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THE MEDIA ON TRIAL
The fictional pyrotechnics of Rui Umezawa
LRC VOL. 11, NO. 3 Literary Review of Canada APRIL 2003 $4.50
“McAndrew’s almost total silence on the existence of the English school system in Quebec, and English as a means of communication on a wider basis, is a faithful reflection of the French-language educational system she is describing.” Reed Scowen considers Quebec’s two solitudes and the languages they speak.
“Iraq is the wrong place to lead the Arab world from and Saddam is definitely the wrong man to lead it, but even thugs have dreams.” Gwynne Dyer helps us to understand Iraq.
“Many of us who embraced literary theory in American graduate schools in the heady days of its beginnings in the 1970s had no idea what was about to be unleashed.” Lorrie Clark takes aim at postmodern theory.
“Once I was asked to drive 25 kilometres to change the fuses in an elderly lady’s home where the lights had gone off. ‘But isn’t there someone close by?’ I asked. ‘Well, my son-in-law lives around the corner,’ came the reply, ‘but I didn’t want to bother him.’” John Roberts on the evolving role of MPs.
Jeffery Donaldson on two Canadian poets • Preston Jones on empire and irony • The struggles of Ontario’s Lieutenant Governor • Poetry and more LRCv11n3f 2/19/04 9:22 AM Page 2
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Literary Review of Canada 581 Markham Street, Suite 3A Toronto, Ontario m6g 2l7 LRC e-mail: [email protected] Literary Review of Canada T: 416 531-1483 Vol. ,No. - April F: 416 531-1612
ASSOCIATE EDITORS Lauren B. Davis 3 Tribalism Gone Mad? 16 Racism, Canadian Style Pamela Divinsky A review of Immigration et diversité a l’école: A review of James Bartleman’s Out of Muskoka Lorna MacPhee Le débat québécois dans une perspective compar- by Mark Lovewell Stephen L. McCammon John Roberts ative, by Marie McAndrew Robin L. Roger by Reed Scowen 19 Political Journalists on Trial Geoffrey E. Taylor 6 Through the Looking Fania Urbina A review of Canada’s Democratic Malaise: Are Nipun Vats Glass the Media to Blame? by Richard Nadeau and Patrick Woodcock A review of Private Interests: Women, Portraiture Thierry Giasson, and Who Controls Canada’s CONTRIBUTING EDITOR and the Visual Culture of the English Novel, Media?: A Pilot Study, by Stuart Soroka and Anthony Westell 1709–1791, by Alison Conway Patrick Fournier ASSISTANT EDITOR by Lorrie Clark by Anthony Westell Sonali Thakkar 8 One Cheer for Political 21 Geologist and Giant EDITORIAL INTERNS A review of Spar: Words in Place, by Peter Jonathan Burkinshaw Reform Beth MacKinnon Sanger, and Falling into Place, by John Terpstra An essay COPY EDITOR by John Roberts by Jeffery Donaldson Madeline Koch 11 Spin and Counterspin 26 The Beginning and End of RESEARCH An excerpt from Ignorant Armies: Sliding into American Power Jamila-Khanom Allidina War in Iraq A review of First Great Triumph: How Five ADMINISTRATION by Gwynne Dyer Americans Made Their Country a World Power, Susan Szekely by Warren Zimmermann, and The End of the Khoa Nguyen 13 Lucid Dreaming American Era: U.S. Foreign Policy and the DESIGN A review of Rui Umezawa’s The Truth about Geopolitics of the Twenty-First Century, by James Harbeck Death and Dying Charles A. Kupchan ADVERTISING/SALES by Wendy Eberle-Sinatra by Preston Jones Michael Wile Telephone: - 15 Elegy for the Dead 28 Reviews in Brief Cell: - A poem by Kam Razavi, Blake Heathcote and [email protected] by Rhea Tregebov Jonathan Burkinshaw PUBLISHERS 15 The Stinger Mark Lovewell 30 Letters [email protected] A poem by James Gillies Helen Walsh by Eric Miller [email protected]
15 Away with the Spoon Published by LRC Inc. A poem Denis Deneau, President by Ann Marie Reszetnik founded in 1991 by p.a. dutil The Literary Review of Canada is published 10 times a year by the Literary Review of Canada Inc.It does not appear in January and August.
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Racism, Canadian Style As experienced by Ontario’s Lieutenant Governor early in life Mark Lovewell
During the war, they moved to Welland in feet. Maureen Bartleman (née Simcoe) was very Out of Muskoka southern Ontario, so Percy could try his hand as different from her carefree husband. Intense and James Bartleman a steelworker. But by , his love of the out- serious, she suffered frequent bouts of depres- Penumbra Press doors had reasserted itself, and his family— sion, brought on by childhood hardships at the pages, hardcover which now included two sons and two hands of her alcoholic mother. As an adult, daughters—came back to Muskoka. That sum- Maureen had nothing to do with this woman; her mer, they occupied a tent on the outskirts of Port father died when James and his siblings were still Carling. For six-year-old James and his older quite young. But the rest of her extended family ne summer’s day in , when a sudden brother, Bob, it was an idyllic time. By happy were often nearby, in a collection of shacks storm blew up on Ontario’s Lake coincidence (at least for the two boys), their known as Indian Camp, inhabited by a disparate OCouchiching, there was panic at the home makeshift lodgings were situated near a garbage group of Chippewas and Mohawks during the of the lake’s most famous resident, Stephen dump: summer months. It was a place where Maureen’s Leacock. The adult son of Leacock’s cook had children were always welcome, as Bartleman taken to the water a few hours before in a flimsy We were proud of our large tent, and considered fondly remembers years later: sailing canoe. Leacock launched his motor boat that our location close to the village dump and found the canoe capsized not far from shore. presented opportunities rather than disadvan- The ground was carpeted with pine needles and He hauled the young man out of the water, tages. Granted, the dump had its own distinctive the air was filled with the perfume of giant white pines. The cabins exuded the fragrance of sweet- “We were proud of our large tent, and considered that our grass, fresh birchbark, and strips of white ash that were used for making baskets. The Chippewa location close to the village dump presented opportunities language is, by its very nature, soft, and conversa- rather than disadvantages.” tions were in muted tones. Saturday nights, with their roaring parties, were enlivened by brawls between young Chippewas (always including one impervious to the latter’s insistence that he could fragrance, and the permanent black cloud of of my uncles) and Mohawks, as some vague easily make his own way back to land. Later, smoke from the burning orange crates, card- memory of ancient wars between the two peoples Leacock made sure to inform the Toronto Star of board, scrap lumber, and discarded furniture was surfaced. his heroic exploit, and the story was picked up by not to everyone’s taste. But where else could one the international wire services, even appearing find treasures such as slightly soiled but usable Maureen’s influence on her children extended (doubtless to Leacock’s keen pleasure) in The toys and somewhat torn but still readable comic far beyond her heritage. She became the real head Times. books, and see wildlife (including raccoons and of the Bartleman household, with the tacit The young man involved in this misadventure skunks) in profusion, not to mention flocks of cooperation of Percy’s own parents, who were was the father of Ontario’s current lieutenant seagulls and crows, which constantly circled over devoted to their errant son’s offspring. James’s governor, James Bartleman, whose recently pub- their culinary delights. “white” grandparents moved to Port Carling lished memoirs describe a remarkable life and from Orillia, and built a modest house just next family background. His father Percy was a ne’er- Once autumn brought an end to these warm- to Percy’s own shack. This proximity meant they do-well charmer with a liberal streak of irrespon- weather pleasures, Percy managed to rent a cot- had a significant influence on their grandchil- sibility and a penchant for the outdoors. Having tage for the winter. But the Bartlemans were told dren’s upbringing. spent several years during the Depression as a they had to vacate the premises by the time the For the youthful James, his grandparents’ hobo, he had returned to Ontario and married tourist season started in May. In any case, the cot- calming presence was crucial, given his ambiva- a Chippewa woman from the village of Port tage was hardly luxurious. Uninsulated, it fea- lent attitude to his own father. An attentive par- Carling in the northern lake country of Muskoka. tured most memorably an outdoor toilet that ent in his own wayward fashion, Percy Bartleman (His bride, Maureen, had been just , and all offered virtually no protection during the bitterly routinely downplayed the importance of formal four of her children were born before she reached cold winter that followed. Meanwhile, the two education, and stressed instead an appreciation the age of .) The young couple began their Bartleman boys attended the four-room Port of nature. Marriage to a Native woman did not married life near Maureen’s Indian relatives in Carling Elementary and Continuation School, stop him from making racial slights. When angry Muskoka, and supported themselves by cutting their academic trials (both were woefully unpre- at James for some transgression or other, he firewood, picking blueberries and catching fish, pared for their studies) matched by less cerebral would often chide him with the warning that with the product of their labours sold to local challenges in the schoolyard. As the more Indian- he would grow up a “shiftless Indian.” For the farmers as well as the tourists who descended on looking of the two, Bob bore the brunt of the son, this careless statement was far more painful the region each summer. racial taunts repeatedly flung their way. But than the taunts of “dirty half breed” levelled at James, too, was a recipient, and the two brothers him by schoolyard peers. His father’s gibe “would Mark Lovewell teaches economics at Ryerson University grew used to defending themselves from these render me speechless with a rage mixed with and is co-publisher of the LRC. His last article for the LRC slights as best they could. helplessness, guilt, and fear. Rage came from a was on Robertson Davies. Meanwhile, their mother was finding her own profound feeling that my father’s comment was
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deeply unjust to my mother, my brothers and sis- met. The Clause family were unfailingly cour- It did not take long for the changes in his life ters, and to all Indians. Helplessness and fear teous, and never condescending. They kept a busy to begin. Within a few months, he had moved to came from a suspicion that perhaps my father social schedule with their millionaire friends London, Ontario, along with his paternal grand- was right; could it be that my Indian blood had from the United States who maintained similar parents, to complete his pre-university studies at condemned me to come to no good, no matter establishments throughout the Muskoka Lakes, one of the best high schools in the province. what I did in life?” particularly the so-called “Millionaires’ Row”at Although he initially found the experience terri- The young boy proceeded to prove his father Beaumaris on Lake Muskoka. fying, he stuck out the course, and the next year wrong in the only way he could. By the age of enrolled in a four-year history program at the eight, he was diligently working as a paperboy, an One day, during the summer of ,when University of Western Ontario. Having weathered experience that over the years honed his entre- Bartleman had just finished grade and was the previous year’s trial by fire, he now had con- preneurial abilities, as he helped to support the planning to become an elementary school fidence in his intellectual abilities. As he family by taking orders for the illegally gill-netted teacher, Clause asked to see him on the front immersed himself in his studies, however, fish caught by his father. This contraband was veranda of the family compound. “The request he came to an unwelcome discovery—middle- delivered by James to his customers wrapped in was unusual,” says Bartleman, “since my contacts class Canadians were as uncomfortable around old newspapers and hidden in his carrier bag. On with the head of the family had been confined to aboriginal people as his working-class peers in occasion, he would also accom- Port Carling had been: pany his father on his illegal fishing expeditions: As far as I could tell, there were no Aboriginal students other than We would wait for moonless nights myself at Western at the time and few with cloud cover to mask the students or faculty members had starlight and then walk through the ever met an Indian. Their knowledge dark to our canoe at the water’s of Canada’s Aboriginal reality came, edge, with only the occasional intellectually, from their history spark from my father’s pipe betray- courses if they were in the Human- ing our presence. My father would ities; their personal contact came take the net out of a large packsack from driving through slum-like and place it in the canoe.We would reserves in southern Ontario, or from push quietly out into the current, seeing skid-row drunks staggering never removing our paddles from from one beer parlour to another in the water, to avoid making splash- downtown London. ing sounds, and propel our canoe along until we reached a good spot Each summer he would return to set the net. My father would to Port Carling and continue his return alone in the early hours to work for the Clauses. His father haul in the fish while the family had finally realized that his son slept. had worldly success in his grasp. Percy boasted about this fact to all As the years passed, Percy who bothered to listen. “Always Bartleman’s dependence on such seeking female admirers, he clandestine forms of money mak- sought to live vicariously, chatting ing waned, and the family’s place up local waitresses and trying to in the community solidified. Mau- arrange dates for me,” says reen had begun working as a clean- Bartleman. As for relations with ing lady and part-time cook in his elder brother, these were now the homes of tourists. She soon highly problematic. Bob’s own used her employment contacts to aimlessness led to jealousy, and acquire the position of lockmaster using any pretext, he would on the village’s waterway for her engage in what were ostensibly grateful husband, as well as a series playful tussles. At times, this envy- of odd jobs for her sons. driven horseplay would become so By James’s teen years, his self-confidence had a respectful greeting each morning when intense that Bartleman wondered whether he blossomed, and he did well at school. But the vil- I entered the living room to light the fire.” This would have to live somewhere else during his lage of Port Carling was changing, with fewer time, however, Clause told him that he had been summers. Indians returning to pass the summers in the giving some thought to Bartleman’s future. If he Occasionally when back in Muskoka, he nearby camp. By the s, the abandoned shacks was interested in obtaining a higher education, would meet students with whom he fraternized had fallen into disrepair and were torn down. For Clause would finance him out of the same fund at Western. Often these encounters were unset- Bartleman, the gradual departure of his maternal he had set up to underwrite the schooling of his tling. Most notable was an incident involving a relatives was a passing to be mourned: “I was los- grandchildren. Clause would also pay for him to daughter of one of Canada’s richest businessmen. ing a window on a people and culture that attend the high school of his choice to gain sen- (Bartleman does not reveal her name.) After formed part of my being, but I never discussed ior matriculation. It was a life-transforming accepting an invitation from the girl to spend a the matter with my family or friends.” moment: weekend at her family’s Muskoka property, he Meanwhile, one of his summer jobs would discovered that her parents presumed he must be cause his life to take a dizzying turn. He was After stammering out my thanks, I stumbled off a male gold-digger intent on wedding their offered a job on one of the island estates that dot- the porch, my mind numb. I suddenly realized daughter. A few days later, he saw the family again ted the Muskoka Lakes. It was a job his Indian that I could be anything I wanted to be…I had no when their yacht passed through the locks at Port grandfather as well as his father had each held in idea whether I had the aptitude or the intelli- Carling. All of them, the girl included, ignored turn, on a property owned by a wealthy gence…but I had the blind confidence of youth. his greeting. “I laughed the matter off, consider- American couple, the Clauses. James remained at No challenge was now too great. I remember ing that the incident demonstrated social mores this job for seven summers: walking back in a daze to where I had been more befitting Jane Austen’s eighteenth century cutting wood, staring at huge white cumulus Britain than twentieth century Canada,” says The owners arrived each spring in their company clouds in a deep blue Muskoka sky and listening Bartleman. But the stark contrast with the easy- aircraft, accompanied by an Irish cook and to the lapping of Lake Joseph water on the shore going geniality and generosity of the Clauses household help, the first black people I had ever of that deserted part of the island. could not be easily forgotten.
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Once he had acquired his undergraduate always preceded by cocktails—invariably Dutch the hotel in a chauffeur-driven limousine. Where degree, Bartleman returned to Western to do gin, taken straight, with kroepoek (a shrimp was the rest of his money? graduate work, again thanks to Clause’s funding cracker) as a snack; wine was served at dinner; Bartleman tried to convince him that there and now also a government scholarship. But he knives were held in the right hand and forks in was none: as a diplomat he received a good cloth- soon realized he had made a mistake, and the left, not constantly shifted back and forth ing allowance, but he was not well-off. His captor dropped out after just a few months. Embar- during the meal as in North America. (No elbows was evidently unnerved to leave the scene with so rassed at having let down the Clauses, he was on the table, no thumb on the dish, no crackers in little in the way of a reward. “He pushed me for- nonetheless determined to see the world. The rest the soup, and don’t even think of licking the plate, ward on the bed and started to force a piece of of that academic year he worked as a high school even in jest!) underclothing down my throat; he wanted to be teacher, and by spring had earned enough for a sure I wouldn’t raise the alarm as he made his transatlantic air ticket. Once he had imbibed enough of such train- getaway.” His nose already filled with congealed Europe, once he got there, was a revelation. ing—especially valuable, given his aim to be a blood, Bartleman knew he would suffocate Most important was his realization that in his diplomat—he decided it was time to return to unless he managed to remove the gag. He was new surroundings his mixed roots were an Canada. Soon he was back in Port Carling for yet able to spit it out. Then, as his persecutor began attractive attribute rather than an indelible stain: another summer. Following a year’s teaching in to stuff it back in, he begged for his life. He spoke southern Ontario, he passed the exams to join the of his own family, and promised to be silent as his To my surprise, I discovered that on the other side Department of External Affairs, and was ready to torturer departed. of the Atlantic, Indians were regarded as coura- embark on his dream to pursue a diplomatic The man eyed him carefully, then paced the geous, warrior-like, and endowed with an inher- career. room. As he did so, Bartleman told him that the ent ability to commune with nature, as well as The next three and a half decades gave him a cashmere sports coat and Hermes tie that he had victims of brutal colonial aggression. Exposure to chance to work in a wide range of countries, stolen from the wardrobe suited him, as did the the romantic notion of the noble savage, which including Cuba, Israel and South Africa. Jaeger-LeCoultre watch he had taken from goes back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the Despite the success of his professional career, Bartleman’s wrist. The man approached him eighteenth century, and to Karl May’s depictions however, the demons of his Muskoka youth still again, but this time with a distracted air. He told of the heroic exploits of Native Americans in plagued him: “I found it impossible to come to him he would let him live. But before he left, he popular literature at the beginning of the twenti- terms with the village life that had shaped my threatened him one more time, telling him that if eth century, had left its mark. being. The consequence was that in my own he called out or provided the police with any mind I remained an outsider, with an uncertain details, then the members of his gang (called the This attitude was as unrealistic, in its own identity in Canadian society.” Gestapo) would kill his family. He turned to way, as the ill-willed condescension that had been These reservations were to break out yet again leave, but before he reached the door, he turned the norm back in Canada. But Bartleman, into full-fledged anxiety after a horrifying inci- around and came back. now a good-looking young man possessed of dent in . In February of that year, while “I thought he had changed his mind and it was the end,” says Bartleman. “Instead, he said, ‘I’m sorry,’ and left the room. I was devastated. When he turned to let the man in, he felt an electric This petty thief, after brutalizing, humiliating, stun gun against his stomach. Despite the numbing and robbing me, was now seeking to deny me the right to hate him.” electrical surge that ripped through his body, Bartleman’s brush with death caused hardly a Bartleman was still able to fight back. ripple in the South African press. In a nation that now has more than , murders a year and a rape taking place every four minutes, a crime of considerable charm, was in no mood to disabuse serving as Canada’s envoy in South Africa, he such limited magnitude received little public the Europeans he met (particularly the young travelled from Pretoria to Cape Town to attend attention. But the incident made headlines in women) of such useful misconceptions. After Nelson Mandela’s retirement speech to Par- Canada. Bartleman, meanwhile, could not over- journeying through Britain, he took a ferry to liament. For Bartleman, it would be an especially come the distress the incident had caused. “I was Norway and hitchhiked northward. By the time symbolic moment, given the prominent role shaken to the core…It was as if the groveling he reached the Arctic Circle, he had exhausted his Canada and its foreign service had played in I had had to do to survive had destroyed my sense meagre financial resources. He decided to cross helping smooth Mandela’s rise to power. But fate of identity and resurrected old struggles over into Finland and make his way to the Canadian intervened. Soon after arriving at his seafront existential issues that I had come to terms with as embassy in Helsinki. There he was received by an hotel, Bartleman answered his room door to find a child and youth.” elegant French Canadian vice-consul. “She told a heavy-set man who said he had been sent to Soon after this incident, Bartleman retired me the Canadian government would not advance check the ceiling fan. When he turned to let the from the foreign service. Then, in , came yet funds, but offered to send a telegram to my man in, he felt an electric stun gun against his another opportunity, with his appointment as mother for help,” Bartelman notes. “ I decided at stomach. Despite the numbing electrical surge Ontario’s lieutenant governor. His immediate that moment that the foreign service was really that ripped through his body, Bartleman was still predecessor, Hilary Weston, brought uncommon for me and that it was time to learn French.” able to fight back. enthusiasm and elegance to the position, and The money he soon received from his mother “I saw, as if from afar, that I had knocked my managed to raise its public profile in an age when allowed him to return to England, where he assailant to the floor,”he remembers, “but he was Canadians are becoming increasingly apathetic taught at a secondary school in Essex, until the rising to his feet, the look in his eyes no longer about their monarchial institutions. Bartleman dullness of his duties drove him to London. neutral, but angry and determined…Without has the potential to make an equally valuable After a stint as a night porter in a student resi- thinking, I drove my fist into his face. contribution. In this symbolic office, the hard- dence, it was off to the continent. Passing Overpowering pain engulfed my hand. It was as ships and successes of his life take on added reso- through the Hague, an affair with a girl who if I had hit a piece of concrete. At the age of , nance. While he has not used his personal story lived there led to her parents’ insistence that he I was too old for this kind of nonsense.” as a stage for political pronouncements, he does be their houseguest. Here, under the parents’ In short order, the man broke Bartleman’s not need to. As the details of his life show, even watchful eye, Bartleman found himself intro- nose, which “precipitated a cascade of blood over extraordinary luck and remarkable achievement duced to the classic refinements of a European my body, onto him, and over the rug and the cannot erase the malignant effects of the subtly bourgeois household: bedroom furniture.” Bartleman complied with racist attitudes that still often underlie the treat- the man’s orders as his hands were bound behind ment of aboriginal Canadians. Books such as this The family’s home was in Wassenar, one of the his back with neckties, and he watched his captor memoir, with its matter-of-fact portrayal of these most exclusive neighbourhoods in the Dutch go through his suitcases. The man grew increas- attitudes and the incalculable harm they have capital, if not in the entire country.The head of ingly angry with his meager findings of , wrought, cannot help but hasten what will hope- the family was never seen without a jacket and rand (about ). Bartleman must be a rich fully one day be their final disappearance from tie, even on weekends. The evening meal was man, since he was well dressed and had arrived at Canadian society.m
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