made it quite clear that the work communist ideology. And according to the Harper cott Staring correctly identifies the political was meant to remind us not just of those who were Conservatives’ narrative, this is an ideology that, Saspects of the monument, but what action by sacrificed in the name of the communist ideology, during the long Liberal night, spread beyond the a politician is not political? Furthermore, again but also those who supposedly stood by and did borders of the totalitarian east and penetrated into we see echoes of concepts initially applied to the nothing about it. the very heart of Canadian democracy. Holocaust. Harper was, in effect, accusing people He made little secret of whom he was talking If Sileika wants to understand why the of being bystanders to the crimes perpetrated about in the latter instance: “They were the people Memorial to the Victims of Communism has been by communist regimes. I can only repeat that who showed blindness to the unparalleled crimes politicized, I suggest he start not with its critics, for decades no hip artist or intellectual cared to of Maoism in China. Indifference in the face of but with its creators. accuse communist regimes of anything for fear of the communist coup against Poland’s Solidarity Scott Staring supporting the right. Most progressives leaned left, in 1981 and who pushed the so-called Peace Barrie, Ontario flirting with Cuba, ignoring the cultural revolu- Initiative of 1984, not long before the Warsaw Pact tion in China and perhaps regretting the errors of collapsed.” It does not take a PhD in history to rec- uestions concerning the location and design the Soviet Union while supporting its project in ognize that the target of these attacks is the Liberal Qof the proposed monument to the victims general.­ government of Pierre Trudeau. of communism I leave to those who must look at As to Paul W. Conway’s comment, there is a This is far from being the first time that Harper it. I do have an opinion about the name, however. certain veracity in the phrase “Victims of Brutal accused Trudeau of failing the great moral test of I think it should be called the Monument to the Regimes,” and Raphael Lemkin, who coined the our times, namely, the struggle against Soviet com- Victims of Brutal Regimes Who Used Communism term “genocide,” initially thought of naming munism. In fact, Harper repeatedly argued that as a Pretext for Murder. the crime one of barbarism. But to say commun- the raison d’être of the Conservative movement Communism did not kill anybody. People in ism was not guilty of killing anyone obscures too in Canada must be to overcome the shameful power used communism as a pretext for incarcera- much by its generality. Imagine the uncomfortable legacy left behind by Trudeau and his successors: tion, torture, murder and lethal neglect, just as resonance of the phrase “fascism killed no one.” a quasi-socialist state that, if not overtly sympa- they have used, and in some cases still use, anti- Unless you believe that fascism is the only term thetic to communism, was at least too well fed and communism, marketism, capitalism, Christianity that should be vilified, and some do, you must complacent to oppose it. and denominations thereof, Islam, national- admit the specificity of crimes committed by com- This helps to explain the decision to make ism, imperialism, freedomism, eugenics, etc. To munist regimes. the Washington-based political pundit David remember all the specific examples would yield a Finally, this thorny issue is far from settled now Frum one of the monument’s design competi- wide forest of monuments. that the former prime minister has been voted tion jurors, a choice that confused some observ- To dedicate this particular monument to the out. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it cancelled, ers. Frum, as he himself admits, is not known “victims of communism” is a contemporary pol- or severely diminished, and, if that happens, the for his fine arts training; but he is known for itical statement, not a remembering. As Antanas aging progressives can rest easy knowing the declaiming loudly against Trudeau’s apparently Sileika so rightly says, we need to remember, firmly crimes they chose to ignore in the past will con- fawning admiration of Mao and Fidel, and his and comprehensively, this particular absolute cor- tinue to be ignored in the future. Coming up in the LRC

Boulder heist Pacific-bound The genius of Stephen Reid Valerie Knowles Gehry Franklin’s folly Cyber-proletariat Martin Laflamme Adriana Craciun Daniel Joseph The Illegal by Memoir from Hell Senate solutions Robert Matas Hugh Segal Ann Walmsley

December 2015 reviewcanada.ca 31 The 2015–16 season THE PRESENTS

The Silent Promise of Arab Youth | Bessma Momani If you fl ick on the television, it won’t be long before you fi nd an image of an angry balaclava-clad radical Arab teen brandishing an explosive device, or an aerial shot of the destruction caused by clashes between the Middle East’s warring factions. Bessma Momani argues that we dehumanize Middle Easterners when we lose sight of the actual human beings affected by confl ict. Instead of looking at people, we congregate around numbers, ideologies and governments. In her most recent book, Arab Dawn: Arab Youth and the Demographic Dividend They Will Bring, Momani December 3 | 7pm challenges the negative assumptions about the region, and focuses on the positive changes among Arab youth. Hart House This generation is more cosmopolitan, educated, entrepreneurial, creative and tolerant than their parents. The Arab Spring was an initial cry for help against dysfunctional politics. Future change will require individual effort on the part of youth and new policies targeted toward them. Momani describes the hidden potential of the Middle East’s youth.

China’s Turbulent Third Era | Gordon Chang The history of the People’s Republic of China, according to the dominant narrative, falls into two broad sections, the tumultuous decades dominated by Mao Zedong, the founder of “New China,” and the time of “reform and opening up” started by his successor Deng Xiaoping. And as China rose, the West engaged with the country to bring it into the international community. Now, however, the Chinese state has passed political and economic infl ection points. As a result, the third era of the PRC has already begun. Gordon Chang explains how, in this third era, dominated by strongman Xi Jinping, February 2 | 7pm other countries are struggling to develop new approaches to deal with a China moving in deeply troubling Hart House directions.

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32 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada CIGI PRESS ADVANCING POLICY IDEAS AND DEBATE JUST RELEASED

Enter the Dragon Elusive Pursuits Mutual Security in the Asia-Pacific Edited by Domenico Lombardi Edited by Fen Osler Hampson Edited by Kang Choi, James Manicom and Hongying Wang and Stephen M. Saideman and Simon Palamar Enter the Dragon: China in the International Elusive Pursuits: Lessons from Canada’s Myriad challenges to regional stability Financial System brings together Interventions Abroad is the 29th volume and security threaten East Asia’s experts from both inside and outside of the influential Canada Among Nations burgeoning growth and prosperity. of China to explore issues regarding the series. This book examines Canada’s role Mutual Security in the Asia-Pacific: Roles internationalization of the renminbi (RMB). in foreign military and security missions, for Australia, Canada and South Korea This volume tackles questions surrounding and its tendency to intervene under the addresses the economic and security the process being used to attempt to auspices of international institutions. challenges that loom in the region and achieve internationalization of the RMB, Canada is not just among nations in these the role that these three countries can the broader issues related to the country’s efforts, but in nations on a regular basis. play to ensure a stable, predictable financial integration with the rest of the political environment. world, and issues concerning China’s role in global financial governance. AVAILABLE NOW

Managing Conflict in a Governance and On Governance Crisis and Reform Organized Chaos World Adrift Innovation in Africa Edited by Edited by Edited by Edited by Edited by Robert I. Rotberg Rohinton Medhora and Mark Raymond and Chester A. Crocker, Robert I. Rotberg On Governance unpacks the Dane Rowlands Gordon Smith Fen Osler Hampson and Courageous, intelligent, bold and complex global dimensions The 28th volume in the In Organized Chaos, leading Pamela Aall principled political leadership is of governance, and proposes influential Canada Among experts address a range of required if South Africa is going a new theory premised on Nations book series, Crisis pressing challenges, including In Managing Conflict in a the belief that strengthened, and Reform examines the cyber security issues and civil World Adrift to build upon Mandela’s legacy, , over 40 of the according to the expert authors innovative national and global financial crisis through society hacktivism by groups world’s leading international in Governance and Innovation global governance enables Canada’s historical and current such as Anonymous, and affairs analysts examine the in Africa. positive outcomes for people role in the international consider the international relationship between political, everywhere. financial system. political implications of some social and economic change, of the most likely Internet and the outbreak and spread of governance scenarios in the conflict. 2015–2020 time frame.

Centre for International Governance Innovation Single copy orders: cigionline.org/bookstore Bulk orders: renoufbooks.com Most books available in paperback and e-book form New from University of Toronto Press

Civic Symbol Creating Toronto’s New City Hall, 1952-1966

Distance from the Belsen Heap by Christopher Armstrong Allied Forces and the Liberation of a Nazi Lavishly illustrated with photographs, Concentration Camp plans, and drawings, Civic Symbol is by Mark Celinscak the essential history of Toronto’s City Hall, an iconic Canadian building. This book documents how Allied soldiers, who liberated the Nazi concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen, came to terms with the horrors of Holocaust and highlights the previously unacknowledged presence of hundreds of Canadians among the camp’s liberators.

Donald Creighton A Life in History by Donald Wright Red, White, and Kind of This book paints a sensitive portrait of Blue? Donald Creighton, a brilliant but difficult The Conservatives and the Americanization man, and captures the twentieth-century of Canadian Constitutional Culture transformation of English Canada by David Schneiderman through his life and times. David Schneiderman offers a critical perspective on the Americanization of Canadian constitutional practice and a timely warning about its unexamined consequences.

The Canadian Horror Film Terror of the Soul edited by Gina Freitag and André Arab Dawn Loiselle Arab Youth and the Demographic Dividend The Canadian Horror Film highlights They Will Bring more than a century of Canadian by Bessma Momani horror filmmaking, including Pontypool and Ginger Snaps and Arab Dawn is an invigorating study of unearths the terrors hidden in the the Arab world and the transformative recesses of the Canadian psyche. power of youth.

Also available as e-books at utppublishing.com