Internet Vs. Classrooms Are Universities Obsolete?

Calgary on a flood plainpage 13

$6.50 Vol. 21, No. 7 September 2013

Anthony C. Masi Internet vs. Classrooms Are universities obsolete?

ALso In this issue

Megan J. Davies The hidden tragedy of Orillia

Philip Girard Tempest in a Supreme Court teapot

Magdalene Redekop Haunted Mennonite history

PLUS: nonfiction Ian Smillie on child soldiering + Judy Stoffman on Phyllis Lambert + Tom Slee on the light and shadow of internet life + Mark Winston on wheat vs. canola + Shawn Syms on growing up with a gay dad + Joseph Kertes on teenage magic tricks + Dana Hansen on a crusading bookseller

Publications Mail Agreement #40032362 fiction Mark Frutkin reviews Caught by Lisa Moore + Sarah Roger reviews Kafka’s Hat by Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to LRC, Circulation Dept. Patrice Martin PO Box 8, Station K Toronto, ON M4P 2G1 poetry Frances Du + rob mclennan + Shane Neilson + Timothy Mook Sang New from UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS

The Public Intellectual in Canada Mississauga Portraits Canadian Public Policy Ojibwe Voices from Nineteenth-Century edited by Nelson Wiseman Selected Studies in Process and Style Canada This illuminating and entertaining volume by Michael Howlett by Donald B. Smith examines the place and impact of public Canadian Public Policy provides the first intellectuals in shaping the past, present, Mississauga Portraits presents a vivid comprehensive, theoretically informed, and future of Canada’s rapidly changing picture of life in mid-nineteenth-century empirical evaluation of the development of and diverse society. Aboriginal Canada and recreates the public policy in Canada. lives of eight Ojibwe who lived during this period – all of whom are historically important and interesting figures.

Dominion of Capital Partnership for Excellence The Politics of Big Business and the Crisis Performing Autobiography Medicine at the University of Toronto and Contemporary Canadian Drama of the Canadian Bourgeoisie, 1914–1947 Academic Hospitals by Jenn Stephenson by Don Nerbas by Edward Shorter This innovative approach to autobiography This book tells a fascinating story of The University of Toronto’s Faculty of studies analyzes seven works by Canadian relations between government and Medicine is where insulin was pioneered, playwrights and illustrates autobiographical business in Canada following the First stem cells were first discovered, and form as an evolving process of self-creation World War, through close portraits of famous physicians from Vincent Lam to and transformation rather than a backward influential business and political figures like Sheela Basrur began their careers. Edward looking narrative of one’s life. Charles Dunning, Sir Edward Beatty, R.S. Shorter documents the faculty’s impressive McLaughlin, and C. D. Howe. history from its inception to the present day.

Also available as e-books at utppublishing.com Literary Review of Canada 170 Bloor St West, Suite 710 Toronto ON M5S 1T9 email: [email protected] reviewcanada.ca T: 416-531-1483 • F: 416-531-1612 Charitable number: 848431490RR0001 Vol. 21, No. 7 • September 2013 To donate, visit reviewcanada.ca/support

Editor Bronwyn Drainie 3 Towering Landmark 17 Tristimania [email protected] A review of Building Seagram, by Phyllis A poem Contributing EditorS Mark Lovewell, Molly Peacock, Anthony Lambert Shane Neilson Westell Judy Stoffman 17 The Great Lakes Storm of 1913 Associate editor 5 Questioning Higher Education A poem Robin Roger An essay Timothy Mook Sang Poetry Editor Anthony C. Masi Moira MacDougall 19 Colombia North circa 1978 copy editor 8 Father Knows Best? A review of Caught, by Lisa Moore Madeline Koch A review of Confessions of a Fairy’s Daughter: Mark Frutkin Online Editors Growing Up with a Gay Dad, by Alison 20 A Top Hat with Tales Diana Kuprel, Jack Mitchell, Wearing Donald Rickerd, C.M. A review of Kafka’s Hat, by Patrice Martin, Shawn Syms ProofReaders translated by Chantal Bilodeau Mike Lipsius, Beth MacKinnon, Heather 9 Fixing a Spoiled Biography Sarah Roger Schultz, Rob Tilley, Jeannie Weese A review of The Constructed Mennonite: 22 History from the Dark Side research History, Memory and the Second World War, by Rob Tilley A review of “And Neither Have I Wings to Fly”: Hans Werner Editorial Assistants Labelled and Locked Up in Canada’s Oldest Magdalene Redekop Aimee Burnett, Prerana Das, Joshua Institution, by Thelma Wheatley Greenspon, Lindsay Jolivet, Rahel Nega, 11 Hacking Society Megan J. Davies Samir Siddiqui A review of Networked: The New Social 24 Literary Lifeguard Design Operating System, by Lee Rainie and Barry James Harbeck A review of The Pope’s Bookbinder: A Memoir, Wellman, and Coding Freedom: The Ethics and ADVERTISING/SALES by David Mason Aesthetics of Hacking, by E. Gabriella Coleman Michael Wile Dana Hansen A review of Black Code: Inside the Battle for [email protected] Cyberspace, by Ronald J. Deibert 26 Malleable Cannon Fodder Director, Special Projects Tom Slee A review of Child to Soldier: Stories from Joseph Michael Booth Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army, by Opiyo Oloya publishers 13 Water Water Everywhere Alastair Cheng Ian Smillie A review of Wilderness and Waterpower: How [email protected] Banff National Park Became a Hydro-Electric 28 Trying for Funny Helen Walsh [email protected] Storage Reservoir, by Christopher Armstrong A review of Free Magic Secrets Revealed, by and H.V. Nelles Mark Leiren-Young Board of Directors John Honderich, C.M., Sid Marty Joseph Kertes J. Alexander Houston, Frances Lankin, 14 Judging the Judges 29 Grappling with Grain Jack Mintz, Trina McQueen A review of La Bataille de Londres: Dessous, A review of Growing Resistance: Canadian Advisory Council Michael Adams, Ronald G. Atkey, P.C., secrets et coulisses du rapatriement constitution- Farmers and the Politics of Genetically Modified Q.C., Alan Broadbent, C.M., Chris Ellis, nel, by Frédéric Bastien Wheat, by Emily Eaton Drew Fagan, James Gillies, C.M., Philip Girard Mark L. Winston Carol Hansell, Donald Macdonald, P.C., C.C., Susan Reisler, Grant Reuber, 16 The Woman at the Y 31 Letters and Responses O.C., Don Rickerd, C.M., Rana Sarkar, A poem Michael Levine, David Austin, Gail Singer, Mark Sarner, Bernard Schiff, Frances Du Wade Rowland, Paul W. Bennett Reed Scowen Poetry Submissions 16 from distinctions For poetry submission guidelines, please see A poem . rob mclennan LRC design concept by Jackie Young/INK Founded in 1991 by P.A. Dutil The LRC is published 10 times a year by the Literary Cover art and pictures throughout the issue by Dave Barnes. Review of Canada Inc. Dave Barnes is an illustrator and artist currently living on Vancouver Island. More information about his work is annual subscription rates Individuals in Canada $56/year plus GST/HST. available at . (Libraries and institutions in Canada $68/year plus GST/HST.) Outside Canada, please pay $86/year for individuals, or $98 for libraries and institutions.

Subscriptions and Circulation From time to time, the LRC may allow carefully selected organizations to send mail to subscribers, offering products or services that may be of interest. Literary Review of Canada If you do not wish to receive such correspondence, please contact our Subscriber Service department at [email protected], P.O. Box 8, Station K, Toronto ON M4P 2G1 or call 416-932-5081, or mail P.O. Box 8, Station K, Toronto ON M4P 2G1. [email protected] tel: 416-932-5081 • reviewcanada.ca Funding Acknowledgements We acknowledge the assistance ©2013 The Literary Review of Canada. All rights, We acknowledge the financial of the OMDC Magazine Fund, including translation into other languages, are reserved support of the Government of an initiative of Ontario Media by the publisher in Canada, the United States, Great Canada through the Canada Development Corporation. Britain and all other countries participating in the Periodical Fund (CPF) for our Universal Copyright Convention, the International Copyright Convention and the Pan-American Copyright publishing activities. Convention. Nothing in this publication may be reproduced without the written permission of the publisher. ISSN 1188-7494 The Literary Review of Canada is indexed in the Canadian Literary Periodicals Index and the Canadian Index and is distributed by Disticor and Magazines Canada.

September 2013 reviewcanada.ca 1 “REqUIRED REaDIng foR all CanaDIans” —Candace Savage, author of A Geography Of Blood

“Clearing the Plains is a tour de force that dismantles and destroys the view that Canada has a special claim to humanity in its treatment of indigenous peoples. Daschuk shows how infectious disease and state-supported starvation combined to create a creeping, relentless catastrophe that persists to the present day. The prose is gripping, the analysis is incisive, and the narrative is so chilling that it leaves its reader stunned and disturbed. For days after reading it, I was unable to shake a profound sense of sorrow. This is fearless, evidence-driven history at its finest.” —Elizabeth A. Fenn, author of Pox Americana

Visit us on-line at UofRPRess.ca and check out Reality PUblishing, the world’s first reality show about University of Regina Press tory of our logo publishing—only on uofrpress.ca. E S SEE th

2 LRC ad rint-uofr press.indd 1 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review2013-08-16 of Canada 2:45 PM Towering Landmark How a young Canadian heiress with an artistic bent oversaw the creation of an architectural masterpiece. Judy Stoffman

Building Seagram Phyllis Lambert Yale University Press 306 pages, hardcover ISBN 9780300167672

hyllis Lambert is most famous as the founder of Montreal’s Canadian Centre for PArchitecture and as the fierce protector of Montreal’s built heritage. But as her book Building Seagram makes it clear, of all her achievements she is most proud of having been the driving force behind one of New York’s landmark buildings. The year she was born—1927—her father, Sam Bronfman, took over the Joseph E. Seagram and Sons, founded in the 19th century. He merged it with his family’s Distillers Corp., grown prosperous by making use of the business opportunities presented by Prohibition in the United States. Some of his associates had been the leading gangsters of the day. He was to build the new firm into the world’s largest distilling company. Incredible as it may seem, until the age of 27, Phyllis Lambert had minimal contact with her father. When he came home to Montreal on week- end visits from his office in New York after Prohibi- tion was repealed, the owner of Seagram Distillers showed interest only in his boys, whom he considered in the line of business succession. Not that the sons were grateful for his attention—his fierce temper and dominating personality terrified them. Phyllis, the first born, admits inBuilding Sea- gram, her handsomely illustrated book about the company’s New York headquarters, that she was a child “with a strong aversion to all talk about business and money,” a dreamer, a loner, an artist in embryo from the age of nine, whose truest friend discovered that he needed his expensively edu- without reference to any previous era, a building to and parent-substitute was her sculpture teacher cated daughter after all. The post-war liquor busi- inspire those who saw it and worked in it, one that Herbert McRae Miller. “The two afternoons a week ness was booming and Seagram had outgrown its would enhance not only the firm but also the city. I spent in his studio were the most continuous, rented quarters in the Chrysler Building; the com- SB asked her to move to New York to help. concentrated time I would spend with anyone as pany planned to build new headquarters on Park Appointed director of planning, Phyllis Lam- a child or adolescent.” Miller was the only person Avenue in the showy style SB favoured. In Montreal, bert rose to the challenge. She was given the job who ever read to her. he had built a turreted fake Tudor-Gothic castle on of finding an architect and after much list making, Her escape from this chilly milieu came when Peel Street as the home of Distillers Corporation- consultations with experts and travels around the she was sent to Vassar College, where she studied Seagrams Limited, decorated inside with Highland country to look at the work of the leading architects, the history of art and architecture and encountered daggers, sporrans, tartans, shields and a full suit of she settled on the émigré visionary Ludwig Mies people deeply interested in the arts. In 1949, a year armour. He sent his daughter a sketch of the pro- van der Rohe, former director of the Bauhaus, then after graduating, she married a French banker, Jean posed Seagram building in New York, designed by teaching in Chicago, although he was not licensed Lambert, and moved to Paris, but the marriage was the New York firm of Periera & Luckman, in a style to build in New York and, at 68, was considered by short lived. SB called “Renaissance Modernized.” Phyllis was some to be too old. Mies had designed glass sky- In 1954, she was working as a sculptor in her horrified. scrapers in the 1920s in Germany that could not yet Paris studio when SB (as she refers to her father) She wrote back an impassioned eight-page let- be built. New American building technology was ter, reproduced in the book, explaining why the now up to the task. For Mies, architecture was a Judy Stoffman is a writer on the arts living in proposed building would look vulgar and urging search for a visual language that could express new Vancouver and a regular contributor to the LRC. her father to put up a building that was of its time, realities and permit new ways of living; Lambert fell

September 2013 reviewcanada.ca 3 under his spell and later studied architecture under The book takes us through the construction only three positions so that the building’s exterior him in Chicago. process in detail, mainly based on archival and rhythm was not marred by the helter-skelter raising Her father’s associate Lou Crandall, who was in secondary sources, and tells us a great deal about and lowering of the window coverings. charge of construction, suggested that Philip John- Mies’s history, his training and influences and pre- (Most of these refinements were abandoned son, former head of the department of architecture vious projects that generated the ideas he plowed when Toronto’s TD Centre, with its bald and windy at the Museum of Modern Art, work in association into the Seagram building, his finest achievement. plaza, was built a decade later in the same inter- with Mies, and also brought on board a team of (Readers who do not know their mullions from national style. For instance, instead of bronze, the other associate architects and engineers. their spandrels, or an H-beam from a cross mem- TD Centre used black painted steel mullions.) Several photographs reproduced in the book ber, may find this heavy going.) A chapter is devoted A section of Building Seagram is devoted to the show Lambert as a slim, serious, dark-haired young to the tremendous contribution of Johnson, who creation of the Four Seasons restaurant in the pavil- woman wearing glasses, the only female in a thicket designed the interior of the building, the finishes ion at the foot of the office tower. Lambert retells of middle-aged architects, consult- the story of the commissioning of the ants and financiers. Philip Johnson supremely neurotic abstract expres- later said that her presence at meet- Anyone who has ever been subjected sionist Mark Rothko for $35,000 (in ings meant that nobody tried to cut current dollars, $2.5 million) to pro- corners; it was “like having a crown to an extended home renovation will duce a suite of paintings for the Four prince” in the room. Seasons. After painting some 30 large Mies believed that New Yorkers marvel at the fact that the building canvases Rothko refused to allow his were hungry for space, and his pro- took only 18 months to design and deeply spiritual art to be used as mere posed design called for an open plaza décor in an expensive restaurant and at the base of the building—radical at another 18 months to build. backed out of the contract. Lambert the time—that he likened to a clear- writes that she understands his deci- ing in the urban forest. sion but adds nothing to the account Lambert describes how the two architects and and the hardware, and worked on the luminous of the failed commission given by James Breslin in their associates set up a large office in Manhattan, ceilings and other indirect lighting schemes, all of his 1993 biography of Rothko. (The incident is the where they spent their time constructing models. which immeasurably enhanced Mies’s bold design. subject of the recent Broadway play Red.) Mies holed up in his cubicle smoking large cigars, Anyone who has ever been subjected to an Most of the 38-floor structure was to be rented. drinking coffee and thinking. Among the problems extended home renovation will marvel at the fact But when the Park Avenue building was first dis- to be solved: how to create a building that does that the building took only 18 months to design cussed with New York’s real estate agents and not take up the entire site, how to get half a mil- and another 18 months to build. In the end it cost promoters, they suggested that the city’s elite firms lion square feet of space, where to put the elevator $36 million instead of the $15 million budgeted. But might be disinclined to rent offices from someone core, how to make the plaza welcoming to people, it astonished people with its severe elegance, noble with Bronfman’s background. The quality of the how many steps were needed from the street to the materials, its use of specially manufactured grey building, however, enhanced the image of both raised plaza, how to maximize the size of the bays tinted glass that cut down the sun’s heat, its lumin- Seagram’s products and its owner, a man obsessed (the distance between the building’s load-bearing ous glow at night when the windows seemed to dis- with quality and legitimacy. Renting it was not a inner supports), how to create the bronze curtain appear and its attention to detail. Among Johnson’s problem. wall and how to finish its corners. specifications were venetian blinds that stopped in After 1958, when the building was completed, Lambert continued to be in charge of the corporate art collection and helped organize art and photog- Continue the conversation in person! raphy exhibitions on the fourth floor. She encouraged use of the plaza for jazz and dance perform- ances, and for changing installations of sculpture that added to New York’s lively cultural life. Join the author of this issue’s cover essay, Lambert follows the story of the building for Anthony C. Masi, for more on the coming three decades, until 1988, by which time SB and digital sea-change in higher education. Mies van der Rohe had both died, the building on Park Avenue had been sold to the Teachers Insur- ance and Annuity Association of America, and the November 14, 2013 city of New York was granting landmark designation 6:00 PM to the office tower as well as to the elegant interior McGill University of the Four Seasons restaurant, which incorporated Montreal artworks Lambert had commissioned or bought. The enormous difficulties of preserving heritage buildings, which inevitably brings the public interest in conflict with the owner’s private property Please join us for a thought-provoking talk, Q&A and reception, as rights, are amply illustrated. part of The 40th Anniversary Max Bell Essays and Lectures. In this There are two stories in Building Seagram, one series, four exceptional Canadians will each publish an essay and about architecture and another about a strong- deliver a public lecture about a policy issue critical to the country’s willed and remarkable woman, a sensitive artistic future. It was announced in celebration of Max Bell Foundation’s swan born into a family of fortune-seeking ducks. The swan’s story is told reluctantly, intermittently 40th Anniversary, and in honour of the thousands of charities across and indirectly. Canada that work every day to improve society. Phyllis the swan seems to be an outsider in the family who rarely speaks to her brother Edgar, For more about the foundation and its work, president of Seagram after their father’s death in visit www.maxbell.org July 1971. She was not consulted about plans to sell the Seagram building in 1980, or about the later shift in the company’s business away from what Places at this free event are limited, so RSVP to the Bronfmans know best (liquor) into the slippery [email protected] by November 7, 2013! field of movies and entertainment. In 2000, while at the architectural Venice Bien- nale, Lambert heard from a journalist that the This event is presented by Max Bell Foundation family firm had been sold to Vivendi, a French and the Literary Review of Canada. water utility company. Seagram was no more. The Seagram Building endures.

4 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Essay Questioning Higher Education As digital alternatives get cheaper and easier, can universities justify their existence? Anthony C. Masi

esearch universities are under attack in virtually every jurisdiction in advanced Rindustrial democracies. The issues in this crisis are many, diverse and often contradictory: cutbacks in already antiquated financing models; tuition fees that are too high, or too low; infrastruc- ture and equipment that consume operating funds, and are too expensive to replace; employers and a public interested in practical skills training, rather than broad and adaptable education that hones critical thinking; professors who must publish or perish on the road to tenure, and so cannot focus sufficient attention on teaching; and disruptive uses of emerging information technologies. A treatise could be written, and many have been, on every one of these issues. In this essay, however, I want to concentrate on the technological disruption of education. Universities today face three major challenges from digitally driven shifts in learning, information and space requirements— shifts that could erode traditional higher education’s very foundations. First, the current generation of undergraduates consists of what some commentators have labelled “digital natives.” They are at ease with the internet, new hardware and social media in ways that make their parents, and certainly their grandparents, both proud and envious. Among pedagogical experts, there is heated debate about how profoundly these digital natives’ technological familiarity changes the ways they think and study. But it is already clear that today’s university-bound cohorts expect to learn using information technology. How have universities prepared themselves for the arrival on campuses of this exigent digital generation? Not well, I am afraid. Pedagogical approaches have not adapted to this new style of learner, or even to the available new tools. Second, digital natives have grown up with mind-boggling stores of information readily accessible on the internet, and the means of accessing these data are increasingly ubiquitous. Unfortunately, more often than not, the quality of University librarians, pedagogues and profes- in a seminar is the professor. And with so much this information leaves much to be desired. How sors must now therefore go beyond just introducing material being born digital, what happens to all of can today’s students know which information is students to the academy’s own carefully curated those books on the library shelves that no longer valuable and correct, and which is questionable on scholarly sources: they must be able to teach stu- circulate, indeed often just occupy prime campus both counts? dents how to sort and transform the raw informa- real estate at a premium cost? tion available online into useful knowledge. Which Anthony C. Masi is a professor of sociology at often means learning to do so themselves, first. aken together, the shifts above open up a McGill University, where he also serves as provost. Third, the physical spaces that define most Tradical possibility: why not create commun- He would like to thank Nancy Diamond, Laura universities make responding to the first two shifts ities of active and engaged learners that extend far Winer, Royal Govain, Manuel Salamanca Cardona much more difficult, helping keep schools locked beyond the walls of the classroom or the gates of and Lauren Soluk for assistance in researching, into old methods. the university? This notion has helped drive the discussing and editing this article. This essay was The traditional physical design of campus class- recent rise of “massive open online courses.” Called written with the generous support of Max Bell rooms does not encourage deep engagement in MOOCs for short, they embody the promise and Foundation, as part of The 40th Anniversary Max the learning process. Active learning rarely takes disruptive potential of digital technology for higher Bell Essays and Lectures. place in the lecture hall or when the only speaker education.

September 2013 reviewcanada.ca 5 There have been many attempts, over the last ing heads so much as entirely new ways of pack- ence for digital natives, by experimenting openly 15 years or so, at using the internet to reach stu- aging materials and conducting assessments, in with new delivery mechanisms: the MOOC plat- dents separated from the instructor by time, space order to teach incredibly large numbers of students. form edX was founded as a wholly owned but or both. Among the best known are the online While the definition of what constitutes a MOOC not-for-profit subsidiary of Harvard and MIT, as degrees offered by the Open University in the varies, the most significant offerings share several an alternative to for-profit offerings, and aims to United Kingdom and the University of Phoenix in key features. recruit other institutions into a loosely collabora- the United States, but Athabasca University, eCon- They generally are the equivalent of university- tive consortium. cordia and Teluq (in French) have been offering level courses, of varying intensity and duration, but But notwithstanding the enthusiastic response fully Canadian online programs for some time. provided either for free or vastly cheaper than on to MOOCs on the part of some universities, sup- Other variations include recorded lecture courses— campus offerings. port and high hopes for the technology are hardly such as those offered by Bill Gates’s favourite, Lecture materials are packaged into manageable unanimous. The Teaching Company—and programs designed 10- to 15-minute chunks, usually with regularly It is increasingly apparent that despite often- to teach foreign languages—such as those from scheduled times when lectures and background extensive campus consultation, significant num- Rosetta Stone. materials can be viewed and when support of vari- bers of faculty—not to mention librarians and For each of these models, traditional courses ous types is available. pedagogues who help them teach—view MOOCs as have been designed and presented in much the While facilitators are often on call, the platforms disruptive to the academic profession. They might same way that one would on campus. The big for delivering MOOCs have embedded areas where be right. And if this is the digital tsunami, advanced change is in delivery, with a proliferation of new social media features can provide students the warning systems are certainly important. roles—from online instructor to educational opportunity to help each other. Questions about quality control are common, coder—that did not exist in the pre-Web world. Throughout the course, exercises and other i.e., ensuring that these massive courses allow for But the result is a somewhat pale imitation of the learning tools are provided for self-assessment of true teaching, rather than just information delivery campus-based experience: courses are not at subject mastery. Where and when appropriate, or “edutainment.” This basic worry about whether the same level, and have not lived up to the early these include test repetitions personalized by arti- MOOCs serve students is reinforced by the fact that hype around digital distance learning. ficial intelligence algorithms. given the size of the audiences they can reach, one Then, about a decade ago, starting with a project Successful completion of modules or whole must wonder if we are entirely sure about whom at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and courses can be determined by third-party testing we are talking when we refer to students in such Carnegie Mellon University, the “open courseware” procedures, such as exams supervised by webcam classes—not to mention the massive dropout rates, initiative was born. Universities, including other or administered in person at local facilities. believed to average around 90 percent. (While this elite institutions, began publishing course materi- The economies of scale here are incredible— means that thousands often still finish any given als such as syllabi, assignments and multimedia forget teaching a 1,000-student introductory course, and the dropout numbers’ meaning is lecture recordings. Subjects ranged from linear course. MOOCs can reach hundreds of thousands hotly contested, the phenomenon needs careful algebra to television criticism—from the very hard of learners, potentially millions, with a single offer- consideration by those who care about the future to the extremely soft, from the obvious science and ing. At least some of these courses are educationally of campus-based university education.) Beyond engineering choices to offerings in the humanities successful, too, even when judged by the standards teaching, faculty also wonder, how will profes- and social sciences. Materials were made openly of traditional higher education. Earlier this year, sors’ research function be preserved in a MOOC- available, but courses were not taught. the American Council on Education recommended dominated system? This relatively simple gesture raised the stakes that its 1,800 member colleges accept a number These concerns feed into questions of equity, for all universities. By making the design of courses of Coursera MOOCs as counting toward comple- both for students and academics themselves. Some and programs taught on prestigious campuses for a tion credits. The expectation is that sooner rather fear new technology will divide institutions and premium price available to all for inspection with- than later, participation in the right MOOCs will professors even more starkly—MOOCs for the out cost, the open courseware movement stimu- provide a credential accepted by many employers masses, residential higher education for the privil- lated revisions at many other institutions. as equivalent to a diploma, certificate or even full eged, and “never the twain shall meet.” Critics also The new approach also helped pave the way university degree. see contingent academic employment as poten- for full-blown MOOCs—a concept actually first tially exacerbated with a proliferation of assembly- developed in Canada. In 2008, George Siemens aken together, these higher education MOOC line positions producing MOOCs. And faculty and Stephen Downes, in the division of extended Tstart-ups and the disruptive technology- groups have similarly raised intellectual property education at the University of Manitoba, tried an driven trends that enable them represent a truly concerns over ownership of the MOOCs professors experiment with their course on connective know- significant challenge for universities, and probably are now asked to create, warning that “the future of ledge. In addition to teaching 20 or so registered for the whole post-secondary sector. If students their profession” is at stake. on-campus students, they made the class freely anywhere can take a for-credit course designed Members of university boards, however, tend available to a world-wide audience of auditors via and taught by an Ivy League superstar online, for a to favour delivering their schools’ courses through the internet. Beyond receiving access to master- fraction of the equivalent’s cost at a local college, a MOOCs. Especially at public research universi- fully presented course materials and quizzes, these whole new economic logic and competitive land- ties, they are probably drawn to them as a way of auditors could interact with one another—and the scape emerge. The founder of Udacity, Sebastian driving down costs. But it appears that in some traditional students—through various tools such Thrun, boldly claimed in a 2012 Wired profile that cases, boards have not fully considered MOOCs’ as discussion threads and online meetings. Over “in 50 years … there will be only 10 institutions implications for extant university financial mod- 2,000 auditors participated, even though only the in the world delivering higher education”—and els. Given the expenses required for high-quality on-campus students were assessed, graded and those institutions will not all necessarily be today’s MOOCs, how can they be a panacea for rising costs, received course credits. universities. especially short to medium term? If students take In the five years since, however, some of the Hyperbole provides a good sound bite, but the MOOCs for credit and eventually receive accredited most exciting and challenging higher education erosion of traditional institutions’ monopoly on degrees, will they manifest the same allegiance to MOOC experiments have been designed by univer- issuing credentials is indeed a palpable threat to the institution that campus-based alumni do? And sity professors who used outside organisations to established universities. They can learn a lot from are MOOCs what current alumni and potential nurture their concepts. Two of the most prominent new competitors, however; many are already doing future students expect from a particular institution? MOOC providers are now Udacity and Coursera; so. Administrators, on the other hand, are ambiva- both are venture-funded private enterprises spun Regular operating budgets of research univer- lent about this trend—love it or hate it, join it or by professors of computer science out of their work sities, be they derived from government appro- avoid it, or all four in combination. They know all at Stanford University in Palo Alto, in the heart of priations or tuition fees, cannot provide sufficient too well that no one has yet generated a serious Silicon Valley. development resources to deliver on the MOOC financial model to sustain still-costly MOOCs’ Such organizations need not work directly with promise. Some have therefore established for- existence once launched, an uncertainty that can- traditional institutions of higher learning, but use mal partnerships with new companies such as not last much longer without dampening donor renowned professors from world-class universities Coursera, but institutions have also turned to and investor interest. That is not to say possibil- to design, develop and deliver their courses. These philanthropists to cover the initial costs of MOOC- ities have not been discussed; indeed, they have: are quality products for interested and motivated related work. This includes cooperation between continuing to give course access away free, for learners, not just canned courses or recorded talk- schools to improve the residential campus experi- instance, but charging for premium services, from

6 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada special tutorial assistance to proctored assessments best teachers. By serving huge, world-wide audi- by most major providers are simply too large to per- to certified credentials. Or charging companies for ences, MOOCs have the potential to provide empir- mit individual student engagement, leaving course recruitment access to top students. It is just that no ical evidence to support or reject the link between designers to draw on peer interaction or assess- one has fully tested the waters to see if the market research excellence and quality instruction. ments and, increasingly, on artificial intelligence will tolerate these costs. After all, this is higher edu- But in other areas, the study of teaching and algorithms, to pursue similar results. cation, not razor blades. learning in higher education is actually already Ultimately, on the plus side, universities are Such reservations have left several journalists quite well advanced. Unfortunately, professors lucky to have core groups of qualified academic openly questioning the “irrational exuberance” and academic administrators at the world’s major and professional staff that are already dedicated of some boards and administrators for jumping research universities are often just not particu- supporters of teaching and learning tools, both new on the MOOC bandwagon. But the print journal- larly well versed in its findings, even those based and old. Likewise, professors already create most of ism industry’s current straits should certainly give on work done on their own campuses. The single the truly useful educational information available pause to those who think MOOCs can be ignored: most important conclusion from the vast amount on the Web for courses and programs, so are well prominent daily newspapers and weekly magazines of scholarly work on higher education pedagogy placed to help students make sense of the ever- have gone from billion dollar enterprises to little is that the best outcomes are obtained when stu- growing masses of data online. more than vanity presses, if they have survived at dents are active learners. Insofar as active learning I fear that we will burn these people out, how- all, simply because they did not take technological requires engagement, a facile take-away is some- ever, if we do not provide adequate human and change in their business seriously. thing like “small is beautiful.” But this is not suffi- financial resources and an environment in which cient. The fact of the matter is that no one has found they can feel room for creativity and engagement. o might the campus truly become a thing of the an acceptable financial model that would permit Professors have to relearn their role and take the Spast, except for those employed in Silicon Valley such intimate experiences across the undergradu- time to teach as well as they conduct research. This or Silicon Alley? ate curriculum for students at research universities, will not be easy, and these new expectations must The fundamental educational question is how especially those that are publicly funded. be clearly communicated, but also backed up with much the campus-based, face- new incentive schemes. to-face university experience can Might the campus truly become a thing Finally, everyone from admin- sustainably add intellectual—as istrators to students themselves compared to social and personal— of the past, except for those employed in is now questioning hallowed value, even while MOOC sophis- assumptions about how academic tication and adoption increase. Silicon Valley or Silicon Alley? spaces should be designed. This is Some MOOC converts are con- especially true in libraries, as they vinced that this model will lower costs, eliminate Of course, an alternative to being small is to become “liberated” from paper and circulation of redundancies and satisfyingly replace university for be creative in the way courses are conceived, physical titles declines. Compared to traditional many learners. Others are entering the arena cau- designed, developed and delivered. library stacks, for example, high-density book stor- tiously but deliberately, because they think MOOCs For over a decade, along with other informat- age facilities can hold 20 times the number of vol- can teach them how to improve technology-medi- ics tools, learning management systems have umes per square metre and are usually robotized, ated on-campus courses. been used on campuses. An LMS is a Web-based offering considerable space and cost savings. In order to be able to sort out which of these two software application that allows professors to But the reconceptualization of physical spaces perspectives is correct (or least incorrect), research- design and deliver course content, to monitor stu- even extends to laboratory settings. Going, going ers will have to accumulate and make sense of dents and to assess and record individual and group and soon to be gone are the fixed rectangular enormous quantities of student records, along performance. A well-implemented system contains benches. Computers are now the constant com- with information captured from MOOC usage. The interactive features to encourage and facilitate panions of the equipment and supplies needed to plural of anecdote is not data; there is hard quanti- discussions, including video conferencing. But an do experiments. Common work areas with writ- tative work ahead. LMS alone is not enough. Other information and ing capture spaces, directly attached to round lab But if traditional universities were traded on the communications technologies used successfully on benches, are correspondingly making enormous futures market, I would only go long on those that campuses are screen-sharing software, ePortfolios, headway in renovation projects and new construc- are seriously addressing the key educational chal- lecture recording systems, audience-response tion of science facilities. lenges of shifts in digital technology. As the chief devices such as clickers, and other tools designed academic officer at McGill University, I am push- to increase student engagement. We can also build ore than at any time in the 35 years that ing my institution to do just that. I have argued in on tools students already use themselves, explor- MI have been at McGill, I worry about how our academic plan for strategic rethinking and the ing the application of social media (Twitter, blogs, information technologies are affecting my insti- creation of “MILE” (McGill Innovative Learning Facebook and similar tools) for pedagogy, sup- tution’s present and how they may transform its Environments) to address the three challenges porting and learning from the experiences of those future. At the same time, however, I have come to that opened this essay. Our approach builds on professors who are going this route independently. appreciate digital disruption’s potential to reinvig- four interrelated pillars: evidence-based pedagogy, Further still, consider the “flipped” model of orate teaching and learning in higher education. sound management of information resources, large lecture sections, which has shown promise in Research universities are the engines of any redesigned physical spaces and appropriate adop- providing active learning situations: professors pre- country’s innovation system, and therefore its tion of new instructional technology, including but record lectures and other materials and students competitive advantages, as well as preservers of not limited to MOOCs. view them at their convenience before coming to its cultural and intellectual life. But resources are Traditional universities do not currently possess class, where instead of rehearsing that content, only likely to get scarcer, and technological change appropriate, accurate and timely data on how our professors (or other instructional personnel) inter- faster paced. So while many professors and admin- students learn, which adds frustration in trying to act with students to ensure that they are engaging istrators know the radical departures from normal develop sound teaching guidelines and recom- with the material. If the technology is well deployed required to adapt, we also know that we are not mendations for professors. Another consequence and the information readily available, such as making them fast enough or profoundly enough. of the lack of analytics is that units such as medicine through an appropriate MOOC, then this is a clear MOOCs, for example, are shaping up to be a and engineering, which need curriculum-mapping opportunity to enhance classroom results. Indeed, game changer. Will they allow universities to make capabilities for their accreditation requirements, the University of Maryland Baltimore County has the necessary accommodations more quickly, or are left without the necessary tools. And the prom- reported impressive results from adding online force them to make room for new education pro- ise of such information is just one reason that learning support to conventional lectures, even viders who can? I hope for, and I am working to McGill University has become a member of the as they increased in class size: this resulted in a encourage, the former; but right now, I am not sure non-profit MOOC consortium edX. 70 percent reduction of costs for one introductory that I would bet against the latter. Similarly, many of us who have the great chemistry course and a significant increase in suc- privilege and serious responsibility of serving cessful completion rates—performance benefits in the administration of research-intensive uni- they have also seen in digitally enhanced visual art For more details on this essay’s versities have hypothesized—and often asserted courses, among others. sources, visit the online version at without sufficient supporting evidence—that At first blush, all MOOCs may be taken as this . the best researchers are, more often than not, the type of “flipped classroom,” but those offered today

September 2013 reviewcanada.ca 7 Father Knows Best? From the daughter of a gay dad comes a journey of acceptance. Shawn Syms

piano and ran marathons. Along with her two fantasized about having the hirsute disco Lothario Confessions of a Fairy’s Daughter: younger brothers, Alison and her parents lived a as a father: “Hip, hairy and heterosexual. I couldn’t Growing Up with a Gay Dad quiet and happy life in Peterborough, until her imagine a more thrilling combination of traits to Alison Wearing father started to stay away from home in downtown have wandering around the house.” Knopf Canada Toronto for increasing stretches of time for reasons Wearing’s personal recollections are interlaced 293 pages, softcover that were eventually revealed. These ranged from with bits of information about key moments in ISBN 9780345807571 exploratory sexual trysts to attendance at meetings LGBT history taking place in Canada as she came of the support group Gay Fathers of Toronto. of age, including the Stonewall riots in New York, The author has chosen a structure reflective Pierre Trudeau’s Criminal Law Amendment Act lison Wearing’s dad, Joe, was every- of the multidimensional nature of its contents. In decriminalizing homosexuality and the 1981 raids thing that a father is supposed to be addition to a conclusion set in the present day, of Toronto’s gay bathhouses, in which 286 men Ain our culture—a consistent provider, Confessions of a Fairy’s Daughter is divided into were arrested and one police officer eerily evoked a loving protector, a man who cheered on his three parts. The book starts with Wearing’s first- the Holocaust, shouting “I wish these pipes were adored offspring at every assembly, performance person recollections of an idyllic childhood. She hooked up to gas so I could annihilate you all!” or gymnastics meet. He was also Margaret Atwood joined a rally pro- deeply enamoured of musical theatre, The elder Wearing inches out of the testing this attack on the queer com- French cuisine, prancing along side- munity. Three years earlier, Wearing’s walks and lounging in silk pyjamas. closet at a time when attempting an dad had narrowly escaped similar In other words, he was what is known entrapment; he was at one bathhouse in gay parlance as a screaming Mary. openly gay life was both dangerous at the precise moment when another Not an easy person to be, espe- was raided. cially back in 1978. The daughter of and exhilarating. The impact of such events upon a queer dad, that is. Reconciling the queers of the day is exposed even seeming contradictions of her beloved father’s writes, “When I went missing, someone looked more starkly in the section in which Wearing cur- identity, and in the process reconfiguring her own, for me; when we got lost, we found our way. We ates artifacts from her father’s box of letters and is the tableau of Alison Wearing’s memoir Confes- laughed, played, ate well, loved each other.” She clippings. Joseph Wearing’s diary entries counter- sions of a Fairy’s Daughter: Growing Up with a Gay then explores her reactions to the revelation of balance the twin poles of his existence—the liberat- Dad. Charting her personal journey from embar- her father’s unexpected sexuality. The second sec- ing nature of sexual explorations whose motivations rassment to acceptance, Wearing shares with the tion is a pastiche composed of various selections he has tried to submerge for his entire life, and his reader her evolving understanding of the meanings from a cardboard box owned by her father, which deep love of his family and aversion to disrupting of sexuality, gender and family as realized through contained a scrapbook of sorts—personal corres- their lives or hurting them emotionally. Having her relationships with both of her parents. pondence, journal entries, newspaper articles and grown up sublimating his desires and hoping them Confessions of a Fairy’s Daughter is an account other items that formed a part of his two-year pro- just a passing phase, the elder Wearing inches out of a very specific set of lives, ones marked by cess of coming out as gay. The concluding section of the closet at a time when attempting an openly significant privilege. Wearing acknowledges this, describes subsequent conversations that an adult gay life was both dangerous and exhilarating. A exploring how her comfortable sense of the world Wearing had with her now-divorced mother, who handwritten list of emotional quandaries captures was ruptured by the news she received at the age originally broke the news to her pre-teen daughter the man’s divided loyalties and emotional torment: of twelve that her father was possessed of an aber- after discovering that very same box. “my moods change wildly, even within a day—at ration of the sort that normally just was not talked Wearing’s prose style is at once elegant and times my home life is a cage, at other times a pre- about in Peterborough, Ontario. A clever, lively and poetic, yet breezy and readable. The book is filled cious refuge which I want to cling to as long as I can thoughtful read, the book is valuable not merely at with hints of—occasionally delightfully outré— … Why do we have to endure such pain?” Despite the level of personal revelation, but also for captur- humour, starting in the very first paragraph with a all the advances in LGBT visibility and rights in the ing perspectives—both her father’s and her own— reminiscence about a childhood pet dog with an intervening decades, this conundrum is still faced on a specific socio-historical moment perhaps now astonishing propensity for emitting diarrhea while by many people today. on the verge of being forgotten as the drive toward leg humping. If anything, she perhaps spends a After years of soul searching, Joseph Wear- LGBT equality continues to propel forward. bit too much time setting the context of her happy ing eventually meets a long-term partner named Wearing is the author of several plays and a well- home before the great reveal of her father’s sexual- Lance; more than 30 years later, they remain received previous travel memoir, Honeymoon in ity nearly a quarter of the way into the book. At this together. Meanwhile, the teenaged Alison main- Purdah: An Iranian Journey. Her father is a profes- point though, the pace picks up considerably. tained a “double life” in which she would spend sor emeritus of political studies at Trent University Along the way, she offers interesting observa- weekends with Dad and Lance and their gay friends and author of The L-Shaped Party: The Liberal Party tions of gender and masculinity from the recalled in Toronto, but fabricate sanitized accounts of those of Canada 1958–1980, a 1981 study. Her mother, perspective of her youth. Given that, in the late trips to recount to all of her friends. Over time how- Anne, is a driven multi-instrumentalist who taught 1970s and early ’80s, queerness was rarely spoken ever, particularly influenced by the rejection of her of and never positively, the youthful Wearing does father by his siblings, she comes to realize that her Shawn Syms has written about sexuality, culture not think twice about ascribing her father’s effem- love of her father in all its complexity should not and politics for more than 25 years for more than inate characteristics to the unorthodox nature of remain a secret, declaring that “the truth really does 50 publications. He has been a queer activist for being an academic. But subconsciously, she under- free all of us in the end.” For father and daughter just as long. Shawn is editor of Friend. Follow. Text. stands something is awry. When a best friend con- both, a long journey of forgiveness and acceptance #StoriesFromLivingOnline (Enfield and Wizenty, fesses to teen lustfulness for Bee Gees singer Barry ends on a high note. One cannot help but cheer 2013). Gibb, Wearing responds by admitting that she has them both on.

8 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Fixing a Spoiled Biography Mennonite identity and the Second World War. Magdalene Redekop

man with a vicious temper.” Werner The Constructed Mennonite: speculates that early abuse was the History, Memory and the Second cause of his father’s stuttering. World War The story that will resonate most Hans Werner deeply with Russian Mennonites University of Manitoba Press in Canada is the account of the 205 pages, softcover mass flight of Mennonites (and other ISBN 9780887557415 German-speaking peasants) to Mos- cow in 1929. The Werner-Froeses, including twelve-year-old Hans, joined he Constructed Mennonite: more than 18,000 people after selling History, Memory and the all their belongings in order to pur- TSecond World War is the biog- chase passports. They made the jour- raphy of a man called Hans, written ney to Moscow in cattle cars, where the by his son, Hans. It is this simple fact majority (including Hans’s family) had that makes it a gripping book. The son their hopes shattered. Along with other (hereafter referred to as Werner) is a refugees, they were reloaded into the historian whose explicit aims are made cattle cars and shipped back to their clear in paragraphs about memory at villages. Meanwhile, in response to the end of each chapter. That these intervention from Germany, the Soviets paragraphs are inadequate is partly gave in and allowed the 5,600 remain- because of the urgency of an implicit ing in Moscow to emigrate—some to personal goal that takes precedence: Brazil and Paraguay, others to Canada. the son’s effort to come to terms with For Hans and his family, returned to how his father came to terms with the Siberia, there followed famine and past. The plain speaking that has his- suffering beyond imagining. In Hans’s torically led Mennonites to resist fic- own halting words we hear how he and tion is visible here in the almost painful his stepbrother discovered his step- honesty with which Werner records father’s body hanging in the granary. facts even when they contradict his Dispossessed of his religious and father’s stories. Like Jacob wrestling ethnic heritage, Hans offered no resist- with an angel, the son who wrestles ance when he was drafted into the Red with his father’s ghost seems to say: Army, where he became Ivan Ivan- “I will not let thee go, except thou bless evich. In 1941, during a confrontation me” (Genesis 32:26). The Constructed with German troops in black uniforms, Mennonite is a kind of ghost story, Ivan surrendered when he heard but more startling than the ghosts “the unmistakable sound of German, are the actual people who emerge the language of his childhood.” As a from the distant past to quarrel with prisoner of war, he quickly reinvented our assumptions about history. himself as Johann and was then drafted Growing up in Steinbach, Manitoba, Wer- be related to belatedness. As Cathy Caruth puts into the German army. On the eleventh of April in ner heard his father’s war stories over a period it, the violence of trauma is “not known in the 1945, Johann was captured and spent time in an of 40 years. His father could not read and write first instance” and therefore returns to “haunt the American prisoner-of-war camp before immigrat- “beyond a basic level,” but, like Coleridge’s “ancient survivor later on.” Werner’s own style contains the ing to Canada to become John Werner. mariner,” he told the same stories again and again. stiffness that happens when powerful emotions are Werner uses these name changes as markers of Werner seems puzzled by the fact that there was held at arm’s length. “the various ethnic and national identities” that his “little deviation in the narrative structure or details The simple facts of the life story are compelling. father “negotiated.” John is a name that slips across of the stories.” Trauma theorists have argued, Werner’s father (hereafter referred to as Hans) was borders with particular ease—Jack, Jean, Sean, Ian, however, that such “repetition compulsion” can born in a Mennonite village in Siberia on Christmas Yann, Yon, etc. The name that appears in this book day in 1917, the year of the Bolshevik Revolution. as part of “Stalin’s Hope”—Ivan Ivanevich—is in Magdalene Redekop is a professor emerita in Before he was four, all the other male members fact the Russian equivalent of John Doe. We tend to the Department of English at the University of of the Werner family, including his father, died in laugh off the deep fears and longings that we invest Toronto and the author of numerous articles on a cholera epidemic. Hans’s mother, Anna, then in the act of naming, but they become palpable in Mennonite culture. She is writing a book entitled married a man called Jonas—a violently abusive the context of war. At first sight, the title of this book Making Believe: Mennonites and the Crisis of alcoholic stepfather. After escaping from him, Anna may seem to locate it alongside recent memoirs Representation. married a third time to Johann Froese, “a troubled such as Rhoda Janzen’s best-selling Mennonite in

September 2013 reviewcanada.ca 9 a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home, in for Family in the Shadow of Stalin. In a gargantuan identity is only one of several kinds of stigma dis- which the very idea of Mennonite identity is some- labour of love, Konrad traces the lives and deaths of cussed by Goffman, but it is an important one for thing of a joke. Werner’s sobering subtitle, however, the uncles and aunts who, unlike her father, were this book. The most dangerous stigma or “badge of puts it on a different shelf altogether. On the one left behind. shame” in the “bloodlands” was, of course, Jewish hand there is the borrowed nostalgia about faux- How do we rewrite our family myths when new identity. Werner tells of how his mother’s name was folk identity that now saturates writing about Amish facts shatter the ones we have lived with? Perhaps it changed to Frieda by German troops because Sara and Mennonite identities. On the other hand, there is because The Constructed Mennonite refers back to was considered to be a Jewish name. He also tells is the angst of a son who wonders what lies his a child’s point of view that it conveys both the fear of how his father and other German soldiers had to father might have told and the wonder in this “appear naked before a panel of seven doctors” to in order to be regis- process. The question of identify the men who were circumcised. tered safely on a Nazi Dispossessed of his which one was worse, It is within this charged context that Werner puts Volksliste. Hitler or Stalin, is for forward the question of Hans’s Mennonite identity. This book raises religious and ethnic adults. The deeper fear Like many others in similar circumstances, Hans questions that are fam- heritage, Hans offered of the child is that his emigrated to Canada with the help of the Men- iliar to many other father might have been nonite Central Committee. The first task of MCC groups in Canada. Pub- no resistance when he one of the bad guys. officials was to establish the Mennonite identity of lic questions about his- Werner remembers that the person applying for emigration. The documents tory are domesticated— was drafted into the Red when he was a child he show that Hans fixed his spoiled identity by deny- linked up with private puzzled over the fact ing that he had become a German citizen and by ones about memory. Army, where he became that his father did not claiming that he had been drafted against his will For groups that have parade with the other into the German Army. Although Werner was not experienced collect- Ivan Ivanevich. veterans in Steinbach a common Russian Mennonite name, “his fluency ive trauma in another on Remembrance Day. in Low German sealed his identity—he was clearly country, these questions are not academic. What “As I began to grasp the gravity of the Holocaust,” he Mennonite.” Convenient at the time of Hans’s appli- should be remembered and what should be for- writes, “I remember experiencing a moment of fear cation to emigrate, Low German became a “badge gotten? What should we tell the children? My own that there would be a knock on the door and that of shame” in Canada—a barrier to the construction family came to Canada from Russia in the 1870s, my father would be arrested for having committed of a bourgeois identity. Werner recalls “with some as did the families of Patrick Friesen, Miriam an atrocity—a story that he had never told us.” guilt” that he was embarrassed that “Mennonite Toews and numerous other Canadian writers. This Recent revisionist history tells of “ordinary Low German was the only language spoken in group—the Kanadier—experienced the hardship of Nazis” like Udo Klausa, who lied about their past the home.” Although all the interviews with his pioneering on the prairie but not the horrors of war. in order to achieve a “normal” post-war identity. father were done in Low German, the Low Ger- Like many others from that group, I became aware No atrocities, however, are exposed by Werner’s man version of John is conspicuous by its absence of these family questions as a result of marrying research. The most shocking lies have to do with the in Werner’s catalogue of names. It is not Hans someone from the later group—the Russländer. fact that his father con- but Hauns. Despite this The story that many Mennonites tell their chil- veniently “forgot” that As a prisoner of war, significant deletion of dren is familiar to me. It is the story of a “golden he left a wife behind one letter, Low German age” lost, followed by unspeakable suffering. That in Siberia and another he quickly reinvented survives in this book as Mennonites were among the 14 million massacred one in Germany. Wer- a residual and welcome in what Timothy Snyder has recently called “the ner concludes that his himself as Johann and reminder that culture bloodlands” is known to Canadians who have read father “could never and identity cannot and the fiction of Rudy Wiebe, Sandra Birdsell and other find a narrative that was then drafted into should not be purified. descendents of the Russländer group that, unlike included the story of Spoiled biography can the Werner family, escaped. What is not as well his previous marriages the German army. never be fixed once and known are stories told from the point of view of without destroying the for all. those who did not get out in 1929, some of whom ‘myth’ he was creating about himself.” He hangs Biographer Patrick Honan once observed that a eventually came to Canada. Their stories challenge on to that myth even after it is discovered that his biography fails if it does not evoke a sense of the liv- the myth of the lost “golden age.” first wife never remarried and that she died in 1986 ing presence of the subject in every chapter. By that So radical is the experience of dispossession for in the Soviet Union. Like Homer’s Penelope, she standard, this biography succeeds. Hans Werner the displaced persons that it is hard for Mennonites remained faithful to her spouse. Her myth, if she is an elusive and contradictory figure but always from other immigrant groups even to fathom the had one, did not match with that of her husband. there—sometimes boasting and at other times a nature of the experience. Since the fall of the Soviet The fictions that are tested in this book reson- stuttering fool, a chameleon man who dissembled Empire in 1990, awareness of displaced persons ate at a deep level. Most ancient of these is the in order to survive. His survival strategies may not has been heightened as new information has come departure/return trope. On his journeys, Homer’s look like the kind of non-resistance that Mennonite out about the lives of relatives who were previously Odysseus confronts numerous ordeals, each one theologians talk about, but he is in good company. hidden behind the Iron Curtain. Something of the testing the values of his nation. When he returns There is a body of folklore containing stories of how scale of the task of reconstituting these lives can be home, the nation celebrates his heroism. Wer- Menno Simons himself escaped becoming a martyr seen in Anne Konrad’s Red Quarter Moon: A Search ner’s father, similarly, tells his stories “in a heroic by means of various tricks and survival lies—so fashion.” The trouble for him, as for other modern common in the 16th century that they were called heroes, is that home is the place to which you Menniste Leugen. It could be argued that to be a Get extra insight can never return. Added to this is the inconven- Mennonite is, by definition, to be a constructed ient fact that women have a different story to tell. Mennonite. Anabaptists were, after all, so named between issues! Most troubling, however, is the way the fog of war to mock their rejection of infant baptism and their obscures all values. At no point does Werner claim insistence on adult choice. In North America we For more of the content you care about, follow that his father’s ordeals were a test of his Mennonite now think of Mennonite groups in terms of ethni- the LRC on Twitter. We’ve overcome our future values. He was dispossessed of those long before he city, but the reality is that 70 percent of Mennonite shock to provide timely, 140-character updates joined the Red Army. Indeed, this father with the Christians in the world are now located in Africa, on issues and ideas that matter to readers, spoiled biography sometimes seems like one of T.S. Asia and Latin America. Are they not also “con- including breaking book news, cultural events Eliot’s “hollow men.” structed” Mennonites? These and other questions and interesting writing from across the web— As Werner notes, it was not uncommon for “men will engage readers of this book. Werner makes no in particular, work published elsewhere by with ‘spoilt’ biographies in the disrupted world of grandiose claims, however, for the significance of LRC contributors. war-torn Europe” to fabricate details in order to his father’s life. For him it is enough that his father Follow us at “gain permission to emigrate.” A useful context here lived to tell the tale and that he “was able to assem- (which Werner does not mention) is the work of ble his narrative—to fix his spoiled biography—in twitter.com/lrcmag sociologist Ervin Goffman, who relates the notion ways that allowed him to come to terms with his of “spoiled identity” to the concept of stigma. Group past.”

10 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Hacking Society Three books look at the current state of play in the interconnected world. Tom Slee

backed by extensive research and written by recog- Coleman inhabited the world of free software Networked: nized experts. hackers for years, and her account of their com- The New Social Operating System munities, conferences, humour and norms makes Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman n the sunny side of the courtyard sit Lee fascinating reading. The appeal is in the specifics: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press ORainie and Barry Wellman. Facebook is, of the membership rituals of the Debian Linux com- 358 pages, hardcover course, the social network and Networked: The munity, the conventions around the ways hackers ISBN 9780262017190 New Social Operating System is about how social ask each other for help, or a page explaining the networks have transformed the ways in which we witticism buried in this fragment of the perl pro- Coding Freedom: connect. gramming language.1 The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking What are we doing when we interact through E. Gabriella Coleman keyboards and screens? Are we staying in touch #count the number of stars in the sky Princeton University Press better or becoming, in Sherry Turkle’s memorable $cnt = $sky =~ tr/*/*/; (1) 254 pages, softcover phrase, “Alone Together”? Rainie and Wellman ISBN 9780691144610 are out to challenge “the folks who keep moaning Many specialist fields have in-jokes of course, that the internet is killing society,” which tells you and Coleman initially thought her project would Black Code: Inside the Battle for Cyberspace where they are coming from. We are moving, they simply discuss the “cultural mores of computer Ronald J. Deibert say, to a society in which “individuals have partial hacking.” Instead, she was right there as hacker cul- McClelland and Stewart membership in multiple networks and rely less ture became inseparable from that of the broader 312 pages, hardcover on permanent membership in settled groups,” in internet, fed into mainstream ideas of network cul- ISBN 9780771025334 which “families have less face time, but more con- ture and so gained broader importance. nected time, using mobile phones and the internet.” Central to hacker culture is a commitment to The authors write that “the underlying theme of this freedom of information and to mutual sharing of n the courtyard of Facebook’s 57-acre book is that it is a networked world, and that being computer code. Many see this “hacker ethic” as campus at One Hacker Way, Menlo Park, networked is not so scary.” grounds for a broader political agenda in which ICalifornia, the single word HACK is laid out in Rainie works with the Pew Research Center, and peer-to-peer networks provide an alternative to 12-metre letters in the stone. HACK is a big word Wellman is a University of Toronto sociologist who corporate or state-run institutions. Coleman sees at Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg recently explained has studied social networks for 40 years. The book is free software as “a targeted critique of the neo to potential investors: “Hackers believe that some- built on survey data and sprinkled with vignettes of liberal drive to make property out of almost anything can always be better, and that nothing is ever individuals’ lives to keep it interesting. Their mes- thing.” But this is reading too much into a move- complete. They just have to go fix it—often in the sage is reassuring: the statistics show that while we ment that is, in the end, technical and not political face of people who say it’s impossible or are content have fewer confidants among our friends, we now beyond a romantic belief in liberty and in “the with the status quo.” have more people to draw on in times of crisis; and distinct power of the individual to trump author- The courtyard embodies the contradictions that “the more people use the internet, the more ity.” She does acknowledge that hacker politics are of Silicon Valley: self-consciously rebellious, yet friends they have, the more they see their friends, “narrowly defined,” but, for all its careful analysis, flush with material wealth and political influence. and the more socially diverse are their networks.” there is a frustrating gap in Coding Freedom: Cole- In a few years, the spotlight will move elsewhere Drawing causal conclusions from surveys is man does not tell us who hackers are when they are and weeds will grow in this courtyard; but while always difficult. If “Twitter users are more involved not computing. Where do they work? How old are Facebook itself may be transitory, it is an actor in in social activities,” is that because they use Twitter they? How do they earn their money? Why are they a central story of our times—the collision between or because they are a young cohort? Rainie and almost entirely male? Anchoring them in their lives the material world and a burgeoning digital space. Wellman do convince me that our relationships beyond the screen might have brought some of the You can no longer avoid digital technology. with friends and relatives can be sustained through contradictions and limitations of hacker culture to With each year, more of the world becomes digital digital connections and that we are not getting lost the surface. and more of the digital world becomes networked: in another hopeless little screen. But of course that first mail, then photographs, music, books, money is not all there is to the internet, or to Networked, ainie and Wellman are optimistic about net- and, soon, 3D printed products. Even objects that and their other arguments are less successful. Rworked society, and Coleman sees progres- remain resolutely material are increasingly driven sive potential in free software, but Facebook has by software—from kitchen appliances to the bil- ut first we walk across Facebook’s courtyard repeatedly been embroiled in privacy controversies lion lines of code that control an Airbus A380—and Bto that word HACK. Now often used to mean and now we cross the courtyard to a cold and shad- those systems are increasingly networked. breaking into computer systems, it has long had owy corner where sits Ron Deibert. Deibert is head Where is digital technology taking us? A starting broader meanings. Anthropologist E. Gabriella of the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, “a kind point is to ask where has it brought us so far. Here Coleman, now of McGill University, uses it to mean of X-Files meets academia” whose mandate is to are three books to help answer this question—to someone who works on “free software.” Much of the “document and expose the exercise of power hid- guide us around Facebook’s courtyard—each software that runs the internet is never bought or den from the average Internet user.” He has been a sold; instead, it is shared freely by software develop- regular on TV during the flurry of revelations about Tom Slee has worked in the software industry ers for others to use as they wish. The remarkable state and corporate surveillance of our digital lives, for 20 years. He writes about the intersections success of free and open source software has been and his book is a valuable companion to these of technology, politics and economics and is the hugely influential, prompting the development of stories. author of No One Makes You Shop at Wal-Mart: collaborative sites such as Wikipedia, and influen- The most explicitly Canadian of the three books, The Surprising Deceptions of Individual Choice cing the culture of sharing expressed through sites Black Code: Inside the Battle for Cyberspace opens (Between the Lines, 2006). like YouTube. in Calgary, has an epigraph by Dionne Brand and

September 2013 reviewcanada.ca 11 has a subtitle that harks back to the science fiction bert’s global tour of cybercrime and cyber warfare networked individuals are empowered individuals. of William Gibson. It is also the most likely to find that lingers. In one of the strongest chapters, he They reference Deibert and Citizen Lab’s warnings a broad audience. Coleman writes well but her describes how post-Soviet states and unofficial briefly, but return quickly to an optimistic view of academic prose will limit her book’s appeal, while “Electronic Armies” in Syria and Iran, aided by networked society based around the experience Rainie and Wellman fall between two stools: seek- western technology companies, combine internet of expanded personal choice. They point out that ing to appeal both to specialists and general read- surveillance with thuggery to suppress political video games can be educational and enjoyable, ers, their voice is often that of a tour guide recount- opponents. He recounts how China successfully but not that they can be sexist, racist and glorify- ing too many facts and dates. built its “Great Firewall” at home and engages in ing of warfare. A networked world is one in which Deibert recounts some of Citizen Lab’s own digital espionage abroad, and how Somalia’s civil companies use technologies to “help [us] get our colourful exploits. Given unrestricted access to war has produced surprisingly robust wireless needs met,” rather than one in which they spy on compromised computers belonging to the office phone networks. Closer to home, he documents the us. In the workplace, networked organization is a of the Dalai Lama, Citizen Lab researchers uncov- combined corporate and state surveillance of our liberating contrast to both hierarchy and rugged ered an espionage network affecting more than daily lives and how the border between digital and individualism. And the network is a boon for indi- 100 countries and tracked its control centre to the physical warfare was erased by United States/Israeli vidual creators. computers of China’s People’s Liberation Army. collaboration Stuxnet, a virus designed specifically Unfortunately, despite the wealth of statistics, Discovering and downloading a database backup to break the Siemens industrial centrifuges used in Rainie and Wellman neglect some strong research belonging to cybercrime ring Koobface that “laid Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. that runs counter to their conclusions. Matthew bare the entire operation from inside out,” they The book’s material on corporate surveillance Hindman’s excellent book The Myth of Digital Dem- pinpointed a group of BMW-driving, World of has little that is new, but that lack is more than ocracy provides evidence that, although it seems Warcraft–playing Russians. made up for by the insight and experience Deibert more people can speak on the internet, the same But while these individual stories convey “the brings to bear on his specialist areas of cybercrime narrow range of voices gets heard. Other research- thrill of the hunt,” it is the cumulative effect of Dei- and cyber warfare. Throughout, he keeps the focus ers have argued that networked workplaces can give on the technology, leaving readers to draw their more power to central authority, enabling it to bet- own political conclusions. It is a wise call, making ter reach all corners of an organization. Most often, the book accessible to readers with a broad range of those who lose out in an increasingly connected political opinion. Black Code is essential reading for world are those in the middle, who have carved out Coming up anyone who cares about the evolution of civil liber- modest careers from being able to offer something ties, crime and warfare in the digital age. of distinct but limited appeal. These are not the “professional elites” but are the midlist author, the in the LRC clear message of Black Code is that many middle manager, the small business owner. Ainterests are bending the internet to their own While Networked is a valuable reminder not to ends: so much so that Deibert writes that with the slip into a sentimental golden-agism and makes growth of the “cyber security industrial complex … strong points about connectivity, it fails to convince Two ways of getting old the internet as we once knew it is officially dead.” when it comes to empowerment. Sandra Martin Coleman is not ready to give up: she sees free software hackers, Deibert’s colleagues among them, t would be easy to come away from these books as among the strongest defenders of digital civil Iwith the idea that there is an open, collaborative Jobs after affluence liberties. They are technologists, yet they are also “good internet” with norms owing much to the free David Crane “the fiercest critics of the privacy violations and software hackers that has been spoiled by a closed, copyright policies of social network platforms like censored and commercial “bad internet” tied to Facebook.” governments and big corporations. Such a view Travels in Japan Digital activism goes back to the clash between fits neatly with the idea of “internet freedom,” pro- Bronwyn Best free software and intellectual property law, which moted last year by Hillary Clinton, but Black Code coincided with the anti-globalization movement shows that even an open and uncensored internet and the politics of No Logo: Taking Aim at the can serve the powerful and afflict the powerless. Afghan hopes Brand Bullies at the turn of the century. Coleman Uzbek president Islam Karimov operates a filter- Terry Glavin charts the growing legal sophistication of free soft- free service while his competitors have to filter; ware proponents as they sought to put computer Mexican drug cartels use videos and social media code outside the realm of copyright and patent to convey threats and videos of assassinations; and Ethnic cleansing by claiming that “code is speech” (it can express the government of Syria loosened its grip on the humour, as we have seen), so that code sharing internet at pivotal moments, possibly to watch its on the prairies? should be protected under freedom of expression opponents’ conversations. The Syrian Electronic Andrew Woolford laws. Coding Freedom makes a strong case that Army used free software to trap dissidents, and the the free software movement has “fundamentally U.S. National Security Agency uses free software to refigure[d] the politics of intellectual property analyze the data it collects in its surveillance efforts. Joseph Boyden’s law” and, more importantly, that the free software Cultural movements from impressionism to rock The Orenda community demonstrated by its own success that and roll have had their countercultural moment restrictive intellectual property laws are not neces- before being absorbed into the mainstream of soci- Marian Botsford Fraser sary for innovation—for if the World Wide Web is ety. The internet’s countercultural moment is over not innovation, what is? and the digital world is no longer a naturally hospit- On speaking Spanish So is the company with HACK in its courtyard a able environment for non-commercial, dissident or legitimate part of hacker culture? Coleman would alternative culture. But that does not make cyber- Stephen Henighan say not: she sees free software as an alternative to space inevitably Orwellian: Facebook’s courtyard “corporate” software and distinguishes hackers may embody wealth, but Deibert reminds us that Gandhi’s spiritual war from “Web 2.0” companies. But Facebook cares not the Hudson’s Bay Company had political and eco- a whit about such distinctions: it claims hacker cul- nomic clout that today’s biggest corporations could Charles Blattberg ture as its own and leaps into the marketplace with never hope to match, and struggles for civil liberties both feet. It is a development described by Andrew have repeatedly succeeded in the face of seemingly Emancipation Day, Potter and Joseph Heath as The Rebel Sell: Why insurmountable entrenched interests. Culture Can’t Be Jammed—capitalism has happily by Wayne Grady absorbed the romantic pose of the free software Jack Kirchhoff movement and sold it back to us as social networks. Note 1 If the variable $sky holds a string of characters, the fragment counts the asterisks in that string (in an unusual or Rainie and Wellman, politics comes out way) and puts the number into the variable $cnt: it counts Fof the social network: from Toronto to Cairo, the number of *s in the $sky. 12 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Water Water Everywhere In the wake of the Alberta floods, a much-needed history lesson. Sid Marty

ence” where “choices in system design virtually public to protect the parks for both their sublime Wilderness and Waterpower: determine downstream incremental change.” By scenery and the revenue they brought into Canada, How Banff National Park Became a Hydro- way of example, the decision regarding what track which was $15 million in 1921 alone for an outlay of Electric Storage Reservoir gauge to use on a railroad is one that determines $850,000. Harkin made mincemeat of the economic Christopher Armstrong and H.V. Nelles the course of events through time. “Canada,” they grounding for the Spray Lakes reservoir, which he University of Calgary Press explain, “got the hydroelectric religion,” so our showed as propping up plants that should never 267 pages, softcover economic path was an aggressive dependence on have been built in the first place. Instead of spend- ISBN 9781552386347 hydro power for electricity. We excelled in that ing $4 million at Spray Lakes to capture another field and by 1910 we had built 960 waterpower sites 7,500 horsepower, he suggested why not use the nationally. 30,000 horsepower-worth of natural gas being ost park supporters in Canada are The city of Calgary, powered by a small low-head flared off and wasted annually at Turner Valley to aware of the double-edged sword of hydro dam and a coal-fired plant, had a burgeoning generate power. Maccess and damage accruing to high- need for more power, and Max Aitken, “the impish But the political forces arrayed against Harkin way and railroad development in our first and most wizard behind Royal Securities Corporation” of were as vast and immutable as his beloved moun- famous national park. Some of my own generation, Montreal, along with fellow New Brunswicker (and tains; they would prevail over all opposition in the however, might be startled by Christopher Arm- later prime minister) R.B. Bennett, saw a stream Spray watershed and also at Lake Minnewanka. strong and H.V. Nelles’s reminder in Wilderness and of money waiting to be tapped at Horseshoe Falls Ironically, Charles Stewart, minister of the Depart- Waterpower: How Banff National Park Became a west of Calgary. Aitken understood how money ment of the Interior, decided that the only way Hydro-Electric Storage Reservoir that the produc- flows, but knew little about the flow of rivers. In to safeguard the park from industrial develop- tion of hydroelectricity “was as much a factor in 1909, his engineer warned him that the Bow River, ment was to “remove the lands … required for the history of Banff National Park as was the CPR.” a glacier-fed stream, had too variable a flow to sup- hydraulic storage out of the park system once and If we are blasé about dams and reservoirs in Banff ply the horsepower he had contracted to provide to for all.” Under the new National Parks Act of 1930, and region today, it is because they were built long the City of Calgary. Horseshoe Falls dam was com- 1,630 square kilometres were chopped out of the before we arrived on the scene. Also, the human is pleted in 1911 despite this warning. Five years later, Spray watershed, along with hundreds of square an adaptable animal that can get used to almost C.H. Mitchell, Canada’s foremost hydraulic engin- kilometres in other drainages. It had cost Harkin any degradation over time. Armstrong and Nelles eer, described the Bow as “unsuitable, inefficient, and Canada dearly to get the parks preserved remind us that in the early 20th century, “the idea and commercially unfeasible for power purposes.” “unimpaired for … future generations.” of what the park should be was as expansive as its At the time, the dam, rated at 19,500 horsepower, Armstrong and Nelles have written that the territory.” Most Canadians of that era subscribed to could only produce one third of its capacity. More Bow River after hydro development is “an organic the notion that a park should, first of all, be made water at more cubic feet per second was needed, machine.” That implies that the Bow River is under useful to the public, and it is therefore surprising, and to get it Calgary Power Company laid plans human control, and, as the floods of 2013 have and a compliment to the small band of conserva- for a reservoir upstream at Kananaskis Falls and amply illustrated, nothing could be further from the tionists of earlier days, that proposals to build hydro cast its eyes further west to Lake Minnewanka and truth. From June 19 to 22, 80 to 340 millimetres of reservoirs in Banff were met with some stiff public the Spray Lakes above the coal-mining town of water hit the watershed over a 48-hour period, and resistance.1 They were countered by dam boosters Canmore. Instead of opting to employ the region’s peak flows upstream of the Elbow River junction who described ugly cracked mud flats in glowing coal deposits for power generation, the developers rose to 1,740 cubic metres per second. The flood terms as resembling “a bold seacoast at high tide.” would now have to “redesign” the river upstream caused 70,000 Calgarians to flee their homes, with The authors pose a cheeky question for today’s from Calgary, a path-dependent decision that provincial damage hovering around $4 billion. But environmentalists: “Now that these hydroelectric would have severe consequences for Banff National writing in the Calgary Herald, Jerry Osborn, a geol- structures have largely outlived their usefulness, Park.2 ogy professor at the University of Calgary, points who would propose pulling them down? They have At the heart of this book is a turf war, triggered out, we ain’t seen nothin’ yet. The worst floods in become, in a strange way, part of the nature to by Calgary Power’s application to create a huge recorded history were probably 1879 and 1897, and be preserved.” Given the contemporary focus on reservoir in the Spray Valley, divert water through high-water marks suggest 2,265 cubic metres per the environment and current debate about what a tunnel down to the Bow River Valley at Canmore second for those monsters. There were no hydro constitutes wilderness and what is humans’ place and completely stop the flow of the Spray River, dams on the Bow obstructing the flow back then. in it (which they briefly touch upon), a scholarly which enters the Bow River in Banff townsite just The worst-case scenario, in a 1979 study by Mont- study of how such developments came about is below the famous Banff Springs Hotel. The fight real Engineering imagines a flood of 6,145 cubic long overdue. This one is well researched and its was on between “the animal spirits of industrial metres per second. cast of characters, including Max Aitken (later Lord capitalism,” to use the authors’ term for the rapa- We know now that the power dams should not Beaverbrook), R.B. Bennett, J.B. Harkin, Ernest cious businessmen of those days, and a handful have been constructed, and we know also that Manning and William Lyon McKenzie King, makes of colourful conservationists, who were aided and much of Calgary should not have been built on a for a fascinating study for the park history buff abetted by the powerful Canadian Pacific Railway, flood plain. Ultimately, the clear blue waters of the and—given this year’s disastrous floods—for any- no less. It was a battle that inspired the formation Bow River will turn to muddy brown once more, body interested in the cantankerous nature of the of the National and Provincial Parks Association in and we will discover yet again that our powers to Bow River. 1923, “the first national lobby to decry the spolia- redesign nature have limits that we cross at great The authors, both professional historians, tion of wilderness preserves.” peril. describe the chain of events that led to reservoirs The point man for the conservationists was and dams in the park as a case of “path depend- J.B. Harkin, Canada’s first national park commissioner. Inside this mild-mannered bureaucrat (his Notes Alberta writer Sid Marty is a former member of nickname was Bunny), there was a calculating 1 Rocky Mountains (now Banff) National Park, founded in 1885, encompassed 110,250 square kilometres by 1902. the Banff National Park Warden Service and the and determined mind. He openly encouraged Today’s size is 6,641 square kilometres. author of A Grand and Fabulous Notion: The First the creation of the NPPA, which could lobby the 2 This proved to be a template for dam building in Alberta. Century of Canada’s Parks (NC Press, 1984). His politicians for park preservation. And he did his For example, after the Oldman River Dam was completed in 1991, a court-ordered environmental review panel rec- most recent nonfiction work is The Black Grizzly of research. Fending off both the entrepreneurs and ommended in 1992 that it should be immediately decom- Whiskey Creek (McClelland and Stewart, 2008). the federal Water Power Branch, he appealed to the missioned so that the river flow would be unimpeded.

September 2013 reviewcanada.ca 13 Judging the Judges A Quebec writer reopens the contentious patriation debate. Philip Girard

La Bataille de Londres: Dessous, secrets et coulisses du rapatriement constitutionnel Frédéric Bastien Boréal 476 pages, softcover ISBN 9782764632277

f you read only English- language print media, you may Ijust barely recall a reference to La Bataille de Londres: Dessous, secrets et coulisses du rapatriement constitutionnel when it came out in April of this year. In this retelling of the patriation the coincidence of Baroness Thatcher’s death and British-Canadian relations. La Bataille de Londres saga of 1978–82 Frédéric Bastien argues for the Justin Trudeau’s win, the story clearly would have explores in great detail how the Canadian consti- critical importance of the British side of the story, had legs in Quebec. tutional issue played out in British politics. Some using new evidence gleaned from official sources On April 16, barely a week after the release of members of the UK cabinet were incredulous at in the United Kingdom. Much of it came from the book, the provincial legislature, the Assemblée the power that their parliament still possessed diplomatic correspondence obtained via freedom Nationale du Québec, unanimously resolved to over the Canadian constitution and wondered of information requests. The author’s sensational demand that the federal government release all how they could divest themselves of it. Nicholas allegations about inappropriate behaviour by Chief papers in its custody relating to the matter. The gov- Ridley, minister of state for the Foreign and Com- Justice Bora Laskin during the Supreme Court’s ernment responded with a yawn that more or less monwealth Office at the time, proposed a unilateral consideration of the Patriation Reference of 1982 tracked the response in English Canada. Patriation? repatriation whereby the British parliament would were front-page news for a day. The story then sank Been there, done that, don’t want to go there again. pass a new British North America Act transferring like a stone. None of this is terribly surprising. The accord all its own powers to Ottawa. His officials patiently In the French-language media, the book’s alleg- leading to the Constitution Act, 1982, an accord that explained that while such a measure was theoretic- ations were treated as the Canadian equivalent of the Quebec government did not join, has always ally possible, the political consequences in the form the Wikileaks scandal, with Bastien, cast in the role been seen as illegitimate and a source of grievance of provincial outrage would be enormous. of Julian Assange. For weeks scarcely a day went by in some circles, whatever its legality. The decade of Bastien also tries to explain why Margaret without some print coverage in Quebec, numer- negotiations that followed 1982, which attempted Thatcher unwaveringly supported Trudeau’s initia- ous letters to the editor and hundreds of reactions, to secure Quebec’s endorsement of a new consti- tive in spite of opposition from her own backbench mostly angry, on newspaper websites, not to men- tutional package, only made matters worse, ending (many of whom were ideologically opposed to a tion radio and television shows, internet discussion with the defeat of the Charlottetown accord and the charter of rights) and the two leaders’ conflicting and so on. 1995 Quebec referendum. political views. Thatcher dismissed Trudeau as a In a dream tie-in for Bastien’s publisher, the The close to two decades of constitutional “left liberal” in her own memoirs and found him book’s release coincided not only with the date of “peace” that have followed the referendum have unbearably soft on communism. Yet she remained Margaret Thatcher’s death but also the selection of been, in some sense, artificial. English Canada his staunch ally throughout the “Battle of London.” Pierre Trudeau’s son Justin as leader of the federal hoped that time would heal past wounds and that Here Bastien points to the central importance of Liberal Party. A photo of Thatcher and Trudeau Sr. demographic change would weaken the sovereign- the Atlantic alliance in Thatcher’s politics. She sus- appears on the cover of La Bataille de Londres, and tist cause. To some extent that has occurred, as pended judgement on aspects of Trudeau’s person- the Iron Lady plays a key role in the book and in shown by the weak minority government achieved ality and policies that she disliked because of her Bastien’s interpretation of events. But even without by the Parti Québécois in September 2012, after overriding desire to maintain good relations with nine years out of power, and the decimation of the Canada as an ally. While Anglo-American relations Philip Girard, of Osgoode Hall Law School, York Bloc Québécois in the 2011 federal election. But were at the core of Thatcher’s preoccupations, she University, is the author of Bora Laskin: Bringing the controversy created by Bastien’s book demon- was also keen to keep Canada on side in the global Law to Life (University of Toronto Press, 2005), an strates that the wounds opened in the constitu- struggle against communism. She had everything unauthorized biography of the late chief justice. tional battles of 1980–82 remain far from healed. to gain in assisting Trudeau and nothing to gain by It will be reissued in paperback this fall. He also Aside from the references to the judges that have encouraging the provinces. served as law clerk to Justice W.Z. Estey at the caused such a furor, the new information found Bastien makes no secret of his own views. He Supreme Court of Canada in 1979–80. by Bastien will be of interest mainly to scholars of is a strong Quebec nationalist who detests the

14 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Trudeauvian legacy of the charter, multicultural- There are three main problems with Bastien’s always conveyed in summary form in indirect ism and minority language rights. Enamoured approach. The first is that he has an unrealistic speech. These are not the Watergate tapes. Without of organic approaches to society, Bastien abhors and uninformed view about what constitutes inap- context it is difficult to know what meaning the liberalism and embraces Joe Clark’s “commun- propriate behaviour on the part of judges. Judges parties attributed to the conversation. For example, ity of communities” as the appropriate model for meet politicians and diplomats all the time on between the hearing and the decision in the Patria- the Canadian polity. The project of his book is to social occasions and at official events. They are tion Reference, Laskin is reported as having said to delegitimize the Charter and the 1982 constitu- not forbidden from discussing current events in a a Foreign Office official at a dinner at the Middle tional “deal” by demonstrating that it was foisted on general way, or from observing that a contempo- Temple in London that he was returning to Ottawa Canadians through a combination of clever polit- rary dispute is likely to end up in court, as long as to “knock a few heads together.” Bastien is confi- ical propaganda and high-level trickery amounting they do not express a view about how they think dent that he knows exactly what this means: Laskin to constitutional subversion. the dispute would or should be decided. This is was reporting to the official that his colleagues were Here Bastien’s accusations against Chief Justice all that happened in the intervention attributed to in disagreement and he was returning home to Bora Laskin are key. Any dirty tricks by the polit- Justice Estey. What Bastien terms a “warning” to the straighten things out. Really? icians can be chalked up to, well, politics. Short “imperial government” (?!) about the “intentions” The one incident that does give rise to some con- of actual corruption, violence or intimidation, it is of the Supreme Court was a completely anodyne cern is a meeting between Laskin and the English hard to say that any tactics are off the table in Can- conversation with the British high commissioner attorney general Sir Michael Havers in July 1982 in adian politics. But allegations that the chief justice about the likelihood that Trudeau’s initial, “unilat- which Laskin discussed the timing of the rendering of Canada conspired secretly with the British and eral” package would end up at the Supreme Court of the decision and disclosed that the judges were Ottawa to stack the deck against the Gang of Eight of Canada. in disagreement. The English were not a party to the would be different: if proven, those could be politic- The second problem is that one cannot take at proceedings and it is not clear that Laskin disclosed ally explosive, perhaps even beyond Quebec. face value the assertion by a diplomat that what anything about the substance of the disagree- La Bataille de Londres describes five incidents he or she is reporting as “Highly Confidential! Top ment. Still, if this incident had become known and involving Chief Justice Laskin and one involving Secret!” really is so. Diplomats are disposed to someone had complained to the Canadian Judicial Justice W.Z. Estey that Bastien characterizes as portray their findings as insider information even Council, it is possible that Laskin’s action might “interventions” in the patriation debate. In his view, when they are not, or to exaggerate the importance have been found to have compromised the appear- these interventions represented breaches of the of what they convey. Based on a note from the Brit- ance of judicial independence. But this would not separation of powers of such magnitude that they ish high commissioner, Bastien faults Chief Justice lead to the nullity of the decision, especially since rendered the opinion in the Patriation Reference Laskin for revealing “confidential information” it was an advisory opinion in a reference case, not null and void. This review is not the place to ana- about the timing of the hearing in the Patriation a determination of rights. Bastien in any case cites lyze in detail Bastien’s treatment of these incidents; Reference, when the information was never confi- no law or academic opinion supporting his legal I have done so elsewhere. (Indeed, my forthcoming dential in the first place and was being discussed conclusion. article in the Osgoode Hall Law Journal is available with both parties’ lawyers the next day. Bastien La Bataille de Londres is well written and does at .) In summary, only is insufficiently critical of his sources and does convey a fresh perspective on some well-known one of the incidents raises any issue that might war- not test their validity against other contemporary events. But its attempts to undermine the Patria- rant concern. All the rest are based on demonstrably evidence. tion Reference and the constitutional package of erroneous interpretations of the evidence or on The third problem is that the information 1982 are based on faulty interpretation and wishful evidence that is itself ambiguous or inconclusive. relayed in the diplomatic correspondence is almost thinking, and have no support whatever in law. New from Ronsdale Press

he moved a MOUNTAIN THE LIFE OF FRANK CALDER AND THE NISGA’A LAND CLAIMS ACCORD

JOAN HARPER

He Moved a Mountain How Happy Became Vladimir Krajina The Life of Frank Calder and the Homosexual World War II Hero and Ecology Pioneer Nisga’a Land Claims Accord z Howard Richler z Jan Drabek z Joan Harper An informative yet humorous account The biography of a decorated WWII Czech The first biography of Frank Calder, the of the ever-changing meanings of words in Resistance fighter, who immigrated to Canada Nisga’a chief who brought to the Supreme the English language. Richler explains how and, as a UBC professor of forestry, took on the Court of Canada the “Calder Case,” the “gay” morphed into “homosexual,” with hundreds forest barons for their clear-cutting and slash blueprint for worldwide aboriginal of other examples, including the much-debated burning, ultimately becoming the father of land claims. 20 b&w photos. “fulsome,” “geek” and “presently.” Canada’s “ecological reserves.” 30 b&w photos. 978-1-55380-227-3 ½ 202pp ½ $21.95 978-1-55380-230-3 ½ 160 pp ½ $19.95 978-155380-147-4 ½ 200 pp ½ $21.95

Available also in e-book formats Ronsdale Press Distributed by PGC/Raincoast

September 2013 reviewcanada.ca 15 The Woman at the Y

I see her staring by the front entrance We pass through positions, when I join the long queue embracing rolled-up mats spreading our arms into clean lines, within their taut arms and I look straight ahead, legs bending into warriors, rocking upwards like I’m not bothered, into happy babies, planting our palms firmly like I’m unaware. like cats, chairs. Everyone is transforming, I feel her staring when the whale music starts their bodies growing lighter and we begin doing sun salutations. and lighter, soaring … Hazy light turns our feet into funny looking honey jars, — Her stare hooks onto my rolling shoulders, stretches our shadows along the hardwood floors. and minor irritation blooms on my forehead like an open wound. Upside down I see her face behind me while we’re doing the downward dog. In the communal change room She’s sitting with her legs tucked in, amidst all the rituals and perfumed sweat, completely motionless, peering right at me she comes up to me with her hair wet with the sad gaze of a mother who slowly unravels while I’m putting on my clothes and apologizes, what she’s knitting so she can start all over again. she didn’t mean to be rude, cause alarm. I turn away. She follows me to the mirror and watches me Her gaze remains pinned on my skin snap the cord of the hairdryer, plug it in, turn it on. while our bodies move and move, From behind she softly explains that she couldn’t break her gaze plummeting forward and back, because I look just like her daughter at nineteen, arching up before falling downward, right before the cancer came. fingers locking against the bottom of our toes, the skin there firm, slightly callous, We stare at each other’s reflections, the texture there similar to a devout dancer the infuriating noise of the dryer who’s hardened by exercise, becoming a dull droplet of sound made strong by deep, regular breathing. in my cold, wet ears. Her arms are folded around her tiny body like a frightened child Our bodies move together like a single, fluid organism abandoned in a long stretch of aisle. within this dimly lit cocoon, There are two moles on her neck, everyone familiar with each other’s limitations and far too many lines on her face and strengths. It’s one hour of unspoken intimacy. trying to hold together a steady expression.

Amidst the bang-bang noises, I can feel my mouth go dry. I can hear myself breathing.

Frances Du from distinctions

What range of tones are possible in the phrase See for yourself? Sarah Gridley, Loom

* Expand, to widen. Borrowed hours, function. Blazing heat. Perhaps, we stay awake. We know: the summer still of discon- tent. Excessive: rooms we can’t yet leave. Her kingdom for a working AC unit. Cool down, some. She swims the mornings. Sixteen weeks: we measure eyelids, ears, the length. Shifting Frances Du is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in publica- eyes to front. A habit of apples. The white flesh of page. The tions such as SHE Canada, The Culture-ist and Traveler’s Digest. She is moorings. Rush, a second time. Starfish sing. Nuance, of tiny currently reading F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is The Night and rereading boats. A tin ear. The Blue Hour of the Day by Lorna Crozier.

* rob mclennan lives in Ottawa and is the author of more than 20 trade books of poetry, fiction and nonfiction. He won the John Newlove Poetry A small discretion, slight. Exactitudes. This question still of Award in 2010, and was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2012. luck. Adrift. Spread out, across. To pre-exist. A stubble, roughly His most recent titles are the poetry collections Songs for Little Sleep nine months. Dailyness. The pattern, of little feet. A landscape (Obvious Epiphanies, 2012) and grief notes (BlazeVox Books, 2012), and of pretending. Stacked boxes, letters. We write in colour, songs a second novel, missing persons (Mercury Press, 2009). An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, Chaudiere Books, the Garneau of lightening. A dedicated commons. Shadow. The desire of Review, seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics and the mothers. Certainty: the handle of an axe, a hammer. Vowel- Ottawa poetry annual ottawater . He regularly posts thin and unaligned. A spider’s web of chance. reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at . Rob has recently been reading blue heron by Elizabeth Robinson, rob mclennan The Prowler by Kristjana Gunnars and Loom by Sarah Gridley.

16 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Tristimania

Cures of patients, who suppose themselves to be glass, may easily be performed by pulling a chair, upon which they are about to sit, from under them, and afterwards showing them a large collection of pieces of glass as the fragments of their bodies. Dr. Benjamin Rush

Tinted windows in the killer’s Camaro, burnished windows of the Wall Street skyscraper, bulletproof windows of the Popemobile, stained-glass window made in my grandfather’s name (gold makes the wine-red colour), window-face of my father’s watch, cracked glass in the parking lot, shards in the park sandbox, encasement of light in bulb, substrate of the looking glass. Look at my history:

I fancied of glass, first my fingers and then arms. Once trans- lucent, I let the doctor see through me: using a candle, he saw my glass heart, glass liver, glass spleen. He diagnosed an error in the furnace: I was fired imperfectly, I should return to flesh and begin again. It is true: I wanted to die. Before I agreed, I asked about impurity: what is the purpose of becoming like light when grit and bark prevent a perfect image? He said: fall, break, and you shall be made flesh again. He pushed my chest and I shattered on the ground.

How I see: through eyes of glass that are painted and then burnt intact. I feel through the silica whorls of fingertips. I love the smooth, cold texture of my thick limbs and on my brittle lips are hymns to the light. I am invisible except as intensifica- The Great Lakes Storm of tion of light that glows past bits of dirt. The doctor is blinded when he looks, he holds hands over his eyes that are also glass, 1913 but he is afraid to become an entire eye, a pane. Nicole rides the Greyhound from Montreal to Prince George. Shane Neilson Seventy two hours, non-stop. Half that time spent getting out of Ontario.

A guy gets on in North Bay and sits across the aisle from her.

He moves beside her.

where are you going?

He says he’s going to Thunder Bay, that he’s recently been released from Kingston Penitentiary. He tells her a story he says he heard on the inside.

a storm hit the great lakes back in 1913. they call her big blow, the white hurricane, the freshwater fury. she lasted four days in november. two hundred fifty people were killed and nineteen ships sank, some of which haven’t been salvaged. i’m going to thunder bay for the leafield. her and her cargo are waiting for me on the lakebed. Shane Neilson is a poet from New Brunswick. His second trade book of poetry, Complete Physical (Porcupine’s Quill, 2010), was shortlisted Nicole has heard the story before less the part about The for the Trillium Poetry Award. He won Arc Magazine’s Poem of the Leafield, back in seventh grade geography. But she pretends Year award in 2013. “Tristimania” is from a manuscript titled Medical that she hasn’t. In twilight she gives him a handjob then at Inquiries and Observations upon Diseases of the Mind, a text derived night she climbs on top, both of them barely under the blanket from the seminal textbook of the same name by Dr. Benjamin Rush. she brought for the trip. Neither finishes. A woman two rows Shane is currently reading The Diary of Virginia Woolf(Volume 5, back witnesses and pretends to be asleep. 1936–1941) and F.R. Leavis: A Life in Criticism by Ian MacKillop. Thunder Bay is their morning stop. Fifty five minutes for Timothy Mook Sang studied at the University of Northern British breakfast, or a shower in the public washrooms. They eat Columbia and Ottawa University. He is currently a schoolteacher in together. Montreal. His poems have been published in the Bywords Quarterly Journal, All Rights Reserved, Canadian Literature, In/Words Magazine, Jones Av, ditch and New Fairy Tales. Tim is currently reading Vampires what if there is no sunken treasure? in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell and Red Doc by Anne Carson, and trying to read Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. Timothy Mook Sang

September 2013 reviewcanada.ca 17 The premier volume on Canada-Africa relations. Available now. Featuring leading experts from policy and government, civil society and academia.

Order nOw at www.Canadaamongnations.ca

The Spur festival is produced by Diaspora Dialogues and the Canada’s first national festival of politics, art Literary Review of Canada. and ideas is pleased to announce its 2014 dates: For more information, visit Winnipeg – March 21 to 23 spurfestival.ca. Toronto – April 3 to 6 Calgary (NEW FOR 2014) – April 25 to 27 Ottawa (NEW FOR 2014) – May 9 to 10 Vancouver – May 22 to 25

Many thanks again to the visionary Presenting Sponsors that made Spur 2013 possible!

Toronto: Winnipeg: Vancouver:

18 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Colombia North circa 1978 Smugglers and undercover cops in Newfoundland’s amateur drug trade. Mark Frutkin

takes to smoke one joint before being fingered as an On the other hand, Moore renders dialogue with Caught undercover detective. Even though this was the age marvellous facility (here the language is entirely Lisa Moore of amateur drug smugglers (and police new to the appropriate), as in this short exchange between two House of Anansi Press drug trade), Patterson lacks the nerves of ice and characters: 318 pages, hardcover the easy cool that undercover work almost certainly ISBN 9780887842450 requires. I couldn’t get my car started there, last As in all of Lisa Moore’s previous work, includ- winter, was it, Gerald? ing the novels, Alligator and February (long listed Spark plug, the man said. n a start appropriate to a thriller, Caught, for the Man Booker Prize and winner of Canada Worst kind of weather, Harold’s sister said. Lisa Moore’s latest novel, opens with young Reads), as well as her short story collection, Open, Replaced the spark plug, he said. IDavid Slaney escaping from a Nova Scotia the saving grace here is her use of language and her prison in 1978 where he has been serving a long incredibly precise attention to everyday detail. Moore can also write humour that zings. In one sentence for drug smuggling. Some years before, Here is her description of an old man’s tortured scene, Slaney is hiding out in a hotel. The police Slaney and his old friend and fellow smuggler, walk: “There was an extra swivel in his gait, an have come looking for him and he talks his way into Hearn, had been caught in an unexpected fog almost lewd skewing of bone and pain and he was a room where a bride is preparing for her wedding. off the coast of Newfoundland and had failed in their attempt to bring Officers, she said. to shore two tons of marijuana The reader can only marvel at the Good evening, ma’am, one of from Colombia. The sly Hearn then the cops said. skipped out on bail and disappeared precision of Moore’s observations. I hope so, she said. I’m about to while Slaney took the rap. get married. The first quarter of the novel is We were wondering if you’ve as suspenseful as a walk across a high wire as we bent forward. One hip rode up too high and hitched seen any suspicious activity, the officer said. feel Slaney’s stress and tension, when each thump on the way down. Or the left knee gave out at the Anyone looking like they might be on the run. on the door could be the knock of doom, the last minute. The old man had a faith in the knee that Are you talking about the groom? she said. police coming to rearrest him and haul him back he lost and regained with each step.” The codger’s We’re looking for a young fellow, six-foot- to prison. He explores the meaning of trust and gait is described with such precision, it is as if she two, blue eyes, black hair, slender of build, doubt in this context and how, in each situation, he had videotaped it and then played it over and over some would say handsome-looking guy. has to choose one or the other. Slaney would have again until the bones, muscles, tendons and his I was looking for one of them too, she said. done well to investigate his trust in his old friend disjointed motions coalesced into a mental image But you settle for what you get. Hearn, for he plans to rejoin his buddy and smuggle made of words and phrases. another boatload of drugs. He imagines greater The reader can only marvel at the precision of A truly hysterical scene, but again, a bit hard success this time, based on his hard-won experi- her observations, as in the description of Slaney as to believe that the young bride would shelter an ence. However, Slaney’s blind trust in his old friend “he hunched down near the barbecue and had to escaped convict she had just met. does not ring true. bounce a bit on the balls of his feet to unwedge the It must be added that the novel is also rife with While the characters in Caught are generally matches from the pocket of the tight new jeans.” small errors of detail that mar its excellent writing: believable, and Slaney himself surprisingly likable, Usually, these details are the lifeblood of the no cameras were allowed in Canadian trials in the the plot comes crashing into shore like a thin- novel and offer the reader extraordinary insight 1970s; woodpeckers do not peck trees at night; seat- hulled ship hitting the rocks. When we learn that into the passing world. At times, however, this belts did not exist in the 1960s, and so on. Trifling the police have let Slaney escape from prison so microscopic vision can feel too strained, so acute mistakes but disturbing in a novel of this quality. that they can follow him, allow him to meet with it is all stainless steel and glass: “The ridge of the Moore has a genuine skill with minor characters. Hearn and ultimately track their sailing venture bifocals fell exactly halfway across the man’s eyes, Slaney’s old girlfriend, Jennifer, is both soft-hearted to another arrest on Canadian shores, the story is magnifying the bottom half; the brown irises were and hard-edged; the owner of the sailboat, a lush simply not credible. Over and over, the plot gets vulnerable and watery. There was a bright crimson named Cyril, is both broken and lovable. Every tangled in nets of unlikelihood. It all feels somewhat dot in the left iris, just below the pupil. The pouches truck driver and bartender is limned in a few telling far-fetched for a novel written in a straight-forward, beneath the man’s eyes were veined with violet lines that bring the characters to life. realistic mode. lines and pressed upon by the black frames; in the In the end, the fine writing rescues this novel, The difficulty with plot is magnified when a cop top hemisphere, above the ridge of thickened glass, even with all its far-fetched plot elements. In one named Patterson is assigned to go undercover and the irises were sharp and calculating.” This is far scene, the faithful reach for the hymn books: “the offer Slaney and Hearn money to help fund their more information than the reader needs or wants. Church had filled with the rustling of pages so illegal venture. Patterson is pictured as a bumbling, Moore’s penetrating vision and the language thin the print of both sides showed through them.” sweating loser and would last about the time it that expresses it raise the question: Does this razor- And again, “she brought the dish of marmalade sharp view resonate with the character of David across the table by sticking her knife into it.” Or Mark Frutkin has published 13 works of fiction, Slaney and the world he inhabits? The answer is no. this description of a rainstorm: “there were, at first, nonfiction and poetry, including Fabrizio’s Return It is clearly the vision of the author and this throws only two splats, the size of quarters, on the giant (Knopf, 2006), which won the 2006 Trillium Award the book somewhat off kilter. A strong disconnect windshield and they trembled like things with a and was a finalist for the Commonwealth Award intrudes between language and character—Slaney consciousness.” Over and over, the accumulation (Canada/Caribbean). His most recent publication himself would never see the world so acutely, for of detail builds a world that is alive and keenly is the novel A Message for the Emperor (Véhicule his vision is all about the “pot” of gold at the end of observed. If it were not for the serious deficiencies Press, 2012). his imagined rainbow. in plot, this would be a very fine novel indeed.

September 2013 reviewcanada.ca 19 A Top Hat with Tales A novel that folds four iconic authors into an ingenious plot. Sarah Roger

The third story is about Borges, Calvino and Over the novel, P.’s concerns with bureaucracy Kafka’s Hat Kafka, who are driving to Montreal to be guests of gradually become philosophical, as he contem- Patrice Martin honour at a conference on the author as fictional plates causality, rationality and the nature of lit- Translated by Chantal Bilodeau character. On the journey, they discuss the nature erature. P. wonders whether his future hinges on Talonbooks of fiction and the mysterious, supposedly true collecting Kafka’s hat, and he questions his circum- 131 pages, softcover tale of a pair of twins who disappear after reading stances and the methods he devises for navigating ISBN 9780889227439 Kafka’s Hat: a story about a man named P. and a hat them. The conclusions that P. draws to explain that once belonged to Kafka … his condition are unsatisfactory and often contra- The novel starts in the style of Kafka, borrowing dictory. When faced with a difficult decision, he n the essay “Kafka and His Precursors,” trademark features such as the abbreviation of the rationalizes that “action leads to knowledge, which Jorge Luis Borges shows how reading an author’s name to a single letter—in this case P. for leads to action, which leads to knowledge, Iauthor’s work can reveal qualities that are con- Patrice or possibly (as the narrator suggests) for his which leads to action, and so on,” only to later con- cealed in the writing of previous authors. He argues precise actions. At first, it seems as though Martin clude that “contrary to what we are taught from our that influence is determined by the order in which is simply mimicking Kafka’s style, but as he enlists earliest childhood, knowledge leads to inaction.” readers read texts, rather than the order in which elements from Auster, Borges and Calvino, the When Kafka’s Hat opens out to subsequent they were written—a view he demon- plots and characters (Max and Dora; strates by pointing out ideas in Zeno Borges, Calvino and Kafka; the twins of Elea, Han Yu, Søren Kierkegaard There is something disconcertingly who read Kafka’s Hat), it becomes a and Robert Browning that would not meditation on readership, authorship exist for readers who had not previ- familiar about the logic P. employs and the novel. Following the model ously read Franz Kafka. Borges’s novel set by his precursors, Martin draws his approach places the onus on readers when hiding a security guard’s corpse readers’ attention to his book’s status to attribute meaning to texts based on in a storeroom of suitcases. as a fictional construct. Versions of their own reading history. Kafka’s Hat appear throughout the Patrice Martin’s Kafka’s Hat is a story: it is “a book about hats and skillful demonstration of Borges’s claim, drawing book becomes an entertaining web of intertextual dead writers’ ghosts,” “a book with a tragic ending” his reader’s attention to shared stylistic and the- connections. For example, the man and woman and “the story of an improbable but catastrophic matic aspects latent in the texts of four preceding driving to New York are named Max and Dora after meeting between reality and fiction.” The charac- writers: Borges, Paul Auster, Italo Calvino and Kafka’s confidant and his final lover; at one point, ters nod to this recursion and its implications: Max Kafka. Martin brings together some of his precur- Max makes a joke of his plan, saying, “going to wonders whether, “at best, the story of a man who sors’ most distinctive devices—circular plots, Brooklyn is pure folly!”—a reference to Auster’s The wants to meet Paul Auster, hoping Auster will read a labyrinthine structures, intertextual references, Brooklyn Follies. Occasionally, these allusions are novel about a man on a quest for Kafka’s hat, might questions of identity, invocations of the author as sufficiently obscure that the novel seems to have make a good novel. Difficult to say at this point.” character—in a playful, meta-literary work that been written for those best acquainted with Mar- In the book’s final pages, Martin addresses the extends and illuminates his precursors’ ideas about tin’s precursors. roles of the author and reader head on, highlighting the relationship between readers, writers and texts. Other aspects of the novel are more acces- the degree to which any story is assembled by an Kafka’s Hat has three intertwined plots. It opens sible, particularly the Kafkaesque plot, which will author and interpreted by a reader: with a story about a man named P. and a hat that amuse anyone who has experienced the sort of [once belonged to Kafka. P. has been sent to the cus- mind-boggling bureaucracy that P. faces. Tere Those three men [Borges, Calvino and Kafka toms building in New York to collect the hat. Faced is something disconcertingly familiar about the … are here only to remind us that words can with escalating levels of administrative absurdity, P. logic P. employs when hiding a security guard’s do extraordinary things: they can invent struggles with his task; by the time he succeeds, he corpse in a storeroom of suitcases. He draws up a worlds where the dead and the living walk has discovered a mysterious literary manuscript, four-step plan, but upon realizing that he has only side by side; they can create a character met his soulmate and found himself on the wrong accomplished one step (a 25 percent completion whose traits remind us of an author, himself side of the law. Later, when P. and his companion rate), he adds two already-completed steps to the half-man, half-character; and they can bring flee the city, he tells her the story of his ordeal. list to increase his rate to 50 percent. Adding to writers, who never met in real life, together on The second story is about a man named Max the absurdity is the fact that, even in dire circum- the page. Those three men were also brought who has written a novel in the style of Auster. After a stances, P. is unwilling to break trivial rules: “Since here to plant doubt in the mind of the reader, number of rejections from publishers, Max decides there is no ladder—stationary or portable—P. who will eventually have to decide what that the only way to guarantee his novel’s success is figures that to put a suitcase on the top shelf, one meaning to give to the last scene of this story to have Auster write a foreword. On the way to find has to resort to a forklift. Since he has never oper- about hats and extraordinary writers. Auster, Max picks up a hitchhiker named Dora to ated this kind of vehicle, and doesn’t hold a licence whom he describes his novel: a story about a man authorizing him to do so, he will have to hide the Although Martin brought Auster, Borges, Cal- named P. and a hat that once belonged to Kafka … body at ground level.” For all their ridiculousness, vino and Kafka together, the reader must make P.’s experiences—and his exceedingly rational sense of their conjunction. The attention Kafka’s Sarah Roger, a native Torontonian, is a lecturer responses—are plausible. They render believable Hat draws to the fictional texts within the text, to at the University of Oxford and a postdoctoral Martin’s assertion that he has “been bumping into Martin’s intertexts and to the shift in responsibility research fellow at the University of Edinburgh. Her the spirit of Kafka for most of his adult life,” as a from author to reader are all in the spirit of Borges’s doctoral dissertation was on Kafka’s influence on clerk in the House of Commons and member of the Kafka and His Precursors, showing again how it is Borges. Gatineau municipal council. up to the reader to attribute meaning to a text.

20 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Our Literate Lunches feature good food and good conversation with Canadian authors. The series is presented by the Literary Review of NEW RELEASES FROM DUNDURN Canada in partnership with the Gardiner Museum. LITERATE LUNCHES AM I SANE YET? LUNCH WITH NINA MUNK An Insider’s Look at Mental Illness September 18 | 12 PM – 1:30 PM by John Scully 111 QUEEN’S PARK, TORONTO $25 - Talk/gallery admission and a bag lunch by à la Carte Kitchen Award-winning journalist Scully has been committed to mental Join us for the next instalment in the LRC’s series of institutions seven times. He has intimate author lunches, to hear Nina Munk discuss been locked up. He has attempted suicide. With brutal frankness he her new book, The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the reveals the plight of patients he has Quest to End Poverty. Based on six years of in- met on the inside and investigates depth reporting and research into Sachs’s ambitious the therapies and drugs they have Millennium Villages Project in sub-Saharan Africa— been given to try to ease their pain. which aimed to show how living conditions for some of the world’s most destitute might be improved—her account raises challenging questions about international aid and development today. New novel from two-time Joseph Brant Nina Munk, a contributing editor atVanity Fair, is a journalist and the author of Fools Rush In: Award winner. Steve Case, Jerry Levin and the Unmaking of AOL Time Warner. She was previously a senior writer at Fortune, and before that a senior editor at Forbes. Her work has appeared in Vanity Fair, the New York Times Magazine, the New Yorker, Fortune and the New York Times. THE REDEMPTION OF OSCAR WOLF To register for this lunch, visit reviewcanada.ca/events by James Bartleman

A saga of mid-20th-century Native life in Canada and abroad, this is a ONE YEAR, novel of resonating ideas and un- forgettable characters with a fascin- BECOME AN TEN ISSUES C ating anti-hero protagonist who sets out on a quest for redemption after a terrible re in his hometown kills his grandfather and a young maid.

LRC SUBSCRIBER! By the author of Cold War Soldiers By Mail, send form to: Name Suite/Apt UNDER THE Literary Review Street City of Canada Province/State Country BLUE BERET PO Box 8, Station K Postal/Zip Code Email A U.N. Peacekeeper in the Middle East Toronto, ON Phone Fax M4P 2G1 by Terry “Stoney” Burke

To Subscribe online, Payment Options: Bill Me! Cheque Enclosed! Charge Me! From inexperienced soldier to sea- visit reviewcanada.ca/ If Paying By Credit Card: Card Number soned veteran of nine U.N. missions sub2013 (Visa or Mastercard Only) in Cyprus, Israel, Lebanon, and Expi Expiry Syria, Burke gives us a detailed account of a peacekeeper’s life in the Si Signature ever-turbulent Middle East. CONTACT US: Email / INDIVIDUALS LIBRARIES / INSTITUTIONS Available from your favourite bookseller literaryreview@ National Rate: $56 + tax National Rate: $68 + tax and as ebooks. cstonecanada.com ON, NB, NL: total $63.28 ON, NB, NL: total $76.84 Phone / PE: total $63.84 PE: total $77.52 416 932 5081 NS: total $64.40 NS: total $78.20 /dundurnpress | @dundurnpress | dundurn.com Fax / Rest of Canada: total $58.80 Rest of Canada: total $71.40 416 932 1620 International Rate: $86 International Rate: $98

September 2013 reviewcanada.ca 21 History from the Dark Side Junk science, injustice and the value of public memory. Megan J. Davies

Dr. Helen MacMurchy, famous “And Neither Have I Wings for her Little Blue Books and to Fly”: Labelled and Locked other maternal health initia- Up in Canada’s Oldest tives, was front and centre in the Institution Canadian eugenics movement. Thelma Wheatley Wheatley follows MacMurchy as Inanna Publications she traverses the incalculable div- 413 pages, softcover ide between her Rosedale home ISBN 9781926708584 and the slums of Cabbagetown where Daisy’s extended family resided, taking along her beef tea n “And Neither Have I and the sure belief that educa- Wings to Fly”: Labelled and tion, race and class rendered her ILocked Up in Canada’s superior. We meet the energetic Oldest Institution, Toronto writer Dr. D.K. Clarke, first professor Thelma Wheatley has given in the University of Toronto’s imaginative life to a largely Department of Psychiatry, and forgotten chapter in Canadian Dr. Clarence Hincks, psychiatrist history. Throughout the first and founding director of the half of the 20th century, spurred Canadian National Committee by eugenicist ideas popular for Mental Hygiene (later throughout the western world, the Canadian Mental Health Canadian politicians, social Association). workers, nurses, physicians and The institution at the heart of parents participated in the incar- Daisy’s story is the Orillia Asylum ceration of thousands of children for Idiots, established by the and adults labelled “mentally province of Ontario in 1876 to defective.” Many spent years house feeble-minded youth con- of their young lives housed in sidered a danger to society and inhumane conditions, separated from family, and accessible piece of Canadian disability history a draw on the public purse. Renamed the Hospital labouring without compensation in institutional and worthwhile reading for those interested in the for the Feeble-Minded in 1932 and the Ontario kitchens, wards and laundries, and facing brutal historical overlay of medicalization, human rights Hospital School seven years later, the consistently treatment at the hands of staff. Some were sterilized and the plight of vulnerable people. underfunded and overcrowded facility depended without their knowledge or consent. Although the final chapter of Daisy’s patient on the unpaid labour of generations of children and Not a purely academic treatment of eugenics, history touches on the unbounded possibilities young adults like Daisy, her mother, Ella, and two this book is part memoir, part treatise. Wheatley of late 1960s permissive society, this book—and uncles, who collectively provided 16 years of work threads her larger narrative through the story of Daisy’s story—are dominated by notions of hered- cleaning Orillia’s lavatories, changing bed linen and “Daisy Lumsden,” a teenage resident from 1959 ity born in the late 19th century. Sir Francis Galton, washing laundry. to 1966 in the Ontario Hospital School in Orillia, an Englishman and cousin of Charles Darwin, Abuse and neglect characterized the world of the and of Daisy’s extended “Hewitt” family, many of created the pseudo-science of eugenics in the institution. Inspection reports and recollections, whom also spent time at “Orillia.” By juxtaposing 1880s, a school of thought that regarded the human presumably from Ella and Daisy, provide portraits the profoundly marginalized lives of the Lumsden race as a vast breeding stock. In the eugenicist of limited lives, systematic humiliation and outright and Hewitt kin with those of the politicians, pro- universe, reproduction and the fate of the nation cruelty. The book presents small kindnesses from fessionals and public administrators whose judge- were inextricably entwined: based entirely on the staff as a rarity. The sexual abuse of young male ments doomed Daisy and her relations, Wheatley accident of birth, eugenicist theory categorized residents appears to have been commonplace. renders the broader story profoundly personal an individual as either “superior” and a worthy Daisy’s friend Eddy shared graphic reports of being and underscores the deep injustice of this history. citizen or “unfit” and a liability to the nation. The gang raped in the communal showers by older Extensive archival research and a skillful integra- title of the broadly influential 1904–08 British Royal male inmates and molested by an attendant during tion of relevant scholarship shores up Wheatley’s Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble- a late-night trip to the toilet. We are left to imagine narrative construction. The result is an important Minded sums up the thrust of the movement. the life-long pain and suffering endured by former Canadian eugenicists looked primarily to Britain Orillia residents. Megan J. Davies is a professor in York University’s for leadership, although ideas from the United In Canada, eugenicist thought gave credibility Department of Social Science and a British States were also influential. Wheatley connects the and direction to establishment concerns about Columbian social historian. Her research interests lives of Daisy and her kin, real and imagined, to immigration, urban poverty and untamed female include madness, old age, social welfare, rural luminaries in the Canadian medical establishment sexuality. Keeping company with MacMurchy, medicine and alternative health practices. who built their careers on eugenicist foundations. Clarke and Hincks in interwar Toronto, we find

22 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada ourselves deep down the eugenicist rabbit hole. “apple” or any other of the food items of the picture understandings of the past not commonly included Immigration, taught to us in school as the corner- vocabulary exam administered by a psychologist in the historian’s toolkit. I ran straight into this pos- stone of Canada’s national growth, in fact allowed at the Toronto Psychiatric Hospital, but she found sibility, however, in a recent documentary project, “inferior stock” from Ireland, Eastern Europe and a rat in the “Mutilated Pictures” quiz. Three years The Inmates Are Running the Asylum. Created col- Asia into the country. Mothers’ pensions, pioneer- later she failed to react to the picture “Birthday laboratively by a rag-tag group of long-term mental ing social welfare legislation of the period that gave Party” but identified “Wash Day.” There is no indi- health service users, academics and enthusiastic some widowed and deserted mothers a monthly cation in the case files used for this book that the youth, our film follows the story of Vancouver’s stipend, were condemned by some as merely social workers, psychologists and public health Mental Patients Association—the radical and encouraging the mentally defective to procreate. nurses that dealt with the Hewitt and Lumsden startlingly successful peer support organization Perceiving poor girls and young women from a families ever viewed Ella’s test results through the that emerged in 1970/71 as a response to the tragic eugenicist perspective, everything from a fondness lens of acute poverty. limitations of early community mental health. This for the dance hall to early sexual relations with a Eugenicist thought infused early Canadian work has included powerful moments of personal family member became clear evidence of mental social welfare and public health systems. Surviving and political alchemy for the MPA founders and, and moral degradation. case files make evident the importance of structural like the book reviewed here, The Inmates project The family histories of the Hewitts and Lumsdens determinants in shaping the lives of the Hewitts demonstrated that “memory work” and giving demonstrate that this is not just a Canadian story, and Lumsdens, but the professional voices in these voice to remembrance is an essential democratic but needs to be appreciated as an imperial project. records demonstrate that the family’s situation was act. Historians interested in employing their craft Daisy’s beleaguered parents were both products of framed by moral rather than material concerns. In in the fields of reconciliation and social justice can late 19th- and early 20th-century youth immigra- the winter of 1928 the Hewitts were living on the thus take away important lessons from “And Neither tion schemes, which relocated more than 100,000 $14/month of Henry Hewitt’s soldier’s pension and Have I Wings to Fly.” impoverished English children to near-certain had just used their last chair for firewood. Their Canadians would like to imagine that the viola- servitude in the New World. Her grandfather was social worker was not lacking in compassion, but tions recounted in this book are stories from the sent out as an indentured labourer for an Ontario in the end four of their children were removed from past. But can we jettison eugenics to the historical farmer, while her grandmother was raped by a son the penniless family: three were incarcerated in scrapyard of regressive public policy and junk sci- in the Toronto home where the immigration agency Orillia and a fourth was sent out for adoption. ence? I would suggest not. I offer two pieces of had placed her as a maid. This is another aspect of Our current federal government favours the evidence that the eugenicist mindset still lingers in the historical pattern where children cut loose from history of wars and great Canadian endeavours. professional practice and public policy. families are particularly vulnerable to ill treatment, “And Neither Have I Wings to Fly” is a very differ- First, there is the recent publication of the as they were at Orillia and in infamous American ent story of our national past. Wheatley presents American Psychiatric Association’s influen- experiments on hepatitis at the Willowbrook State an analysis of societal fault lines formed when tial Diagnosis and Statistical Manual of Mental School in New York and on stuttering at an Iowa powerful professionals grabbed hold of an ideol- Disorders, fifth edition, where hoarding, persistent orphanage. Closer to home, we are just finding out ogy that rationalized controlling vulnerable youth irritability in children and grief at the loss of a loved about nutrition experiments by the federal govern- under the guise of helping them. The parallel to one can now count as mental illness. Clinical cri- ment done on aboriginal children in care in the late First Nations residential schools, the “Sixties Scoop” teria for many illness categories listed in DSM-5, we 1940s. of aboriginal babies and the case of Duplessis’s learn, are based on normative social expectations. The deeply gendered elements of Daisy’s story Children is obvious. Taken together, these are vast At the same time—and here again I glimpse the should also be appreciated. Mentally defective historical catalogues of institutionalized injustice, ghosts of MacMurchy, Clarke and Hincks—DSM-5 women were regarded as doubly dangerous, for it but personal stories render the incomprehensible presents mental health patients as people whose was believed that their offspring would inevitably real. Velma Demerson was 18 in 1939 and pregnant psychological difficulties are rooted in a fundamen- be feeble-minded. Ready access to birth control by her Chinese immigrant fiancé when her parents tal biological flaw. Yet surely this is a logical contra- should have been obvious solution, but there was a and the police cooperated to convict her under an diction, for there is not a single physical test for any strange double-think at work in this regard that still antiquated 1897 law of “incorrigible” behaviour and of the diagnoses listed in the volume’s 991 pages. lingers in attitudes about abortion rights. Concerns incarcerate her in Toronto’s Mercer Reformatory. Second, I would reference the national five-site about untamed female sexuality (and procreation) Subjected to painful vaginal surgeries in a search At Home/Chez Soi study, the $110 million brain- are a subtext in the case files of both Daisy and for a gynecological basis for her immorality and child of the Mental Health Commission of Canada her mother, but medical personnel disregarded stripped of her Canadian citizenship, Demerson (2009–13), created to “collectively develop a body reports from Daisy of repeated sexual abuse from lost custody of her son. of evidence to help Canada become a world leader her mother’s male partner. We learn later in the Difficult, unsettling pasts, stories of injustice in providing services to homeless people living book that this abuse was intergenerational: Daisy’s and damaged lives: these are sites where an active, with a mental illness.” This randomized control mother was herself molested by an older brother. engaged perspective like the one that Wheatley study purposefully left half of its vulnerable par- It does not appear that sterilization, legal from employs can help Canadians appreciate current ticipants homeless to substantiate something that the 1930s to the ’70s in both Alberta and British manifestations of these disturbing legacies. we already know—mental well-being and a place Columbia, and practised quietly at Ontario mental And shouldn’t history shake us loose from to call home are intimately connected.1 Imagine a health institutions, was ever considered in their complacency and direct us toward informed similar research study dividing residents of High cases. compassion? River, Alberta, flooded out of their homes in June Girls and boys consigned to Orillia appear to Daisy Lumsden requested legal access to her into two groups, one being rehoused with financial have been primarily filtered through state educa- case records from Orillia, persuading her mother and social support and the other cut adrift to fend tional, social welfare and public health agencies. to do the same. She pulled Wheatley, a church for themselves. I doubt that Canadians would find Poverty, parental neglect perceived or real, delin- acquaintance and writer, into her quest for the this acceptable, not only because of the hubris of quency perceived or real, a stutter, squint or dull truth. The final chapters of the book detail her “scientific” experimentation, but also because the expression—any of these could steer a child in subsequent involvement in a class action lawsuit people of High River are Just Like Us, citizens with the direction of Orillia. The Stanford-Binet intel- against the province of Ontario. But the most families, jobs, real estate. The At Home experi- ligence test provided a hierarchical shopping list important truth for Daisy was uncovered in the mental subjects are, like Daisy, individuals who are of labels: dull normal, moron, imbecile and idiot. storied layers of her past, a risky place for anyone, regarded as less than citizens because they exist on These eugenicist labels held great authority. Under but particularly for a child given by her parents the margins of society. They are Other. Orillia would Canadian law only those deemed imbeciles and into the care of the state. And here she found a gift. not have existed without this mindset. Nor, I think, idiots (feeble-minded) were to be institutionalized, Her parents and maternal grandfather—flawed could At Home/Chez Soi. although the moron class, with their worryingly caregivers that they were—never acquiesced to the “normal” appearance and lax moral standards, power of medicine and the state to catalogue, con- Notes were thought to comprise a greater hazard to the demn and own their child. Henry Hewitt, Ernie and 1 There has been limited critical analysis of the At Home/ Chez Soi project. For an exception see Cindy Patton’s well-being of the country. Ella Lumsden repeatedly travelled from Toronto to “Can a Research Question Violate a Human Right?: Such measures of intellect were deeply biased, Orillia to visit Daisy. Retaining legal council, they Randomized Controlled Trials of Social-Structural rooted in cultural and class norms. Undergoing successfully secured her release in 1966. Conditions,” published in 2012 at .

September 2013 reviewcanada.ca 23 Literary Lifeguard A life spent saving books from oblivion reaps deep rewards. Dana Hansen

The result is an illuminating account of one man’s had never been an exclusive agreement; Mason The Pope’s Bookbinder: A Memoir admirable efforts to create something in his life that takes the opportunity in this example to illustrate David Mason is meaningful, beautiful and lasting, and to explain his extreme distaste for government bureaucrats Biblioasis his decisions and actions to those—most poign- who do not understand or care about books, and 424 pages, hardcover antly his deceased father—who have doubted him. excoriates the dubious actions of the National ISBN 9781927428177 Indeed, at heart this book reads as a son’s attempt Library: to justify to his disapproving father, a banker, his choice of an admittedly not-very-profitable voca- They lost my respect and they also lost the s many university students majoring tion: “My father was a good man; he meant well; he moral loyalty I have adopted towards all my in English literature do, I worked in book- just didn’t understand.” clients. Now collectors and other libraries Astores for a number of years, first at the The memoir’s title, intriguing though it is, get first shot at the important rarities I scout chains and later in an exceptional and still-thriving relates only to a small aspect of the book and to a out—the National Library comes last. Not independent shop in Burlington, Ontario. Despite brief period in Mason’s early life when he trained that it matters much now, for what is now the fact that David Mason, one of Canada’s fore- and worked as a bookbinder in Spain, eventually merged into one huge bureaucratic morass most antiquarian booksellers and now author of assisting in the fulfillment of a commission from called Library and Archives Canada buys The Pope’s Bookbinder: A Memoir, has declared that the Vatican. While an amusing anecdote, the story nothing. They are collectively denying the “antiquarian booksellers do not really consider new of the work he did for the Pope highlights a more moral imperative all sovereign nations have to booksellers to be booksellers at all,” but rather “only important point: bookbinding provided an entry preserve the written and oral record of their retailers selling whatever the publishers provide,” point for Mason to the book trade, first as a seller history. They are dissembling in the manner my experiences in the new book business put me in of books new and then used and rare. At the age of of all shadowy bureaucrats everywhere, and contact with many an eccentric bookseller, collector almost 30 with no formal education or serious work they are apparently engaged in sinister plots and reader of the kind Mason describes vividly and experience, and having spent most of his twenties to ignore their mandate. in abundance in his thoroughly enjoyable memoir. hitchhiking around parts of Europe, dirt poor and “Bookmen,” as Mason calls them, are a distinct aimless, Mason had finally found an occupation Mason’s mandate, he makes clear, is to ensure breed with a noble imperative: “I have come to that captured his interest and challenged his intel- the preservation of the past for the future by edu- believe that, more important than my or my col- ligence. That he was not making a lot of money was cating younger booksellers, just as his own beloved league’s petty concerns or our personal ambitions, irrelevant given what he viewed as his tremendous mentor Jerry Sherlock of Joseph Patrick Books did. the true significance of our work is social, and our fortune at discovering bookselling as a genuine In some of the more instructive chapters of the main contribution is the salvaging and retention of vocation, and not just a job. memoir, Mason offers advice to those in the trade important artifacts of our civilization.” Among several philosophical digressions in on such matters as the art of scouting for books, Dedicated to this notion of the bookseller as The Pope’s Bookbinder (including his debatable appraising collections and successfully bidding at preserver of cultural memory, Mason is dismayed assertion that one cannot be successful in any auctions. “Buy what you like,” he offers, and “follow by the apparently small number of memoirs written book-related enterprise if one is not a committed your own instincts.” In one amusingly self-con- by booksellers—a paucity he laments in a review of collector of books), perhaps one of the most sin- gratulatory yet edifying instance, he describes how Anthony Rota’s 2002 memoir, Books in the Blood: cere is Mason’s determination to resist conformity, he outsmarted and outbid a distant cousin of L.M. Memoirs of a Fourth Generation Bookseller: to not be distracted from his true calling by the Montgomery at an auction for a rare edition of her “inducements and temptations which seem to book of poems, The Watchman. I have always found great irony in this melan- offer high rewards.” Having witnessed acquaint- The Pope’s Bookbinder is a rich testament to choly fact: that in a trade whose raison d’être ances in the book world succumb to the rewards of Mason’s deep love of books and abiding respect is focused on the rescue and preservation of more money, authority, security or prestige, Mason for those who share his life’s passion. Immensely the past, significant members have not seen declares, “a man with a true vocation must guard appealing to anyone who has warm childhood fit to record the anecdotal history of their own the integrity of that vocation with the same zeal that memories of favourite books and librarians, has personal past. he affords to his family or his country. There can be worked for minimum wage in bookstores spend- no compromises of one’s truth, just as one can’t be ing most of each paycheque on books and finds It is with this lofty vision of the crusading book- a sometime patriot.” no greater pleasure on a Saturday morning than seller that Mason has, in effect, taken up his own Not one to mince words, Mason clearly has little browsing the shelves of a regular haunt and challenge to provide the world with just such an patience for anyone who does not live up to his high selecting a new volume, this memoir will not anecdotal history of his apprenticeship and early bookman standards, as evidenced by his descrip- disappoint. Mason’s sometimes supercilious tone years in the book trade, his successes and failures tion of the fallout he had with Steven Temple, a and moments of false modesty can be forgiven as his business expanded, and the many relation- longtime friend and fellow Toronto bookseller. in one so devoted to his mission: to worship and ships he has formed over 40 years, both positive According to Mason, Temple violated “one of the spread the good word of the book. “I realize I have and not, with fellow booksellers, scouts, customers, strongest unwritten rules of the book trade” when worshipped a worthy God all these years, and I librarians, employees, scholars and institutions. he attempted to profit on an exclusive agreement am exalted,” he writes. Books, “the most perfect between Mason and the National Library of Can- invention man has ever created,” saved Mason, as Dana Hansen is a writer and reviewer who teaches ada to supply the library with Canadian editions of they have many of us, from lives of aimless wan- literature and composition at Humber College books by foreign authors—Mason’s specialty. dering and destructive behaviour. Mason, in turn, Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning in Temple’s betrayal was compounded by the deserves our respect and appreciation for saving Toronto. response of the library officials claiming that there the books.

24 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada For great reading at any size

visit the new reviewcanada.ca

September 2013 reviewcanada.ca 25 Malleable Cannon Fodder Is it cultural manipulation or simple brainwashing that creates the child soldier? Ian Smillie

into a soldier’s life by an unprincipled parent. Most attempt to get into the mind of a child combatant. Child to Soldier: Stories from Joseph Kony’s are kidnapped, however, and are converted without Ishmael Beah, a child soldier himself, produced an Lord’s Resistance Army much difficulty, it seems, into beasts of burden, sex emotive memoir of his horrific experience in Sierra Opiyo Oloya slaves and, all too often, vicious fighting machines. Leone; A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier University of Toronto Press Forced to witness and to commit atrocities them- became a bestseller, making Beah, the one-time 217 pages, softcover selves, often encouraged with beatings, torture and killer, a popular speaker on European and North ISBN 9781442614178 drugs, they are socialized into indiscriminate vio- American lecture circuits. lence. For unscrupulous warlords with unpopular The challenge for all of these authors is to bring causes and armies short of recruits, they represent an element of understanding to the subject: How he phenomenon of child soldiers is cheap, malleable cannon fodder, easily replaced if can children be turned into such ruthless killers? not new. Boys and very young men have they are killed. Senator Roméo Dallaire has called Why do so few escape, or even want to escape? And Tbeen encouraged, welcomed, dragooned them the most sophisticated low-tech weapons for those that have been “rescued,” can there ever and press-ganged into armies and navies for a system in the world today. be a return to normality? very long time, and mostly we have not thought Some of the worst examples in recent years Opiyo Oloya, superintendent of education much about it. Hollywood has brought us decades have been seen in Sierra Leone’s ten-year conflict, for child learning with the York Catholic District of Hornblower-type films in which boys serve as graphically depicted in the film Blood Diamond, School Board in Ontario, returned to his homeland plucky midshipmen, while drummer boys serve as which arguably portrayed the problem of child in Uganda in search of answers. An Acholi himself, a frequent icon for artists seeking to portray bravery soldiers better than it did of diamonds. Charles he examines Joseph Kony and his LRA, trying to in 19th-century combat. I grew up on a diet of child Taylor’s “Small Boy Unit” in Liberia was a focus of understand why and how an Acholi leader could soldiers on television: Rusty, the boy soldier on Rin attention at his war crimes trial in The Hague, and kidnap Acholi children, using them inter alia Tin Tin; Cuffy, the boy soldier on Captain Gallant of The Lord’s Resistance Army led by the Ugandan against their own people in a vicious and protracted the Foreign Legion. sociopath, Joseph Kony, remains an object of conflict marked by horrific brutality and lengthy, The reality, of course, is very different. Some horror and fascination, raised to momentary and forced marches across hundreds of kilometres and estimates place the number of child soldiers in belated global attention last year by the sensational three or four countries. active combat today at 250,000. Few of them volun- YouTube video, Kony 2012. Child to Soldier: Stories from Joseph Kony’s teer, although some, like Omar Khadr, are beguiled There is a growing library of books about Lord’s Resistance Army is a cultural investigation child soldiers—Dallaire’s own They Fight Like because culture, Oloya says, is “at the heart of the Ian Smillie, an Ottawa-based development con- Soldiers; They Die Like Children: The Global Quest transformation of children into soldiers [and] plays sultant and writer, was the first witness at the war to Eradicate the Use of Child Soldiers, Uzodinma a crucial role in their daily struggles to make sense crimes trial of Charles Taylor. He is the author of Iweala’s Beasts of No Nation and Emmanuel Jal’s of the violence in which they have become a part, Blood on the Stone: Greed, Corruption and War in War Child: A Child Soldier’s Story. Most of them are and, ultimately, to attempt to take some control of the Global Diamond Trade (Anthem Press, 2010). novels; even Dallaire’s book is a semi-fictionalized their lives within it.” The brainwashing of these chil-

26 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada dren is not, Oloya argues, the Stockholm Syndrome other conflicts and have returned to face the same Oloya strives to show how the child soldiers writ large. The Stockholm Syndrome has been problems in their communities in Sierra Leone were able, with the help of an inner strength used to explain why captives—like Patty Hearst, for or Liberia or Mozambique without the benefit of derived from Acholi values, to remain human and example—sometimes identify with their captors. Acholi “personhood” is not considered. Similar to divide their personalities into two parts: the Oloya explains that at most, only 8 percent of all cultural patterns may have prevailed elsewhere, but person that they had always been and the one that abductees fall victim to the Stockholm Syndrome, in fact the rebel armies of Liberia and Sierra Leone was obliged, in order to survive, to be a soldier. One and these are people held almost exclusively in were notable not for their ethnic homogeneity, but could perhaps say the same thing of any soldier close confines and over very short periods of time. for the precise opposite. While one might ascribe a going into combat. Each once worked in an office For child soldiers, the experience is much deeper child’s psychological and physical survival to cer- or a factory; each once had a family and a normal and much more protracted. Oloya also says that tain innate and even culturally derived strengths, peaceful life; and each is obliged to shoot and kill despite a name that invokes God or perhaps Christ, these would have to be more general in nature than when the command is given. All live in hopes of the LRA has none of the “apocalyptic spiritualism” those of the Acholi alone. coming home to normal, even those who commit- of David Koresh’s Branch Davidians or Jim Jones Monsters such as Joseph Kony, Charles Taylor ted the atrocities at My Lai, Abu Ghraib and Belet and his Peoples Temple in Guyana. and Sierra Leone’s RUF leader, Foday Sankoh, Huen. And while the welcome will be different from Oloya argues that the LRA’s success with chil- were no more child psychologists than they were one instance to another, the personality bifurcation dren is based on an extensive exploitation of their social anthropologists. They discovered early in may be similar. The difference between the adult prior cultural experiences, a kind of “rebranding their criminal madness that children were readily soldier and a child soldier in Africa may not be as of the mind, a retooling of previously held cultural available and that they could be brainwashed— great as it seems. ideas” and the creation of a refracted kind of “nor- probably more easily than adults. Oloya describes Child to Soldier sheds new light on this dark mal” in which familiar cultural activities—grinding eight stages in the liminal transformation of chil- subject. It is restrained, even clinical in tone, avoid- millet, collecting water, eating communally—were dren into soldiers, including some that may have ing recrimination, blame or even advice for those the backdrop for the additional obligation that soon particular Acholi resonance, such as an anointing who work with former child soldiers. Some of the enough became apparent: fighting, being wounded with shea butter or being made part of a distinct latter might have been useful, but just as each and sometimes dying in battle. household within the LRA. But it is neko dano— former combatant is an individual, perhaps there Oloya avoids the term “child soldier,” explaining killing a person—that echoes across so many other are no pat lessons. Oloya laments the failure by that while the people he describes were kidnapped conflicts where child soldiers have played import- Uganda and others to acknowledge the suffering as children, those who survived soon enough ant roles. Killing is important for three reasons, of the people of Northern Uganda, and especially became adults, and their return to their families Oloya explains. First, whether a child is forced to the pain of the child-inducted soldiers. There is has inevitably been marred by a kind of fear and kill or simply to watch, killing is “taught” as part of nothing to memorialize all the children who lost loathing on the part of their communities, and a multipurpose military strategy. “Second, making their innocence and their lives, apart from a monu- even their parents. Not only has the child whom abductees watch and participate in killing served ment erected in 2009 by the Dutch government at a mother once knew become a killer, but he is no as powerful reminders of the fate that could befall the main intersection in the town of Gulu. “Called longer a child. Oloya prefers, instead, the term those who disobeyed orders or who attempted the Pillar of Peace, it depicts two children, with “child-inducted soldier,” a constant reminder that to escape.” And third, the trivialization of killing dismantled guns at their feet, reading a book. This in many cases the challenge of rehabilitation and served to inure children to the sight of blood and to is, as the Acholi like to say, loyo nono (better than reintegration is that of an adult who survived—at get them over their fear of death and violence. nothing).” least in the psychological sense—by retaining elements of a culture that now rejects that person. This is the double tragedy of the child soldier: “...stories that drip with guts, bodily emissions, and heartache, told abducted and forced into monstrous behaviour, by narrators who long for a real connection.” — Globe and Mail then rejected when she or he is freed at last to resume a “normal” life. What those children want and need most is recognition that while they were “...skirts the boundaries of a nihilistic worldview.” — The National Post away they retained at least some of their Acholi “personhood.” The idea of home is what helped to “... equivalent to watching a train wreck—horrifying, yet save them. compelling, at the same time.” — Winnipeg Free Press But perhaps they were not saved, and perhaps their idea of home was never more than that—a “...tragic, mortifying and funny. …the kinds of tales you love to read child’s idea. And even if there once was a home as but are glad are not happening to you” — Maisonneuve imagined by the child, over the years Kony and his LRA obliterated large parts of it. Payaa Mamit wants “darkly funny at times, graceful at others to forgive the community that failed her in the first and gritty throughout” — Sundog Lit place by allowing her to be kidnapped; she does not want to drown in the guilt and shame of having been part of the force that caused her community “deals in what the gut and heart compel us to do, not what so much pain and suffering. She wants to leave law and morality tell us are civilized.” — Salty Ink behind “her identity as the guilty person she was in the bush, in order to find forgiveness, to forgive, and “...stories that range from cloudy overcast melancholy to eventually to live free of guilt.” The chances that any dead-of-night dark.” — The Book Stylist of that will happen seem slim. This book is about the particular trauma visited “...an unnerving, discomfiting, totally upon the Acholi people and their children, told original debut.” — Miriam Toews through the personal stories of a few child-inducted soldiers. Because it is by an Acholi searching for answers, the book seems in a way like a telescope that focuses so narrowly on how the Acholi culture accounts for an Acholi child’s survival, that sight has been lost of what the book might say about other conflicts, other countries and other children. It is not as though Oloya has not read and consulted widely on the subject of child soldiers. The book is well referenced and has an extensive bibliography (although, oddly, Roméo Dallaire’s ALL WE WANT IS EVERYTHING book on child soldiers is noticeable for its absence). STORIES BY ANDREW F. SULLIVAN But the fact that many children have survived arpbooks.org

September 2013 reviewcanada.ca 27 Trying for Funny A teenager thinks magic will solve all his problems. Joseph Kertes

about a young reporter who comes to Williams reverb to thirteen. So when Kyle taunted Free Magic Secrets Revealed Lake, British Columbia, only to stumble upon Satan again, trying to determine the limits Mark Leiren-Young crime and mayhem and palpable danger. of his demonic powers Satan replied gravely, Harbour Publishing His new memoir, Free Magic Secrets Revealed, “Blapblapblap blap blapblapblapblap blapblap 254 pages, softcover is about an even younger Mark Leiren-Young. This b l a p.” ISBN 9781550176070 story roams over the classic terrain of comedy. It There was nothing Kyle could do. Nowhere is about a young man trying to make his mark (no he could run. “Dark Lord,” he asked. “Do you pun intended or it is a bad one if it is), trying to find enjoy haunting me with recollections of my ying is easy; comedy is hard,” his identity, trying to find love among the unforgiv- single failure?” “ according to the early 19th-century ing precincts of high school and trying to impress Dactor Edmund Kean. I would append by putting on a spectacle, a show featuring a sci-fi It is not the kind of impression Mark was hoping to that statement: “Not feeling very well is easy; script Mark has written that includes magic and to make. The first review that appears in the papers reviewing comedy is hard.” heavy metal music, starring girls Mark would like hits hard: “this is just a high school production that The primary problem with penetrating the comic to date and boys Mark would like to be. somehow wandered downtown. I’d say it’s worth mind is that comedy is used as a shield, a defence The teenager begins his theatrical journey as seeing for a laugh, but that would be cruel.” The girl mechanism, really, against all Mark has been hoping to impress foes. Comedy comes from a dark Most of the jokes we laugh at are about most, Sarah Saperstein, instead place rather than the light place comes over to make sure Mark is it seems to occupy. Another wise our frailties, our inadequacies, about not going to take his own life, and man, Mark Twain, once observed for the first time Mark gets to make that “the secret source of humour discomfort rather than comfort, about love with the girl of his dreams. is not joy but sorrow; there is no But the next review of The humour in heaven.” Heaven is for shortcomings rather than strengths, Initiation, appearing in the bigger the civilized, the well behaved, the Vancouver paper, the Sun, pro- well dressed. It is a place where failures rather than successes. vides a deeper interpretation. The soft music is playing. Hell is for writer has understood the blap- bad behaviour, childish antics, rage and criticism, a magician, but of course he is no Doug Henning. blappings of Satan to suggest he could not speak not approval. Practitioners and creators of comedy, “I doubt there are a lot of magicians building their human, should never have been able to communi- famously or infamously, are more often morose careers around an illusion that requires their cate with any kind of sense. than cheerful. mom’s bedsheet.” And so, finally, because things work out in com- It is difficult to see this at first. We bounce off the Next, he has a brief career as a party performer edy, all the failures somehow end up adding up to comic shield. The trouble (and the joy for us) is that who dresses in animal costumes. One customer some vestige of success. The show comes together: when we laugh we are distracted, less inclined to wants a Playboy bunny but gets Mark instead, the acting is more inspired; magic is added; the make sense of a joke or a funny character or a funny dressed as a bunny. As a gorilla, Mark is directed to sound equipment is adjusted. Mark and his pals do scene. Yet most of the jokes are about our frailties, sing “Happy Birthday” but is not allowed to talk. It manage to impress the right people, and Mark’s life our inadequacies, about discomfort rather than breaks the spell. “Gorillas don’t talk,” his boss tells comes together too, just as he has hoped: comfort, about shortcomings rather than strengths, him. failures rather than successes. Aristotle’s under- My mother never mentioned law school standing of tragic characters was that they are bet- “I see,” I said. again. ter than we are—we look up to them—while comic “Then you sing Happy Birthday.” I was a playwright. characters are inferior—we look down on them. We “But I don’t talk?” Randy was a magician. see the banana peel in front of them before they do. “Never.” Kyle and Annie and Ivy and Lisa were stars. We pity comic characters. We admire tragic ones. The Initiation toured the world. Moreover, the comedian or the comic writer is Mark’s greatest extravaganza, meant finally to trying for funny, so the sorrow flowing from the confer upon him fame, admiration, love and envy, And Mark tries to turn his friend Randy into the dark heart beneath the humour remains pure and is the show he writes, directs and produces himself, real Houdini by chaining him up, putting handcuffs true, less tampered with, less edited, once funny is the show that ends up being called, significantly, on him and then dumping him into the deep end. achieved. The Initiation, a rock fantasy. But the magic ends up It takes Randy over a half-minute to break free. One such funny writer is Mark Leiren-Young, a being left out, the acting is so-so, the music laugh- He comes up gasping. “‘I can’t hold my breath for journalist, playwright and filmmaker, and winner able, the story undeveloped without its promised thirty-two seconds,’” he tells Mark. His friend says, of the 2009 Leacock Medal for Humour for his first sequel and the production values low: “In Spinal “‘Then you’d better get out of the handcuffs faster.’” memoir, Never Shoot a Stampede Queen. It is a story Tap there’s a famous scene where Nigel Tufnel So all’s well that ends well—all inadequacies creates the greatest amp of all time,” Leiren-Young erased (or diminished), love blooming in the air, Joseph Kertes is a winner of the Stephen Leacock recalls. the laughter sounding in all the right places. Award and founder of the first-ever full-time college Of course, while you are reading Mark Leiren- program in comedy writing and performance. He Instead of going up to ten, this one stops Young’s Free Magic Secrets Revealed, you do not is currently dean of creative and performing arts at at eleven. Our sound technician—the one have to consider why you are laughing. Just laugh Humber College in Toronto. we hadn’t rehearsed with—had dialled our and enjoy.

28 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Grappling with Grain How and why an unlikely Canadian coalition defeated an agribusiness giant. Mark L. Winston

Growing Resistance: Canadian Farmers and the Politics of Genetically Modified Wheat Emily Eaton University of Manitoba Press 187 pages, softcover ISBN 9780887557446

he saga of genetically modified wheat in Canada is a fascinating story revealing Tthe conflicting producer, agribusiness and consumer interests that emerge when scientific discoveries affect the way we grow and market food. Growing Resistance: Canadian Farmers and the Politics of Genetically Modified Wheat has an engaging tale to tell and a great deal to recommend it, although it suffers from an academic style and a polemical approach that may limit its readership to specialists. The book grew out of Emily Eaton’s doctoral dis- policies designed to favour corporate agriculture. genetically modified canola, producers became sertation and focuses on the politics of genetically In the process, she reveals competing visions for accustomed to purchasing seed from companies modified wheat. It asks a question key for anyone agriculture and food that express the difference in rather than saving and replanting their own. interested in genetic engineering and other forces the public’s mind between bread and edible oil, Thus, science and agribusiness had already driving contemporary farming: why was GM wheat ranging from a populist, cooperative, farmer-driven taken over canola seed production before GM var- not approved for use in Canada, while other gen- system for wheat to the more agribusiness and ieties resistant to insects and tolerant to herbicides etically engineered crops such as canola were? In science-driven model that developed in canola. were invented. It was an easy transition for canola answering it, Eaton’s book casts an uncommonly Wheat became a significant crop in Canada producers to buy seed and sign restrictive coven- in-depth look at the culture of farming in Canada. around 1900, at the same time that populist polit- ants about its use. Canola also did not have wheat’s The wheat in question was Monsanto’s Roundup ical sentiments were emerging. Farmer coopera- historical ethos, and consumers were less resistant Ready wheat, created in the 1990s and designed to tives that handle and market grain were formed as a to using edible oil made from GM canola than they tolerate Monsanto’s herbicide product Roundup. result, including the now-defunct Canadian Wheat were to genetically modified bread. Weeds are a major pest for farmers in many crops, Board. Wheat varieties selected by traditional The core of Eaton’s book focuses on why farm- and the intended advantage of RR wheat to farm- breeding techniques already produced high yields, ers were successful at stopping RR wheat’s approval ers was that they could spray Roundup while the so farmers did not see any agronomic need for gen- after a battle that lasted from about 2000 to 2004. crop was in the field, killing weeds but leaving their etically engineered wheat. Weed control also is not While growers drove the resistance, their success wheat unaffected. as much of a problem in wheat as it is in canola, and depended on an unusual coalition of farm, con- The book has many strong points, in spite of there are a number of herbicides to choose from sumer, health, environmental and food industry its dense writing, and Eaton is at her best when that provide good control when needed. participants. Eaton points out how unusual it is for describing the issues that have plagued the Most significantly, Eaton tells us that producers farm groups to cooperate with organizations such approval of GM crops. Her comparison of the fac- generally save a portion of their wheat seed to as Greenpeace that are seen as urban and less prac- tors leading to the adoption of GM canola and the replant in future years, eliminating the need to pur- tical than farmers, supporting policies that threaten rejection of GM wheat in Canada is particularly chase seed from the agribusiness empire. Finally, conventional farming and having a radical in-your- illuminating. on wheat’s side of the ledger, the crop has been face protest style not usually appreciated by more She frames these different outcomes in a full present for thousands of years, with a mystique and conservative farmers. Also, the common interest spectrum of crop characteristics, farming history, culture around it that resist technological change. of stopping RR wheat drew together activist farm economic factors, government regulation, scien- Canola, by contrast, is a product of science, groups such as the National Farmers Union with tific advances and the implementation of federal created by Agriculture Canada scientists who bred mainstream producer bodies such as the Agricul- undesirable qualities out of canola’s predecessor, tural Producers Association of Saskatchewan and Mark L. Winston is academic director and fellow at rape, resulting in an oilseed crop that yielded edible the Canadian Wheat Board, organizations on the the Centre for Dialogue at Simon Fraser University, oil rather than the machine oils that were extracted agricultural political spectrum that commonly find and author of Travels in the Genetically Modified from rape. These early canola varieties were turned themselves on different sides of issues. Zone (Harvard University Press, 2002). He currently over to industry, which developed methods of The coalition worked because each group is working on a new book, Dialogue in Bee Time: producing hybrid seed for planting that were focused on its expertise: Greenpeace raised Lessons Learned from the Bees. superior to seed farmers could produce. Well before environmental concerns, farmers were worried

September 2013 reviewcanada.ca 29 about the agronomic characteristics of RR wheat, engineered food that prevented the adoption of become resistant due to overexposure, just as they and the Canadian Wheat Board and the National RR wheat. Most anti-GM campaigns have focused have to field-sprayed insecticides. Many farmers Farmers Union raised concerns about consumer on consumer concerns, but wheat resonated more have returned to spraying older and more environ- acceptance of GM wheat. than canola because of the ubiquity of wheat and mentally damaging pesticides as GM crops fail to Consumer resistance to GM wheat was the big- its image as the most fundamental of foods, the control the pests against which they were designed. gest worry, but many wheat producers who rotated biblical staff of life. The success of herbicide-tolerant GM crop plantings with canola were using RR canola and Eaton also taps into a broader Prairie concern: systems at controlling weeds also has become a had an agronomic concern. They worried that who controls agriculture, farmers or corporations? problem. Fields of herbicide-tolerant crops like RR rotating with RR wheat would double the chances One of the author’s concluding points is that pro- canola, corn or soybeans are virtually free of weeds, of weeds developing resistance to Roundup. It is ducer antipathy to RR wheat hinged on the profit- which has reduced populations of beneficial pests, particularly interesting that many of the same farm- ability of agriculture and control of food systems. predators and pollinators. ers who were comfortable using GM canola did Perhaps, but she does not provide strong proof that My own laboratory’s research has been on bees not favour GM wheat, emphasizing the specificity this was the case, and this section feels more like in canola, and demonstrates that wild bee popula- of their objections to wheat rather than to genetic her own politics getting in the way. tions thrive only when there are diverse sources engineering in general. of nectar and pollen. Eliminating Suspicion was another factor weeds reduces wild bees and makes driving producer concerns. Farmers Eaton’s comparison of the factors farmers depend even more on man- inherently distrust everyone from aged honeybees, which in turn are banks to government, and secrecy leading to the adoption of genetically suffering from many maladies includ- around data and test trials did not ing the same nutritional challenges endear the RR wheat proponents to modified canola and the rejection of facing wild bees in weed-free mono- producers. Agriculture Canada scien- genetically modified wheat in Canada cropped situations. Monarch butter- tists were gagged in an early example flies are in decline as well, threatened of the government suppression of is particularly illuminating. in part by lack of their obligatory scientists that has now become epi- milkweed hosts that are now absent demic. Corporations were seen as in too-clean Roundup Ready fields. operating in their own rather than producer inter- Concerns about shrinking markets for consum- The perceived threat of GM crops and the bal- ests, and university scientists who often receive ers fearful of genetically modified organisms in ance of evidence about their impacts to date have corporate funding were perceived as biased. their bread, pasta and cake would seem to be the left opponents and industry in a stalemate. While Experience with the approval of GM canola more significant factor, and this market-based industry continues to develop new GM crops, convinced many farmers that the Canadian govern- rationale for opposition makes more sense than these are rarely approved, and the expected wave ment preferred commercial interests rather than the anti-corporate rhetoric that is consistent with of genetically modified dominance in agriculture producers. Eaton’s outrage as she describes govern- Eaton’s personal politics. She writes: “producers outside of the already-approved crops has yet to ment’s role in facilitating agribusiness interests over and consumers must think hard about which dis- materialize. producers and consumers is well placed. The lack courses and strategies can successfully push back Eaton calls for a new round of protests against of transparency, establishment of advisory com- the corporate environmental takeover of food sys- GM crops, fearing that the dam holding them back mittees with membership that insures predeter- tems, regulations, and standards.” And then again: will soon break, but it is not at all clear whether mined outcomes, reliance on industry research and “the main problem with GMOs (and indeed the Canadian Prairie farmers will continue to resist suppression of public access to data upon which food system more broadly) is its corporate control.” GM wheat if industry creates crops with agronomic regulators base decisions are a continuing national Eaton wants farmers to be driving the farm-to- characteristics that provide a profitable edge. Con- disgrace that should infuriate all Canadians. table conversation about how we grow and market sumer resistance to GM crops is weakening, and In the end it was consumer fear and produ- food, but there are as many farmers comfortable corporate pressure on government regulators to cer apprehension about marketing a genetically with corporate partners as there are those opposed. approve crops is increasing. It seems unlikely the For example, wheat farmers would likely embrace coalition that fought-off RR wheat will be as robust drought-resistant wheat in a climate-changed or successful in the future as it was in the last round. prairie if consumer concerns did not affect sales. Still, if Eaton hopes to contribute to the forces Get monthly Eaton’s anti-corporate stance may be the right opposing GM crops, she would be well served one, but more nuance, cogent argument and evi- to work on writing for a less academic audience. updates from dence—and less rhetoric—would have been more Growing Resistance is not a feet-in-the-furrow book, convincing. but rather one replete with off-putting academic GM crops have been around for close to two jargon. the LRC’s decades, and it is a good time to ask whether the Terms such as “neoliberal subjectivity,” “post apocalyptic disaster predicted by some has tran- structuralist” and “epistemological critique” per- editor-in-chief. spired. In North America today, corn, soybeans and meate her writing, used in sentences such as “this is canola are predominately genetically modified, the sense in which the interview is an intersubject- and a handful of other crops have been approved ive production where meaning is not objective, but Sign up online for our and are in common use. Given their ubiquity, it is rather an ongoing interpretive accomplishment.” e-newsletter to receive a reassuring that no cataclysmic health or environ- These phrasings were perhaps necessary to satisfy mental disasters have transpired, although GM her doctoral supervisory committee but detract monthly Editor’s Note from crops are not without their problems. from what could have been a more compelling Bronwyn Drainie, with the Human health has been the biggest concern for tale of the people, history and issues that surround details of new LRC pieces now consumers, and at this point there are no apparent farms. health impacts from current GM crops. After two And whatever your opinion of GM crops may online—including topical decades and widespread presence of GM crops in be, the stories of the proponents and opponents full-text articles republished our food, it is hard to continue arguing that there are riveting, with passion and spirited debate on all from our archives for news- is any danger to our health. Still, some say we have sides. Food is among our most fundamental needs, not waited long enough, or that most of the research and how to farm it, what to grow and who controls letter subscribers—and other has been based in industry or with industry-funded its production and sale confront us with some of magazine-related news. university scientists. And of course, lack of impact the most critical decisions we make as individuals from today’s crops does not mean that future crops and societies. with new traits might not be harmful, suggesting Flawed this book may be, but it is worth the Visit reviewcanada.ca/ that continued regulatory vigilance is desirable. slog to ponder the issues beneath the language But there have been environmental impacts and and rhetoric, as they represent some of the deepest newsletter concerns. Resistance is one; insects initially con- challenges we face in making decisions about our trolled by insecticides engineered into crops have own health and the environment around us.

30 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Letters and Responses

Re: “The Cultural Queen of Canada,” by excellence. This is not always easy as illustrated by ded in the psyche, riddled with what I describe as Suanne Kelman (July/August 2013) the virtual absence of the performing arts on tele- biosexual politics—primal anti-black fears rooted n a brilliant novel written in the 1970s entitled vision today. in slavery’s history (including in Canada)—which IWhite Noise by Don Delillo, the author reminds The Hollywood moguls of the first half of the continues to negatively shape our collective daily of us of the growing cacophony of images and 20th century, emerging out of poverty but rich in human encounters. sounds competing for our attention. While I’m a culture and communications skills, remain prime Henry argues that my discussion of black pro- purveyor of the commercial arts (literary agent, examples of substance and celebrity. Look at what test, statelessness and internationalism could have executive producer and recovering lawyer), I am they produced with the technology of their time. been “given more prominence than a mere few only too familiar with the conflict between content Bravo to Margaret Atwood on her very success- lines of text.” But I not only introduce this issue and commodification. ful self-promotion, which has accrued to the bene- in relation to Richard Iton’s work on the political Having been accosted over the years by intel- fit of the entire literary scene in Canada. potential of the black diaspora, but also elaborate ligent academics and others with absolutely no Michael Levine later with Saidiya Hartman’s notion of slavery’s ability to communicate to a wide audience, I am Toronto, Ontario “afterlife” in relation to the RCMP’s mortal fear of caught between my enormous respect for word- the impact of black national/international politics smiths whose brilliance is self-evident and the Re: “Black Power in Montreal,” by Fran- in Canada. These ideas implicitly and explicitly sad fact that these skills are often overlooked in an ces Henry (July/August 2013) thread through the entire book. overcrowded marketplace, exacerbated by the vol- n her review of Fear of a Black Nation: Race, Henry also suggests that the book focuses on ume of material available in the digital age. ISex and Security in Sixties Montreal, Frances “personal and political differences among the pro- The 2013 Stratford Shakespeare Festival was Henry rightly suggests that there is a vast body of testers” during the Sir George Williams affair. Not launched for the first time ever in Toronto by literature on racism in Canada. What I have tried only is this misleading, but the many interviews a “debate” between Adam Gopnik and Torquil to contribute in the book is a discussion on pol- I conducted with people who were active during Campbell on “popular” versus “classical” culture. itics that situates people of African descent within this period demonstrate the complicated dynam- Not surprisingly, they both agreed that the great- the Canadian/Quebec and black diasporic social ics of the time in relation to gender, age, ancestry, est writer in the English language was—perish the and intellectual experience; and to speak about race, class and politics. These dynamics show both thought—a populist and actually somewhat of a the coevals of race and racism, not as a “black the difference and sameness within a people that carny. problem,” but as a human problem that adversely, are often far too simply reduced to the identity I despise “celebrities” without talent but pro- and deeply, has an impact on the lives people of “black,” but whose reality is more complex. foundly respect and support all efforts to market African descent. This problem is firmly embed- My sense is that Henry is looking for a different

The LRC and Spur present…

Diplomats, Guns and Money Upcoming Speakers The LRC is pleased to announce a Graeme Smith new series of speakers for 2013–14, Marc Lewis in partnership with Spur, Canada’s September 23, 2013 The Gardiner Museum first national festival of politics, November 25, 2013 Toronto, ON The Gardiner Museum arts and ideas. Graeme Smith, an Toronto, ON award-winning former Tickets to these events are $10 foreign correspondent Lewis is a professor of neuropsychology ($5 for students) but are FREE for with The Globe and Mail at Radboud University Nijmegen in the and now a senior analyst Netherlands and the author of Memoirs all LRC subscribers and patrons. with the International of an Addicted Brain. Crisis Group, shares his gripping personal To purchase tickets for Graeme account of the Afghan war waged by the United States, Canada and our allies. With For the inside track on more Smith’s talk—or a discounted tales ranging from NATO cockpits to back Toronto evenings in this series, LRC subscription, which gets you alleys and prisons, he’ll explain how it all to be announced soon, email FREE entrance to the event—visit went dangerously wrong. An expert on the [email protected] and Taliban insurgency, Smith recently finished ask to join our invitation list! reviewcanada.ca/smith The Dogs Are Eating Them Now: Our War in Afghanistan (forthcoming from Knopf).

September 2013 reviewcanada.ca 31 kind of book. Yes, some empirical information was Re: “Blood in the Water,” by Rudy Butt- Ontario analysis writ large, nor do the perpetually sacrificed for critical reflection (though the two ignol (July/August 2013) lagging jurisdictions, Manitoba and the three Mari- streams are not incompatible). However, I believe ecause my purpose in writing Saving the CBC: time provinces. While Levin accurately captures that this “weakness” contributes to the book’s BBalancing Profit and Public Service has been the “reform consensus” of the Canadian educa- strength, and I have no doubt that others will to provoke an urgently needed public debate, I’m tional establishment, he also tends to obscure the further document this far too neglected historical grateful for the extended review by Rudy Buttignol rather chequered pattern of reform with uneven moment. in the LRC. quality standards and student performance all The 1960s represents a gold mine for our I have one small correction to make: I did not over the map. understanding of many of today’s pressing issues, suggest that the CBC “stop commissioning and He makes a heroic effort to dispel any public including gender, race, class, security, sexuality acquiring independent programming,” as the perception that the education system is in crisis. and political solidarity. It represents a moment of review states; only that CBC television begin once A Ipsos Reid poll released on September 6, 2012, enlightenment on the road, I hope, toward a more again producing some programming on its own. would tend to suggest otherwise. An overwhelm- expansive vision of freedom for our time. This Buttignol wishes that the book had spent more ing majority of Canadians (86 percent) now accounts for the book’s tension between docu- time looking at the role of provincial public broad- express concern about public elementary school menting the historical moment in question and casters (one of which he heads), and on the private children’s performance in reading, writing and reflecting on its contemporary significance. production industry. But its purpose was to pro- mathematics. Furthermore, contrary to Levin and David Austin vide a concise, affordable, accessible introduction his allies, three quarters of those surveyed (75 per- Montreal, Quebec to the role of the CBC in the wider media ecology cent) agreed that “standardized testing” was “a of this country, and at 40,000 words, sacrifices have good way” to measure and compare students’ per- Re: “The Politics on Our Plates,” by to be made. There is indeed a place in the emer- formance against other provinces and countries. Sarah Elton and Pierre Desrochers (July/ ging debate for a similar book on the experience of To be fair, Levin accepts the fact that the system August 2013) provincial educational broadcasters, and perhaps is not perfect, but then proceeds to identify sup- n these years of hot-tempered politicking about Buttignol is the one to write it. posed weaknesses like program supports for the Iissues of 100-kilometre eating, locavorism, The important point the book attempts to make, poor, minorities, aboriginal people and students globavorism, agribusiness, obesity and anor- and which the review generously acknowledges, is with disabilities, which are actually our current exia, the best thing to do before settling in with that the CBC is on the brink of a financial collapse strengths, compared to most other developed this latest verbal battle between Sarah Elton and that it is not in a position to survive in any recog- countries in the Organisation for Economic Co- Pierres Desrochers is to run out for a five-spice nizable form. Something has to be done. Either we operation and Development. What he is really pork belly bao from Banh Mi Boys here in Toronto, allow the country’s most important cultural insti- proposing is tinkering with the status quo rather and believe me it’s worth the price of a flight if tution to disintegrate into irrelevance and ultimate than any reform agenda addressing broader public you happen to be unfortunate enough not to live oblivion, or we can pre-empt the collapse by care- concerns. within walking distance. This is probably one fully and purposefully dismantling both the CBC Leading Canadian educators like Levin find of the least healthy things you can possibly eat. and the surrounding broadcast regulatory regime, it difficult to confront the system that they them- Unfortunately, it is also just about the most deli- with a view to reassembling both in a form that selves have helped to shape and tend to have a cious and mouth-pleasing thing you can consume. preserves the virtues of public broadcasting while few blind spots. More objective analysts seeking to It is positively organoleptic. at the same time allowing private broadcasters to assess the state of Canadian K–12 education would The fact is, the world over, people will eat the do what they do best. draw on the independent research of the Canadian most delicious thing they can get their hands on, In short, we need to do a thorough review of Council of Learning and, more importantly, on the and the challenge is simply to balance the damage our antiquated Broadcast Act (1991), before it’s too findings of its final report. It might have been help- with some exercise. I like to exercise in the kitchen, late. One thing that I’ve found very encouraging ful, for example, to reference Paul Cappon’s Octo- so I don’t waste those movements: reaching here, over the year or so that I have been engaged in ber 2010 assessment that “Canada is slipping down bending there, lifting, carrying, always using the researching and writing and eventually promot- the international learning curve” and that “we’re core muscles to take the pressure off the shoulders, ing Saving the CBC is the strong consensus among not going to be able to compete in the future knees and other parts of the body that sometimes media watchers that the public broadcaster unless we get our act together.” While Levin lauds let you down. I intentionally place my appliances, must get out of commercial sponsorship if it is to the Canadian system for “the consistent quality utensils, pots and pans as far away from each other survive. (And that, inevitably, means dropping of our schools,” he seems to brush aside Cappon’s as possible. I use a lot of cast iron, because these hockey.) That’s the essential first step—from there, key finding that “we have very little information are the heaviest. Natural dumbbells, as it were. necessary reform and realignment can follow nationally about how we are doing.” And, the lift with the oven mitts from the oven to naturally. Scraping below the surface, what education the counter; that is something to practise over and Unfortunately, the one place where this con- reforms does Levin actually support? More spend- over again. Such stability it gives your core! At the sensus is not shared is in the upper echelons of the ing on public education, raising graduation rates, end of one of my exercise sessions I might have a CBC itself, where sales and marketing managers poverty reduction measures, investing in arts edu- beautiful layered polenta dish: homemade tomato have come to have an inordinate influence on cation, expanded co-op and workplace education, sauce (using canned tomatoes out of tomato sea- policy. This can only be changed by firm leader- and presumably less emphasis on public account- son—get your whole body involved with the can ship from above—ultimately, from Parliament. ability testing programs. In other words, mainten- opener), fontina, gorgonzola and fresh basil. I fig- Wade Rowland ance of the Canadian education status quo. That’s ure I can lose up to 100 calories making that dish. Port Hope, Ontario also a reasonable facsimile of the aspirational Now back to pork belly and pigs. Pigs are raised McGuinty education agenda from 2003 until 2011. almost the world over, except where they are pro- Re: “Getting to Better Schools,” by Ben While purportedly addressing the perils and hibited for religious reasons. They’ll eat anything, Levin (June 2013) pitfalls of education reform, Levin seems remark- and so as long as there is compost, they will flour- ssessing the state of Canadian educational ably resistant to the more popular panaceas—par- ish. The pork belly bao (bun) is made from pretty Areform is much like trying to nail jelly to the ental choice, standardized testing, teacher quality- much pure gluten I surmise, so you either get wall. In a country like Canada where education is evaluation reform and alternative charter school over your aversion to it, or miss out on one of life’s a jealously guarded provincial responsibility and, programs. In a nutshell, he seems to be gently and sweetest surprises. since the 2011 demise of the Canadian Council on diplomatically rejecting the main tenets of the cur- It’s not that I am unaware of the need to pro- Learning, without any overarching federal pres- rent North American education reform movement. vide for the world’s poor. I am certain we could do ence, it has become a next-to-impossible chal- It all sounded so reasonable that his hidden mes- that now, if we simply asked the pharmaceutical lenge. That may explain why Ben Levin’s essay sage almost escaped my notice. industry to help us, in return for what they have conveyed the distinct impression that Canadian Paul W. Bennett collected from us. Especially from drugs that treat education can be accurately viewed through an Halifax, Nova Scotia diseases we don’t actually have, like “high choles- Ontario lens and educational reform treated as a terol” and “pre-diabetes.” projection of what amounts to the imperilled Dal- The LRC welcomes letters — and more are available Gail Singer ton McGuinty reform legacy. at . We reserve the right to pub- Toronto, Ontario Our top-performing provinces on international lish such letters and edit them for length, clarity and tests, Alberta and Quebec, do not conform to an accuracy. E-mail .

32 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada FALL FOR THESE BOOKS

Selves and Subjectivities Inventing Stanley Park Reflections on Canadian Arts and Culture An Environmental History Edited by Manijeh Mannani and Veronica Sean Kheraj Thompson Sean Kheraj traces how the tension between With essays on Leonard Cohen, Daphne Marlatt, popular expectations of idealized nature and David Cronenberg, and the Aboriginal rap group the volatility of complex ecosystems helped War Party, among others, Selves and Subjectivities transform the landscape of one of the world’s investigates emerging representations of self most famous urban parks. This beautifully and other in contemporary Canadian arts illustrated book not only depicts the natural and offers an exciting contribution to the and cultural forces that shaped the park’s multivocal dialogue surrounding the Canadian landscape, it also examines the roots of our sense of identity. complex relationship with nature.

$29.95 | 978-1-926836-49-2 | paperback $29.95 | 978-0-7748-2425-5 | paperback

The Undiscovered Country Standing Up with Ga’axsta’las Essays in Canadian Intellectual Culture Jane Constance Cook and the Politics of Ian Angus Memory, Church, and Custom The Undiscovered Country engages with themes Leslie A. Robertson and the Kwagu’ł Gixsam of identity, power, and the nation as they Clan emerge in contemporary English Canadian Robertson and Cook’s descendants draw on philosophical thought. Angus also develops the oral histories and textual records to create a concept of locative thought – the thinking of a nuanced portrait of a high-ranked woman, people who have undergone dispossesssion, a cultural mediator, devout Christian, and “of a people that has not yet found its place.” Aboriginal rights activist.

$34.95 | 978-1-927356-32-6 | paperback $39.95 | 978-0-7748-2385-2 | paperback

The Lays of Marie de France The Canadian Rangers Translated by David R. Slavitt A Living History The late 12th-century French woman poet P. Whitney Lackenbauer Marie de France drew from traditional Breton For more than six decades, this dedicated tales to write her twelve “lays,” which offer group of citizen-soldiers has quietly served as profound considerations of love, fidelity and Canada’s eyes, ears, and voice in isolated coastal betrayal, and luck and fate. Presented here and northern communities. Drawing on official in sprightly English verse, the lays offer acute records, interviews, and participation in Ranger observations about the choices women made – exercises, Lackenbauer reveals why the Rangers and still make today. have evolved into a flexible, inexpensive, and culturally inclusive way to promote sovereignty $16.95 | 978-1-927356-35-7 | paperback and security.

$34.95 | 978-0-7748-2453-8 | paperback

Strategic Nonviolent Power Native Art of the Northwest Coast The Science of Satyagraha A History of Changing Ideas Mark A. Mattaini Edited by Charlotte Townsend-Gault, Jennifer Kramer, and Ki-ke-in “I don’t know of another study that does what this . . one does – applies a new theoretical framework to A sweeping survey of the history of ideas nonviolent resistance, synthesizes existing material, and arguments that have shaped and disputed and provides numerous illuminating examples from Northwest Coast Native art for more than history – in a single book.” 250 years. — Erica Chenoweth, author of Why Civil Resistance $195.00 | 978-0-7748-2049-3 | hardcover Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict

$29.95 | 978-1-927356-41-8 | paperback

Available from fine bookstores near you Order by phone 1.800.565.9523 (UTP Distribution) Order online at www.ubcpress.ca Follow us on Twitter @UBCPress www.ubcpress.ca www.aupress.ca LRC sept_LRC Mach 04/07/13 4:42 PM Page 1

Culturally Speaking

Both Hands A Life of Lorne Pierce of Ryerson Press SANDRA SAMPBELL

“A principled idealist and fervent nationalist, Lorne Pierce was perhaps the most inﬂuential book publisher of early twentieth-century The Architecture of Canada. Informed by prodigious research, Andrew Thomas Taylor Shut Off enormous erudition, and welcome humour, Montreal’s Square Mile and Beyond Both Hands argues convincingly for a new The Canadian Digital Television Transition SUSAN WAGG appreciation of Pierce’s importance as a maker GREGORY TAYLOR of Canadian culture. It is a great pleasure to “Thoroughly researched, well referenced, “Shut Off is a tale of missed opportunities, well read.” –Roy MacSkimming, author of The Perilous illustrated, and written, The Architecture of told by an author who has a sound grip of the Trade: Publishing Canada’s Writers Andrew Thomas Taylor will be of great interest issues and knows the terrain and the actors to historians of Montreal, Canada, and the involved well.” social formation of the late nineteenth and –Dwayne Winseck, Carleton University early twentieth centuries.” –Rhodri Windsor-Liscombe, University of British Columbia

Out of the Basement Youth Cultural Production in Practice and in Policy The Perils of Pedagogy MIRANDA CAMPBELL The Works of John Greyson The Ofﬁcial Picture Edited by “…represents a major contribution to research The National Film Board of Canada’s BRENDA LONGFELLOW, SCOTT M ACKENZIE, on cultural policy. There’s no other book in the Still Photography Division and the AND THOMAS WAUGH ﬁeld like this one. It valuably allows readers to Image of Canada, 1941–1971 understand the perspectives of young cultural CAROL PAYNE “…offers scholars, artists, and the general read- producers.” –David Hesmondhalgh, University er the opportunity to trace the complex oeuvre of Leeds “The wealth and variety of Payne’s sources that is John Greyson. The interplay between are exceptional, all of which she examines critical analysis and Greyson’s own voice gives with intelligence and rigour. Through her full colour to Greyson’s work and position remarkable understanding of the period and in the international cultural, aesthetic, and her compelling analysis of the images, Payne political spheres.” shows herself to be an accomplished art and –David Gerstner, City University of New York cultural historian.” –Annie Gérin, Université du Québec à Montréal

The Structures of Law and Literature Duty, Justice, and Evil in the Cultural Imagination JEFFREY MILLER

Garden Plots “The eclectic nature of Jeffrey Miller’s linkages between and Canadian Women Writers and Their among disciplines is not only highly entertaining but demonstrates a level of creativity seldom seen in a ‘law and lit’ book. Literary Gardens Anyone who is a Northrop Frye fan will delight in this SHELLEY BOYD book.” –Lynn Penrod, University of Alberta “Building on the pioneer writing of Moodie and Traill, Shelley Boyd moves gracefully into the twentieth century and provides insightful readings of works by Roy, Shields, and Crozier. Garden Plots adds much to our understanding McGI L L - Q U E E N’S U N I V E R S I TY PR E S S of the writings of these authors.” –Michael Peterman, Trent University m q u p . c a Follow us on Facebook.com/McGillQueens and Twitter.com/Scholarmqup