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Vol. 27, No. 1 • January/February 2019 Editors-In-Chief Murray Campbell (interim) Kyle Wyatt (incoming) [email protected] 3 The Tools of Engagement 21 Being on Fire art director Kyle Wyatt, Incoming Editor-in-Chief A poem Rachel Tennenhouse Nicholas Bradley Assistant Editor 4 Invisible Canadians Elaine Anselmi How can you live decades with someone 22 In the Company of War Poetry Editor and know nothing about him? Portraits from behind the lens of Moira MacDougall Finding Mr. Wong by Susan Crean conflict photography fiction Editors Judy Fong Bates Shooting War by Anthony Feinstein Basil Guinane Murray Brewster Cecily Ross 6 A Quiet Miracle copy editor Jewish life has survived and thrived in 24 Right Out of Tosca Patricia Treble Canada—against all odds The sprawling, multi-generational history of Contributing EditorS Seeking the Fabled City by Allan Levine a family that is a window to the strangeness Bronwyn Drainie, Beth Haddon, Suanne Kelman and richness­ of Quebec Mohamed Huque, Andy Lamey, Mark Songs for the Cold of Heart by Eric Dupont Lovewell, Molly Peacock, Robin Roger, Bardia Sinaee 7 Julio Alison Gzowski A poem ProofReaders Cristina Austin, Suzanne Mantha, A.J. Stainsby 26 ‘Scots Wha Hae’ Sondra McGregor Turmoil in eighteenth-century Scotland 8 Ignoring Tectonic Shifts ADVERTISING/SALES changed Canada and the world Michael Wile As the Asian world has risen, Canada has Call of Empire by Alexander Charles Baillie, The [email protected] paid little attention Scottish Clearances by T.M. Levine, Set Adrift business manager David M. Malone Upon the World by James Hunter Paul McCuaig Chris Alexander Board of Directors 11 Legal Pot: The Devil Is in the Details Jaime Watt (Chair); Joseph Kertes; Andrew Potter in conversation 28 The Formula to End Homelessness John Macfarlane, C.M.; Amela Marin; with James McIntosh A collection of essays from front-line shelter Don McCutchan; Trina McQueen, O.C. workers offers a glimpse at what works and corporate secretary 13 Pollack of Body Art a picture of why poverty persists Vali Bennett A poem Beyond Shelters edited by James Hughes Advisory Council Barry Dempster Carol Goar Michael Adams, C.M.; Alan Broadbent, C.M.; Carol Hansell; Don Rickerd, C.M. 15 The World inside Their Heads Poetry Submissions 29 Bringing Back the Body For guidelines, please see reviewcanada.ca. A novelist wrestles with the idea that fiction is A poem LRC design concept by Jackie Young/INK stranger than truth J.R. Gerow Most of What Follows Is True Founded in 1991 by P.A. Dutil The LRC is published ten times a year by the Literary by Michael Crummey 30 Eat, Die, Live Review of Canada Charitable Organization. Susan Swan The prospect of death, the morality of food, annual subscription rates and making more of a longer life Individuals in Canada $56/year plus GST/HST. 17 When Terror Came to Canada (Libraries and institutions in Canada $68/year plus John Allemang GST/HST.) Outside Canada, please pay $86/year for The response to the FLQ crisis remains individuals, or $98 for libraries and institutions. controversial five decades later 31 Letters Subscriptions and Circulation The Making of the October Crisis Martin Breum, Ray Argyle, Tony Fang Literary Review of Canada by D’Arcy Jenish P.O. Box 8, Station K, Toronto, ON M4P 2G1 [email protected] Brian Stewart 32 Defining Race 416-932-5081 • reviewcanada.ca Why both culture and biology count ©2019 Literary Review of Canada. All rights, including­ translation into other languages, are reserved by the 20 The Fire and Brimstone Next Time Andy Lamey publisher in Canada, the United States, the United We deal with the reality of evil by thinking Kingdom, and all other countries participating in the Universal Copyright Convention, the International of ways that sinners are punished Copyright Convention and the Pan-American Copyright Convention. Nothing in this publication may be Hell and Damnation by Marq de Villiers re­produced without the written permission of the Mark Lovewell publisher. ISSN 1188-7494 Literary Review of Canada is indexed in the Canadian Literary Periodicals Index and the Canadian Index and is distributed by Disticor and Magazines Canada. Illustrations by Min Gyo Chung, a Korean-Canadian illustrator based in Toronto. His work has appeared in such magazines as The Walrus, Reader’s Digest Canada, and Corporate Knights.

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January/February 2019 reviewcanada.ca 1 “LOVING, FUNNY, AND BEAUTI­

FULLY—Ronald Wright, author ofTOLD.” A Short History of Progress

The Organist: Fugues, Fatherhood, and a Fragile Mind by Mark Abley

“ ‘What does a life add up to?’ This question is central to Mark Abley’s haunting family memoir . . . . he ventures bravely into territory that is, for almost everyone, mysterious: what our parents were like before we, their children, became (so we like to imagine) central to their lives. What this compelling book makes clear is that what we don’t know about them is often what we don’t know about ourselves.” —David Macfarlane, author of The Danger Tree

“Beautiful, tender, and raging…” —Charles Foran, author of Mordecai: The Life and Times

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2 LRC AD THE ORGANIST U of R Press.indd 1 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review2018-12-03 of Canada 9:42 AM editor’s note The Tools of Engagement

he Literary Review of Canada announced “The First Issue!” in December T1991 with confident, unadorned typog- raphy, a four-column grid, and simple house ads inviting readers to “treat yourself to the best discus- sions of Canadians.” The second issue, two months later, described itself on the back page as “what you thought was always needed!!” As an undergraduate English major at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, I learned a valu- able lesson in editorial restraint: You have three exclamation points to use in your entire life. Use them wisely. It’s a maxim I generally embrace, but I happily forgive my predecessors for spending the LRC’s allotment in those early days. I also admit to using more than my share of exclamation when the magazine offered me the opportunity to help shape “the best discussions” of today. It wasn’t until November 1992, with the eleventh issue, that the LRC ran its first editor’s note. Much has changed in the intervening years—for the magazine, for readers, for Canadian print culture— but that note’s seven relatively sombre paragraphs, run right on the front page, continue to ring true:

The Literary Review of Canada was created to fill a serious void in Canada’s cultural landscape: insightful, substantive reviews of While the LRC has changed over the years, its mandate remains the same. Canadian books....Born the child of a severe photograph by Bryan Dickie economic crisis, and of a time when the American newspaper USA Today can boldly Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The Walrus, The to provide relevant cultural context that helps us advertise itself on Canadian street boxes as New Yorker, and many others through the various make sense of the news that is broken. To hold up a “the national daily” without even raising screens that punctuate my day. I am not one to mirror, as best as space and other constraints allow, eyebrows, the possibilities of survival for a read James Meek’s fascinating but lengthy review of to the widest possible range of Canada’s intellectual Canadian monthly dedicated to the explora- Alan Rusbridger’s Breaking News on my phone, but output. tion of the Canadian mind seemed slim. I am keenly aware of it because I follow the London I am deeply humbled to add my name to the Review of Books on Instagram. list of LRC editors—from Patrice Dutil to Sarmishta However slim the margins of survival were then, The LRC, on the other hand, is not what one Subramanian—who have shaped an indispensable the magazine and the cultural space it covers would would describe as an early adopter: The magazine’s forum for discussion in this country. While my soon have to reckon with a radical destabilization of website, reviewcanada.ca, got going in September name appears in this issue, all of the credit goes print media and unimaginable redistribution of ad 2001; our pages didn’t mention the URL in print to interim editor Murray Campbell, who has kept revenue—a continuing upheaval felt by legacy and for another two years. Though the site has evolved the magazine going these past few months with the upstart publications alike. Yet survive the LRC has, since then, the magazine’s web and social media help of a dedicated team of staff and supporters. sometimes narrowly, because “our pages feed the presence are rather tired. But in the months to You are holding in your hands—or reading on your need to discover more about the intellectual rich- come, we will, like Rip Van Winkle with an iPhone, screen, perhaps—the product of their commit- ness that is Canada.” With fewer and fewer places to gradually awaken to the twenty-first century in ments and intellectual toil. Because of them, I can look for smart analysis on the wide variety of books thoughtful, sustainable ways that complement the confidently say theLiterary Review of Canada will an ever wider variety of Canadians write, those physical magazine that graces your coffee table and survive the coming year—a promise not unlike the words are even truer today. stands proudly tall on the newsstand. If we do it one made in November 1992 and honoured ever No one can deny the vehicles with which we right, with the resources we have, even more read- since. And that calls for an exclamation point! might connect thoughtful readers, from coast to ers may “come to depend on the Literary Review of coast to coast, with our nation’s intellectual rich- Canada as a guide to our symbols.” ness have changed. And no one can deny the LRC The tools have changed since the early 1990s, hasn’t stayed up-to-date with the latest models. but my editorial brief remains more or less the Physical books and magazines fill my house same: To reflect deeply on books and other texts Kyle Wyatt and mailbox, but I also engage with The New York that nourish Canadian life. Not to break news, but Incoming Editor-in-Chief

January/February 2019 reviewcanada.ca 3 Invisible Canadians How can you live decades with someone and know nothing about him? Judy Fong Bates

his position as a live-in cook at a resi- Finding Mr. Wong dence in Toronto’s Rosedale and go Susan Crean to work for Crean and his wife at their Talonbooks new home a few kilometres away on 272 pages, softcover Old Forest Hill Road. At that time in ISBN 9781772011944 Toronto social geography, although not so much today, a move from Rosedale to Forest Hill would have ith the exception been a step down. What possessed of The Five Chinese Wong to accept what would have WBrothers, every book I been considered a socially inferior read as a young child in small-town position? As it turned out, he made Ontario in the late 1950s and early the right move. 1960s was filled exclusively with char- It would have been easy for Susan acters who were white. When I was Crean to have written an agreeable thirteen I encountered a non-white account about the Chinese domestic person in Gone with the Wind. I was who worked for her grandparents, a in my early twenties when I finally story where the employers are kind, met a Chinese person in Canadian the hired help hard-working and literature in W.O. Mitchell’s Who Has loved by the family. Fortunately for Seen the Wind. In life and in literature the reader, Crean does more than this. we Chinese, although considered a Yes, Wong is loyal and hard-working. visible minority, were in fact invisible. He keeps house, cooks the meals, It wasn’t until the late 1980s and tends the garden, and even manages early 1990s that writers like Sky Lee, Tony, the adored but mischievous Wayson Choy, Denise Chong, and African green parrot. In time he Paul Yee began to share our stories becomes that most valued servant in Canada. Those early stories were who knows his employers better about life in Chinatowns in the big than they even know themselves. He city, in shops, restaurants, and laun- knows that Crean’s grandmother likes dries, rarely about domestic help in her breakfast grapefruit cut into bite- the homes of white people. As a child, size pieces with a splash of Jameson my image of the Chinese houseboy whiskey and that oatmeal needs to was formed by characters in U.S. tele- be served with strips of toast. On vision shows like Peter in Bachelor Sundays he is able to produce a roast Father and Hop Sing in Bonanza. beef dinner with Yorkshire pudding. Compared to the rest of the casts, The Crean girls with Wong Dong Wong. At Christmas he decorates the house these Chinese houseboys seemed Photograph courtesy talonbooks with pine boughs and knows exactly meek, inconsequential, sometimes where to hang the mistletoe. He comic. As far as mainstream Canadian culture was of Toronto, in a small town where my father washed makes marmalade from scratch. concerned, if the Chinese in the Chinatowns flew other people’s clothes for a living. If the Creans had After Crean’s grandfather died in 1947, Wong under the radar, the Chinese domestics didn’t even lived in Acton, it is likely that my father would have stayed on for almost another twenty years, look- make it on to the screen. Thus it was with much washed and pressed Mr. Crean’s shirts. It is one of ing after his widow. Over time, the relationship interest and anticipation that I started to read Susan life’s ironies that in late middle age, two women took on a tinge of Driving Miss Daisy. On Friday Crean’s memoir, Finding Mr. Wong. from such divergent backgrounds should embark nights they watched the fights on television, argu- Susan Crean and I grew up on opposite sides of on journeys where each would mirror the other. ing about who might win. Every Christmas mor- the track from each other. By the time she was born In 2010 I published a memoir, The Year of Finding ning Wong accompanied Mrs. Crean to her son’s in the mid-1940s, her family was part of the upper Memory, which took me back to my ancestral home home for breakfast, and then had dinner ready for middle class living in Toronto’s Forest Hill. My in China in the hope of learning more about my everyone back at the Forest Hill home. He seemed home, on the other hand, was an hour’s drive west parents. Finding Mr. Wong is the story of Susan to straddle the line between family member and Crean’s effort to understand the Chinese man who employee. However, it was a line that was never Judy Fong Bates is the author of The Year of Finding was employed as a servant for almost forty years in crossed. When Susan Crean was four years old and Memory, a memoir of returning to China and the home of her paternal grandparents. attending kindergarten, she told her class about uncovering her parents’ past. Her novel, Midnight There must have been something appealing Wong. A classmate asked, “So who’s Wong?” In at the Dragon Café, was chosen as Toronto’s “One about Gordon Crean, Susan Crean’s grandfather, that moment Crean realized that not everyone Book Community Read” for 2011. that made Wong Dong Wong decide in 1928 to leave had a Wong. She was unable to explain and felt

4 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada awkward. Wong was a loose end, neither fish nor soup. He taught the sisters how to use chopsticks. It Without doubt Crean was pleased to uncover fowl. There is a sense throughout the book that is telling that in the almost forty years spent in the these facts about Mr. Wong, but she wanted more. Crean has struggled with this all her life. Wong was Forest Hill home he shared so little of himself and She wanted context. She researched the history of a man she had known since birth. He was someone his culture and that the Creans for whatever reason the Chinese in Canada, the racism that was at the she loved and who loved her. He took her to the never bothered to find out. That, as a young adult, heart of legislation that formed the head tax and movies, bought her a bicycle, for Christmas he sur- Susan Crean made room and time to know Wong the 1923 Chinese Exclusion Act, both of which lead prised her with a stuffed panda. Every May 24 he the man is a testament to the deep and lasting affec- to the formation of bachelor societies, forcing men bought fireworks and, to the delight of the family tion she had held for Wong the servant. to be separated from their families in China until and neighbours, lit them in the backyard. Susan, or After Wong died of stomach cancer in 1970, after the act was repealed in 1947. She read about Sun-sii as he called her, was his favourite and she Crean continued to wonder about him. Who was the relationship between domestics and their knew it. On some level, for a bachelor like Wong, Wong Dong Wong? In her search to find out about employers, talked to academics and community she was a surrogate daughter. her beloved Wong, she began a journey to learn leaders. And, finally, she travelled to China and vis- And yet the Creans knew very little about Wong about a man she had known all her life, who yet ited Shui Doi, Wong’s ancestral village, where she Dong Wong on a personal level. They met with surviving relatives and vil- knew that every Sunday on his day lage officials who greeted her with a off, he would dress in his suit and On Sundays Wong is able to produce banquet and much ceremony. Along tie and go to Chinatown where he the way Crean gained an understand- would meet with friends, drink tea, a roast beef dinner with Yorkshire ing of the culture and landscape that and perhaps visit the gambling dens. formed the man who was such a sig- Wong’s domain was primarily the pudding. At Christmas he decorates nificant yet quiet presence in the life kitchen. He lived upstairs toward the the house with pine boughs. He of her family. back of the house. Under his care, the But she also discovered that there house functioned like a well-oiled makes marmalade from scratch. were things which she would never machine. There was little need for know or understand, for some things questions. For Susan Crean, getting to are simply unknowable. “What would know Wong Dong Wong the man only really started remained a mystery. She found out that he was born Wong have thought of his life in Forest Hill? How after her grandmother and Wong moved out of the in Taishan county, Guangdong province, in 1895 hard was it to adapt to Canadian ways?” Through Forest Hill home, her grandmother into an assisted and was orphaned not long after birth. In 1911, a her journey to learn about Mr. Wong, Crean has living facility and Wong into a rooming house in village uncle who was already in Canada paid the given us a moving account of a man, an outsider Chinatown. $500 head tax for Wong to emigrate. He arrived on and an orphan, who against all odds found family Once Wong retired, Crean and her sister visited the steamer the SS Canada Maru on November 16 and acceptance in a foreign land. In so doing, she him at least once a week. It was during these years of that year. In order to pay back the head tax, he has shone a light on a little-known part of the story that he introduced them to Chinese food, at first worked at his uncle’s Vancouver restaurant. By the of the Chinese in Canada, and she has done so with “safe” dishes like fried noodle with beef and dim time his uncle decided to sell the restaurant in 1917, love. I have no doubt that wherever Wong might be, sum such as shrimp dumplings and sticky rice, but Wong had already paid off his debt. It seemed like a he is smiling about the gift that his Sun-sii has given then gradually braised chicken feet and bird’s nest good time to board a train and head east to Toronto. to Canada.

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January/February 2019 reviewcanada.ca 5 A Quiet Miracle Jewish life has survived and thrived in Canada—against all odds Suanne Kelman

Seeking the Fabled City: The Canadian Jewish Experience Allan Levine McClelland & Stewart 512 pages, hardcover ISBN 9780771048050

istorian Allan Levine must be a very brave man. First, writing Seeking Hthe Fabled City: The Canadian Jewish Experience involved sifting through a massive and widely dispersed mountain of documents, plus interviewing dozens of people, all to create a book deeply wounding to Canadian vanity. We have become fond of contrasting our multicultural tol- erance and civility with the bigotry of less happy nations. That is not a theme you can extract from our history, however; Canada’s treatment of its Jewish population often makes for painful reading. We live in a country that disliked and mistreated refugee minorities fleeing oppression long after the Second World War. Multiculturalism is a very new value here. Canada is now one of the best places in the world to be Jewish, which is not necessarily good news for a historian. There is no central tragedy to shape the narrative line—just a progression of set- backs, defeats, and occasional stunning successes that somehow morphs into mainstream accept- ance in recent years. Canada has seen plenty of Many Jews in Canada can remember feeling like not-terribly-welcome guests in their own country. anti-Semitism, some violence, a few riots—but no photograph courtesy of Ontario Jewish Archives pogroms, no concentration camps, no Pittsburgh synagogue massacre. Nor does the country’s geog- Jewish history in Canada. The first settlers provide spokesmen: the delusion that Jews form a united, raphy help. This is a big place, with Jews sprinkled an excellent example. The honour of identifica- indeed monolithic bloc. It’s an extraordinary mis- from coast to coast. History and geography make it tion as Canada’s first Jew is generally awarded to conception, given that Canada’s Jews cover a spec- difficult to impose a clear storyline on Jewish hist- either Aaron Hart or Samuel Jacobs in the mid- trum that runs from Dave Barrett to Ezra Levant, ory here. The two unifying themes that emerge from eighteenth century. But Levine points out that other from Peter C. Newman to Larry Zolf, from Linda Levine’s narrative are oppression from the outside candidates got here first. A Sephardic Jewish mer- Frum to Naomi Klein. Canada has many Jewish and reaction against it, and the state of Israel, which chant, Joseph de la Penha, claimed Labrador for communities, and they are not always on the best has replaced religion as the identifying factor for William of Orange in 1677. (His descendants tried of terms with each other. many Canadian Jews. But discrimination has faded, unsuccessfully to regain possession of the territory The history here reinforces, repeatedly, a senti- Canadian Jews have largely prospered, and Israel in the twentieth century.) And Esther Brandeau, at ment I first encountered on a birthday card. The has become a divisive issue. So the shape of Jewish the age of twenty, landed in New France in 1738, card’s front read, “Experts have found that two history in Canada is, frankly, squishy. disguised as a man. The authorities eventually out of three Jews agree…” The open card finished It is difficult to convey the sheer volume of shipped her back to France, irritated by her refusal the sentence: “…on absolutely nothing.” Levine’s material that Levine assimilated to write Seeking to convert to Catholicism. People and themes chronicle of discrimination against Jews is comple- the Fabled City (the title comes from a poem by surface in documents and then disappear. And mented by the ongoing squabbles among Canada’s Montreal poet A.M. Klein). There is simply so much remember that problem of geography: woe betide Jews themselves. Somewhat to my surprise, the the historian whose focus on Montreal, Toronto, contemporary divisions are less intense than some Suanne Kelman is a professor emeritus of Ryerson Winnipeg, and Vancouver leads him to omit the of the past ones. (I can’t recall a recent occasion University’s school of journalism. She previously Jews of the Maritimes or Alberta. in which a rabbi was beaten up over a theological worked for the CBC and the Globe and Mail and Levine’s courage runs much deeper. His book dispute.) Refreshingly, Levine does not pretend now lectures on books. She describes herself as a acts as a corrective to a myth perpetrated by both that he rises above the fray in a spirit of pure aca- mostly secular Jew. the worst anti-Semites and by aspiring Jewish demic detachment. He admits freely to his Zionist

6 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada ­sympathies and his personal biases. You could use some parts of this book as recruitment material should you ever wish to found a fan club for the National Post’s Barbara Kay. Julio But no historian has worked harder to play fair. Levine acknowledges that criticism of Israel is not Inevitable — limited to anti-Semites, and that it can be valid, the taste of kerosene on a tongue trained for heat though he does note the paradox of LGBT and environmental activists attacking the only country first pinchos in the Middle East that would tolerate them. He then fire identifies a useful signal that their motives may be less than pure: the demonization of Israel as a do what you have to do uniquely evil state by protesters who remain silent mothers leave about China’s treatment of its Uighur population, Bashar al-Assad’s attacks on his own people, or join their sisters in the States Saudi Arabia’s bombing of Yemen. break backs It’s a safe bet that Levine’s herculean efforts to & baby bonds achieve balance will not prevent some of his read- but catrachas are fireproof ers from taking offence. For instance, he is careful to note that Quebecers, French or English, “were it’ll lick your body like a cat not necessarily more racist than other Canadians.” scrape craters onto the skin of a 20-something But the rest of the book makes it clear that anti- now ageless Semitism runs deep in that province’s culture. but you only make that mistake once Many readers will already know about the infam- ous interns strike at Notre-Dame Hospital in 1934. Ignite — That’s the year when thirty-one of the hospital’s it’s a ticket for the next ones thirty-two interns walked out to protest against the hospital’s offer of an internship to what they termed blubbering birds a “Hebrew.” As they explained to a journalist, who will rise from the mist “Catholic patients found it repugnant to be treated of 151 Rum by a Jewish doctor.” incombustible The results of the surveys, some recent, that Levine quotes would be adequate proof that Quebecers disproportionately dislike and distrust Jews, but it’s the passages from the press, priests, and politicians that really put the teeth on edge. Worse, not all of these citations come from the dis- A.J. Stainsby tant past. In 1988, La Presse sided with Outremont (then a separate city within Montreal) in its effort to restrict the number of Hasidic synagogues, argu- A.J. Stainsby recently graduated from Queen’s University and has had works published in ing that the Hasidim are a “bizarre minority, with the Literary Review of Canada, FreeFall Magazine, and Lake Effect 8, an anthology published its men in ‘pigtails,’ all in black like bogeymen, its by Upstart Press. In 2017, she was awarded the James H. Stitt Prize in Poetry. women and children dressed like onions.” It’s difficult to imagine words quite that offen- sive in today’s mainstream English-language press. Still, to follow Levine’s example of even-handed Louis Rasminsky—but also scores of anecdotes political correctness. I think Levine was genuinely discourse, let me quote from a letter to Ontario about Jewish Canadians who attended Jewish offended by the history of sexism he unearthed. premier Leslie Frost in 1950 from a friend, a judge summer camps, tried to farm, organized charit- Fifty years ago, at a very WASP gathering of aca- named J.A. McGibbon, as Queen’s Park was dis- able drives, or just struggled to make a living. It’s a demics, I overhead a well-upholstered matron ask, cussing a law to abolish discrimination in the sale technique that makes the book readable, not just a “Why are Canadian Jews so much less interesting of property: “I do not want a coon or any Jew squat- valuable resource. and creative than American Jews?” At the time, I ting beside me, and I know way down in your heart There have been histories of Canada’s Jews by informed her that I often asked myself the same you do not.” To his credit, Frost told his friend he Gerald Tulchinsky, Irving Abella, and others. What question about Canadian WASPs. was out of date. Still, historically, intolerance is not distinguishes Levine’s work is its comprehensive But now, looking back, I realize what a water- unique to Quebec. approach, in both material and attitude. That does shed that question represents. I can’t imagine a Levine is also willing to risk outrage from at least mean it may offer more detail than the general university gathering now where a guest could ask some of Canada’s Jews. Seeking the Fabled City is reader wants on the founding and schisms of syna- such a question, or even assume that no Jews would unlikely to feature on any gift lists for the board of gogues and charitable institutions, or the ongoing be present. Levine’s book shows that it is a miracle CIJA, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, now struggles of regular folk against the machers, the Canadian Jews managed to accomplish anything, the self-proclaimed representative of Canada’s Jews big shots who claim a divine right to direct other given the myriad obstacles Canada placed to block and their interests. Levine does a magnificent job of people’s lives. But some of those details are illumin- their progress, success, and assimilation. unravelling the machinations that led to its creation ating for their own sake. The story of Toronto’s brief If you are a Jew who’s lived in Canada for more and its eventual destruction of the highly respected war over the kosher certification of butchers in the than sixty years, you can remember feeling like a Canadian Jewish Congress in 2011. He lets each fac- 1920s certainly held my interest. not-terribly-welcome guest in your own country. tion speak for itself, but his own unease is obvious. Perhaps the most distinguishing feature of Today, there is a dispute about the size of Canada’s That section, near the end, illustrates the Seeking the Fabled City is that it was written now. Jewish population, all because Statistics Canada technique that brings the book’s facts and figures That means that Levine dispels another popular removed “Jewish” from its list of top ethnic ances- alive. Levine functions like a camera, switching and fallacious stereotype: the belief that Jewish tral identities in its 2016 long-form census question from wide shots to close-ups, as he focuses on women hold the true power in their communities. about “ethnic and cultural origins.” Without that people who exemplify or animate the numbers Whatever the dynamics of individual families, reminder, Canada’s Jewish population suddenly and data. The bibliography lists fifteen pages of that has never been true in the spheres of religion dipped to half of its previous level. Still, that means printed material, but the following page provides and politics. This book shows a recurring pattern: many Canadian Jews couldn’t be bothered to write the names of fifty people interviewed over two women raised the money for charity, and men the identifying word “Jewish”—which does suggest time periods. The book features stories about fam- decided how to spend it—without consultation. a certain lack of commitment. This is the story of iliar figures—Samuel Bronfman, Mordecai Richler, The chapter on this does not read like a gesture to how that happened.

January/February 2019 reviewcanada.ca 7 Ignoring Tectonic Shifts As the Asian world has risen, Canada has paid little attention David M. Malone

anada’s population of of international relations and law, in Asian origin has been spite of Asia’s impressive recent rise. Cgrowing consistently since Consequently, the relationships of the early twentieth century, today Asian countries among themselves exceeding fifteen percent of our over- and with Canada has received com- all populace and fast heading con- paratively little academic attention, siderably higher. Yet modern Canada notwithstanding the fine work of has remained resolutely trans-Atlan- a number of Canadian scholars; tic in its orientation, with interest in Brian Job and Paul Evans, both of the Pacific Ocean region and Asia the University of British Columbia, modest and fitful for the majority of spring to mind. Claws of the Panda: Canadians. Beijing’s Campaign of Influence and While Asia’s economic growth Intimidation in Canada, a new book and, consequently, its economic by Jonathan Manthorpe, a long-time and social development—powered Canadian columnist and foreign cor- by China and latterly India—has respondent, may shed further light on been little short of astounding over China’s strategies toward this country. the past twenty-five to thirty years, In the United States, the bitter a consequential number of robust conclusion of its calamitous military middle powers has also emerged in adventure in Vietnam in the 1960s the region. and 1970s produced an amnesiac South Korea, Indonesia, and response to a distant Asian humilia- Malaysia may lead the field statistic- tion. Washington was long soothed ally, but impressive niche players like Is Canada’s policy on Asia steered by trepidation or indifference? by a number of bilateral alliances and Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan Illustration by Min Gyo Chung staunch friendships in the region— have each excelled in a variety of ways, such as Japan, South Korea, Australia, not least in higher education. Canadians are aware Canadians that we live in a suddenly much more Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines. of, but not much moved by, these facts. This carries unpredictable world, in which newly assertive gov- But the United States now sees China as a global the risk that this country’s international profile and ernments tend to bump into others more frequently rival, and its traditional Asian friends are increas- its ability to support its interests will be reduced. than in the past, with worrying consequences. ingly at risk of being drawn into Beijing’s orbit. This Importantly, this is coming at a time of increased Rhetoric is much less disciplined by diplomatic shift in calculus toward wariness of China has been political tension between Canada and China. norms than was the case even in the recent past, as made by large swathes of business and other lead- The events that followed the arrest last illustrated by a brief, vicious squall this past January ing sectors of U.S. life, not just by President Donald December of a senior executive of the Chinese tele- between Turkey and the United States, NATO Trump. As well, Russia remains and is likely to communications giant Huawei seem to have taken allies no less. This is a world all Canadians, myself remain a meaningful third military power and rival the Canadian government by surprise, doubly so included, must strain to understand better, not least of the United States. perhaps given its policy of seeking closer trade ties because our economic model requires Canada to Asian friends of the United States remain nerv- with China. The detainment of Meng Wanzhou, engage energetically not just in trade but also in ous and are developing new international secur- the daughter of Huawei’s founder, was done on a various other forms of international exchange, and ity and economic strategies of their own, in one request from the U.S. government, which is seeking because so many of us travel and work abroad. of which Canada is a founding participant: the to extradite her to face U.S. fraud charges. It came at The United States has been the globe’s domin- Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for a time when Ottawa is said to be considering some ant power for more than 100 years and, throughout Trans-Pacific Partnership (still widely known as TPP, form of restrictions on Huawei’s access to Canadian most of those years, Canada’s towering economic its original name until the United States defected telecommunication networks. partner and mostly reliable friend. Its global reach from it in early 2017). Meanwhile, China is working At the time of writing these lines, no solution is expanded as a result of its military might but also hard on its own international networks. Globally, apparent, and anxiety runs high. Nevertheless, such as a result of its single-minded focus on the global weaker international economic performance since deeply worrying episodes generally are encouraged interests of American companies. Until recently, an the 2007–08 economic crisis has reinforced geo- to a close through negotiation, often involving sym- assumption that informed calculations lies at the strategic concerns of individual governments and pathetic third parties. These events, though, remind root of most American decisions affecting other regional formations, including in Asia, with many countries was well founded. However, that clearly Asian countries highly dependent on exports. David M. Malone, a former Canadian high com- is no longer the case, with knock-on consequences Statistics on Canada’s international economic missioner to India, is currently rector of the United for Canada and the world. relations tell a fairly clear story with respect to Nations University (UNU), headquartered in Canadians are not alone in following Asian Asia.1 Canadian foreign investment directs itself Tokyo, and an under-secretary-general of the developments fitfully. The Western media generally to familiar markets that seem reassuring to Bay United Nations. These views are his own alone, not tend to focus on the trans-Atlantic world (and, to a 1 The Asia Pacific Foundation’s website offers a handy set those of UNU or the UN. degree, on the Middle East), as has the scholarship of statistics.

8 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Street executives: the United States, the United iety of forms and ending definitively only in 1946, the “re-balancing” as bland, and the security- Kingdom, France, Australia, and other traditional produced few happy memories. Vietnam left the related measures accompanying them as unambi- markets dominate (as do, interestingly, notorious Americans shattered domestically. tious. TPP negotiations were allowed to drag on too Caribbean and European tax havens). Any entre- The United States, ever with trade on its mind, long as Washington and Japan argued over mutual preneur open to risk might argue that the eco- had stakes in the opening of China to commerce in concessions. The delay turned out to have killed any nomically fastest-rising continent—Asia—might the nineteenth century and forced Japan to open prospect of ratification by the U.S. Senate after the be worth a growing share of investment portfolios. itself to foreign trade in the 1850s. But Japan then agreement fell hostage to the presidential and con- Canadian entrepreneurs have tested those wat- turned from isolation to dreams of economic and gressional elections of 2016. And in January 2017, ers and remain invested in China in modest pro- territorial colonization, soon inflicting both on President Trump withdrew the country from TPP, portions. But beyond Japan, Australia, and (to a Korea and Manchuria, and eventually spawning a creating a strong sense that allies and friends were lesser degree) China, Canadian investment in the perverse logic that required it to attack Pearl Harbor no longer valued. region might charitably be described as apathetic. in 1941, which, given Tokyo’s aversion to surren- The president’s chaotic initiative to engage Canadian investment in India is only twelve per- der, led inexorably to America’s nuclear attacks on North Korea’s Kim Jong Un in 2018 created some cent of that in China and Hong Kong combined. Hiroshima and Nagasaki. optimism in South Korea, but disquiet elsewhere, While India has often been woefully unwelcoming Japan benefited from a relatively benign U.S. notably in Japan and perhaps also in China. In the to foreign investment and remains prone to politic- occupation after the Second World War, which was face of Washington’s unpredictable policy, these ally driven economic policy decision-making, this aimed at setting it back on its feet and at constrain- two latter countries made serious efforts in 2018 to figure is surprising. Indian companies for their part ing its ability to make war through a new constitu- reconcile with each other. require little encouragement to invest in Canada as tion and strong economic links to the United States. The Trump administration has not made it a a bridge into the U.S. market. After the Korean War (1950–53), in which Canadian priority to recalibrate progressively its economic Canadian trade with Asia reflects a somewhat troops also fought, the United States left behind relations with China, instead reinforcing threats different trend than investment, with China well out significant military forces in Japan, some of which with tariffs. A brief ceasefire between Washington in front, followed by Japan and South Korea as our remain, in part as a deterrent and also as an early and Beijing announced following the December biggest partners in the region. But on trade, despite response mechanism vis-à-vis a resurgent China. 2018 G20 meeting in Buenos Aires may or may not repeated, high-profile trade missions, Canada runs Japan, meanwhile, reinvented itself as an industrial lead to positive substantive results in the bilateral a threefold deficit with China, produced by anemic power that emerged as the principal global trading relationship, but a return to the status quo ante exports and a large tide of imports. With Japan and rival to the United States by 1980. seems unlikely. South Korea, the deficits are high, though less strik- Japan’s export-oriented economic strategy Some of Washington’s policies have sideswiped ing. Each of East Asia’s economic powers has long (soon mimicked in turn by Taiwan, South Korea, India, which is puzzling since it is Washington’s cleaved to postwar Japan’s model of export-driven several countries of Southeast Asia, and, of course, best bet as a potential ally of some geostrategic heft growth and has excelled at it. Canada is, to each of China), was short-lived. In the mid-1980s the in Asia. As of now, it’s hard to see whether the Indo- them, a secondary and modestly scaled, safe inter- United States forced an exchange rate realignment, Pacific concept touted by Washington and the so- national market. thus bursting Japan’s stock market and real estate called Quad (consisting of Australia, India, Japan, On some other fronts, different patterns emerge. bubbles. Arguably, it has never fully recovered, with and the United States) favoured by policy circles Immigration, which Canada requires to keep its demographic decline further clouding its socio- inside the Beltway, will develop any traction, par- own flat demographic trends in modest growth economic prospects, leaving the path open in Asia ticularly in the absence of greater policy coherence. mode, today hails overwhelmingly from Asia, at for dominance by a then-low-key but economically The Trans-Pacific Partnership, minus U.S. par- fifty-four percent of the total figure in 2017. For fast-expanding China. Today, by some measures, ticipation, went ahead under Japanese leadership industrialized countries, Canada is a niche propos- India is overtaking Japan as Asia’s second largest with eleven of its twelve original negotiating part- ition as a migration prospect, often linked to uni- economy after China. ners signing a revised pact in 2018, signalling that versity studies or driven by political and economic The end of the Cold War in the 1990s brought traditional U.S. allies in the Asia-Pacific maintain instability at home. about a retrenchment of the formidable U.S. cap- the capacity for a degree of strategic autonomy. Canadian universities, increasingly pressured by acity to wage war. A view took hold that no serious Nevertheless, many capitals in Asia will be attracted their hybrid business models and limited govern- threat to U.S. security existed anymore. to joining one or several of China’s flagship regional ment support, seem more entrepreneurial than In particular, Washington perceived no credible or global initiatives as well. The so-called “one belt, Bay Street. They are touting aggressively, and suc- threats to its power along the Pacific Rim. Deng one road” program, a set of infrastructure initia- cessfully, for international business, with political Xiaoping’s economic policies after 1979 were to pay tives that aim to link various Asian, African, Middle dysfunction and increasingly astronomical tuition off spectacularly for China, but this was not widely Eastern, and Latin American countries more closely charges in the United States thereby making Canada predicted in the early 1990s; his injunction to col- to China and potentially to each other, is so clearly an evermore attractive destination for Asian stu- leagues to maintain a low profile proved remark- China-centric and designed to China’s advantage dents. In 2017, Indians topped Canada’s foreign ably effective. China focused on economic growth, (and now increasingly controversial) that it will student charts, followed by Chinese and Korean and succeeded brilliantly such that, by 2010 or so, it likely be less attractive to some countries than students, but pretty well every Asian country of any had emerged as second only to the United States in Beijing’s more sophisticated initiatives such as the size is now represented on Canadian campuses. economic capacity. Meanwhile, the United States well-timed and well-managed Asian International exhausted itself militarily and economically in Iraq Infrastructure Bank (which Canada, like most he international outlook of most countries is and Afghanistan after the terrorist shock of 9/11, significant countries of Asia with the exception of Tshaped by history, geography, and capability. increasing the anxiety of its electorate. Japan, has joined).2 In Asia, the burden of history seems particularly President Barack Obama’s effort to re-engage Perhaps most attractive now for several Asian strong. For example, divergent interpretations of Asia was heralded in “America’s Pacific century,” signatories of the eleven-member TPP might be the events leading up to and during the Second World a 2011 widely cited article by then-secretary of Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership War bedevil relationships among Japan, China, state Hillary Clinton, which mentioned a “pivot” (RCEP), which superficially resembles TPP the and Korea, and continue to rankle in each today. toward the region. Her arguments were primarily most, although its actual substantive content is less Colonial and post-colonial grievances are nursed economic. She cited China, India, and the United ambitious. Expressed most positively, its attraction and rehearsed constantly, much more so than States as the “three giants of the Asia-Pacific.” She now arises from the fact that RCEP carries little within the West. claimed that Asia’s impressive economic growth geopolitical baggage. And geostrategically, TPP11 is The United States was created with apprehen- had been “long guaranteed by the U.S. military” now much undermined without the United States. sion of “foreign entanglements,” as articulated by before mentioning some (rather modest) new U.S. By late 2018, however, both the United States George Washington. Nevertheless, it soon adopted naval and military deployments to the region. This, and China, for different reasons, were seen as the Monroe doctrine establishing the Americas and negotiations aiming at a trans-Pacific trade “on the back foot” at a contentious Asia-Pacific as a sphere of its own influence. Relative to Asia, partnership, were the cornerstones of the Obama Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting. Soothing the United States took over the Hawaiian islands administration’s rebalance toward the Pacific— U.S. discourse proffered by Vice-President Mike in 1898 (they attained full statehood only in never a particularly convincing enterprise, given its Pence during the meeting lacked credibility. 1959). Washington’s ill-fated colonial adventure modest scope. Meanwhile, China increasingly wrestles with the in the Philippines, starting with a U.S. military In retrospect, Obama’s approach to Asia was 2 See Tom Miller’s book China’s Asian Dream: Empire ­government that same year, thereafter taking a var- flawed. The “pivot” was perceived as undiplomatic, Building along the New Silk Road (Zed Books, 2017).

January/February 2019 reviewcanada.ca 9 unpopularity locally of its pattern of deploying the goal of protecting its cross-border economic Affairs, linked to CIGI and the two Waterloo-based Chinese labour to implement its infrastructure interests. But its indifference to Asia does sur- universities; as did Mike Lazaridis, Balsillie’s erst- initiatives abroad, an issue not just in Asia but also prise. Further, any observer of the White House while co-CEO at BlackBerry, with the internationally in Africa. And then there is the so-called debt trap would conclude that a foreign policy focused on renowned Perimeter Institute of Theoretical Physics. that China’s related lending can create for weaker the United States, no matter how intelligently and Where is the Canadian philanthropist willing countries, which was much in the news throughout energetically conducted—and Canada is seen to vie or partner with Stephen Schwarzman and 2018. Embarrassing (if possibly temporary) polit- internationally as having done well so far on that his expensive, impressive Schwarzman scholars ical setbacks for its political friends in Sri Lanka, front—is any longer sufficient. and college project, centred at Tsinghua University Malaysia, and the Maldives point to choppier wat- in Beijing? The very useful Asia-Pacific Institute, ers than Beijing may have anticipated. ecent developments affecting Canada- brainchild of former senator Jack Austin, is too The Association of Southeast Asian Nations RChina relations are a reminder that either lonely an outpost in Vancouver as a window onto (ASEAN), which first met in 1967 as a grouping of Washington or Beijing can take Canada hostage the Far East and the Pacific. five countries close to the United States, has since whenever it suits their designs. During the distress- Where are the exciting new ideas from expanded to include five more nations. None can ing crisis this winter involving Canadian detainees Canadians on how Canada’s aid strategies— afford to alienate China, and, until recently, none in China, Ottawa looked fairly powerless globally. including its research funding arm, the enviable has wished to offend the United States. Might it be We were largely ignored by both major powers International Development Research Centre— able to provide a geostrategic bridge between these involved, although some modulated bleats of sup- can create ambitious new waves of programming two global rivals? ASEAN displays real limitations, port from other NATO allies and Australia soon that will launch a new generation of substantive not least the absence of the necessary political surfaced. Might Canada want to dust off and adapt bridges to Asia? clout to lead its continent or deter from its preferred Pierre Trudeau’s “third option” ideas on foreign As citizens and institutional actors across course any of the world’s geostrategically mean- policy, notably his advocacy of diversifying our Canada, we can and should do better on all these ingful powers, even within its own region. But the meaningful partnerships? One bright spot: the fronts, offering the government, business, educa- ASEAN region, now centred on Indonesia, is also energy and focus Chrystia Freeland has brought to tion, and other relevant sectors of our national the geostrategic linchpin of Asia. bear, as Canada’s foreign minister and chief nego- scene specific projects to champion for the Asia- Playing catch-up due to its electoral choices, tiator with Washington on trade, has caught the Pacific region. Washington will now strain to exercise the power international eye, not least due to the comedown of Until Canada gets more serious about Asia, and presence necessary to balance Beijing in her Saudi antagonists in recent months. overcoming its instinct to indulge mainly in “safe” Southeast Asia. The TPP was designed, in large But it makes little sense to moan only about strategies involving the U.S. and Europe, and part, to contain China’s ability to evade the rules government. largely normative (if admirable) human rights, of the existing global order (largely dictated by the Where is Bay Street in this equation? Traders gender, and environmental issues at the global West since the end of the Cold War) or to set its own depend on funders—but Canadian banks are level, it sells short the country’s potential. The risk rules. Washington, having rashly abandoned that notoriously risk-averse. This can and should evolve. of continuing lack of focus on Asia is that Canada’s strategy, now finds itself scrambling in Asia and has Where are the Canadian philanthropists who international profile will wither as the West’s rela- little to show as a result. might endow valuable bridges to international tive importance declines, and that Canada’s cap- Even fifteen years ago, South Asia might have knowledge? Jim Balsillie set an example with the acity to contend in support of its interests in a more been left aside in any discussion of geostrategically Centre for International Governance Innovation turbulent, diverse, and fractious range of nations vital regions of the continent. Because of India’s (CIGI) and the Balsillie School of International will erode. rise, but also its repositioning as more open to partnership with the United States, this is no longer the case. Nehru-era non-alignment is no longer the principal driver of India’s foreign policy. Now, defence of its economic and security interests in a more predatory world encourages a diplomacy that bobs and weaves, much as ASEAN’s has but with more weight. Very few of these tectonic shifts have aroused much interest in Canada. Seemingly in part to accommodate its NAFTA renegotiation strategy, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau threw a last-minute Dear LRC reader, spanner into what had been expected to be the signature of TPP11 during a summit meeting in It is with great pleasure that, on behalf of the Literary Review of Canada board December 2017, somewhat bruising ties with of directors, I announce the appointment of Kyle Wyatt to the position of Shinzo Abe, Japan’s internationally prominent editor-in-chief. prime minister. Eventually, Canada signed on. Kyle not only brings deep editorial knowledge and expertise with magazines Trudeau is covered in the Asian media as a rock to his new position but digital and online skills as well. In 2011, he earned his PhD star among the contemporary crop of rather grey at the University of Toronto, in the English department and the Collaborative and uncharismatic world leaders, but this relates Program in Book History and Print Culture. He has diverse and wide-ranging more to looks and style than to substance. Canada’s experiences with a variety of organizations, including the journal Studies in American current foreign policy, which focuses on women’s Indian Literatures, The Walrus, and The Works Design Communications. empowerment and the fight against climate change As the new year opens a new era for the LRC, we are confident that Canadians could be a bit more popular in Asia if it was bet- will continue to read and enjoy the magazine as it refreshes and expands its voice ter known. Overall, Canada remains firmly over under the aegis of its very talented new editor. the horizon, seen as a potential country of refuge, driven by honourable values in a time of knavish Regards, geostrategic manoeuvring, but hardly a full Pacific Rim or Asian actor of weight with a discernable strategy focused on the region as a whole. In this, it is a far cry from Australia, which engages energetic- Jaime Watt ally with Asia, in spite of Canberra’s embarrassingly Chair of the Board of Directors colourful domestic politics, recently tinged by Literary Review of Canada nativism and sometimes racism. No serious Asian student of international rela- tions would fault Canada for focusing on rela- tions with the United States über alles and for ­subordinating other foreign policy priorities to

10 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada in conversation The Devil Is in the Details Canada’s legalization of marijuana raises a host of policy and health questions

he federal government’s move to legalize the recreational use of mari- Tjuana in October 2018 raises many ques- tions about what this will mean for Canada and Canadians. Canada is only the second country in the world to formally legalize the drug and the first G7 country to do so. The government made the move to deal with a situation where, as the 2015 Liberal campaign platform noted, illegal can- nabis falls into the hands of minors, large profits are generated by organized crime, and many people are trapped in the criminal justice system for what is arguably a victimless crime. While the legalization of marijuana in Canada begins with a straightforward change to the Criminal Code, its ramifications go far beyond this. It will have a serious impact on the country’s international treaty commitments, interprovincial relations, taxation, and regulatory regimes. And, of course, it will have a profound impact on social and health policies and possibly on the health of users. Andrew Potter, an associate professor at the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, a former columnist for Maclean’s, and former editor-in-chief of the Ottawa Citizen, is a co-editor (with McGill law professor Daniel Weinstock) of High Times: The Legalization and Regulation of Marijuana in Canada, a collection of essays being published in March by McGill-Queen’s University Press. He conversed recently with James McIntosh, a profes- sor of health economics at Montreal’s Concordia University. Their exchange was conducted by e-mail.

James McIntosh: First, let me congratulate you Can government pot regulations fit a country accustomed to a black market? on an interesting and informative book. It’s a series illustration by min gyo chung of essays dealing with a number of legal and institu- tional issues involving the legalization of marijuana arose out of a conference last April hosted by Daniel a policy perspective, the primary concern facing in Canada. Some of these are quite controversial, Weinstock, director of the Institute for Health and the Liberal government as it fulfilled its promise to and not all of the essays offer insights that might Social Policy at McGill University, which I helped “legalize, regulate, and restrict access to marijuana” have been expected or what readers wanted to hear. organize. To fill out some gaps in the areas we was whether it could achieve these goals without The main focus of the book is a preliminary evalua- wanted to cover, we commissioned a few additional making the situation worse. tion of how successful the actual implementation essays. The ambition of the book is to provide a baseline has been. I think it’s an important first step in try- The papers cover five main areas: the political framework for evaluating these goals of the new ing to come to grips with one of the most important dynamic of legalization, the public health issues cannabis regime, situated as it is within the very policy challenges since the legalization of alcohol. it raises, the legal implications of the new regime, complicated structure of the Canadian federation It should be seen as the start of the dialogue on the economics of legalization, and finally the inter- and the international community of which Canada managing marijuana, which hopefully will lead to national context of Canada’s decision. remains a part. a better understanding of how the policy is working In the lead-up to legalization, the Liberals made McIntosh: Alana Klein, in her essay in the book and how it might be improved. a point of repeatedly emphasizing the rationale on harm reduction makes the point that the con- Perhaps you could provide a brief introduc- for the change in policy: it was to protect minors, tent of the new bill, the Cannabis Act—the new tion to your book and what you think are the main undercut the black market and the organized legislation that replaces the Controlled Drug and concerns that Canadians should have about the crime that profited from it, and keep otherwise Substances Act—is more oriented toward punitive specific procedures that have been adopted by the law-abiding adults from getting trapped in the measures, prohibition, and punishment than it is various provinces. criminal justice system for what is for the most toward harm-reduction strategies. She notes that Andrew Potter: Most of the essays in the book part a harmless recreational activity. And so, from this runs counter to what was proposed by the Task

January/February 2019 reviewcanada.ca 11 Force on Cannabis Legalization and Regulation,1 schizophrenia, but there are also strong negative adolescent brain is strength—that is, THC content. which formed a basis for the Liberals’ plans for effects that arise at the time teens actually use mari- The higher the content, the worse the effect, and legalization. She argues that this approach could juana. My current research, based on the survey the THC levels in black market marijuana have ultimately undermine the authority of the judicial mentioned above, shows that school grades are ser- been climbing for years. And so, the more we can system in exactly the same way that legal sanc- iously affected by regular marijuana use under the channel teens into consuming lower THC content tions in the system before legalization had minimal age of eighteen. Students who use marijuana every marijuana, the better. impact on drug use behaviour because users and day are three times less likely to be in the top school There’s a lot of ifs and mights and coulds here, distributors paid no attention to the law. What do grade category, and ten times more likely to be at for sure. Part of the problem, of course, is that the you think of that idea? the bottom of the grade distribution, compared to legislation has such crazy penalties for people Potter: I wouldn’t want to speak for Klein, but “never users.” caught selling or providing marijuana to minors— this idea that the Cannabis Act could end up spark- What is needed is an effective policy to reduce up to fourteen years in prison. And while I see the ing a renewed war on drugs is one that has come up marijuana use among adolescents. This is the rationale for it (you need to make it highly risky for in a number of different contexts since the frame- type of policy that Klein is advocating. The Liberal black market dealers to sell to minors), it has the work for legalization became clear. One obvious government’s plan included education for young side effect, I think, of making it hard for parents way this might happen is if the black market proves people about the risks of the serious health con- to monitor and control their kids’ use. Kids hide to be more tenacious than expected. As we note in sequences of using marijuana before the age their use from their parents. I’ve wondered if there the introduction to the book, with legalization it of twenty-one. We do know that school educa- might be room for some sort of policy innovation is not as if the Canadian government simply lifted tion policies directed at this age group to reduce here, where parents—and parents alone—could be the criminal prohibitions on the existing, thriving, tobacco use have been very effective. I would argue permitted to provide marijuana to their children illegal marijuana economy. Instead, what it did was that because perceptions of potential harm from starting at age sixteen, in the same way we let par- set up a parallel, legal marketplace for cannabis that early marijuana use are based on misconceptions ents oversee their teenagers’ drinking. Or is that it hopes will ultimately drive the illegal market out of how harmful, health-wise, marijuana use can be, overcomplicating things? of existence. But this will only happen if the legal making adolescents more knowledgeable about the At any rate, I find the issue of the age of consent market can out-compete the private market on a harm it can cause them is likely to produce more to be one of the most difficult issues here. It doesn’t number of fronts, including price, convenience, favourable results. really arise in the context of alcohol because there’s safety, reliability, selection, and so on. If the legal However, the actual mechanisms for imple- not really a black market in moonshine. Teens market struggles, there will be a great deal of pres- menting the legalization have been left to the who want to drink either get their older siblings to sure—not least from Big Cannabis—for the govern- provinces to determine, and the only area under buy legal booze for them or they steal it from their ment to crack down on the persisting black market. federal jurisdiction remains the Criminal Code. parents. There are other ways that the new regime might Even the legal age for marijuana use and the right But this line of thinking leads me to a much trend toward prohibition and punishment. This to self-cultivation were devolved to the provinces. broader question, which I had not really considered includes the extremely draconian penalties for sell- As a result, it is not really surprising that the new before, and that is whether legalization itself might ing to minors, the fact that minors have been the wrong option. You and themselves are some of the most avid I both agree that the status quo was consumers, and finally the unavoid- unacceptable, and that simply ceas- able problem of driving under the Unfortunately, what is good for the ing to drag people into the criminal influence. justice system for getting high is justi- Ultimately, I get the sense that the Liberal government electorally does fication enough for legalization. But federal government is treating the when I read the paper by João Castel- mere fact of legalization as its piece not always lead to good policy. Branco Goulão, the architect of the of the harm-reduction strategy while Portuguese decriminalization regime, leaving the rest of it to the provinces. I start to wonder if decriminalization This contrasts with such jurisdic- would have been a better path to take. tions as Portugal, which has made a point of federal legislation does not address the potential I’d be interested in your thoughts on this. integrating its decriminalization strategy with its health issues involving adolescents as the Liberal McIntosh: As we have agreed, the issue of the healthcare system. government had originally intended. age at which we should allow young people to use Is that how you see it? Questions about what age teenagers should be marijuana is now at the forefront of the legalization McIntosh: I think that legalization is a great allowed to legally use marijuana are considered discussion. This is because it is somehow assumed harm-reduction strategy. In 2013 in Canada, almost in Weinstock’s essay. From a harm-reduction per- that adolescents under the legal age won’t use 59,000 possession offences involving marijuana spective, he argues that it might be advisable to marijuana, yet this is demonstrably not the case. In were recorded by the police. This type of offence set the age of consent at eighteen or possibly even my view, the only function that legal age of use per- will largely disappear under the new regime, and sixteen. Do you think that he has a valid case here? forms is that it allows the government to charge an that is a great accomplishment that in itself makes Potter: Weinstock’s essay left me highly con- individual with selling pot to a minor. This has rela- the legalization policy well worthwhile. But like flicted. On the one hand, I find the notion of tively little effect on usage. Sixteen-year-olds can most legal solutions to social problems, it only goes allowing sixteen-year-olds to consume marijuana use tobacco or alcohol with impunity. But the age of part of the way. Moreover, legalization does not legally instinctively repellent—it just makes me consent is a very sensitive issue politically so there necessarily mean real legalization if the legal age really uncomfortable. But that’s the case with a will not be much support for what Weinstock is pro- for using is set at eighteen or twenty-one. And what lot of harm-reduction-style arguments: once you posing. However, to answer your question, I think will the sanctions for underage use be? I see this as accept the inevitability of what you find repellent, legalization is preferable to decriminalization. a big challenge. the key is to figure out how to mitigate the harm- This was the position of the Le Dain commission The largest proportion of possession offences ful effects. Weinstock’s argument amounts to pre- which I found to be very compelling.3 Legalization involve adolescents. It is quite clear that legal sanc- senting readers with the following choice: Is it better potentially gives the government a much larger tions up to legalization have been ineffective in per- to have x number of minors consuming marijuana role in the system of marijuana ­regulation and suading young people not to use marijuana. Data of dubious quality and unknown strength that was control—more than simple decriminalization from the 2012–13 Youth Smoking Survey shows that obtained from criminals or to have perhaps twice would. Decriminalization does nothing to promote teenagers start using marijuana on average around that number of minors consuming marijuana of a product quality, and drug profits are not taxed or age fourteen.2 The fact that marijuana was illegal at known quality and strength obtained through legal appropriated by the state. that point appears to have had little or no impact on outlets? And he concludes that choosing the first Here’s another issue. One of the recommenda- their behaviour. option would be morally reprehensible. tions of the task force that preceded the new legisla- Early marijuana use involves enormous per- What I think tips it in Weinstock’s favour is the tion was that individuals would be allowed to grow sonal costs. Some appear as respondents get older. research that shows that one of the major factors their own marijuana, subject to limits on plant size Examples are higher risks of mental illness like driving the negative effects of marijuana on the and numbers. In the final rollout of the legislation,

1 Task Force on Cannabis Legalization and Regulation, 3 Gerald Le Dain, Final Report of the Commission of A Framework for the Legalization and Regulation of 2 Propel Centre for Population Health Impact, Youth Inquiry into the Non-Medical Use of Drugs (Information Cannabis in Canada (Health Canada, 2016) Smoking Survey, 2012–2013 (Health Canada, 2014) Canada, 1972)

12 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada it was decided to allow the provinces to make a decision on whether this was a legal option. Some provinces like Quebec have decided not to allow this. I was hopeful that Canada as a whole would Pollack of Body Art do so. Now that possessing small amounts of mari- juana is legal, it is going to be very hard to enforce Moles like wind-hocked islands this type of restriction. Making home production off the coast of Scotland. illegal is a throwback to the old ways of dealing Hemangiomas, tiny with marijuana, requiring the police to waste a lot bindis of pure cherry. of time and effort on activities that have no social Freckles, splat!, like sap in spring. benefit and that clog up the legal system with A scar on my left palm trivial offences. It also runs counter to the original courtesy of a beer purpose of legalization, which was to remove the bottle shard. control of marijuana use from the criminal justice system. Alternatively, provinces could decide not to The jagged ridges enforce the law, which has the effect of undermin- of a surgeon’s knife, ing the legal system and defeats the purpose of the restriction. an autographed Lucian Perhaps, more importantly, home growing is Freud. another way of reducing the role that the black mar- A trio of ice pick holes ket plays in marijuana production and distribution. where my gall bladder I noticed that this issue was not addressed in any of was sucked out through straws. the book’s essays, including the paper by Anindya Sen and Rosalie Wyonch covering black market Once I fell in love with problems, which I’d like to come back to. But first, the imprint of a bra strap, there must have been some discussion of produc- her shoulders like soft lookouts. tion and distribution by some of the contributors? Potter: You’re right, the homegrown aspect of And that day at the beach the legislation doesn’t get a lot of attention in the when the waistband of my best book, and didn’t get much discussion at our con- friend’s abandoned swim trunks ference. I’m not sure why—maybe because it is stood out like a spiked belt. seen by most academics as a sort of niche thing, for The mushroom glow of my dead hobbyists and other pot devotees, and that won’t father’s undressed wedding put much of a dent in the black market, one way or finger. another. To the extent that it does get discussed, it The wart between my mother’s is wrapped up in the more general question of the smallest toes federal-provincial wrangling. Quebec’s attempt to that as a child I thought completely ban home-growing of marijuana, in could speak. Just yesterday, particular, has raised some serious jurisdictional I found a scratch resembling questions that have not entirely been resolved. But this does point us to one last topic I’d like a zipper where my solar to touch on, and that’s the patchwork of distribu- plexus flares into its tion systems that have been put in place across the Genesis of ribs. country. To be honest, I find the way things have gone is pretty appalling. With the possible excep- tion of Alberta, it’s been a total gong show, with a supply shortage and the lack of adequate retail outlets leading to a situation that is not measur- ably different today than it was before legaliza- tion. The old dispensaries and online distribution networks are still in place and still outperforming the legal market by virtually every measure. Furthermore, not only was this completely pre- dictable—it was predicted, including by some contributors to our book. Barry Dempster My own preference would have been to simply legalize the black market—bring the dealers and dispensaries in from the cold, as it were. They’ve Barry Dempster is the author of fourteen collections of poetry, including The Burning got the outlets, the distribution networks, the Alphabet (Brick Books, 2005), which was nominated for the Governor General’s Literary product, the customer base—setting up a parallel Award for poetry and won the Canadian Authors Association Award for Poetry. His most system always struck me about as misguided as recent collection is Late Style (Pedlar Press, 2017). the Americans setting up a parallel government in Iraq in 2003, while leaving the members of the former regime with no option but to work for the insurgency. Do you have any sense of why that decision was kinds of drugs, some of which require a prescrip- But in your March 2017 contribution to the LRC, made? Was it an abdication of federal responsibil- tion while others are suitable as over-the-counter you offered an alternative proposal, which was to ity, or because the jurisdictional question was too products. Marijuana fits into this model well; in set up a pan-Canadian cannabis marketing board complicated? Would it have made much of a dif- addition, pharmacies are located in most Canadian that would serve as a single-desk buyer and seller, ference, in the end? It is interesting that this option localities and are regulated provincially so the with product being distributed through pharma- never really came up in any of our contributions. model has many attractions. The absence of a cen- cies. This would have made it easier to control sup- McIntosh: The pharmacy model was proposed tral oversight institution, which would have set ply, quality, and price, while firmly integrating the by the Uruguayans as a distribution model. It limits on THC content, defined the characteristics whole regime into the healthcare system. Instead, impressed me because it offered a vehicle in which of edibles, etc., was disappointing to me, since it we went the usual Canadian route and left every- all types of marijuana could be delivered to the left a lot of things out of a unified control mechan- thing to the provinces. market from a single outlet. Pharmacies sell all ism if the provinces were not inclined to deal with

January/February 2019 reviewcanada.ca 13 them. Additional federal involvement with the I think this conclusion is premature. The mari- so far and what we can expect as it unfolds? collaboration of the provinces could have led to juana market five years from now will be very dif- Potter: I don’t think anyone thinks things have the development of educational programs directed ferent from what it is today. Aphria, a Canadian gone well at the retail level. But perhaps that was, toward young people. Getting Canadian youth off producer of marijuana products, said in July 2017 if not inevitable, certainly a very likely result. It was marijuana was a major justification of legalization, that it was producing medical-grade marijuana for always going to be messy, given how many moving but, so far, no progress seems to have been made $1.11 a gram. Jonathan Caulkins, one of the lead- parts there are here. But more damning, I think, is on this front. ing experts on marijuana legislation, predicted that the government moved far too slowly on the You could argue that the federal government the long-run cost of marijuana would be between issue of pardons or expungement. In my view, a decided to devolve the delivery system to the prov- $7 and $10 a pound or 1.65 to 2.2 cents a gram.4 parallel bill dealing with expungement should have inces because they could duck the responsibility for The present retail price of recreational marijuana been in place on Oct. 17, 2018, and the commit- the failures and glitches that will inevitably occur as in government stores in Montreal is around $7.50 ment to fast-tracking the pardon process is inad- managing marijuana production and distribution a gram. When government agencies start buying equate, to put it very mildly. evolves. As Malcolm Bird notes in his essay on pol- from large low-cost producers, the retail price can One thing that should be fascinating to watch itics and policy, the political rewards is what happens when the first char- favour the federal government as the ges for driving under the influence initiators of legalization, which was come to court and the techniques and still is popular with the elector- I don’t think anyone thinks that police are using for testing driv- ate, at the expense of the provinces ers are challenged. Then there are who have to deal with the details of things have gone well at the the saliva-testing devices, which are implementation and bear the costs of themselves relatively new and will the conflicts that arise between prov- retail level. But perhaps that almost certainly be subject to a court incial and municipal requirements. was a very likely result. challenge here. But all of this, I think, Unfortunately, what is good for the will get sorted out in due course. I Liberal government electorally does also think that the retail problems will not always lead to good policy. sort themselves out sooner or later, There are two other issues that I want to men- be reduced. My prediction is that, in the long run, depending on the province, though I have no clue tion, before I get your assessment of how well the the recreational marijuana market will resemble what effect it will have on the black market. legalization program has worked. Sen and Wyonch the market for alcoholic beverages. For Quebec, Here’s the real issue: What comes next? examine the Toronto market and investigate the and possibly other provinces, there will be enough Marijuana was never really the gateway to harder role that the black market plays in it. They come to outlets, there will be lots of different products that drugs that conservatives said it was, but I have the conclusion that, at least in Ontario, the black are clearly labelled and, like wine, will come from a suspicion that marijuana legalization will turn market is an important source of high-quality prod- all over the world. Prices will be reasonable and, out to have been a legal gateway to calling the ucts and is likely to remain in this position. again like wine or spirits, it won’t be worthwhile for entire drug-prohibition regime into question. black market producers to enter the market. How soon before we are talking about taking a full 4 Jonathan Caulkins, Estimated Cost of Production for Legalized Marijuana, WR-764-RC (RAND Corporation So, finally, Andrew, what’s your assessment of harm-reduction approach to opioids and other Drug Policy Research Center, 2010) how well the legalization experiment has performed­ hard drugs?

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14 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada The World inside Their Heads A novelist wrestles with the idea that fiction is stranger than truth Susan Swan

Most of What Follows Is True: Places Imagined and Real Michael Crummey University of Alberta Press 72 pages, softcover ISBN 9781772124576

ultural appropriation wasn’t an issue in the 1980s when I published my Cfirst novel,The Biggest Modern Woman of the World. It told the life story of Anna Swan, a nineteenth-century giantess who exhibited with P.T. Barnum (and who may be a distant relation of mine). Anna grew up in the backwoods of Nova Scotia before Barnum and his agent brought her to New York to exhibit at his American Museum on Broadway. As part of my research, I visited her relatives in Nova Scotia. The ones I met generously gave me their help. But there were others I did not meet. Not until I gave a reading at a library in Port Hawkesbury. I was warned by the librarian that some Swan relatives were coming to the reading and they were not happy with my book. I didn’t worry too much about them because I imagined they were old people (I was young then), and so I felt utterly sur- prised when two young women, younger than me, in fact, came through the door loudly protesting my novel. I entertained their questions and explained that I saw my book as an homage to a giantess who Not everything makes it into the story. had been overlooked by mainstream Canadian Illustration by Min Gyo Chung historians. They weren’t buying my argument. They said interrupting me, and finally, the librarian asked with Casanova, and the researcher pointed out the things I described had never happened to their them to leave. again and again where I had been falsely roman- great-great-aunt, and they pointed to scenes like It was my first inkling that readers are not all ticizing what the pair saw there. So tirelessly and the one where the giantess loses her virginity to the coming from the same cultural place. The two doggedly, I amended some of my descriptions. God local midget wielding an icicle. I reminded them I young women lived not far from where Anna Swan forbid that my novel should suggest I believed the had stayed true to the facts of Anna’s life. Born in had been born and for them the past wasn’t as far same things as my eighteenth-century characters. 1846, she stood seven foot, six inches and weighed off as it is to a city dweller like me. They were rural It was all right for Casanova to have Orientalist 418 pounds; she married the Kentucky Giant and people who grew up in an oral culture and they reactions to Muslim culture, but it wasn’t all right had two giant babies who both died within hours often walked by the houses their dead relatives had for me, the twenty-first-century author, to believe of birth. Novels are full of made-up scenes and I lived in. Their past was all around them in a way it in stereotypes. admitted that, as a novelist, I had invented a great wasn’t for me. Like me and many other novelists, Michael number of interactions and events that weren’t And when they talked about their great-great Crummey has qualms about cultural appropria- mentioned in the very able but brief biography by aunt it was as if she had just died a few years ago, tion. And in his new slim book of criticism, Most Nova Scotian archivist Phyllis Blakeley. not a century before. of What Follows Is True, Crummey offers a frank You should’ve written a biography, like Blakeley, Since then, cultural appropriation has become a assessment of the predicament that fiction writers the young women told me. You had no right to tell thorny political issue for writers. (The 2017 dust-up are facing in a confrontational age. lies about our relative’s life. They began to scream over a “cultural appropriation prize” sardonically What is the relationship of fiction to truth? at me. The reading turned into chaos. Audience proposed in Write cost Hal Niedzviecki his editorial Crummey asks in this thoughtful essay that was the members shouted at the two young women to stop job at the magazine.) When I wrote my sixth novel, basis of his CLC Kriesel Lecture at the University of What Casanova Told Me, I hired a researcher to Alberta in 2018. And how does a white novelist like Susan Swan’s new novel, The Dead Celebrities Club, help me with a section set in the Ottoman Empire. him describe non-white characters in their books? will be published by Cormorant Books in May 2019. The novel ends with its heroine going to Istanbul Crummey is a charming and deceptively

January/February 2019 reviewcanada.ca 15 agreeable writer whose novels are part of the Newfoundland” because she had read The Bird didn’t like the way it talked about sexual perver- literary flowering that has been happening in Artist, a novel set in early twentieth-century sion in Newfoundland families. In the novel, a local Newfoundland since the wildly successful publi- Newfoundland by American writer Howard newspaper, The Gammy Bird, ran a weekly column cation of Annie Proulx’s novel The Shipping News Norman. It was published in 1994, and Crummey devoted to the community’s latest sexual outrages. in 1993. He first struggled with the problem of says its author completely disregarded the truth When Quoyle, the book’s hero, protested that so cultural appropriation while writing River Thieves, of how Newfoundlanders lived during the novel’s many abusive incidents couldn’t have happened his internationally praised debut about the encoun- time period. in one week, the columnist Nutbeam retorted that ters between members of the Beothuk tribe and As he says, “beyond using Newfoundland place there were so many he couldn’t fit them all in. European settlers. Published in 2001, the novel is names, the world of The Bird Artist bears absolutely Proulx was likely more interested in poking fun set in early nineteenth-century Newfoundland. Its no resemblance—I am not overstating this—lit- at parochial newspaper columnists than in sug- story tackles, among other things, racial genocide erally zero resemblance to the Newfoundland of the gesting Newfoundlanders were a sexually perverse along with the issue of guilt in the murder of an early twentieth century.” lot, and Crummey says that the physical reality of Indigenous man. For instance, Norman has Newfoundlanders the sea and land and the social reality of the out- Crummey was careful not to put his own words eating a great deal of sea bass when the traditional ports feel authentic in her book. “Whether it’s the in the voices of Indigenous characters: “To pretend diet used to be cod. Sea bass is what people eat in grinding passage of the winter or the particularity I might resurrect them in fiction, that I could some- New England, and Crummey suspects that Norman and variety of local accents, Proulx’s Newfoundland how make them live again on the page, belittles the conveniently took a lot of descriptions of habits and has the air of something created from lived experi- magnitude of the loss…it was just one more thing landscape from New England and applied them to ence,” he writes. that could be done to them.” But he still depicted Newfoundland. Crummey still hopes a good story will feel true Indigenous people, and the depiction of non-white In another example of false verisimilitude, to the reader. He says making up a fictional outport fictional characters by a white novelist is tricky, too. Norman calls Newfoundland settlements “villages” in his novel Sweetland allowed him to get closer In his essay, Crummey offers some possible solu- instead of “outports,” and he describes early twen- to some truths that might have been harder to tions that acknowledge the fancy footwork fiction tieth-century fisherman eating lobsters in local describe in non-fiction, and he took it as a compli- performs in its transaction between artifice and restaurants when restaurants were nonexistent in ment when one reader thought his fictional place factual truth. outports during that era. Merchants gave the fisher- was real. Most white novelists I know wouldn’t presume men food and supplies on credit, and the fishermen However, he argues it’s impossible for novels to write in the voice of a black or Indigenous per- paid the bill with the profits from the season’s catch. to be 100 percent accurate. He doesn’t come out son. I wouldn’t do it either because a white author What’s more, lobster was not eaten as regular fare. and say so, but he also implies that readers have writing in the voice of a non-white feels like a The list of errors and malaprops go on. People a responsibility not to confuse fiction with non- transgressive act now. Why do it at a time when in The Bird Artist have Germanic, Greek, Dutch, fiction. Authors don’t always approve of how their non-white authors are claiming their own voices Italian, and Hebrew names but are rarely called characters behave, and many of us leave clues that and stories? The chances are also good you’ll get a by the Irish names that betray the origin of most point this out, like Crummey’s desecration scene in lot of it wrong. River Thieves. The notion that a story, like rain, I agree with Crummey that fiction falls where it may came out of a differ- Fiction writers influence the way should be seen as mostly (but not ent historical period when racial and completely) true. If readers come to a ethnic groups didn’t interact as often people see the world around them. novel with the same expectations they as they do now. It was also a time apply to non-fiction, they will be mak- when marginalized groups didn’t And with that influence comes ing the mistake of the academic who have the power to complain about authorial responsibility. once told me Nino Ricci’s beloved how they were being described. For novel Lives of the Saints was a failure example, few women readers in the because Ricci didn’t get the right nineteenth century criticized the way women were Newfoundlanders. These fictional characters with placement of sacred Catholic relics on the altar. depicted in novels by men because, for the most exotic-sounding foreign names also shoot raccoons Crummey is clear that he isn’t going to claim part, it was men who defined social realities. in the novel although there are no raccoons in the mantle of total accuracy for his fiction. After Most of What Follows Is True, Crummey’s title, is Newfoundland. all, as he notes, authors are too caught up in their a disclaimer he borrows from the film Butch Cassidy In his own work, Crummey tries conscientiously own obsessions to simply, objectively reflect the and the Sundance Kid. He begins his essay by point- to avoid such errors. In a visceral scene from River world. They present the world in their heads, which ing out that fiction, to quote critic Stan Dragland, Thieves, he depicts a white father and son uncov- is often different in substance and detail from the “thickens the real.” That is to say, the community ering the skeleton of a dead Beothuk. The son world a reader sees. He compares the act of writ- we live in doesn’t have a presence in the world until silently deplores his father, who, in a characteristic- ing a novel to placing a transparency over the map it is described. Crummey comes from Buchans, ally racist joke, flaps the jaw bones of the skull back we’ve made up of our own lives and experiences: a mining town in the centre of Newfoundland, and forth and says, “Just a dead Indian...Nothing and growing up he believed the real world existed to bother your head about.” Crummey says he On some level, all creative writing is an act of elsewhere, where movies were set or in places he described the son’s worry about the desecration of appropriation, an appropriation of the real to encountered in books. the Indigenous skull to evoke Crummey the author, our own inscrutable ends. And in the process, The burgeoning of Newfoundland writers has who wants to say to the reader: don’t be fooled into despite our best intentions (or because of made that location feel more real to the world, thinking I have consented to this treatment of a them), there are inevitable distortions and Crummey says. Until Proulx’s novel became an Beothuk skeleton. adjustments and blind spots and mistakes international bestseller, publishers didn’t think Lest you think Crummey is being too sensitive that snake their way in. Even where writers readers wanted to hear about such a remote place. in his critique of The Bird Artist, consider the movie aren’t being nakedly exploitative, their rela- That is why he thinks the notion that fiction holds Argo, directed in 2012 by Ben Affleck, which mini- tionship to the truth, to what we think of as up a mirror to society is too passive to be accurate. mized the crucial roles that Canadians played in the real world, can’t help but be professional, In his experience, there’s a lot more going on with the 1979 rescue of six American hostages from Iran. can’t help but be subjective. And we would do the relationship between history and fiction than Although Canadians came up with the plan, risked well to keep that in mind, regardless of how simple reflection. their lives hiding the hostages, forged the necessary convincing a book is. The “thickening of the real” in a novel often documents, and bought the hostages their plane leads readers to believe that what they read is true. tickets out of Iran, Affleck’s hero is a U.S. Central At the end of his essay, Crummey offers a double If a place doesn’t exist until it’s been described, Intelligence Agency officer who spent a single proviso to the debate over cultural appropriation. then, by describing people and places, fiction writ- day in the country. My hunch is you’ll agree with He recommends impatience with the blinkered ers influence the way people see the world around Crummey that it’s exasperating and insulting to see novelist who doesn’t deign to learn about the world them. And with that influence comes authorial the role played by your country or group described he or she is describing. And perhaps more import- responsibility. by someone with so little regard for the basic truth. antly, Crummey asks that a generous dose of toler- For example, Crummey ran into an American According to Crummey, many Newfoundlanders ance be given to that minority of one, the author, reader who exclaimed that she knew “all about had criticisms of Proulx’s The Shipping News. They who is doing his or her best to tell us a story.

16 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada When Terror Came to Canada The response to the FLQ crisis remains controversial five decades later Brian Stewart

The Making of the October Crisis: Canada’s Long Nightmare of Terrorism at the Hands of the FLQ D’Arcy Jenish Doubleday Canada 368 pages, hardcover ISBN 9780385663267

arly on the morning of October 16, 1970, a Quebec couple much celebrated E in arts and political circles awoke to find Montreal police clomping through their house and fast approaching their third-storey bedroom. When poet Gérald Godin leapt from bed and demanded to see their search warrant, the answer was short:

“We don’t need a search warrant anymore, sir,” an officer replied. “A special law has been voted, and we can search where we want without a warrant. Listen to the radio. You’ll see.”

Their surprise could be forgiven, however, as the news that prime minister Pierre Trudeau had imposed the War Measures Act, for the first time in peacetime, came at 4 a.m. when those scheduled for pre-dawn arrest were still sleeping, along with most of the country. Civil liberties long taken for granted were vanishing, as they do, in the dead of night. Almost the next words spoken to Godin and his singer-actress partner, Pauline Julien—“Come on, get your clothes on. You’re coming with us.”—also had the ring of state security roundups around the world. The War Measures Act aimed at suspected ter- rorists and possible supporters gave police not only power of search and arrest without warrant, but, even more controversially, of detention and Armed soldiers became a common sight in some Canadian cities in 1970. interrogation without access to lawyers for a min- photograph courtesy Library and Archives Canada (PA-117477) imum of seven days, and up to three weeks essen- tially incommunicado if charges were pending. To city police dragged 238 suspects into custody far he would take such draconian action, Trudeau those of us old enough to remember the times, it within the first eight hours of the act’s proclama- snapped, “Just watch me.” And, according to polls, comes as a jolt to recall what a flair our police had tion. Nearly 500 were swept into detention and nearly ninety percent of the Canadian population, for mass arrest. “Who’d have thought it?” some of us 4,600 searches were conducted for weapons and including Quebec, did watch the unfolding drama reporters mused as we scrambled vainly to keep up subversive materials in the weeks before authorities in fascinated approval. with the racing prisoner wagons. finally conceded an armed insurrection in Quebec Thousands of Quebec radicals and separatist That first surge of 1,200 provincial and Montreal was, in fact, unlikely. The dragnet, along with the activists felt justified in wondering if the next knock dispatch of 10,000 combat-equipped troops to help on their door would mean arrest. Some arresting Brian Stewart is a veteran journalist and former guard Montreal, Quebec City, and Ottawa, remains teams were stern, others in chatty good spirits as if senior correspondent for CBC News who has cov- one of the most controversial moments in modern still testing out their new role as mass incarcerators. ered conflicts and crises around the world, includ- Canadian history.­ When a friend of mine, fellow journalist Nick Auf ing the events in 1970 covered by this book. Famously asked by a television reporter how der Maur, was taken in, the two officers agreed to

January/February 2019 reviewcanada.ca 17 rendezvous with him and his chosen witness at his reforms ended long years of strict economic and or had simply forgotten. Over the years, like others, favourite smoky bistro in the heart of Montreal’s cultural conservatism under a powerful coalition I came to underestimate the relentless grind of entertainment area. He was allowed a final coffee forged by strongman premier Maurice Duplessis, violence and growing mood of pessimism in official and cognac as he regaled them with amusing stories and his Union Nationale party, with the over- circles at the time. before they finally led him off to the crowded police whelmingly traditionalist Catholic Church and the Over seven-and-a-half years, the FLQ pulled off holding cells. Once locked away, they permitted his anglophone minority’s economic leadership. The more than 200 bombings and was responsible for girlfriend to drop off a Montreal Canadiens hockey youth of most felquistes was spent in that rigid 1950s six deaths even before Laporte’s murder, dozens sweater for him to wear proudly in detention. (Like environment that left them restless, embittered, of bank robberies, and the theft of tons of dyna- most of those interrogated and detained, he was and militantly nationalist. mite. It stole combat weapons from army arsenals released without charges after a week.) Neither reform nor separatist goals satis- with remarkable ease and had little trouble set- The times seemed unreal then and they still do fied FLQ members, who spurned as “wet hens” ting bombs alongside major buildings, factories, today. It is difficult five decades later to fathom our even charismatic Liberal party reformers such and inside mailboxes across Montreal. Members greatest peacetime crisis, one that left a cloud over as René Lévesque and the spellbinding orator hijacked a plane, forged early links with Palestinian Quebec for decades. Why did it happen the way it Pierre Bourgault, a leader of the first staunchly insurgents, planned the kidnapping of three diplo- did? Did government panic and go overboard? Why sovereigntist movement, Le Rassemblement pour mats—pulling off one—while simultaneously seiz- were Canada’s foreign friends so startled by such l’indépendance nationale (RIN), forerunner of the ing and assassinating a major political figure. uncharacteristic actions while our population was Parti Québécois. Instead, their inspiration came The book is very detailed, relying heavily on so supportive? from Marx, Lenin, Cuban revolutionary saint Che police documents and news accounts. But it is These are questions author D’Arcy Jenish Guevara, and anti-colonial guru Frantz Fanon’s never plodding, for Jenish has a clean style and a explores in The Making of the October Crisis, while revolutionary classic, The Wretched of the Earth. keen storyteller’s eye for quotes. For example, one leaving no doubt where he feels the blame for the For felquistes, Quebec was not a province but Montrealer blasted spinning out of his chair and crackdown lies with his subtitle, Canada’s Long a francophone nation beaten into colonial status across the floor by a bomb said it felt “as if I was in Nightmare of Terrorism at the Hands of the FLQ. while Anglo Canadians (and U.S. business inter- an old-fashion barn dance.” Jenish gives the impression he believes much of ests) were contemptuous occupiers. In Fanon they Jenish relies on the astonishing stories of Robert what seems now as a heavy-handed state response found assurance that there could be no alterna- Côté, who I used to think might qualify as having was justified to stop the crisis escalating rapidly into tive to bloodshed to break such chains: “National the worst job in the world as head of Montreal’s dangerous civil unrest. liberation, national resistance, the restoration of undersized and ill-equipped bomb disposal squad. He insists we have a very imperfect memory nationhood to the people...decolonization is always We follow Côté as he dismantles waves of bombs of the crisis, which reinforces an increasingly a violent phenomenon.” scattered about the city, perhaps fifteen a month, negative view of official actions. The reason it so While some felquistes were immature goofs some with only minutes to spare. Though often puzzles and evades us today is that historians and hopeless at clandestine existence (the Laporte nervous, he keeps his fingers steady by refusing and documentary makers have been fixated on kidnappers forgot to stock up on food and had “to pay attention to the ticking of the clock” and the height of the crisis only—the over years prevents truly catastrophic relatively short period within the last loss of life and destruction. One car quarter of 1970 that saw the kidnap- Over seven-and-a-half years, bomb he disarms outside the Bank ping of British diplomat James Cross of Montreal headquarters in the and the kidnapping and murder the FLQ pulled off 200 bombings heart of the city would have reduced of senior Quebec cabinet minister much of the area to rubble. The FLQ Pierre Laporte—while giving far too and was responsible for seven deaths, plans booby traps to kill him, but this little attention to the long struggle of dozens of bank robberies, and the remarkable man survives to receive the Front de Libération du Québec to the Order of Canada. bring an increasingly violent terror theft of tons of dynamite. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion campaign to Quebec. here that although the crisis was ter- What makes our grasp of events rible, Canada was extremely lucky to even more dubious, he believes, is that many to live on tinned spaghetti most the time), Jenish have avoided far worse by 1970. Counter-terrorism of those who have written about October 1970 also highlights more dangerous characters: the efforts faced daunting odds because of the almost tended to be either former terrorists, such as Cross twenty-something master bomb maker Pierre-Paul comically lax official security at the time. The FLQ kidnapper Francis Simard, or at least emotionally Geoffroy, responsible for thirty-one bombings was able to steal near-unlimited supplies of very sympathetic to the idealism and commitment of including the boldest blast inside the Montreal high-explosive dynamite by simply taking it from young felquistes as FLQ militants were called. This Stock Exchange; Paul Rose, ruthless kidnapper virtually unguarded construction sites and quar- bias at the core of their accounts, Jenish argues, and elusive fundraiser through bank heists; and ries, where whole crates of it were painted bright has led to a skewed history in which government lead FLQ theorist and ferocious polemicist Pierre red and marked “Explosives.” actions are now routinely denounced as politic- Vallières, author of Nègres blancs d’Amérique, Incredibly, three successive Quebec govern- ally oppressive or scandalously unnecessary. This whose power with words claiming francophone ments over seven years failed to act to adequately seriously overlooks the enormous threat of vio- oppression won an admiring following among stu- insist on safer storage of explosives and to pun- lence on quite-unprepared leaders in Montreal, dents and academics.­ ish lax security. When new legislation was finally Quebec City, and Ottawa that in the end forced From 1967 on, I had a rare vantage point as a passed in mid-1970, felquistes showed their defi- them to grasp for emergency detention powers young Montreal Gazette reporter covering the then ance by immediately walking off with seven cases and backup troops. extraordinarily powerful and world-famous mayor of dynamite and shaking downtown Montreal with Canada’s innocence when confronting the FLQ of Montreal, Jean Drapeau, and reporting on a yet more bombings. underground throughout its existence from about city hall that often seemed under siege. Drapeau By the late 1960s, the FLQ had a seven-member 1963 to 1971 is striking in hindsight. We forget that would be one of two key figures, along with Quebec central committee giving loose direction to nor- the 1960s FLQ violence preceded the far-left urban premier Robert Bourassa, who pushed an initially mally two semi-autonomous cells, containing five terrorist campaigns elsewhere in the West, such as reluctant Trudeau to impose the War Measures Act. to ten members each, that were active in Montreal those of the Red Brigades in Italy, the Red Army I ended up not only covering Drapeau but the many at any one time. Jenish quotes one government Faction in Germany, and the Weather Underground riots and protests of the time. It was an exciting per- estimate that a core of forty to fifty dedicated terror- (Weathermen) in the United States. The West had iod—and bizarre as it coincided with the mayor’s ists were aided by perhaps 300 active sympathizers little experience with terrorism, and there were tireless push for civic grandeur, from Expo 67 to the who supplied financial aid and hideouts, along with few models for Canadian politicians to study; they Olympics that arrived in 1976. 2,000 to 3,000 passive supporters. I was interested seemed not to know quite what to make of the FLQ I assumed I remembered the era well, albeit to see this figure as some politicians estimated a until too late. through the rosy haze of nostalgia for a city I had higher number, but this seems a reasonable esti- The FLQ grew out of the intense impatience loved like no other, but Jenish’s point about mem- mate now. felt by some Quebec youth with the democratic ory is well made—I was surprised to find in The While most in Quebec strongly opposed the reforms introduced by the Quebec Liberal Party’s Making of the October Crisis information about FLQ, there was a serious split in society. Most Quiet Revolution at the start of the 1960s. These events I had been unaware of in the FLQ campaign worrisome for governments was the large number

18 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada of Quebec intellectuals, prominent artists, show front line of law and order could not be entirely terror operations leading up to the October Crisis business stars, academics, labour leaders, and trusted in a prolonged emergency, which made did little to prepare felquistes for an operation on separatist politicians who mobilized committees reliance on Ottawa’s power more crucial. this ambitious scale. FLQ theorists assumed gov- in defence of FLQ prisoners and who invariably By 1970, the FLQ was convinced by the unrest ernments would buckle (they did not), that franco- tended to load major blame for the bombings on of the previous months that the timing was right phones would start rallying to them (they were society itself. to expand their campaign beyond bombings and revulsed instead), and that they were the future The underground movement was able to surf robberies into kidnapping and even executions (their time was up). atop a growing tide of political and labour unrest by adopting tactics increasingly common among Had they avoided kidnappings and stuck to in the streets. Montreal endured years of riots, South American insurgents. In early 1970, police bombs, the FLQ might have gone on longer as a including the massive pitched battle on Saint- seized documents showing plans were afoot to serious threat but instead they plunged into cat- Jean-Baptiste Day in 1968 during which Trudeau kidnap either an Israeli or a U.S. diplomat. No effort astrophic failure. Within months, the FLQ gave up, famously faced down waves of bottle-throwing was made to warn other diplomats they could also with most members serving years in prison. Or in hard-core activists trying to storm his review stand be targets, including British trade commissioner the case of those who had freed Cross, a mostly sad, while panicky police, from my vantage point, James Cross, who was snatched with ease from his homesick exile in Cuba. responded with extraordinary brutality. own home on October 5 and taken away in a bor- “There was a lot of crying during the flight [into This history emphasizes how rattled Quebec rowed taxi by a cell called Liberation. exile],” kidnapper Jacques Lanctôt wrote. “Everyone society had become. Drapeau, whose own home The general facts of the October Crisis, from had a heavy heart. It was the first time we had left would be bombed the next year, delivered a sin- early October to end of December, are well known. our beloved Quebec, which we had plunged into a gularly uncheerful Christmas message depicting Jenish proves to be a clear-eyed guide through the grave crisis…” his city sinking into “dangerous and depressing... twists and turns of ransom demands and denials, a Eventually, eighty-three militants and twenty- violence and disorder, rancor and conflict.” Claude manifesto broadcast, the internal disputes between three sympathizers were convicted of a wide range Ryan, respected editor of the newspaper Le Devoir, the Liberation cell holding Cross and the Chénier of crimes. None talked to Jenish, so he relied instead said that “Quebec, at this moment, has a climate of cell that brutally murdered Pierre Laporte on on historic interviews and past writings. Some of intellectual, spiritual, moral, and social anarchy.” October 17 after kidnapping him a week earlier. the most prominent like Pierre Vallières and Paul To top everything, Montreal police, surly at the The use of troops was likely inevitable because Rose have died, a few became politically active on best of times, stormed off the job over contract police were too exhausted and far too few in num- the fringes, but most settled into unremarkable disputes on October 7, 1969, just one year before ber to guard all diplomats, politicians, and public anonymous lives in Quebec away from media—and the crisis. Joined by fire services, it was a mass buildings. The mass arrests, on the other hand, are any association with the word “terrorism.” desertion that threw the city into an anarchy of still hard to justify. Governments had reason to It will soon be a half century since the October rioting, bank robberies, and widespread looting be highly nervous, as a growing tide of thousands Crisis, and neither Quebec nor Canada has much before troops and provincial police restored order. of student and hard-core activists were rallying interest in reliving the “long nightmare” of the I still think this event had a much-underestimated in open sympathy to FLQ demands for prisoner years leading up to it. However, countries can impact on the official handling of the October Crisis release and ransom. The situation felt dire, but benefit from a perspective on their history— as there were dark hints well into 1970 that police subtler methods and fewer arrests should have even a distasteful historical perspective—and might storm out again unless new demands were been tried. I would have liked Jenish to explore this this work brings an important part of ours back met. Authorities were haunted by a fear that the area more, but he is solid in showing how years of into focus.

January/February 2019 reviewcanada.ca 19 The Fire and Brimstone Next Time We deal with the reality of evil by thinking of ways that sinners are punished Mark Lovewell

Hell and Damnation: A Sinner’s Guide to Eternal Torment Marq de Villiers University of Regina Press 312 pages, softcover ISBN 9780889775848

araka, Hades, Gehenna, Inferno. Hell’s names are legion as we try to make Nsense of the overpowering reality of evil. So, too, in its Western Christian incarnation, are its memorable features: “the quarrelling, devilish personalities, and the demonic cast of thousands… the horrid instruments of torture and the never- quenched fire,” as Marq de Villiers writes in his latest book, Hell and Damnation: A Sinner’s Guide to Eternal Torment. Atheists might argue that such antiquated visions are well behind us, but evidence suggests otherwise. In a 2004 Gallup poll of Americans, for example, seventy percent of respondents said they believed God would punish sinners in the afterlife. Such statistics tell us much about the lingering power of hell as an idea. Because whatever specific punishments Gallup’s cast of believers had in mind, there’s a good chance many were inspired by the features de Villiers touches upon. He argues these apparitions are well worth exploring from a secular standpoint. For if one brings together the contrasting visions of hell propounded in different times and places, then their sheer profu- sion must give any believer reason to pause: “To put it plainly,” says de Villiers, “the multiple (and con- flicting) depictions of the inferno and the paradiso… are folktales, no more; as such, they are on a par with spiritualism, Ouija boards, hauntings, hobgoblins, and the rest.” And interestingly, he is not the only writer engaged in such a project at the moment, with American historian Scott G. Bruce publishing a compendium of hellish visions, The Penguin Book of Hell, in recent months. This suggests that publishers, Hell (not exactly as illustrated). at least, see a persistent zeitgeist out there. Image from the Mechanical Curator collection, British Library via Flickr De Villiers has made a name for himself as a writer willing to range far and wide in specialized of comparative religion, he leans heavily on his he investigates. What kind of place is it? Who’s in areas, especially in history and science, to produce sources. Besides citing a raft of scholarly tomes, he charge? What’s its operating plan? And what have compelling works characterized by a keen eye, acknowledges a special debt to Hell-On-Line, a vast self-proclaimed eyewitnesses said about their voluminous research, and a knack for storytelling. online repository of primary texts on the topic of time there? His 1999 Water, for example, won the Governor hell collected by medievalist Eileen Gardiner. The result is a breezy if somewhat impression- General’s Award. This latest project is no differ- Given the sheer volume of information de istic tour. The non-Western part of his account ent. Because of his lack of credentials in the field Villiers imparts, and his wish to stress the logical highlights the surprisingly agnostic perspective underpinnings of the various visions of hell he provided by Shintoism, the astonishingly complex Mark Lovewell is a retired Ryerson University explores, he resorts to an unconventional exposi- underworlds prevalent in Buddhism, and the intri- professor and administrator. He is a former interim tory technique. Four themes ground his narrative cate realms of Hinduism’s own versions of Naraka. editor of the LRC. as he asks the identical questions for each vision The Western elements include the journey of souls

20 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada in ancient Egypt; Sheol and Gehenna in Judaism; Hades in the classical age; and the world of the dead in Zoroastrianism. All these shadowy after- worlds set the stage for his main focus—the hell of Being on Fire Western Christendom. De Villiers points out that Christian hell is in What is the shape, the taste, of summer light some ways exceptional, given its stress on torture, that comes to rest on arid hills especially the perpetual kind. While the torment at the edge of the world as my window of deservingly wicked souls is found in some other versions of hell, no other religious tradition applies frames it? Already leaves have fallen, this feature with the same unremitting intensity as the undergrowth a burgeoning basket does traditional Christianity. Even allied faiths such of scraps and drafts. I see only brittle as Islam differ in how hell is viewed, with Islamic scholars believing that the duration of a sinner’s punishment is calibrated to fit the sin. kindling and firelighter, hear nothing “Torture is a Western idea,” de Villiers observes, but matches striking. This climate raises “and even in the West the doctrine of perpetual abstractions and indifferences. torment was only propounded by the Lateran Council [convoked by Pope Innocent III] in 1215.” Cirrus is the sky’s bunting. The scarlet Generations of theologians and mystics, as well tanagers and orioles that winter as poets and playwrights, provide the backdrop in my sleep whistle incendiary for this evolution, which continued for centuries after the Lateran Council. De Villiers is especially tunes. From the resolute bird, Stevens wrote intrigued by the contributions of the Benedictine (I paraphrase), fiery feathers hang. It sings monk Marcus (writer of the boldly imaginative beyond us, alone. Alone, I have tract The Vision of Tundale) and the mystic Teresa of Avila, and he makes a powerful case that these frequently overlooked writers deserve as much no words for the phoenix, whose throat is full credit, if not more, than better-known figures such of its own accord with wordless songs, as Dante and Milton in fabricating the distinctive and I have no ideas before this view aspects of Christian hell. Tundale, for example, is escorted by an angel but final thoughts.T he grass, the moss, the dirt, to a mammoth viewing pit where he is given the and the stone have been drained. The slug, the frond, chance to set eyes on the devil in person—an the fern have been drunk by mere being, the swelter encounter memorably described in the Middle English poetic version of Vision: that simply is. I borrow again from the poet to ask, what is this smoke, He was bothe grett and strong this sleeping light? I dwell on what I can And of an hundryt cubytes long.

Twenty cubytes was he brad, And ten of thyknes was he mad. glimpse of the ocean, as if that saline And when he gaput, or when he gonus, casement were not framed by the fouled shore. A thowsand sowlys he I repeat, I repeat my rusted self: swoluwys attonus. should firedrakes in blazing set fever skies Compared with Vision’s vivid tone of authenti- alight, no watchers would notice. The dull city, the literary hijinks of Dante’s Inferno seem, at portents escape us. Everything has soured, least to de Villiers, to be a rather lacklustre piece of myth-making. What does distinguish the Divina passed out of humour. Trust me—my belly Commedia is Dante’s willingness to assign imagina- is full of glass, my eyes are rubbed with sand, tive punishments to various sinners whom he iden- and I have been left in the kiln to burn. tifies by name. “This was new,” de Villiers notes, “many early visions of hell recounted the sufferings there, but hardly ever named the sinners directly, particularly the author’s contemporaries.” He admits to being underwhelmed by Dante’s Inferno, viewing it as a rather lacklustre piece of Nicholas Bradley myth-making. In contrast, he sees Milton as deserv- ing praise for at least one major innovation—turn- ing Lucifer, as hell’s main overseer, into a genuine Nicholas Bradley is a poet, literary critic, and scholarly editor. He lives in Victoria. tragic hero. If anything, the conception of hell we find in the pages of Paradise Lost is something of a zenith in de Villiers’s view, with the traditional hell we’re realms of fire and brimstone and is now to be found sense of evil is too great to lay aside the versions familiar with today being more or less complete in a sleekly furnished office. of hell each of us has concocted for ourselves. And by the time Milton’s poem was published. Since De Villiers believes further evolution in our who is to say that such a stratagem doesn’t serve then, there has been a slow but perceptible shift notions of hell is likely. In his epilogue, he sug- a beneficial function, not just psychologically for away from the high drama of the Middle Ages and gests we are already moving back to conceptions us as individuals but for society as a whole? If Renaissance, with more and more attention paid to of the afterlife that prevailed in prehistoric times. we do cling to our private visions, however, then Satan himself. In summarizing this shift, de Villiers In early animist societies, for example, there was we need some awareness of how arbitrary such notes, “It wasn’t that the devil had disappeared. rarely a hell at all. Rather, the greatest punishment chosen myths must be. Seen in this light, Hell and It was just that he would be smoother now, more a dead soul could experience was being forgotten Damnation succeeds in making us think carefully urbane, able to capture men’s minds via trickery by the living. about our own beliefs, while representing one and persuasion and not by frightening the hell out But there is no guarantee de Villiers’ prediction more intriguing milestone in de Villiers’s varied of them.” It is as if Satan removed himself from the will come true. For many of us, the need to make writerly career.

January/February 2019 reviewcanada.ca 21 In the Company of War Portraits from behind the lens of conflict photography Murray Brewster

Shooting War: 18 Profiles of Conflict Photographers Anthony Feinstein Glitterati Editions 224 pages, hardcover ISBN 9781943876570

here were times when Anthony Feinstein would scare the hell out of me. T I was worried he had some sort of X-ray vision. We would sit together on panels discussing war journalism, and my fear was that he would see right through me and judge the cumulative effect of my experiences covering combat. Such was the power of his unobtrusive gaze and, more importantly, his reputation as a neuro- psychiatrist. For those of whose business it was to chronicle war, you would have had to have been living under a rock for the past dozen years not to have met him, read his work, or at least been aware Four years after taking this image of a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan, Tim Hetherington was killed in Libya. of it. That kind of gravitas gets you pretty impressive Courtesy of Tim Hetherington/MAGNUM access to a tight-knit, often-cloistered community of extraordinarily gifted people who’ve been riven in Toronto, first encountered conflict in 1982 as a They are, in most cases, among the most sensitive, by the burdens of repeatedly staring into the savage conscript into the South African army, which was thoughtful, historically literate, and, more import- abyss of modern wars and conflicts. Through him, fighting in northern Namibia and southern Angola. antly, image-conscious people I’ve ever met. we are granted admission into this intimate fellow- His interest in war photography was kindled by the They are also the toughest to get to know. They ship to meet his subjects and in some cases their “amateurish” photos he took there. In this book, he are keenly aware, even more than television people, families in Shooting War: 18 Profiles of Combat “worked backward…starting with photographs that of how they want to project themselves, under what Photographers. I admire and then going in search of the men and terms, and in what light. And rarely do they let you “The work of conflict photographers comes at a women who took them.” in completely. personal cost,” Dr. Feinstein writes on the back dust That has a tinge of self-indulgence, which he can You would think Feinstein’s long history as a jacket. “War inevitably leaves an imprint.” It is a pat- be forgiven in light of his previous groundbreak- psychiatrist and the ability to dismantle the road- ently obvious statement with the patently obvious ing scholarly works including Dangerous Lives: blocks of the mind, without setting anything off, intention of drawing readers in to meet each of the War and the Men and Women Who Report It and would give him a leg-up on average interviewers. It photographers whose singular or collective body of Journalists Under Fire. My fear that this book was might very well be, in some cases, that his subjects work he admires. going to be a vanity project vanished after the first saw him coming. There is a guarded quality to some He further entices with a noble, but also some- few pages. What lingered temporarily was a con- of the biographies that is all too familiar, especially what obvious, appeal along of the lines of you may cern that we were being served up fawning, misty- if you’ve spent time in the company of war and con- know the image, but you don’t know the person. “So eyed, or rock star accounts—as much as the words flict photographers. If you haven’t, you’re left with when you next come across photographs of war or “rock star” can apply to the semi-anonymous world questions and a desire to know more about some conflict and marvel at their content, or recoil from of combat photographers. of the subjects. it, or perhaps even look away, depending on your Don’t get me wrong: it is no sin to admire some- Only a few of his subjects are remotely close to sensitivities, pause for a moment and reflect on the one who has shown courage in the face of horror, being household names, although they are widely men and woman behind the lens and what it has even physical danger, and yet still had the presence known and revered within the community of for- taken to get the images before you.” of mind to do the job as a service to history. We are, eign correspondents. Feinstein, the director of the neuropsychiatry however, being invited with this book to gain a bet- There’s the legendary Don McCullin, a Brit program at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre ter, clear-eyed understanding of these unique indi- whose career has spanned over six decades with viduals beyond the maudlin and often hackneyed assignments in almost every major war zone since Murray Brewster is an Ottawa-based correspondent interpretations of war photographers. Feinstein 1964—including Vietnam, Northern Ireland, and for CBC News, where he is the senior parliamentary succeeds some of the time. the present charnel house of Syria. The portrait defence and foreign policy writer. He is the author of It is no easy task that he has assigned himself. of him is, by far, the most complete. You leave The Savage War: The Untold Battles of Afghanistan Having spent fifteen months covering the Afghan with a better appreciation of the man, not only the (2011) and was the lead writer on the 2015 docu- war as a print journalist, I have come to appreci- expected torments and regrets, but the wellspring mentary Kandahar Journals. ate how combat photographers are a breed apart. of his ambition and outlook on life. The harrowing

22 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada account of David Guttenfelder’s brushes with death ­photographer who died at the relatively young age do that kind of work. Everyone who covers combat in Africa and his willingness to share that trauma of forty-five in October 2007 from a ruptured brain knows there are sometimes consequences such as and the grace with which he deals with it make for aneurysm. She left behind a significant body of when British photographer Tim Hetherington was a gripping read. work that focused on the plight of women in war. killed while covering the Libyan civil war. That said, Then there’s Tim Page, who arrived in Vietnam To create his portrait, Feinstein relies on interviews the bargain you make with yourself is amorphous as a twenty-year-old and made his name with that deliver a gratifying view of the woman whose and evolving, something you can’t quite wrap your photographs that “reveal, in the most dramatic and riveting images of the violence in Gaza in the early fingers around as it’s going on. visceral way, the horrors and exhilaration that come 2000s gripped me. Seeing her through the eyes My reasons for covering the war in 2006, with warfare.” Page was renowned for the hard and of the people who loved her brought a depth and when the hard fighting started for Canadians in fast life he lived in his four years in Vietnam, which warmth to her story that is missing in some of the Kandahar, were not the same as those that drove was a kaleidoscope of dope, women, rock ’n’ roll, single-voice narratives. me to the streets of Kabul in early 2014 on the and combat. And it is clear that Feinstein is a fan, Photography, in particular photojournalism, same day fellow correspondent Nils Horner was writing that Page’s account “of the war is so funny, is about capturing the essence of moment, or the murdered with a shot to the back of the head by a intoxicating, and downright entertaining that it truth of an individual, with an image. Being able to Taliban splinter group. It is not the kind of wisdom can obscure his own suffering and the deep well- seize and illustrate the substance of each of these that gets shared with random strangers, no matter spring of sympathy and compassion he had for the extraordinary people would have been a daunting how well meaning or noteworthy. Vietnamese.” task for even a seasoned biographer. The fact that you don’t always get deeply per- There are flashes of insight like that, but in the The peril with this kind of project, in particular, sonal insight and brutal honesty in one, two, and end we don’t leave with a better understanding is to avoid creating caricatures or playing to well- three—or may be even four—interviews may be one into what makes this legend tick. That is unfortu- trodden stereotypes, which people invariably have of the most important weaknesses of Shooting War. nate. Pick up a copy of Dispatches, Michael Herr’s about war photographers and even correspond- Still, the book does make you “pause for a classic memoir of Vietnam, and you will see Page ents. It is easy to dismiss all of them as larger-than- moment and reflect” on the men and woman stitched throughout that gripping narrative. There life characters—cowboys or cowgirls, adrenaline behind the lens. Feinstein avoids the cliché is, perhaps, more insight in that book than in the junkies, and even freaks who’ve been broken by and cringing. There is a certain reverence that retrospective of him offered here, where we meet what they’ve seen. is touching, particularly in the presentation of the older version of the man who continues to drag That kind of appraisal is something I have per- the appendices where portraits and boilerplate around the ghosts of his storied past. sonally witnessed with the shocked, sometimes biographical details are displayed. This book suc- Shooting War contains moments of tenderness puzzled, expressions of those who’ve asked about ceeds, in a few instances, to deliver moments of and mercy, in particular with Feinstein’s handling my time in Afghanistan and learned that it involved truth and piercing insight into its subjects, but the of Carol Guzy, the multi–Pulitzer Prize–winning fifteen months and eight deployments. They are call for a deeper appreciation of each of them is photographer who was—according to the book— stunned by the amount of time I spent there, mysti- unevenly delivered. Nevertheless, it is worth read- unceremoniously dumped by the Washington Post fied at the motivation, and even a little disturbed by ing. It will, if anything, serve to whet the appetite after decades of covering conflicts and the after- the serenity with which the words are spoken. of those who want to learn more about the nobil- math of natural disasters. Most people do not understand the deep, intim- ity of these people, the nobility of a profession Feinstein also does justice to the memory ate commitment needed and the peace one must that is growing more dangerous and maligned of Alexandra Boulat, the outstanding French make with oneself, eventually, in order to repeatedly with each passing year.

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January/February 2019 reviewcanada.ca 23 Right Out of Tosca The sprawling, multi-generational history of a family that is a window to the strangeness and richness of Quebec Alison Gzowski

Songs for the Cold of Heart Eric Dupont Translated by Peter McCambridge QC Fiction 608 pages, softcover ISBN 9781771861472

t has been nearly three- quarters of a century since Hugh IMacLennan’s emblematic novel about French-English relations, Two Solitudes, provided Canadians with a metaphor for our dual existence. And since that time, in the field of Canadian literature at least, it feels as though little progress has been made in breaking down the barriers that keep us in our respective lin- guistic silos. The poet Rainer Maria Rilke, whose title MacLennan bor- rowed for his novel, was thinking of interpersonal relations when he wrote, “Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.” A hopeful sentiment when it comes to lovers, but it loses its magic when applied to the realities of the Canadian cultural divide. Life in Quebec and ‘the realities of the Canadian cultural divide.’ Now a vibrant and original voice Quebec summer and winter by Canadian Pacific Limited via Flickr from Quebec has given us a chance to revisit that relationship. through two world wars, the fall of the Berlin Wall, must have a living Madeleine, dies giving birth to Shortlisted for the 2018 Giller prize, Eric the Kennedy assassination, and many other major Louis. The boy grows up to become a legendary Dupont’s epic 608-page novel, Songs for the Cold twentieth century events. Among many, many strongman capable of lifting horses into the air. of Heart, which as La Fiancée américaine has sold other strange and wondrous occurrences, there are Later he operates a funeral home out of the house a whopping 60,000 copies since it appeared in nuns who appear out of thin air, a grandmother he shares with his wife, Irene, and his grandmother, 2012. Dupont, who teaches translation at McGill who defies death, and a lunch with Nazi leader also Madeleine, who despite being dead continues University, is an established literary star in his Joseph Goebbels. Its themes are universal: the ways to live with them and greets the mourning relatives home province. He’s won Quebec’s version of in which we create family legends, how stories who come to the funeral parlour. Canada Reads and nabbed the province’s two top become myths, how coincidences we barely regis- That is only the beginning. As insightful as it is literary prizes. This, his fourth novel, has found ter in our lives take on greater significance as time absurd, this book celebrates storytelling in all its its way into almost every serious reader’s home in passes. Add to the mix jealousy, betrayal, tragedy, forms. Louis Lamontagne proves to be no ordinary the province. and violence all tempered by an underlying current storyteller. His tales—even his children request Yet, despite its formidable presence in Quebec, of great wit. specific favourites like “the one about the dune” readers in English Canada knew nothing of the Opening in 1953 in Rivière-du-Loup, Songs for or “the lady with the big melons”—are non-linear, novel until the translation (deftly executed by Peter the Cold of Heart is the story of the Lamontagne filled with asides and digressions, coincidences, McCambridge) made the Giller short list, thereby family as told by the patriarch Louis “the Horse” and mistaken identities. His colourful and fan- introducing them to a master storyteller. Songs for Lamontagne. Aided by more than a few warm gins, tastic narratives are characteristic of the novel as the Cold of Heart is so layered and multifaceted Louis begins his tale by describing to his three chil- a whole. One section of the book is epistolary— that it defies elevator pitches. The sprawling multi- dren the story of his dramatic birth while trapped letters between Louis’s twin grandsons. Another generational tale spreads across two continents, in a church by a blizzard on Christmas Eve during section is the personal notebook of a German girl the annual re-enactment of the Nativity. Louis’s who steals an earring from Goebbels’s wife during Alison Gzowski is an editor at the Globe and Mail mother, Madeleine, a red-headed teen imported a party. Another section is a diary by the same girl and a founding director of the Writers at Woody from the United States to marry his father in order about the Soviet army siege of Königsberg in 1945. Point literary festival. to comply with the family rule that every generation­ The novel is rife with tall tales, asides that feel like

24 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada winks from the author, and frequent references to over the top with murder, attempted rape, tor- the potency of gossip. In part, Dupont is showing ture, suicide, political intrigue and betrayal. And us how stories connect us to one another. And as even though Songs does not try to recast Tosca or chaotic as they are in the telling, they are critical to recreate its plot, the opera is nevertheless an apt our sense of who we are and where we come from. analogy to Dupont’s epic story. The author, who Dupont has been compared to Gabriel García speaks Portuguese and German as well as French Márquez and John Irving, and, indeed, the and English, studied classical singing for four years accepted presence of the living dead (Old Ma and carried out extensive research, interviewing Madeleine) is magic realism at its best. The book’s people who lived in 1960s Quebec, as well as sur- subversive humour, too, is reminiscent of Irving’s vivors of Russia’s incursion into East Prussia during A Prayer for Owen Meany. And there’s a deadpan the Second World War in order to add authenticity absurdity that brings to mind the novels of Patrick and depth to his novel. deWitt. But there is nothing derivative about this There is no doubt that Songs for the Cold of book, which is original in every sense, operatic in Heart deserves a wider reading, but English its ambition and passion, and astonishing in its Canadians are not renowned for their love of read- vast complexity. Somehow Dupont manages to ing translations of Quebec literature. One reason weave the chaos into an enduring whole, in part may be that we don’t believe Quebec is exotic through the use of leitmotifs (teal-green eyes, gold enough in the way that literature from other parts crosses, a birthmark shaped like a bass clef, songs of the world, say France or West Africa, are. We by Schubert and Bach) that act as colourful threads assume we already know the province, when, in recurring again and again and finally pulling the fact, many of us have a passing familiarity that is whole crazy narrative together into a satisfying and likely outdated. For those readers, Songs for the coherent tapestry. Cold of Heart is a revelation and a window on to The most significant and fitting leitmotif is a the strangeness and richness of a province we recurring nod to the opera Tosca. For example, hardly know. there are characters described as being like Tosca, a Dupont’s small publisher, QC Fiction, has high woman named Floria (Tosca’s first name), a restau- hopes for the book both in the rest of Canada and rant called Tosca that is pivotal to the plot, and an internationally. The so-called Giller bump is the ill-conceived film version of the opera starring one opportunity they have been waiting for, but a ques- of the aforementioned Lamontagne twins. The end- tion lingers: Do we need to wait for Songs to achieve ing is practically a scene right out of Tosca. the success it deserves overseas before we here in Like the opera, the novel is melodramatic and Canada fully embrace this spectacular novel?

Coming up in the LRC

Trials of the Modern Bureaucrat Drew Fagan The Politics of Breast Cancer Screening Alanna Mitchell Men and Gender Equality Kate Heron The Lives of Soldiers David MacKenzie West Coast Jazz George Fetherling

January/February 2019 reviewcanada.ca FTRW2019_issue_third.indd 1 2019-02-0125 3:20 PM ‘Scots Wha Hae’ Turmoil in eighteenth-century Scotland changed Canada and the world Chris Alexander

Call of Empire: From the Highlands to Hindustan Alexander Charles Baillie McGill-Queen’s University Press 496 pages, hardcover ISBN 9780773551244

The Scottish Clearances: A History of the Dispossessed T.M. Devine Allen Lane 496 pages, hardcover ISBN 9780241304105

Set Adrift Upon the World: The Sutherland Clearances James Hunter Birlinn 612 pages, softcover ISBN 9781780273549

n May 31, 1821, the sheriff and a dozen men entered Ascoilemore, a Ohamlet in the valley of Strathbrora in the county of Sutherland in the Scottish Highlands, to enforce eviction orders against its residents. At the home of Jessie Ross, the sheriff ordered her young Scotland’s emptied Highlands saw the birth of a new culture in North America. daughters, Elizabeth and Katherine Ross, into the Photograph by Henry Hemming via Flickr shivering cold. When Jessie refused to budge, one of the men, William Stevenson, still drunk from a Edinburgh searching for work, his family and their scrubbed from Scotland’s northern landscape start- night’s carousing, banged two-month-old Roberta’s neighbours were thrown out of their homes. ing in the mid-eighteenth century: rent hikes, leases cradle against a door frame as he moved her out- When Ross’s complaint over the “inhuman not renewed, evictions. These heavy-handed land side. The baby howled in the freezing wind until a treatment” meted out to his family threatened to grabs, backed by the threat of violence, ended a way neighbour, who was a new mother, nursed her back create a scandal for the Staffords, it was Ross who of life, sent the Gaelic language into exile, and gave to sleep. Elizabeth, whose face was injured when found himself the focus of an investigation by Highland Gaeldom the aspect of vacant grandeur it Stevenson flung a piece of wood at her, wept for authorities wary of crossing the aristocratic couple. retains today. fifteen minutes. Unsurprisingly, his accusations were dismissed, This tale of the Ross family is not just the story They were a relatively well-off family before and he was even forced to apologize to Stevenson. of Scotland. Replicated countless times, it is also being forced from their home. Jessie Ross was born His woes continued. His daughter, Katherine, died Canada’s story as tens of thousands of Scots forced in 1793, a daughter of George Sutherland, one of the of whooping cough. Yet despite this misfortune, off their land made their way to the top half of North county’s most prosperous farmers. Her husband, Gordon Ross named his second son after the man America to establish new lives and to help build a Gordon, was the son of Hugh Ross, who managed who had uprooted him—the marquess. Then he new society. several thousand acres in Strathbrora for local lairds. had a mental collapse—a denouement that author Generations of Scottish-Canadians have polished Gordon was schoolmaster at Ascoilemore and, like James Hunter rightly describes as Orwellian. the tales of the Highland clearances. But the per- Jessie, spoke Gaelic and English. But that wasn’t fidy of landowners was not the whole story. In The enough to save them. Gordon desperately tried to ames Hunter’s Set Adrift Upon the World: The Scottish Clearances: A History of the Dispossessed, avoid eviction by getting an extension on his lease, JSutherland Clearances is the shocking history of T.M. Devine, one of Scotland’s most prolific living held by the area’s largest landowner, the Marquess dislocation caused by the greed and impunity of the historians, argues convincingly that the country was and Marchioness of Stafford, later the Duke and Staffords. He was English; she Scottish. For the last a victim of its own agricultural success. As farm- Duchess of Sutherland. He failed, and while in decade of their lives, they were one of the richest ing improved and food became more abundant couples in Britain. Yet their misdeeds in Sutherland throughout the eighteenth century, the population Chris Alexander was minister of citizenship and formed an infamous chapter in the Highland rose—by a quarter between 1755 and 1801. immigration. He has ancestors from Glasgow, clearances, the long saga of rising rents and With more people occupying the same nar- Glenmoriston, and Perthshire, among other places. forced removals that saw hundreds of settlements row tracts of arable land, the number of tenants

26 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada declined; by the end of the Napoleonic Wars in generations of the family between 1720 and 1869, ebb and flow in what Jon Wilson called “theatres of 1815, landless servants, labourers, and tradesmen and is “the most comprehensive collection of anarchy” in the British Raj in India. were the majority. A once-sizeable body of cot- Highland correspondence from that era,” according Alexander Charles Baillie’s book captures the tars—rent-paying smallholders who devoted labour to Scottish researcher Sandra Bardwell. dynamism of mid-eighteenth century Scotland to the laird in key seasons—were by that time virtu- The letters give an insider’s account of Scotland’s where cottars and Gaelic were in crisis; where ally extinct. As this revolution accelerated, an army rapid embrace of empire. Unlike other histories, tobacco, sugar, and the military were thriving; and of families who had once been multiple or single this is not a cool rehearsal of statistics, such as the where change and mobility ubiquitous. tenants, or sub-tenants farming “rigs” as they were numbers of officers commissioned or sugar plan- called in Sutherland, decamped in one of three dir- tations run by Scots. Instead, the letters present a hese three books brim with Canadian con- ections: to Scotland’s industrializing towns and cit- family drama of wooings, bankruptcies, statements Tnections. Urged on by Lord Selkirk, many ies, to the British army or navy, or to North America. of account, and land deals by people who mostly sat Sutherland emigrants crossed the Atlantic, ending As Devine observes, as many as 100,000 Scots left out the Jacobite rising, when the House of Stuart’s up in the Red River Valley in Manitoba. Another for North America between 1700 and 1815, with the last serious attempt at a comeback was snuffed out family from the county, the Macdonalds, had majority going between 1763 and 1775. at the Battle of Culloden in 1746. settled in Glasgow, but hard times forced them to The flight was so profound that The Scots The letters offer a window on the hopes, opin- Canada in 1820. Hugh and Helen Macdonald, with Magazine (which has been publishing since ions and frustrations of the Baillies and their asso- their four children, including a boy named John, 1739) direly warned of depopulation in both the ciates. Dr. John Alves, William’s brother-in-law and settled near her relatives in Kingston. Highlands and Lowlands. manager of the estate in his absence, gossips about The motives of these emigrants varied. A group Without denying that a vast rural population legacies, the value of fir trees, purloined “chintz from South Uist and the Arisaig-Moidart peninsulas was uprooted, Devine disproves the stubborn and muslin,” and the political rivalry of the Duke came to the Island of St. John (later Prince Edward perception that Sutherland-type forced removals of Gordon and General Simon Fraser, a veteran of Island) in 1772 just to remain Catholic. A shipload were widespread. With great acuity backed by vast the Plains of Abraham. In April 1775, Alves wrote of 189 souls mostly from Lochbroom embarked for scholarship, he documents the forces restructuring to William, a military officer in India since 1764, Pictou on the Hector in 1773 to escape poverty. The landholdings across Scotland—from the centuries- that “the spirit of emigration to America still con- Glengarry-Glenmoriston group who went to New long weakening of clan structures and the impact of tinues in the Highlands & is said spreading & gain- York in 1773–74, then on to townships incorporated education in dissolving previously closed commun- ing strength” despite the brewing rebellion in the into Upper Canada after 1791, were following their ities to the profitability of cattle farming. American colonies against Britain. tacksmen, traditional clan leaders under the chief. There were also the grasping practices of aris- He noted that Britain was sending over eight These Highland Gael soldier-settlers became a tocratic clan chiefs, mostly absentee landlords by regiments to quiet the colonists but added, pre- prominent part of the new province’s Loyalist popu- the end of the eighteenth century, in extracting sciently, that “a good deal of blood will be spilt lation, as demobilizing members of the Carignan- funds from self-regarding Highland lieutenants to before matters are settled.” Salières regiment had done in New France a support ostentatious lifestyles in Edinburgh and Five months later, on September 23, Alexander century before. In the end, both clearances and London. Devine’s aim is to give the aching portraits Godsman, factor to the Duke of Gordon, wrote imperial campaigns brought Scottish fortune seek- drawn in John Prebble’s Highland Trilogy—which to William about the growing confidence of the ers to Canada en masse. Dimming prospects at appeared in 1960s and is still the home made opportunity in North dominant work in this genre—a America irresistible. firmer foundation in documented Heavy-handed land grabs, All three books reinforce one fact. As Devine recalls, Prebble’s own point. King William III’s so-called anger had been spurred by Victorian backed by the threat of violence, Glorious Revolution of 1688 was a works that are part of the vast body of ended a way of life. disaster for Scotland. Famine loomed. literature devoted to the clearances. The Catholic Stuarts fled to Paris. Prebble, who died in 2001, appar- Patronage was strangled. Markets and ently first heard stories of the clearances as a child Americans and London’s inability to regain the ancient institutions were stripped away. The Acts in Saskatchewan, where he lived until he returned initiative: “The British senate have been all along of Union of 1707, in which Scotland united with to the United Kingdom at the age of twelve; he a good deal divided about the measures they England in the United Kingdom of Great Britain, was later a member of the Communist Party of ought to pursue, which has brought a stimulus to added insult to injury, as Jacobite plots or military Great Britain until the Second World War. Karl the courage of the Americans, and may serve to incursions as well as a series of wars with France Marx was familiar with events in Scotland. Writing spin out the contest longer than otherwise there erupted from 1689 to 1763. about “the Duchess of Sutherland and slavery” was any reason to expect.” Again, prescient words Over subsequent decades, particularly after in an 1853 paper and also in Das Kapital (1867), spoken nearly two years before the decisive British 1760, Britain began to succeed, however, as Scottish Marx depicted “expropriation of the Gaels” in the defeats at Fort Stanwix and Saratoga (in what is education, literature, officials, sailors, soldiers, Highlands as “reckless terrorism,” replacing com- now New York) that drew France into the war on and trade made their mark across the empire. This munal arrangements with the cruelties of private the American side. Caledonian imprint was especially pronounced property. Devine rebuts these seductive slogans As Charles Baillie points out, prime minister in Canada, where French, English, Gaelic, and with hard economic analysis. William Pitt had counted on India’s riches to pay Indigenous languages were spoken. Catholics were By giving voice to Highlanders, Alexander down debts incurred in the Seven Years’ War, par- welcome, an English-speaking aristocracy never Charles Baillie’s Call of Empire: From the Highlands ticularly at Quebec. When his son Pitt the Younger took root, and seigneurial tenure was not extended to Hindustan casts an authentic light on three became prime minister in late 1783, he inherited to Upper Canada. It was as if the Auld Alliance— principal drivers of change in eighteenth- and a string of defeats in India as well as in North Scotland’s historic pact with France—had been nineteenth-century Scotland: agricultural reform America. When William Baillie was captured on partly restored, underpinned by broader land and urbanization; transatlantic emigration; and September 10, 1780, at Pollilur in India, he was ownership and commercial success in fisheries, fur, the military careers that drove imperial advance in giving his life for an empire that appeared over- grain, potash, and timber. North America, India, and elsewhere. The result is extended on three continents. The most successful early firm headquartered a gem of historical insight, centering on two lives: Within a few years, however, that perception was in Canada, the North West Company, revived the Colonel William Baillie (1739 to 1782), 12th Laird of gone. New colonies at New Brunswick and Cape French fur trade from Montreal, and as Michael Dunain who died in India, and his nephew Colonel Breton Island were welcoming American refugees. Fry noted in Scotland’s Empire (2001), “At the John Baillie of Leys (1772 to 1833), who was the East Tipu Sultan, the sultan of Mysore in India, had sued centre of the mercantile interest stood a group India Company resident at Lucknow. for peace. The French empire was careering toward of related, originally Jacobite families from the The story’s richness derives from a treasure revolution. Great Glen.” In Canada, the victims of Highland trove—a chest of letters that arrived in the Highland Call of Empire chronicles one family’s part in a repression and clearance found stable new homes. Archive Centre in 2002 after languishing unexam- formative period of British rule in India. Another The fur trade they dominated alongside French ined in Inverness. Alexander Charles Baillie’s son branch, the Baillies of Dochfour, were planters Canadian and Indigenous partners would link Jonathan, then completing a doctorate in London, in the West Indies. Still others had emigrated to half a continent. Canada has been enlarging and made the link to their forebears. This “epistolary Georgia with James Oglethorpe in the early eight- refining this template for refugee and immigrant cornucopia” comprises correspondence by five eenth century. Charles Baillie captures fortune’s success ever since.

January/February 2019 reviewcanada.ca 27 The Formula to End Homelessness A collection of essays from front-line shelter workers offers a glimpse at what works and a picture of why poverty persists Carol Goar

Beyond Shelters: Solutions to Homelessness in Canada from the Front Lines Edited by James Hughes James Lorimer & Co. 256 pages, softcover ISBN 9781459413559

n any given night, an average of 35,000 O Canadians are homeless. Over the course of a year, 235,000 men, women, and adolescents have no safe bed. Twenty percent are vis- ible, sleeping on park benches and heating grates. The rest are hidden: couch-surfing, in a hospital, in jail, sleeping in a car, or moving from one emergency shelter to the next. Indigenous Canadians, individ- uals with disabilities and mental health and addictions issues, as well as gay, lesbian, and transgender Finding a way through the tangle of issues afflicting the homeless takes time, patience, and a willingness to start over. youth are overrepresented in the photograph by jeff bierk homeless population. So are adoles- cents who have aged out of the child welfare sys- a permanent part of the social landscape, shifting Montreal’s Old Brewery Mission for many years. A tem, men with criminal records, and women living the burden of caring for those in need from govern- lawyer by training, with multiple degrees and fif- in fear of violence. ment to volunteers and donors? teen years’ experience in government, he brings a The city with the largest percentage of home- The best thing aboutBeyond Shelters: Solutions well-rounded perspective to the task. He has an all- less residents is Red Deer, Alberta. Measured in to Homelessness in Canada from the Front Lines is encompassing view and a network that allows him to sheer numbers, Toronto has the highest home- that it is rooted in experience. Each of the thirteen tap into front-line shelter workers across the country. less population, followed closely by Vancouver. contributors (including editor James Hughes, who Plus he has the ability to turn a disparate series of Right now, 1.7 million Canadians are hanging on writes the introduction and conclusion) works or essays into a coherent whole. by their fingernails: one missed paycheque, one has worked for an organization committed to re- The book is organized as an east-to-west jour- severe drug overdose, or one missed rent payment housing people whose lives have fallen apart. Each ney with an initial foray into the United States could send them spiralling into chronic poverty or focuses on the geography he or she knows person- where a Canadian psychologist, Sam Tsemberis, homelessness.­ ally. And each admits that new barriers and chal- developed and implemented Housing First, an Given this reality, it is refreshing to begin 2019 lenges arise every day. approach that has proved seminal in the quest to with a book that puts forward solutions to home- The drawback for readers seeking a solution reduce chronic homelessness. lessness. Each was contributed by a grassroots that can be applied in their own community is that Born in Greece and raised and trained as a clin- leader who has succeeded in moving men, women, there is no such thing. Each of the models show- ical psychologist in Montreal, Tsemberis began his and children from an emergency shelter into safe, cased in this book was developed in response to career treating people with mental illness. In the affordable places to live. local conditions. In Quebec City, for example, the early 1990s, he accepted a position in New York But—like most tonics—this book should be con- vacancy rate is 3.3 percent according to the 2018 City helping mentally ill clients, many of whom sumed with frequent pauses: What assumptions are CMHC Rental Market Report, which allows shelter were homeless. being made? What questions aren’t being asked? workers to move clients into permanent housing. He got to know these individuals by name, Can a patchwork of local success stories be scaled In Vancouver and Toronto, with vacancy rates of entered their hidden world, and gained their trust. up to address a nationwide issue? Is there a danger 0.8 percent and 1.1 percent respectively, it is a He developed a network of landlords and public that homeless shelters, like food banks, will become struggle to find accommodation for the homeless. support that enabled him to find them a safe place Affordability varies greatly, too. In Quebec City, the to live. He helped stabilize them and integrate them Carol Goar was as a columnist at the Toronto average rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $725 with the community. But twenty percent kept com- Star for thirty years, where she focused on poverty, a month. In Vancouver, it is $1,411, followed closely ing back, homeless again. homelessness, and the fraying social fabric. She by Toronto at $1,270. Recognizing that a change was needed, retired in 2016 and moved to Paris, Ontario. Hughes is a skilled, insightful editor. He ran Tsemberis assembled an unusual team of out-

28 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada siders—a recovering heroin addict, a ­homeless or at risk are Indigenous formerly homeless person, a sexual and have experienced separation assault survivor—to come up with a from their culture, families, and more effective approach. Bringing Back the Body communities. Requests for an Elder, They brainstormed based on their smudging, and ceremony are fre- own experiences. And they turned When you touched him, you felt quent, particularly for those who have the conventional method of assisting like you were touching the scorched grass been through residential school and homeless people—get clean and of a heatstroke summer, and he didn’t look foster care systems.” Arlene Haché, sober to qualify for housing—on its with attention, anymore, as if he were fully present author of the chapter “Decolonizing head. They tried moving them into in the room. The echo of the fire the North,” is a grassroots activist who stable housing, then connecting them established an emergency shelter for still reverberating in his body – his skin, like to counselling, social services, and homeless women in Yellowknife. As paper, wind-chapped, marked treatment. As of 2015, a consistent a teenager, she drifted from place to eighty percent of Housing First clients with the record of trauma, still tingling place. In the North, she discovered escaped the cycle of homelessness, with the potential for breakdown. most of the women seeking shelter compared to forty percent under the were First Nations, Inuit, and Métis, old rules. When you took him off the plane, all you could think driven to find refuge from racism and An appreciation for such methods was please, start talking, but he didn’t, violence. The trio of Winnipeg activ- of harm reduction—meeting a person not a word, almost the entire ride home, ists who wrote “Youth Prevention and where they’re at and helping them only a murmur about how they closed Early Intervention” contend, “It is to move forward—is finally gaining the ice cream parlour a mile from home. impossible to discuss and understand ground in Canada. And then silence. youth homelessness in Winnipeg Most of the chapters of Beyond And everything in him without addressing the historical Shelter follow a similar trajectory: and contemporary processes and was brittle, and tense like a an agency created to get people out destructive legacy of colonization.” house of exploding cards, piled up on each other. of immediate danger evolves into a Finding a way through the tangle support system to rebuild lives. The And when he came into the house, he sat down of extreme poverty, unemployment, authors deserve collective credit like an alien, dumb and hovering, and stared ahead substance abuse, mental illness, for their willingness to tackle one of for minutes at a time. sexual violence, and lost identity that the most complex challenges of our characterize many homeless people time. The backdrop for every story And for those who loved him, the question was left, takes time, patience, and a willing- is entrenched poverty, family disin- What do we do with this body? ness to start over and over. Yet these tegration, and a shortage of public activists persist in the face of unremit- housing, put in place over the past ting adversity. They make headway twenty-five years by judgmental pol- when others have given up. iticians, inflexible bureaucrats, and “Readers may be left with the feel- frustrated taxpayers. J.R. Gerow ing that shelters are trying to be all One ray of hope comes from things to all people, and they wouldn’t Cornerbrook, Newfoundland, where be wrong drawing such a conclusion a transition house for women facing J.R. Gerow is a Montreal-based poet and fiction writer. His work from this collection,” Hughes admits. domestic abuse is quietly turning has been featured in journals including The Yale Review, The He argues this is as it should be. lives around, lifting up women who Temz Review, and Hypertext Magazine. Diversity makes the shelter system need more than safe temporary hous- stronger, reflects the nation’s geogra- ing. Willow House encourages them phy and allows each shelter to capital- to speak openly about their struggles ize on the skills of its leader. with mental health issues, addiction issues, and does not involve finding more money,” he says. “It is Despite serving different markets and different financial constraints. It lobbies government, busi- about finding the strength, the courage, and the will segments of the homeless population, the shelters ness, community groups, and the public to sup- to do things the right way and to stop offering short- in the book have a common aim to move clients port prevention programs. “I see transition houses term and inadequate solutions once and for all.” toward permanent housing as rapidly as possible; becoming central hubs of support, stabilization, So convinced is he that friendship is critical they treat the people who walk through their doors learning, reconnection, and healing for women on the journey from homelessness to independ- as individuals whose stories and circumstances fleeing violence as they prepare to progress in their ent living that the Salvation Army has launched matter; they are committed to changing the social lives,” says executive director Heather Davis. an initiative called Causeway, that bridges the gap landscape; they marshal their ingenuity to make A second beacon in the prevailing gloom comes between homeless individuals and people who up for a shortfall of government funding; and they from Winnipeg, where eighty-nine percent of the want to do something about poverty and injustice. yearn to prevent, not alleviate, homelessness. youth seeking shelter are Indigenous. A network of These “unlikely friendships” benefit both groups. Surely these are the key ingredients of a formula to organizations that began as crisis response centres The concerned citizen acquires stigma-busting end homelessness. has matured into agencies that provide the support insights into poverty, and the homeless person has This book is an invaluable resource for anyone their clients need to make a healthy transition to an anchor and confidant in the community. Both working in—or writing about—the shelter system. I stable housing. learn about relationship-building, setting bound- learned lessons I wish I had known as a journalist. My favourite chapter—probably because it aries, and taking risks. It is an eye-opener for Canadians who don’t reflects the reality that I documented for close to Oxford does not claim this is the right or only realize how homeless shelters have evolved since twenty years as a journalist—is entitled “Homes, formula for reducing homelessness in a high-cost, their inception in the ’80s as charities dispensing Jobs, and Friends.” The author is Dion Oxford, low-vacancy urban market. But he shows how far meals, showers, and temporary beds. Most citizens founding director of the Salvation Army Gateway, humanity coupled with creativity can go in building have only a vague idea what goes on behind the a shelter for men experiencing homelessness. a healthy alternative to homelessness. doors of a contemporary homeless shelter. He now serves as mission strategist for the five With Indigenous people making up a dispropor- It is a graphic illustration for politicians of the Salvation Army homeless shelters in Toronto. tionate share of the shelter population, particularly damage done by their choices: allowing the mini- His outlook is imbued with a deep respect for in Western Canada, the book offers insight into mum wage to fall below the poverty line, cutting those at the margins of society and unshakeable this unique challenge. Cora Gajari is the executive social assistance, eliminating the Canadian afford- commitment to “treat people like people, not pro- director of Carmichael Outreach Inc. in Regina and able housing program, and underfunding mental jects to fix.” Oxford’s understanding of loneliness a member of the Inuvialuit from the Inuvik region. health and addiction programs. and the power of friendship lifts the issue beyond She has been working in the area of poverty and Yet Beyond Shelter has a hopeful message. We stereotypes, charity and the perennial quest for homelessness in Regina for ten years and writes, have the tools to turn the tide on homelessness. We more public funding. “The answer to our problems “A disproportionate number of people who are just need the political will.

January/February 2019 reviewcanada.ca 29 Books in Brief Eat, Die, Live John Allemang on life, death, and a good meal in between

as the apocalypse looms, and we might be better off rambling meditation, Tucker seems fed up with her Learning to Die: Wisdom in the Age getting our moral affairs in order. Some twenty-five over-thinking. In the end, she’s content to accept an of Climate Crisis pages are devoted to challenging Steven Pinker’s each-to-her-own philosophy as the best solution to Robert Bringhurst and Jan Zwicky appealingly optimistic view of resourceful human- the appetite-sapping conflicts of modern eating, if University of Regina Press ity’s prospects, which is inconsistent with the auth- only to enjoy her next meal. 105 pages, softcover ors’ proud disdain for technological innovation ISBN 9780889775633 and urbane comforts. In a more practical world, where life goes on regardless, you probably need Bolder: Making the Most of Our Longer Lives to incorporate both points of view, however much Carl Honoré poiler alert: We’re all going to die. It’s just a you prefer the stick to the carrot, the wilderness to Knopf Canada Smatter of when. That’s the problem with cli- the city, the purity of a good death to the profound 304 pages, hardcover mate change, and the seemingly hopeless discus- messiness of human existence. ISBN 9780735273351 sions around it. If individuals aware of their own mortality still treat living as the norm and death as a surprise, why would they welcome warnings A Matter of Taste: A Farmers’ Market he challenge in writing a book about aging: of a global catastrophe that is far less personal and Devotee’s Semi-Reluctant Argument Told people already know, and young people immediate? Expert reports pile up like the grinning for Inviting Scientific Innovation to the don’t want to hear. Undaunted, London-based skulls that adorned the studies of medieval poten- Dinner Table journalist Carl Honoré has crafted an absurdly tates. But the science-based memento mori has Rebecca Tucker upbeat message for the tweeners, vigorous middle- little effect on politicians who inhabit a short-term Coach House Books agers like himself who sense the shameful onset of never-never land where doomsday predictions 148 pages, softcover chronological decline but can’t bring themselves to compromise materialist desires. ISBN 9781552453674 believe the final phase will fall far short of wonder- So why not despair? It’s an entirely reasonable ful. Bolder (great title, admittedly) is very much the reaction to unheeded debates over how bad things triumph of hope over experience, an inspirational need to be before the end is officially declared e’ll never agree on what constitutes good guide to an overly revved-up future in which we can to be near. In Learning to Die, B.C. poet Robert Wfood. Every culture possesses the verbal all become exceptions to aging’s rigid rules. Bringhurst and philosopher Jan Zwicky hymn a equivalent of Rebecca Tucker’s main title because As much science-driven as faith-based, Bolder short and disturbing elegy to present-day myopia it’s easier to reconcile our differences as matters of is a maddening book because it occasionally feels that is refreshing in its utter disdain for our feeble taste than argue forever over the absolute truths of true and reassuring and thoughtful on a subject human fiddling. our menus. where derisive stereotypes and mass indifference The better part of Learning to Die is Bringhurst’s Diversity is food’s great glory—anyone who abound. Anyone who has felt isolated or unwanted measured depiction of humanity as an insignificant campaigns for a single way of doing things, whether as the years advance will find comfort in stud- player in the nature of things, where the sun peters agribusiness globalists, megalomaniac innovators, ies that reveal oldies to be happier, wiser (all that out eons after our self-centred race has vanished utopian idealists, or perfectionist foodies should be accumulated experience), more altruistic, less in some briefly footnoted epoch of disasters. The held suspect. One size doesn’t fit all, no matter how anxious (because who the hell cares?), freed from little existence we’re granted on the path from dust small or beautiful. But in an age where eating is rife the people-pleasing constraints of youthful inhib- to dust, you might wisely conclude, should not be with insecurity, food shoppers caught in the worry- ition—I’m not getting grumpier, I’m getting bolder. wasted in mindless triviality. ing space between good and evil are desperate for Real-world evidence surely contradicts breezy There is comfort, however cold, in giving up ethical edible salvation. evangelizing about human potential. Old age is a futile battles and accepting the inevitability of the If that description seems overheated, you are mixed blessing, however much the slowed-down end just as the condemned Socrates does in Plato’s not an introspective urbanite like Tucker, who brain finds ingenious ways to compensate for our Apology. Zwicky focuses on the philosopher’s occupies a milieu in which good food and moral more obvious frailties and losses. Kudos to Honoré serene death-watch, seeing him—not entirely decision-making are inseparable. Her tour of the for informing his frightened contemporaries that convincingly—as a model for condemned human- modern culinary landscape, where it is never clear it’s not all gloom, crankiness, and nostalgic Brexit kind awaiting the imminent arrival of catastrophic whether a farmers’ market is a virtuous statement votes. But then he goes too far and vastly overstates ecological collapse. of organic independence or an aesthetic plaything the forthcoming glories of an imagined longevity Yet the authors can’t bring themselves to feel as of the elite, quickly becomes fraught with anxiety. revolution where supercharged seniors refuse to serenely stoic as their mortality-embracing phil- To her credit, she doesn’t hide her ambiva- act their age. His pioneers and heroes are comi- osophy demands. An irrepressible activist streak lence about nostalgia-based marketing. But her cally, even cruelly, outlandish: an octogenarian requires them to settle environmental scores even innate skepticism disappears when she turns to gaming addict, late-life sex-rompers “exploring technocratic alternatives for feeding the masses—a light bondage,” a troupe of rebellious graffiti artists, John Allemang was a writer at the Globe and woman who cheerfully admits she couldn’t handle womanizing clubbers drinking their juniors under Mail for more than 30 years, including stints as a a small patch of community garden probably the table, Ms. Senior Universe, “lifestyle influencers deadline poet and daily book reviewer. He studied shouldn’t be recommending apartment-based smashing it online.” Classics and still enjoys translating Homer, Ovid, farming as the hope of the future. It all sounds like such hard work, with so little and Molière at his weekly reading group. By the time she’s wound up her restless and return. And when do you find time to nap?

30 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Letters

Re: “Polar Opposites,” by Edward Struzik the implications of China’s emerging interests— relationships and legal status requires the estab- (December 2018) is not the same as claiming that military conflict lishment of a national database. is imminent or even probable. When I pay atten- We have no credible evidence that birth tour- dward Struzik kindly reviewed Cold Rush: The tion in brief sections of my book to Danish or ism is a significant problem throughout Canada; EAstonishing True Story of the New Quest for Greenlandic security thinking, I simply reflect how rather, it’s an issue of limited regional scope. the Polar North, which principally describes how security has long helped shaped the Arctic. According to Statistics Canada, 313 babies were post-colonial relations between Denmark and born in Canada to non-citizen mothers in 2016, Greenland have developed between 2007 and 2018, Martin Breum which reflects a significant drop from 699 babies and how these two parts of the Danish kingdom Copenhagen born to non-citizen mothers in 2012. In addition, have engaged in the Arctic. this appears to be an issue in British Columbia, I am pleased that Struzik finds my book worth specifically Richmond. This local problem the attention of Canadian readers, but I must Re: “Keeping Governments Honest” requires a local solution, such as more stringent respond to this point: “Breum sees the race to own by Tim Harper (December 2018) admission criteria and provincial regulation of so- and control the Arctic as a complex and potentially called birth hotels. It does not require a dramatic dangerous international game-changer that could enjoyed Tim Harper’s piece on the Ottawa press national policy change. lead to military conflict. His thesis is well argued, I gallery, but it didn’t tell me much about Robert Canada is a model country for openness, inclu- but it overstates the danger because diplomacy has Lewis’s new book, Power, Prime Ministers and the sivity, and compassion toward immigrants and so far worked well.” Press. Could the LRC get someone to review it? refugees. A blanket approach to end birthright cit- I hope and believe that this is not a precise izenship would adversely affect thousands born to appraisal. I have no desire to overstate any dangers; Ray Argyle individuals on student visas, to temporary foreign I certainly do not believe in any threat of imminent Kingston, Ontario workers, and to refugees in the process of securing military conflict. Throughout my book, security permanent residence. It may also jeopardize our issues play only secondary roles to Greenland’s and reputation as an inclusive and democratic society, Denmark’s larger contributions. Re: “The Foreign-Baby Baby Problem,” as well as our ability to compete in the knowledge Struzik’s review, therefore, brings attention to by Andy Lamey (October 2018) economy. This is important as most parts of the a broader, more pressing issue: ordinary people, country, especially Atlantic Canada, face an aging politicians, businesses, teachers, artists, democratic agree with Lamey that birthright citizenship is population, skill and labour shortages, and signifi- processes, and diplomacy are primary sources of I central to a fair and inclusive Canadian society. cant out-migration. change and development in the region, but our rela- It’s a fundamental issue of equity. You cannot pick Simply put, banning birthright citizenship is not tions with Russia and other security-related matters and choose who should be given Canadian citizen- an appropriate national solution to a local problem. will continue to influence how, especially, govern- ship upon birth, or how. Doing so—for example, ments think, act, and plan for the future. We must by blood—would allow room for discrimination. Tony Fang be able to talk about the implications of difference It would also lead to a costly and time-consuming Memorial University of Newfoundland without being deemed unduly alarmist. In my opin- administrative nightmare, as matching parental St. John’s ion, Struzik’s review provides a good example of why this is the case. He finds that my book “overstates the danger,” but then continues to recognize how Russia is “the elephant in the room” because of its 2014 annexation of Crimea, the history of the Cold War, and the country’s “military might and icebreaker capabilities.” Also, Struzik speculates that Russia may not continue to adhere to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea if its claims to the Arctic sea- bed are not fully accommodated. As observers of Arctic developments, we cannot ignore security concerns or military capabilities in the area. If, for instance, you live in one of the small Nordic Arctic nations—Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark—there is no escaping Russia’s closeness and shifting political situation. The changing sig- nificance of Thule Air Base, managed by the U.S. Air Force in Greenland, and the recent deployment of U.S. troops on a semi-permanent basis to Norway are other examples. To recognize the political differences between Russia and the other Arctic Council states—or

January/February 2019 reviewcanada.ca 31 A Final Word Defining Race Andy Lamey on why both culture and biology count

he way we think about race is expect human beings to be sharply divided by skin curtain away from racialized race and exposed its changing. Consider a Toronto Star story colour. But skin colour varies as much within races biological claims as social projections. Because T from December summarizing an import- as across them. Lewontin and other biologists have particular socialraces are products of belief, they ant study on police carding: “Random street checks, long noted that there is also more genetic diversity can change over time: hence the history of the Irish or carding, should be banned as there is little evi- within racial groups than there is across them. For being assigned their own racial designation. But dence to show the practice is useful in reducing a concept meant to capture something deep about even if the Irish only became white in a social sense crime, while it disproportionately affects racialized the human condition, it is striking how little race in the nineteenth century, they were always white individuals.” Had a similar story appeared ten years explains at a genetic level. biologically. Today the main reason to employ the ago, it would have referred to the harmful effect card- But where many scholars and activists take these concept of socialrace is to expose false beliefs about ing has on visible or racial minorities. Unlike these considerations to show that race has no biological race and undo the damage they have caused. older labels, the new term “racialized” suggests race reality, Hardimon draws a more nuanced conclu- The distinctive feature of Hardimon’s view is its is something imposed on people by society. sion. His approach is influenced by a biological idea inclusion of a biological but non-racialist concept The difference between the new conception of known as “population thinking.” Before Darwin, of race. Biological concepts of course must be race and its older counterparts is nicely summed biologists used “typological thinking” to classify judged by how well they explain biological reality. up by City University of New York philosopher species: Hold the specimen up to the light and look Yet his account may also have an attractive political Charles Mills: “People are ‘raced’ according to for the features it shares will all other members of feature worth noting. particular rules—we shift from a noun to a verb, its species. Population thinking in biology preserves Recent years have seen members of racial from a pre-existing ‘natural’ state to an active social the idea of species, which is often now defined and cultural majority groups adopt a minority process—and these ascribed racial identities then as a naturally interbreeding population that is identity. Rachel Dolezal, for example, is a former tendentially shape their moral standing…and life reproductively isolated (as when, for example, it president of the Spokane, Washington, chapter of chances.” The view that race is the result of a social occupies a remote habitat), but rejects the idea of the National Association for the Advancement of process has become so widespread that much visible physical traits that all members of a species Colored People. In 2015 she made headlines when research on race now endorses what academics call share. Hardimon’s concept of race, as in biology it was revealed that, although she was born and racial eliminativism, which holds that we should and unlike the racialized view, rejects the idea of raised white, she identified as black, a condition stop referring to race altogether. As the evolution- always-present racial essences or traits. she characterized as “transracialism.” In Canada, ary biologist Richard Lewontin has made this case, For Hardimon, race is a concept that applies Saint Mary’s University academic Darryl Leroux “human racial classification is of no social value primarily to groups rather than individuals. At the has documented the rise of “self-Indigenization,” and is positively destructive of human relations.” group level there will be patterns of physical features whereby thousands of white Quebecers and Nova A new book argues that there is a respectable more common in one racial group than another, Scotians have dubiously proclaimed themselves way to think of race as a biological attribute after but there will be members of that group without “Eastern Métis.” The trend is of concern to genuine all—without any of the racist baggage that so that trait. So a person could be white, for example, Métis people who fear the loss of their ability to long accompanied it. Rethinking Race (Harvard even if they lack light skin. But in addition to a pat- exercise hunting and other constitutional rights. University Press) is by Michael Hardimon, my tern of physical traits, Hardimon argues, members The early history of Métis people in Canada may departmental colleague at the University of of a race are linked by “a common ancestry peculiar have been due to the encounter of European and California, San Diego. His book debunks the idea to members of the group, and that originates from Indigenous racial groups, but Métis people today that race must be either natural or social, and per- a distinctive geographical location.” So Asian, white, define themselves in broadly cultural terms. The suasively argues that our experience of it straddles and black racial groups exhibit different patterns of branch of Hardimon’s theory that may fit them both domains. skin colour and hair texture because they descend best is his account of ethnicity, which only some- Although eliminativists are Hardimon’s target, from different populations that originated in Asia, times overlaps with socialrace and which need not he agrees with them on a central point. “There is Europe, and Africa, respectively. involve visible physical appearance. But even if one specific race concept that ought to be removed Hardimon calls this the minimalist concept Métis people themselves are not a biological race, from our vocabulary,” Hardimon writes, referring of race. It sees race as biologically real but trivial. the rise of self-Indigenization should prompt us to to what he terms the racialized race concept. It is In a chapter on medicine, Hardimon discusses a ask how we would respond to “self-racialization” the “familiar pernicious traditional, essentialist, handful of race-related genetic differences that do on a similar scale. What if equally large numbers and hierarchical race concept,” according to which appear to be medically relevant, such as the genetic of white people were to follow Rachel Dolezal’s races have fixed biological essences that corres- mutation that makes cystic fibrosis most common example and help themselves to affirmative action pond to differences in traits such as intelligence or in whites. But outside these rare medical cases, programs intended for black people? moral sensitivity, and which is supremely offensive race does not predict anything biologically deep or Hardimon’s theory can easily condemn both in ranking races as superior or inferior. important about human beings. Hence his book’s traditional racism and transracialism, regardless Rethinking Race opens with a lucid summary of subtitle: the case for deflationary realism. of how popular the latter becomes. Purely social the familiar problems that undid the hierarchical Critics have disputed the biological reality of race accounts of race would seem hard-pressed to concept of race. If the old view were true, we would by noting that the boundaries of racial groups have explain why transracialism, should it ever become changed historically, a process that historian Noel socially accepted, is any less legitimate than exist- Andy Lamey teaches philosophy at the University Ignatiev highlighted in the title of his book How the ing racial identities. Racism is cunning and able of California, San Diego, and is author of Duty Irish Became White. But what this history shows, to take on new shapes. Contrary to much conven- and The Beast: Should We Eat Meat in the Name according to Hardimon, is the existence of a third tional wisdom, a theory of race that is both bio- of Animal Rights?, forthcoming from Cambridge racial concept, what he calls socialrace. Socialraces logical and cultural may be our best defence against University Press. are what we are left with after we have torn the its many diverse forms.

32 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Media and Mass Atrocity The Rwanda Genocide and Beyond An in-depth AT A CROSSROADS Allan Thompson,analysis Editor of Russia’s Foreword economy by at Roméo a critical Dallaire juncture

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Sergey Kulik is the director for internationalAt studies a Crossroadsat the Institute of Contemporary Development in Russia. He is also a member of the Scientific Council of the Security CouncilRussia of the Russian in the Federation. Global He holds Economy a Ph.D. in international relations.

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