The Canada Council’s former CEO speaks his mind page 3
$6.50 Vol. 22, No. 8 October 2014
Julie Sedivy What turns us on “These scientists studied human fascination—and you won’t believe what they found out!”
ALso In this issue
Jessa Gamble The fracking fracas
Michael Valpy Toronto: biography of a mean city
Andrea Lawlor The night we almost lost a country
PLUS: non-fiction Stephen Bown on the surprising scientific interests of the HBC + Adam Chapnick on Jack Granatstein’s re-evaluation of Vimy + Susan Knutson on Canada’s use of Shakespeare + Michael Morden on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission + Jill Frayne on canoeing in the north + Peter Macleod and Frances Woolley on unions, workers and democracy
Publications Mail Agreement #40032362 fiction Ava Homa reviews The Ever After of Ashwin Rao by Padma Viswanathan + Mark Frutkin Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to LRC, Circulation Dept. reviews Us Conductors by Sean Michaels PO Box 8, Station K Toronto, ON M4P 2G1 poetry Jeff Latosik + M. Travis Lane + Ben Ladouceur + Robyn Sarah New from University of Toronto Press
Reclaiming the Don Surviving Trench Warfare Religious Radicalization and An Environmental History of Toronto’s Don Technology and the Canadian Corps, 1914-1918, Securitization in Canada and River Valley Second Edition Beyond by Jennifer L. Bonnell by Bill Rawling edited by Paul Bramadat and Surviving Trench Warfare offers a whole Reclaiming the Don illuminates the Lorne Dawson impact of Don River Valley on Toronto’s new understanding of the First World War, development and unearths the missing replacing the image of a static trench war This book is an ideal guide to the story of the relationship between the river, with one in which soldiers actively struggled ongoing debates on how best to respond the valley, and the city. for control over their weapons and their to radicalization without sacrificing the environment, and achieved it. commitments to multiculturalism and social justice that many Canadians hold dear.
This Blessed Land The Promised Land Wisdom, Justice and Charity Crimea and the Crimean Tatars History and Historiography of the Black Canadian Social Welfare through the Life of by Paul Robert Magocsi Experience in Chatham-Kent’s Settlements Jane B. Wisdom, 1884-1975 and Beyond by Suzanne Morton A captivating and lavishly illustrated introduction to the Crimean peninsula, edited by Boulou Ebanda de B’béri, Nina Through the remarkable life of Jane B. This Blessed Land is the first book in English Reid-Maroney, and Handel Kashope Wright Wisdom, a Canadian social worker, this to trace the vast history of this fascinating The Promised Land presents the everyday lives book explores how the welfare state was region from pre-historic times to the present. of individuals and families in the Chatham- built from the ground up by thousands of pragmatic and action-oriented social Kent area of Ontario and highlights early workers. cross-border activism to end slavery in the United States.
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Vol. 22, No. 8 • March 2014 Editor Bronwyn Drainie [email protected] 3 Weathering the Storm 18 When Multiculturalism Fell Contributing EditorS Mark Lovewell, Molly Peacock, Robin An essay into the Sea Roger, Anthony Westell Robert Sirman A review of The Ever After of Ashwin Rao, Associate editor 6 The (Other) October Crisis by Padma Viswanathan Judy Stoffman A review of The Night Canada Stood Still: Ava Homa Poetry Editor How the 1995 Quebec Referendum Nearly Cost 19 Of Music and Espionage Moira MacDougall copy editor Us Our Country, by Robert Wright A review of Us Conductors, by Sean Michaels Madeline Koch Andrea Lawlor Mark Frutkin Online Editors 8 The Limits of the TRC 20 The Perennial Temptation Diana Kuprel, Jack Mitchell, A review of Truth and Indignation: Canada’s A review of On Fracking, by C. Alexia Lane, and Donald Rickerd, C.M. Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Indian Groundswell: The Case for Fracking, by Ezra ProofReaders Mike Lipsius, Heather Schultz, Robert Residential Schools, by Ronald Niezen Levant Simone, Rob Tilley, Jeannie Weese Michael Morden Jessa Gamble research 10 What Turns Us On 22 Reinventing the Bard Rob Tilley A review of Riveted: The Science of Why Jokes A review of The Tempest and Romeo and Editorial Assistant Make Us Laugh, Movies Make Us Cry and Juliet, by William Shakespeare, and Shakespeare Clare Gibbons Religion Makes Us Feel One with the Universe, in Québec: Nation, Gender and Adaptation, Design by Jim Davies by Jennifer Drouin James Harbeck Julie Sedivy Susan Knutson ADVERTISING/SALES Michael Wile 13 Self-Discovery in a Canoe 24 Pretty Mean City [email protected] A review of Paddlenorth: Adventure, Resilience A review of Toronto: Biography of a City, Director, Special Projects and Renewal in the Arctic Wild, by Jennifer by Allan Levine Michael Booth Kingsley Michael Valpy Development Assistant Jill Frayne Michael Stevens 26 A Larger Role for Unions publishers 14 Climbing Down from Vimy Ridge A review of Unions Matter: Advancing Alastair Cheng A review of The Greatest Victory: Canada’s One Democracy, Economic Equality and Social [email protected] Hundred Days, 1918, by J.L. Granatstein Justice, edited by Matthew Behrens Helen Walsh Adam Chapnick Frances Woolley [email protected] Board of Directors 16 Old Ideas of Air Travel 27 The Boss-Employee Two-Step John Honderich, C.M., A poem A review of After Occupy: Economic Democracy J. Alexander Houston, Frances Lankin, Jeff Latosik for the 21st Century, by Tom Malleson Jack Mintz, Trina McQueen Peter MacLeod Advisory Council 16 The Beach at La Villette Michael Adams, Ronald G. Atkey, P.C., A poem 29 The Clever Science of Commerce Q.C., Alan Broadbent, C.M., Chris Ellis, M. Travis Lane A review of Enlightened Zeal: The Hudson’s Bay Drew Fagan, James Gillies, C.M., Company and Scientific Networks, 1670–1870, Carol Hansell, Donald Macdonald, 17 Beautiful Inmate P.C., C.C., Susan Reisler, Grant Reuber, A poem by Ted Binnema O.C., Don Rickerd, C.M., Rana Sarkar, Ben Ladouceur Stephen R. Bown Mark Sarner, Bernard Schiff, 31 Letters and Responses Reed Scowen 17 Segovia Poetry Submissions A poem Katherine Fierlbeck, Janet E. Smith, Joel For poetry submission guidelines, please see
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2 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Essay Weathering the Storm The Canada Council’s director for the past eight years looks back at troubled times for the arts. Robert Sirman
get the willies government altogether that “ when I see closed the layout of the previous Idoors.” director’s office was con- This is the opening line of ceived. But political parti- Joseph Heller’s 1974 novel, sanship was nevertheless the Something Happened, and it elephant in the room during succinctly captures the work my eight years at the Council. culture I encountered when The most frequent question I I arrived in Ottawa in June was asked by outsiders was 2006. “What is it like to work for The significance of doors, Stephen Harper?” followed both literal and metaphoric, by “How short is the arm?” surfaced on my first day. The (in reference to the Council’s office I inherited as director arm’s-length status). of the Canada Council for the No politician or political Arts had no door whatsoever staff member, including the to the outside world. It could Prime Minister’s Office, ever only be accessed through contacted me during my time adjacent but private clerical at the Council to offer direc- and meeting rooms, with no tion, or “advice,” or any other signage linking them to the form of suasion. Nor did director. From a wayfaring I receive any letter of man- perspective it was impos- date outlining “expectations” sible to find the office on for either of my two four-year your own, and if you did not terms. Given that the direc- know better you would think tor of the Canada Council the director was in hiding. is a Governor in Council Built form says a lot about appointee (that is, appointed values. I saw the office in by Cabinet), I found this Ottawa as a personal affront. both a surprise and a relief. I needed to convert it from a Several people asked me on private retreat to a collective arrival if I had received my meeting space, so I removed “letter,” and I heard stories everything but the credenzas (which I used as design my ideal office: a totally transparent glass throughout my tenure of other Crown corporation a work station), tore out the private washroom, box that contained nothing but the credenzas, CEOs having difficult conversations with minis- added the meeting room furniture from next door chairs and meeting table assembled in 2006. The ters “behind closed doors.” But this was never my and inserted a full-length glass panel to provide rest of the Council also benefited from the move. experience. unobstructed views both inside and out. The new offices are head and shoulders above its The most negative thing I encountered was the My focus on space did not go unnoticed. To previous digs in advancing an open and collab- secretive environment within the public service compensate for the missing door, the Council’s orative work environment, and its free exhibition itself. I am not sure which side of the door the Aboriginal Arts Office gave me a full-scale mockup space in the heart of Ottawa gives the Council a officials I interacted with thought they were on, of an entrance marked “Director’s Office.” Made of civic presence for the first time. but there was a clear sense within the civil service brown construction paper and elaborately decor- The last word came from a senior theatre profes- that leaks of any kind would trigger serious conse- ated by staff, it was the result of a team-building sional who visited the space in my final year. “Look!” quences. What those consequences were was never exercise at an aboriginal arts staff retreat, and hung she said. “The director works in a corner!” clear, but the assumption was they would not be in the corridor outside my office. The closed door metaphor has different con- good. The result was a lot of self-censorship. “I can’t When the Council moved its premises notations depending on which side of the door tell you” was a consistent refrain that only intensi- to 150 Elgin Street in December 2013 I was able to you consider yourself. Those outside think insiders fied from one year to the next. are plotting against them; those inside live in a Government sector confidentiality makes Robert Sirman served as director and CEO of the constant state of siege. The longer you observe, the sense in many circumstances, especially those Canada Council for the Arts from June 2006 to June clearer it becomes that both groups are essentially surrounding Cabinet decisions. Even here, though, 2014, following a distinguished career at Canada’s the same; the main thing separating them is the things can backfire. I am convinced this was National Ballet School, the Ontario Arts Council door. the case with the simultaneous cancellation in and Ontario’s first Ministry of Culture. In January There was nothing inherently partisan about 2008 of the Department of Foreign Affairs and 2015 he will become a senior fellow in arts manage- the signs of paranoia and siege mentality I encoun- International Trade’s PromArt Program (which ment at the University of Toronto Scarborough. tered on my arrival in Ottawa. It was during another funded international arts touring) and the
October 2014 reviewcanada.ca 3 Department of Canadian Heritage’s Trade Routes the-radar kind of town, but the approach worked sonal lobbying of finance minister Jim Flaherty. Program (which promoted cultural industries well during my time there. In my second year the Certainly the Canada Council was not consulted, internationally), both totally independent of the Council achieved a permanent increase of 20 per- and at the time senior officials at the Department Canada Council. The two cancellations became cent in its parliamentary appropriation (from of Canadian Heritage denied active involvement. public knowledge within weeks of each other, and $150 to $180 million) by turning a one-time alloca- Once announced, however, the government was on in combination they created the impression that tion into ongoing base funding, and in my last year the hook, and the Canada Council was soon drawn the government had reversed its policy on sup- the Council had $25 million of its appropriation, set in to give the prizes credibility: to launder the porting cultural diplomacy abroad. to end in 2015, made permanent. In between, the announcement, if not the money. A working group I did not get the sense that the government had Council survived without cuts to both the strategic including the Council’s chair and vice-chair was reversed its policy at all. The cancellation of both review process of 2008 and the Deficit Reduction established to advise Canadian heritage minister programs grew out of a rotating strategic review Action Plan exercise of 2011–12. A colleague sum- James Moore on how the prizes could be delivered process managed by the Treasury Board, a commit- marized this period as making the Canada Council and how the significant additional funds needed to tee of Cabinet. Because of Cabinet confidentiality, “everyone’s preferred second choice” (an allusion to keep it afloat could be raised from the private sector. departments were constrained from consulting political leadership campaigns). For the next two years the government hid with each other, and decisions were specific to It was no secret that during this time the govern- behind the Canada Prizes whenever the subject individual submissions, not directives from above. ment used the Council as a poster child. Whenever of international cultural funding was raised, but In both cases the programs in not a cent of the $25 million was question were assessed by their ever turned over to the Canada respective departments in a com- Just as a lot of what passes for Council or anyone else. Despite petitive context as performing less assurances by the minister that an effectively than other programs. leadership in Ottawa is bullying, a lot of announcement was coming soon, Once the decisions on PromArt what passes for policy is pandering. the money quietly disappeared and Trade Routes became public, from the government’s accounts, however, the government found and members of the arts com- itself drawn into more and more questionable justi- criticism was raised about the cultural sector’s munity—most of whom had no involvement or fications for its actions. It refused to back down on treatment at the hands of the government, the interest in the initiative in the first place—bit their its announcement, and its intransigence became a official response was the same: the Canada Council collective tongues. rallying cry for the Quebec-based opposition that is receiving more money today than ever before, is believed to have cost the Conservatives their and not a cent of the Council’s Parliamentary “ o learn and at due times to review what one chance for a majority in the 2008 federal election. appropriation has been cut by this government. As Thas learned, isn’t that a pleasure?” If true, this is a big price to pay for fiscally driven presented, both statements were factually correct. This is the beginning of The Analects of Confucius, savings of less than $20 million a year. The story was not so rosy for many other cul- a Chinese pedagogical text assembled roughly Secrecy generates far greater costs than trans- tural programs and Crown corporations at the 2,400 years ago from the teachings of Confucius parency, costs like loss of trust that are almost federal level, including the PromArt and Trade and very popular when I was a university student impossible to fully mitigate after the fact. There Routes programs already mentioned, CBC/Radio in the 1960s. It is a good summary of my current is an enormous advantage to getting things right Canada, Telefilm, the National Film Board and state of mind. the first time, and in my experience this is not the National Arts Centre. The sector was particu- While the most commonly cited justification for achievable without sharing information in advance. larly weakened by the demise of the Canadian spending public money is to contribute to the public During my time at the Council, I consciously Conference of the Arts, a critical voice for artists good, this is rarely what drives political decision shared all but the most compromising information and cultural industries that predated by more making itself. At the federal level the arts programs as a matter of professional practice, and the results than a decade the Canada Council itself. Many of with the strongest political support are those that fully justified the risks. Staff would stop me in the the most significant recommendations of the 1951 offer either many announcements of small grants to corridor and thank me for treating them like adults. Massey Report on which the Canada Council was the broadest geographic constituency (a retread of The community talked about a new era of openness. founded came straight from the submission of the bread and circuses) or a few announcements of large There were no leaks. Canadian Conference of the Arts, called at the time grants to constituencies closely aligned with power the Canadian Arts Council, and its contribution (shades of cronyism). Rarely does one encounter “ ever believe your own press.” to the development of Canadian cultural policy is serious claims of long-term societal benefit. N This was advice from a journalist friend inestimable. It closed its doors last year after its This is not the case at the Canada Council, early in my career, and it is not a message with long-standing federal funding came to an end, and where there is a long history of serious reflection, much currency in Ottawa. It is not a message it is not clear what, if anything, will take its place. evidence-based policy development and shared, with much currency in my home base of Toronto The image I had of the Canada Council during peer-assessed decision making. Nonetheless, the either, but somehow I found the incongruity with this time was of a lighthouse on a small island, Council’s work is significantly weakened by the public service ethic in Ottawa particularly standing tall but feeling increasingly vulnerable as the absence of strong government-wide vision and galling. My time there overlapped with the rise of the raging sea swept away more and more of the political consensus. Just as a lot of what passes social media, and the most unlikely people became coastline. Yes, we were still intact, but the sector we for leadership in Ottawa is bullying, a lot of what their own press agents. were there to protect was inexorably eroding. passes for policy is pandering. The Council’s Throughout my career I have chosen to work Ironically, the biggest bombshell during my budget is miniscule in the bigger scheme of things, under the radar. Rather than pushing my agenda time in Ottawa was not a cut but an increase: the and without complementary policy and regulatory on others, I identify the conditions that need to government’s announcement in the spring of 2009 support at a government-wide level its impact is be met to achieve a particular outcome and focus that it was investing $25 million in a new initiative steadily declining. my energies on putting those conditions in place. called the Canada Prizes. The Canada Prizes were Over the past 25 years the Canada Council Usually this means having many people working described as the international arts equivalent to increased the number of arts organizations to in common cause, so collaborating with others is the Olympic Games in the fields of music, dance, which it provided recurring or operational funding a big priority. visual arts and theatre arts, and were initially by roughly 65 percent—from around 600 organiza- Much of this comes from my experience as a conceived as a partnership between Toronto’s tions to almost 1,000 a year. During the same period teenager playing French horn in various musical Luminato Festival, then in its third year, and a yet- the purchasing power of the Council’s per capita ensembles. I know what it feels like to support to-be-established not-for-profit organization. The parliamentary appropriation declined by more a collective from within, to provide a founda- four signatories of the proposal were David Pecaut, than 5 percent. The Council, and by extension the tion upon which others can soar, and at brief Tony Gagliano and Janice Price, all from Luminato, government, can boast of an ever-expanding list of but critical moments to soar myself. I found this and Jeff Melanson, described as “producer and funding recipients—a hugely desirable outcome early experience deeply fulfilling, and much of creator.” The proposal claimed an impressive list during a period of significant growth and diversity my adult life has been spent seeking a personal of national and international “partners,” which on in the sector—but the recipients themselves are and professional equivalent. One of the ways I did further investigation proved to be unsubstantiated. fated to compete for an ever-shrinking funding pie. this was by adopting non-directive leadership. The story goes that the announcement of Much of this pressure could be eased by greater In some respects Ottawa is not a very under- funding for the Canada Prizes came from per- policy coordination across government that
4 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada reflected how the various pieces fit together and The silver lining in all of this is that there is noth- same skills to energize our cities, deepen our faith maximized the impact of the resources—budgets, ing that inherently prevents a more system-wide and fire our imaginations. policy instruments, intellectual capital—available. approach from developing in the future. There Artists are specialists in the application of all For example, we are used to hearing film described is a strong risk management bias within the fed- forms of human intelligence, whether linguistic, as a combination of art, entertainment and indus- eral machinery, particularly the Treasury Board mathematical, musical, spatial, kinesthetic or emo- try. People are perfectly accepting of this multi- Secretariat, that values rationality and avoids tional. Their work inspires the reflection so needed dimensional approach, and different strategies to extremes. While this infrastructure is limited by to make sense of the complexity of our lives. Artists strengthen one dimension or another—often deliv- the constraints imposed by its political masters, it may not be the creators of the city or the faith or the ered by totally different arms of government—can is a highly competent and professional infrastruc- imagination, but they are critical to their animation live comfortably side by side without much tension. ture nonetheless, and could easily be recruited to and vitality, and through their reflective capacity Yet few opportunities exist to help each of us better understand have high-level conversations who we are and what it means to on how to advance entire disci- I am convinced the arts serve an be human. plines or sectors, film included. I am convinced the arts serve All high-level exercises to which evolutionary purpose, and that there an evolutionary purpose, and I was invited during my time that there is nothing random in Ottawa were driven by either is nothing random about the global about the global ascendance of financial constraint (“How can ascendance of artistic practice. artistic practice. The future of the you spend less on what you are human species, if not the planet, doing?”) or short-term political is increasingly at risk. Reflective priorities (“How can you contribute to the build- respond to changing political and public policy capacity contributes to adaptive capacity, and up to Canada’s sesquicentennial without requiring objectives. If one such objective were to be more adaptive capacity offers an evolutionary advantage additional funding?”). holistic in advancing Canada’s cultural aspirations, critical to survival. There are many people within the system— the existing machinery has the capacity to address it. How to translate the contribution the arts make certainly within the Canada Council and unques- The challenge is to imagine what conditions to this reflective capacity into the language of tionably elsewhere—who have compelling ideas need to be met to bring such a state into being: public good and government investment currently about how we could do better. Some ideas involve political leadership committed to making cultural eludes us, in Canada as elsewhere. This is particu- realigning money and responsibility to deliver development a priority and an electorate willing to larly frustrating to people who spend their lives greater benefits with existing resources, while support it. in the field, because wherever one looks there are others require only marginally more to achieve The arts are an extension of every human’s need signs of impending crisis. Consensus is mounting quantum improvements. to engage with the world through the senses, what that the survival of humanity is inextricably linked I am not aware of any formal processes cur- former National Endowment for the Arts chair Bill to an enhanced sense of collective responsibility rently available within the Government of Canada Ivey calls “expressive life.” Over time, the arts have that can only come about through a radical change to convene such conversations. Perhaps this emerged as humanity’s most accessible realm for in consciousness, the kind of change in conscious- takes place at the political level, but if this is so, individual and collective reflection. We all know ness that is the hallmark of all great art. deeply informed and committed players such as how to tell stories, to draw pictures, to sing in the Given what is at stake it is hard to understand the Canada Council are not invited to contribute. shower and to dance at weddings. Artists use these why it is taking so long to connect the dots.
FASCINATING STORIES AND HISTORIES… MALCOLM LOWRY XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX IN BALLAST TO XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX THE WHITE SEA XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX A Scholarly Edition XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX A Novel by Malcolm Lowry XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX EDITED AND WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY PATRICK A. MCCARTHY ANNOTATIONS BY CHRIS ACKERLEY FOREWORD BY VIK DOYEN, MIGUEL MOTA AND PAUL TIESSEN N ALS OTEWIE SEA TO BALLAST WHITE THE IN XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
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In Ballast to the White Sea Death Sentences Petun to Wyandot: The Ontario Old Man’s Playing Ground: By Malcolm Lowry By Suzanne Myre Petun from the Sixteenth Century Gaming and Trade on the Plains/ A Critical Edidion Translated from French (Canada) By Charles Garrad; Edited by Plateau Frontier Edited, with Introduction and Textual Notes, by Cassidy Hildebrand Jean-Luc Pilon and William Fox By Gabriel M. Yanicki; by Patrick A. McCarthy; Annotations by Wry, witty, touching, and refreshing, with The turbulent history of the Wyandot tribe, With contributions by Allan Pard, Chris Ackerley; Foreword by Vik Doyen, unpredictable plots and quirky characters who the First Nation once known as the Petun. Henry Holloway and Art Calling Last Miguel Mota, and Paul Tiessen cope with death in their own curious ways, Beginning with the tribe’s first encounters Games as a way of making peace. This is what The first-ever edition of In Ballast to the White Death Sentences is the first translation of Mises with French explorer Samuel de Champlain in the Napi, or Old Man, taught various nations Sea, the autobiographical novel by Malcolm à mort, the fifth short story collection from 1616, Charles Garrad’s unique work traces their in southern Alberta and what Hudson’s Bay Lowry, known to most only through the critically acclaimed French-Canadian author route from their creation myth to their living Company surveyor came across in 1792. highly romanticized story of its loss in a fire. Suzanne Myre. descendants scattered from southwestern In fact, the typescript itself has probably Ontario to Kansas and Oklahoma. been read by at most a dozen people since Lowry scholars learned that it was deposited at the New York Public Library. www.Press.uOttawa.ca Facebook.com/uOttawaPress Twitter.com/uOttawaPress
October 2014 reviewcanada.ca 5 The (Other) October Crisis A new book revisits one of Canada’s most traumatic and telling moments. Andrea Lawlor
ing momentum, federalists, virtually in tatters, Johnson, appearing anything but soft in his scath- The Night Canada Stood Still: attempt to bolster support among undecided vot- ing criticism of the introduction of Bill 1 (An Act How the 1995 Quebec Referendum Nearly ers. Flashback to two years prior, and the author Respecting the Future of Québec) in the Quebec Cost Us Our Country carefully reconstructs how the once complacent Assemblée Nationale. Johnson levels hardballs at Robert Wright Jean Chrétien went from brashly deciding that his Parti Québécois and Bloc Québécois counter- HarperCollins prime ministerial intervention in the sovereignty parts, accusing Parizeau and Bouchard of glad- 355 pages, softcover debate was unnecessary to a state described by the handing the hardcore separatists with talk of an ISBN number 9781443409650 author as “visibly anxious, emotional [and] beaten independent nation, but using “confusion and down,” pleading for soft separatists to realize that a obfuscation” to win over the undecideds with a successful referendum would end “a country that is softer line on the Quebec-Canada partnership. riting a historical account of the envy of all the world.” Wright guides the reader One of the book’s strengths is in the author’s Canadian politics is a pretty thank- through this creeping shift undergone by many commitment to providing not only the media Wless task. While we need a written prominent federal politicians, from blind optimism account, but legislative action as well. To his credit, account of our political past, no sooner do we to collectively being beside themselves as the Oui Wright’s narration of Hansard-like content is more come to something resembling a credible conclu- side’s polling numbers skyrocketed in the weeks engaging than one might expect. His description of sion—something we can learn from—than we find leading up to the vote. the rousing debates among Parizeau and Johnson ourselves cycling through the same and Bouchard and Chrétien remind events yet again. As a result, reading It is not clear that the PQ will continue the reader that, regardless of sides political history has become akin and outcomes, Canada and Quebec to watching reruns, intermittently to get mileage out of the potentially were possessed of passionate, pausing to ask, “Haven’t I seen this forward-thinking leaders who all before?” A tiresome prospect, explosive language of nous—a warm debated politics head on and did indeed, for anyone who has ever not shy away from the hard conver- hoped that an issue had, once and and inclusive term, except when you sations. Of course, we forget that this for all, been decided. period in political history was not Few things illustrate this prob- find you are part ofles autres. devoid of political substance, nor lem quite so dramatically as the was it marked by the catty exchange question of Quebec sovereignty. It is a question that The strengths of the book are obvious: it is a of preschool-level name-calling so often heard in has been addressed twice by referendum, and, even clear, succinct synthesis of insider narratives that today’s House of Commons debates. Rather, it was when not the subject of direct democratic action, is have previously only been available through the the raucous, character-driven dialogue one recalls ceaselessly debated by ardent sovereignists, mod- many (often loquacious) prime ministerial mem- from the past (and now yearns for). These insights erate autonomists, heart-wrenched federalists and oirs. It is understandably heavy on media accounts into the legislative context leave the reader with a the irritable “Fine. Leave!” crowd, driving political and thankfully curates academic accounts carefully richer understanding of just how close Canada was, commentators to sheer exhaustion. There remain to make them accessible to all readers. Wright also not necessarily to breaking apart, but to wading some, however, who are willing to take on the task steers clear of the over-used tropes of befuddled into yet another constitutional quagmire. of reconciling our collective political history, and Canadians and angry Quebecers, broken consti- Wright stays clear of forecasting the future, but Canadians should be grateful to them, lest we forget tutional marriages and multiple solitudes, all of quietly draws nice parallels to current-day politics how, with the 2014 provincial election, we returned which are sounding tired 20 years on—although, in introducing the familiar cast of contemporary to a place with respect to Quebec sovereignty where the vein of almost all accounts of Canadian polit- political figures who do cameos throughout the we had, puzzlingly, so recently been. ical history, he does trot out one or two requisite, if book. Recent Quebec premier Pauline Marois has The Night Canada Stood Still: How the 1995 shop-worn, hockey analogies. a walk-on role as the chair of the Quebec Treasury Quebec Referendum Nearly Cost Us Our Country As with any book that peeks into the shadowy Board in 1995, having the dubious honour of credibly takes on the task of documenting the backrooms of the political elite, Wright is limited announcing the Oui side’s loss to an arena full 1995 Quebec referendum on sovereignty. It is a to accounts of political leaders and strategists who of supporters. Former Action Démocratique du thoughtful, detailed account of the actors and were willing to go on the record. Portrayals of the Québec party leader Mario Dumont is noted for his plots that unfolded on both the sovereignist and redoubtable Lucien Bouchard and the passionate youthful ardour (he was only 25 when he was an federalist sides, assiduously compiled from second- (if a touch irascible) Premier Jacques Parizeau are ADQ member of the Assemblée Nationale during ary sources. The author, historian Robert Wright, fair. Wright sheds light on their complex, combative the referendum), and for his astute ability to play self-identifies as an “earnest Upper Canadian,” relationship. One is reminded that they occasion- neither side but nonetheless come out politically the good-willed, if hapless, type of rest-of-Canada ally looked more like frenemies than partners. ahead of his rivals. Federalist circles are rife with anglophone that probably infuriates die-hard sep- Wright astutely sums up their fair-weather friend- familiar names. Wright highlights now-NDP leader aratists with good-natured comments about one’s ship in his description of a “defiant” Parizeau’s Thomas Mulcair, playing the role of a spirited MNA Canada including Quebec, but keeps impressively anger toward Bouchard’s seemingly ad hoc change for the Quebec Liberal Party 19 years ago, con- close to a politically neutral retelling of history. in the vocabulary from “sovereignty” to a European testing potential vote fraud (an issue, unfortunately, The book, appropriately for its topic, begins Union–style “economic partnership”—a turning of interest in contemporary politics as well). In the almost at the end, in the week leading up to the point in the campaign, and a clear signal that while book’s final pages, now-deposed Liberal leader, 1995 Quebec Referendum. With the Oui side gain- Parizeau clutched his principles, Bouchard had his the ever-loyal and resilient Stéphane Dion also does eye on the prize at all costs. a walk-on as minister for intergovernmental affairs, Andrea Lawlor is a post-doctoral research fellow Even former opposition leader Daniel Johnson, charged with drafting the Clarity Act, which would at the Institute of Governmental Studies at the so often unsung in accounts of the referendum, go on to become a legally entrenched blockade to University of California, Berkeley. is given his due. Wright paints an unrelenting renewed attempts at separation.
6 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada One individual who has played a formidable role But of course, economists and policy wonks have in the history of the modern PQ occupies a continu- done these sorts of studies from a variety of perspec- ous role in the book. Author and political strategist tives, and as Jeffrey Simpson pointed out in February WAr & Politics Jean-François Lisée, then advisor to Parizeau, and this year, bookshelves would fail under the weight from dundurn more recently to Pauline Marois (while occupying of them. The trouble is that when politicians are the the role of minister of international relations, La messengers, facts are often treated as inconveniences, Francophonie and external trade for the PQ), fea- waived off when they do not fit into the broader nar- GreG sorbArA tures prominently. Lisée comes across as one part rative. That does not mean we stop attempting the the battlefield of ontario PolitiCs ardent sovereignist and one part savvy strategist. discussion though. On the contrary, it means we by Greg sorbara In the backrooms of the PQ camp, he is portrayed collectively stop treating the desire for sovereignty as as exhibiting long-term vision for sovereignty and a a nuisance to be ignored, and start engaging with the level-headed reaction to some of the more inflam- concerns presented by the sovereignty movement matory moments of the campaign (not the least (and indeed, by other groups in Canada who have being Parizeau’s now infamous “money and ethnic even less of a voice in public debate). To be clear, I do votes” concession speech). Wright recounts Lisée’s not advocate gold-plating a path to independence, disappointment in watching what was intended but I do suggest that a respectful and thoughtful as a gracious concession speech, marred by the exchange on the realities of monetary policy (already acidity and spite of Parizeau’s comment. It remains observed to be a possibly insurmountable challenge to be seen how, as a current PQ member of the in a potential currency union), infrastructure and Assemblée Nationale, he will carry on the move- the rights of aboriginal peoples (who have judicially ment now that so many of his colleagues have been enforceable claims to much of northern Quebec) is Greg sorbara presents a front-row seat to some of shown the door. In March of this year, he somewhat as necessary as a dialogue on respecting and increas- the most significant changes in ontario politics. curiously observed on CBC’s Power and Politics ing the use of the French language, and acknow- that the 1995 referendum outcome was “a tie”—a ledging that reconciling differing policy priorities A time such As there comment that not only confuses but perhaps also across provinces through the federal arrangement never WAs before opens the door for a reconsideration of what a requires re-examining our notions of fairness. It is a Canada after the Great War 51 percent Oui victory would mean for the sover- sober conversation that benefits Canada’s long-term by alan bowker eignist camp. Would that be considered a tie? stability. Flag waving in downtown Montreal only The real strength of the book is that Wright’s works once. account, in general, lays bare the two core challen- Finally, the elephant in the room has to be ges to comprehending the complex issue of Quebec addressed: the Chartre de la laïcité, an issue that sovereignty. The first is simple: understanding the Wright clearly could not take on in the book, but tremendous diversity in pro-sovereignist sentiment. that deserves some sort of epilogue in future edi- There was, as Bouchard described it, “broad con- tions. Wright ends with Parizeau’s resignation on sensus for a referendum,” but as Wright astutely account of the referendum loss, but probably more notes, “no consensus within Quebec on sovereignty so because of the aforementioned controversial itself.” In spite of Wright’s careful documentation of “money and ethnic votes” statement that has the varied attitudes and opinions toward Quebec been interpreted as pitting pure laine Québécois sovereignty both within and outside Quebec lead- against newcomers (even those who have been between 1918 and 1921 a great storm blew through ing up to the referendum, we still lack a clear under- here for generations). To his credit, Wright stays Canada and raised the expectations of a new world standing of what proportion of Quebecers away from trying to paint the PQ as the talisman for in which all things would be possible. understand a vote on sovereignty to be a vote simply everything from sovereignty to left-wing statism to for a stronger line against the federal government or xenophobia. Of course it is not, although their mes- for some modest change from the status quo. What saging could stand to be dramatically improved. It the PAris GAme proportion is tired of the grand passion, the ques- is not clear that the PQ will continue to get mileage Charles de Gaulle, the liberation of tions of identity and nationalism? Soft separatism, it out of the potentially explosive language of nous—a Paris, and the Gamble that Won franCe appears, works well among voters; the Quebec elec- warm and inclusive term, except when you find you by ray argyle torate seems happiest when people have someone are part of les autres. they know is capable of taking a hard line, without What the book can do, given the time period actually following through on all its threats—Mario it discusses, is highlight the great friction in the Dumont’s short-lived success with the ADQ was the Quebec mystique. This is a global society forging embodiment of this feeling. strong international links, yet it also seeks to isolate The second challenge is the nuts and bolts of a itself. It is remarkably progressive but unclear how separation agreement. This book highlights one of to deal with cultural diversity. Nowhere have these the key problems in having a mature discussion tensions been sharper than in the embodiment about carving out one country from another. It of the PQ, an organization that is now tasked with remains a political impossibility for those in elected having to make itself relevant again. But, unlike office. Yet it would, theoretically, be interesting and 2003 when the PQ last lost power to the Liberals, useful for both sides, and more importantly all the this task of rebuilding relevance is going to have to “ray argyle is an author who writes exceptionally people in the middle, to run the scenario through come with a clear refusal to engage with noxious fascinating stories on social and cultural change.” as a thought experiment: if a sovereign Quebec political instincts like inciting fear of the other. —The Globe and Mail was actually realized, what would it look like? It is Hopefully, in the short term, the PQ’s primary goal one thing to make broad conjectures about sharing will be to rebuild itself into a formidable opposition currency and passports, or renaming NHL teams. party that keeps the Liberals on course to economic It is quite another to look 8.1 million people in the renewal. A strong Quebec benefits all Canadians. eye and assure them that “This will objectively be I am cautiously optimistic. Quebec is a society better for you on a day-to-day basis. Your children’s that repeatedly shows itself to be engaged in deter- future prospects will be as secure as they were mining political outcomes, whether it is, as Wright AvAilAble from your fAvourite bookseller And As ebooks. before. The produce delivered to your grocery store narrates, a divisive referendum on sovereignty, or will be of the same quality. Here is how that will be opposition to increasing university tuition. But, as possible in an independent Quebec.” It is not about the author, and anyone else who has lived through /dundurnpress | @dundurnpress | dundurn.com making silly statements about whether Quebecers a Quebec provincial election would readily note, in will still be able to visit the Rockies. Of course they words so often used in this context that they seem will—nobody’s getting quotes to build barricades rehearsed, stale and occasionally cliché, plus ça in Cornwall. change.
October 2014 reviewcanada.ca 7 The Limits of the TRC Indispensably valuable for the tellers, but largely isolated from broader Canadian society. Michael Morden
fied, especially in light of Niezen’s approach. The decreasing the range of acceptable stories that Truth and Indignation: book consists primarily of “event ethnography”— will be heard. Michael Ignatieff once wrote, think- Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation the author and his research assistants attend ing of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Indian Residential Schools public events of the TRC, and describe how they Commission, that,“the past is an argument, and the Ronald Niezen sound, look and feel. This material is augmented function of truth commissions, like the function of University of Toronto Press by interviews with a range of commission organ- honest historians, is simply to purify the argument, 173 pages, softcover izers and participants, but with a strong emphasis to narrow the range of permissible lies.” Niezen puts ISBN 9781442606302 on the religious professionals who had staffed the a rather sharper point on it. The commission, in his residential schools. I was surprised to find those view, does not just eliminate the most egregious particular voices featured so prominently, but they historical untruths. Actually, it elevates and sacral- boy is taken from the trap line that contribute fresh and unusual texture to the story, izes a single narrative, so much so that it produces he lives on, to a far-away school where and help Niezen illustrate the narrative conflict “a kind of protected and protective orthodoxy.” The Ahe knows no one. He is given unfamiliar at the centre of his argument. This is a sensitive, template, roughly speaking, is the story of a help- food for dinner and helplessly vomits less child abused by unnamed, faceless onto the floor. An adult, a worker at Individual childhood narratives fix individuals, in an institutional setting the school, arrives to harass him in a that exists in relative isolation from the language he does not know. He is hit attention on the “crime in private wider world. That which contradicts or until his nose bleeds, and he is told to even just falls harmlessly outside the crawl on the floor and eat what he has life”—child abuse—considerably new orthodoxy is rendered “unsayable.” brought up. He is six, and it is his first While sympathetic to what he sees as a day at school. more than the “wrong in public victim-centred narrative produced from The Indian Residential Schools Truth the TRC, Niezen challenges us to stay and Reconciliation Commission has life”—legislated assimilation. critical, and alive to the unsaid. heard hundreds of these stories from There is an important distinction, coast to coast to coast. It is already a half-decade sometimes abstract, exploration of the moral and he argues, between historical truth—truth with a old, and winding toward its conclusion. What is not practical terrain of this truth commission, and all capital T—and narrative truth. In narrative truth, clear is what is supposed to happen next. truth commissions. the author speaks to an innate human tendency to Truth and reconciliation are distinctly not the There is serious, almost abrasive intellectual line up our memories for coherence, so that they fit same thing, but we presume they are related. It honesty in the text. The author avoids the tempta- neatly along a story arc, rather than just to remem- is an appealing notion, which resonates with our tion just to reproduce the indignation evoked from ber them straight on. Sometimes collective truth enlightenment liberalism. It says: to solve a con- testimonies like the one above, and to give simple telling can overwhelm individual stories, as we try flict, just tell the truth. In an open, permissive and expression to what he describes as “a kind of per- to make sense of our own lives inside the narrative participatory marketplace of stories, the real past sistent, nagging, sympathetic sense of wrong” that structures imposed by convention, tradition or (in will reveal itself, and publics will naturally fall in accompanies any thinking on residential schools. this case) commission. line. Armed with truth, there is no historical fight to Certainly responding to that sense of wrong is one’s Every truth commission must also determine fight, and we can again begin to imagine our future first instinct. After all, as Niezen neatly summar- how to dispense with individual perpetrators of together. It easy to understand why truth commis- izes, the schools represent “quite possibly the worst the historical crimes under discussion. This ques- sions have sprouted up so thickly around regime crime in private life, the sexual abuse of children, tion hinges on the balance that is struck between change and the ends of conflicts, in the last 20 or applied in the context of one of the worst wrongs justice, truth and reconciliation. In South Africa, so years. in public life, the purposeful, policy-driven elim- for example, perpetrators were invited to testify to But how will our new truths yield reconciliation? ination of a people.” But Niezen opts for a clinical their crimes, and in doing so became immune from It still feels a bit like early days, but the time for remove from the moral content of the story, in criminal prosecution. Other commissions have stock taking has come. Did the TRC work? What did order to observe the TRC more critically. There was adopted marginally more prosecutorial mandates, it do? What was it supposed to do? an easier book to write, but Truth and Indignation seeking out individual perpetrators with the intent With Truth and Indignation: Canada’s Truth and is more nuanced, more challenging and as a result to deliver direct, personal justice. Reconciliation Commission on Indian Residential more stimulating. In Canada, no deal has been extended to Schools, Ronald Niezen takes a first crack at this. We still get fragments of awful, stomach- perpetrators, thus guaranteeing an abundance Niezen, an anthropologist at McGill University, churning testimony—the stuff that, if the com- of victims but a unique absence of perpetrators at defends his decision to publish an evaluation of the mission does its job, will make up the new public the hearings. Many church officials did voluntarily TRC before it has even finished by describing “an history of residential schools. We are also presented attend the public meetings, which were open to unusual exercise in scholarly accountability.” He with vivid images of survivors today, including all. And the church organizations themselves had invites readers to hold his conclusions up against some broken people who, as adults, just cannot some requirements to participate—for example, in the remaining TRC activities, and evaluate the work make sense of what was done by adults to their providing relevant archival documents to the com- in real time. I found the timing to be amply justi- child selves. Some just weep at the microphone, mission. But individual roles in the TRC are, to a and this, of course, is testimony. large extent, self-directed. Michael Morden is a doctoral candidate in the But Niezen’s focus is on process over substance. Nor will the commission seek to pass direct Department of Political Science at the University He wants to explore how the commission knits judgement on individuals. It is expressly prohibited of Toronto and a fellow of the Trudeau Centre for testimony together into a preferred narrative, from naming names in its proceedings. It lacks sub- Peace, Conflict and Justice. which then feeds back on future testimony, ever poena power to compel testimony or attendance,
8 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada and cannot suggest criminal or civil liability. If a an assortment of initiated others—researchers, grievances, especially contemporary grievances— survivor wishes to identify individuals, their state- care workers, religious professionals and so on. directed at band councils and other community ment is delivered in camera rather than publicly. People, in other words, who knew what residential members, media, governments, racist employers. If all truth commissions are arrayed on a spectrum schools were long before anyone stepped up to the In this way, participants subvert the carefully drawn between the poles of judicial prosecution on one microphone. parameters of the TRC, and transform it into a end and pure information gathering on the other, But is the TRC’s work reaching past that captive vehicle for some broader truth telling. Canada’s sits radically in the latter direction. audience and communicating with the uninformed But these are just passing digressions, reluc- But through testimony, a picture emerges that masses? We cannot answer the question yet tantly tolerated by the commissioners. The lens places the lion’s share of responsibility on the with anything other than anecdote and instinct. remains tightly focused on the schools. This is, shoulders of the priests, nuns and brothers who Niezen cites online comment threads that show I think, justifiable. It allows survivors the opportun- staffed the schools, as a general class. The book non-Native skepticism and hostility toward the ity to contend in depth with that great, terrible and sets aside considerable space for these official TRC (granted, comment threads are always hor- central trauma in their lives, which is, after all, the villains. And Niezen finds, after scratching under ror shows, and I do not think we have figured out point. public veneers, that these people are far from ready exactly what they mean yet). But the commission But it is difficult to see how this particular exer- to embrace the new narrative of the residential that Niezen describes sounds like a deep, resonant, cise in reconciliation will bear on the real source of schools. He relates a particularly explosive testi- but ultimately somewhat isolated echo chamber. conflict between indigenous and non-indigenous mony, from one Brother Cavanaugh of the Oblate Participants already know the general outline of the people—namely, competing, asymmetrical claims order, who argued that while the residential schools story before it is told by each new testifier, but there to land and resources. That is where our historical were not perfect, “there didn’t seem to be any other are limited means of transmission from the world remembrances, and our expectations of each other viable alternative in providing a good education inside the commission to the world without. Media today, diverge so fatally. The TRC will likely settle for so many children who lived in relatively small, coverage has been spotty, and with the exception our collective understanding of the residential isolated communities.” From the audience, he was of some local outlets, it has rarely focused on the schools, and build one small bridge across the can- shouted at: “Truth! Tell the truth,” “Shame on you!” content of testimony itself. There is no discernible yon of indigenous-settler difference. It just will not This disruption was unusual, however. Mostly backlash against the commission, but nor is there be where the canyon is widest. the religious orders stuck to script in public. But a strong sense of momentum in favour of the pro- And that, maybe, is the central counsel in in the course of individual interviews, they reveal to ceedings. It feels self-contained. Niezen’s wise text: to embrace modesty of ambi- Niezen deep resentment about their presentation. It feels not just isolated from a larger public, tion, and a measure of skepticism, in the face of They remember things differently. They complain but also from the real world of indigenous/non- symbolic high politics. If the TRC has allowed sur- about a lack of funding to the schools, suggesting indigenous relations today. The commission, by vivors to tell their stories and relinquish in some that they had to make do with what they had under definition, brackets residential schools out from small way that burden that they have had to carry difficult circumstances. Some flatly deny the com- a broader suite of policies committed to similar with them since childhood, its existence is amply mon allegation that they punished children for ends, that is, the federal government’s “handling” of validated. But the higher hopes that were inevitably speaking indigenous languages. And they remem- Native issues. This creates a tension apparent even attached to it—that it would prove a watershed, that ber to him the good times: “We had a lot of fun in its own proceedings. In an important passage, it would allow us to turn the page on the past and too, going swimming. The lake was right there”; the author describes a phenomenon he calls “while so on—will likely be frustrated. We have more stor- “I remember playing curling with [the students] I have the microphone”—where witnesses depart ies to share now, and that is good. There remains with jam cans”; “I was always involved in hockey from their childhood recollections to invoke other considerably more storytelling to do. with them.” These are the new history’s discontents. The commission can pass judgement in a general sort of way, but the judged are largely left alone to embrace or reject the mantle of responsibility pre- The LRC presents… scribed for them. The launch of our 2014–15 speaker series Niezen also worries about what he feels is an important absence in the room: the federal gov- ernment itself, which appears at the commission as only an “abstraction, a source of policy, fund- Breaking Down the Door ing, and administration putting forth nothing that October 6, 2014 attracts censure or gains traction with audiences.” ROBERT SIRMAN, former CEO of the The Gardiner Museum And where does the Canadian public factor into the Canada Council for the Arts, discusses 111 Queen’s Park moral accounting? The author describes a process politics and public service. Toronto, ON that feels detached and autonomous that neither compels nor requests deep participation from Join the LRC at the Gardiner Museum on Canada at elite or mass levels. This is, perhaps, a byproduct of victim-centrism. October 6 for an in-depth and lively discussion Individual childhood narratives fix attention on the on the Canadian government’s culture of “crime in private life”—child abuse—considerably creating distance between the political more than the “wrong in public life”—legislated class, the public service and public itself, assimilation. It is easy for us, the public, to accept a which eff ectively shuts the door on open and narrative of abuse at the hands of religious officials, transparent communication. Robert Sirman which is many steps away from our own agency. It is will help diagnose these dysfunctional trends, not even a new story; priestly exploitation is deeply and will off er his own view of a way forward familiar to us, to the point of cliché. We have not as well. been asked to sacrifice any of our heroes—it has been almost too easy for non-Natives. For Niezen, rigid attention to life histories, and the relationship To register for this talk — FREE to LRC subscribers — visit of individual perpetrators and victims can actually reviewcanada.ca/events “distract public attention from ongoing forms of neglect and active sources of indignation.” Has the commission even found a broader audience? Niezen is himself deeply embedded in Generously supported by In partnership with the institution, and inward gazing. This prevents him from examining the public response to the TRC in any great detail. He describes the in-house audience, those actually present at events, as con- sisting largely of survivors themselves along with
October 2014 reviewcanada.ca 9 What Turns Us On Shining a cool, clear light on the things that fascinate. Julie Sedivy
Many of these learning Riveted: biases probably developed The Science of Why Jokes over the course of evolu- Make Us Laugh, Movies tion to make it easier for us Make Us Cry and Religion to learn the patterns and Makes Us Feel One with relationships that were most the Universe likely to be useful to us. More Jim Davies recently, scientists have Palgrave Macmillan begun to explore whether 282 pages, hardcover there is a similar evolution- ISBN 9781137279019 ary origin to the allure of art or certain ideas, as an out- growth of biases that led our man I know ancestors to orient to infor- recently confided mation that helped propa- Ato close friends over gate their genes. (Previous dinner his intention to end examples of books by schol- his marriage. It was not, he ars advancing this argument explained, that he and his include Denis Dutton’s The wife did not love each other; Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure the trouble was they did not and Human Evolution and respond to each other. We Daniel Dennett’s Breaking all nodded, understanding the Spell: Religion as a perfectly what he was referring to—that rich and It has been known for some time that the human Natural Phenomenon.) Davies, a professor of cogni- resonant feeling of affinity, the big, open yes that mind plays favourites with information, and the tive science at Carleton University, is among those makes this particular person seem different from all same is true for many other animals. Scientists see who claim that we are innately tuned to find certain others, more compelling, able somehow to uncork evidence of this in learning biases; some facts about information especially compelling, so that when we emotion that usually stays contained. None of us the world are simply easier to learn than others. encounter it, we respond deeply and viscerally. We questioned that the absence of this feeling dimin- For example, rhesus monkeys are not innately pro- take it in with a special openness. It resonates as ished my friend’s relationship. grammed to fear snakes, as shown in a 1989 study profoundly true or beautiful. Just as we respond to some people but not by Michael Cook and Susan Mineka—monkeys who Davies has published a respectable stack of others, some privileged kinds of information can had no experience with them comfortably played scientific papers dealing with the psychology of draw from us a big, open yes—whether that infor- with toy snakes, but they very quickly learned to be imagination, art, creativity and religion. In Riveted, mation comes in the form of a soaring guitar riff, a afraid if they saw videos of other monkeys respond- he takes us well beyond the walls of his own lab- novel that entangles us in its characters’ lives, or an ing to toy snakes with alarm. This social learning is oratory, acting as an informed guide, taking the idea that is so beautiful or startling or lucid that it powerful, but also very narrow: when shown videos reader on an attraction-packed tour of the last sets up permanent residence in the mind. Most of of monkeys recoiling from flowers or toy rabbits, two decades’ worth of scientific studies probing us do not feel the urge to analyze these responses, the observing monkeys failed to conclude that the informational affinities and biases of humans. but we seek them out wherever we possibly can. flowers and rabbits are fearsome objects. Although While he acknowledges that a person’s aesthetic Such experiences, we feel, are what make us pro- the fear itself is not innate, rhesus monkeys find it preferences are shaped partly by life experiences or foundly human, in the most spiritual sense of the easier to learn to associate danger with potential culture, his interest lies mainly in the regular ten- word. According to author Jim Davies, what we predators than with truly benign objects or animals. dencies that crop up again and again. These regu- respond to with the greatest openness does indeed Similar learning biases can be seen in many other larities can be loosely grouped into broad themes: reveal something profound about our humanity— species. For instance, laboratory rats can learn that for example, our intensely social predispositions, but he is interested in a scientific understanding foods with a certain smell will make them sick, but our compulsion to discern patterns and our attrac- of this aspect of humanity. In his book Riveted: The not that foods of a certain colour, or foods that are tion to the incongruous or novel. The exposition is Science of Why Jokes Make Us Laugh, Movies Make accompanied by certain sounds, will make them at times unsatisfying, and the research itself often Us Cry and Religion Makes Us Feel One with the sick, even when these correlations are just as robust. speculative, but the sights that the author points Universe, he explores why certain kinds of informa- Pigeons can learn to associate arbitrary sounds but out are undeniably captivating. Riveted is riddled tion seem especially compelling to us as members not colours with danger, but when learning about with examples that will prompt readers to develop of the biological species of humans. the quality of food, the reverse is true: they pay a habit of questioning what underlies their own fas- attention to colour but not to sound. We humans cinations—and that is surely the point of the book. Julie Sedivy teaches linguistics and psychology at display much more intricate learning biases—for For instance, some interesting consequences the University of Calgary, and is the co-author of example, our brains seem especially eager to may come from the fact that we humans are Sold on Language: How Advertisers Talk To You learn exactly the kinds of patterns that are most uniquely obsessed with social dimensions of real- and What This Says About You (Wiley, 2011). commonly found among the world’s languages. ity. We devote abundant brain energy to noting
10 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada and analyzing the intentions and motivations of naturally handpick those select few that view- in its stylistic choices. There is little here in the way others, determining whether they are noble or evil, ers find most compelling: dramatic abductions, of story, no characters to speak of, few arresting whether they are likely to behave in ways that will incidents of over-the-top road rage or gruesome real-life details, and no unexpected plot twists or benefit others, or whether they are self-serving terrorist attacks. In turn, we make generalizations even any discernible narrative arc. It is hard not to cheaters. Such concerns are critical to our survival about reality based on what we see in the news. As miss these elements, but given the book’s subject and, as a result, we are wired to find them fascinat- Davies points out, this dynamic virtually guaran- matter, it is also hard not to wonder whether their ing. As Davies points out, humans have been riv- tees that “news tells us things that are anomalous, presence would provide a distorting lens—after all, eted by stories throughout history—but there is no which we then perceive as common and probable.” Gladwell has been rightly criticized by scientists for such thing as a story without characters. It is hard Hence, public perception is that crime is soaring to selectively plundering the body of evidence for just to tell a story about a geological event or a violent epidemic proportions, even as the actual incidence those details that fit with the most compelling story. storm unless it includes human (or humanized) of crime continues to fall—an error made all the In an era where “story” is a prized journalistic value characters. This fascination with the behaviour of more sobering by the fact the policy makers often (perhaps the most prized of all), the very content of social and moral beings, argues Davies, gives us a pander to it. this book provides fodder for questioning the role hearty appetite for a good story, all the more if it Riveted offers a sprawling catalogue of scientific of a gripping tale in popular scientific writing. As involves secret plots or reveals a character’s com- studies that shed light on the ideas and patterns Davies himself advises: “Use extra caution with the plex motives. It is also what makes some explana- we find most alluring. The book is an outstanding talented and be more generous with those lacking tions seem more intuitively right than others. resource for curious readers—my own copy of the in rhetorical and linguistic skills.” Without years of scientific inculcation, which references section was smothered with sticky notes Still, there is the matter of that big, transcend- explanation is more likely to resonate as true: that flagging articles to track down for further reading. ent yes. In the closing words of the book, Davies your child died because of a germ that is too small But at times, the book can be frustrating to read. assures us that we can embrace the pleasures of our to be seen, or that she died because your mortal While covering an impressive range of research, responses but at the same time we need to be wary enemy cast a curse on her? Even when we know the author rarely provides enough detail about of them. However, he downplays the existential about germs, our minds may flail about for some- individual studies to give outsiders a clear sense of upheaval that can occur in taking such a rationalist thing more, a reason, not merely a cause: perhaps the methods that were used or to allow readers to view, a view in which our warmest responses are the death was intended by God to test our fortitude raise valid critical questions. And as much as the to be help under a cool, distrusting light. Does the or to punish us for our misdeeds. The distinction book blurs out many of the details of cited experi- pursuit of aesthetic, spiritual or romantic ecstasy between how we respond to “deeper” reasons that ments, it also stops short of truly grappling with the lose some of its meaning if we perceive it to be the are couched in terms of the goals and intentions of larger implications of the research that is discussed. result of evolutionary tricks to get us to pay close sentient beings as opposed to mere causal explana- The effect is a bit like having an exuberant collector attention to certain information—tricks that, by the tions mirrors my friend’s complaint about what dump out his box of fascinating objects, leaving you way, may no longer even be in our best evolution- was missing in his marriage: we may intellectually to make of them what you will. ary interest? Indeed, our very survival as a species appreciate and accept a mechanistic explanation, Interestingly, Riveted also eschews many of in this complex world of our own making may well but we are apt to feel a spiritual void at the lack of the aesthetic devices that would likely draw an demand that we understand, examine and often purposefulness of it all. That is, we may understand, emotionally satisfying response from the reader. resist our inherent biases. What is less clear is but we do not respond. A cover blurb from Michael Shermer, editor of whether we can do this without also undoing—and Naturally, we risk being betrayed by our inher- Skeptic magazine, compares Jim Davies to Malcolm remaking—our experience of what it means to be ent biases, and this point represents the central Gladwell, but the book is almost anti-Gladwellian human. preoccupation of the book. It is all well and good for a rat in its natural environment to ignore the connection between bad food and the sound that PEN CANADA & THE INTERNATIONAL it hears at the moment the food becomes visible— FESTIVAL OF AUTHORS PRESENT this connection is not likely to ever be meaningful in nature. But the rat is out of luck if it lives in a lab in which such artificial correlations can eas- THE JUDICIOUS USE OF ily exist. Humans living in complex industrialized societies are all like lab rats who have artificially S O manipulated their environments to bear little resemblance to the natural surroundings in which DAVID CRONENBERG their cognitive biases evolved, all of which makes IN CONVERSATION WITH MARK KINGWELL us vulnerable to favouring the wrong information. Thursday, October 23 The lure of conspiracy theories or the false but resilient belief that vaccines cause autism are just two of the more obvious ways in which biases can interfere with an accurate appraisal of real- L I ity. Davies also describes a more subtle problem in the distorted understanding of the world that comes from paying attention to the news. We are predisposed to be most interested in events that are unusual, especially if they also involve some ele- ment of danger. In our previous evolutionary his- Fleck Dance Theatre, tory, this made sense: routine events were probably Harbourfront Centre, Toronto TU already well understood, whereas new and unusual ones called for some extra mental energy to figure TICKETS out—and were especially important to understand $100, all proceeds to PEN Canada if they were threatening. Moreover, in humanity’s On sale at 416 973 4000 or pencanada.ca earlier days, the frequency with which we became aware of certain events, whether through direct observation or very close secondhand accounts, corresponded fairly closely to the actual frequency D E of those events. It also made sense, therefore, for us to be wired to believe that our own awareness of events was fairly well aligned with reality. But PEN CANADA THANKS THE FOLLOWING FOR THEIR SUPPORT on today’s interconnected, technologically inun-
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12Clearing The plains paperback ad for LRC.indd 1 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review2014-07-30 of Canada 10:35 AM Self-Discovery in a Canoe A 54-day Arctic journey teaches deep lessons. Jill Frayne
confident as she steers through one furious set of effects of landscape as much as to landscape itself. Paddlenorth: Adventure, Resilience and rapids after another, the land sprawling around A hundred, even 50, years ago, self-exposure Renewal in the Arctic Wild them unbroken by a single tree. When the group was unseemly. John Hunt’s account of the first Jennifer Kingsley reaches the brackish water of the Arctic Ocean recorded summit of Mount Everest in 1953 breathes Greystone Books delta, the rhythm of the trip judders, tensions sur- not a whisper of what it cost him to send Edmund 240 pages, hardcover face that were of no account when the trip was in Hillary that final distance rather than go himself. ISBN 9781771640350 full flow. The group is wind-bound, the world they Swoops of emotion, the tug of group dynamics were left behind pressing in, fraying their connection detailed only glancingly, if at all. (That is not to say with the land and with each other. their effects were not addressed. On his final des- n a review of an account of the polar Kingsley’s style is concise and spare, nicely perate push to South Georgia to find rescue for his explorer Ernest Shackleton’s harrowing adven- evoking what she loves best: stranded crew, Ernest Shackleton took with him a Iture in the Antarctic, Anthony Lane of the New formidable seaman who was also a lout and a bully, Yorker attributed Shackleton’s lifelong passion The diagonal push that came from left to rather than have him trouble those left behind.) for the vast white wastes of the South Pole to the right tried to slam us back to shore. The wind In the unused places of the Earth, nature calls explorer’s discovery of “the deep the shots. She unravels humans, contentments of desolation.” In the unused places of the Earth, nature wakes us up, rocks us, thumps us Jennifer Kingsley is a kindred in the solar plexus, not to mention spirit of Shackleton’s. calls the shots. She unravels humans, kills us. To spend days and days Kingsley is a naturalist and in wild land is to ride a huge ani- guide in Canada’s most remote wakes us up, rocks us, thumps us in the mal. The currents set running in a North. She is also a writer and she group utterly organize how a trip has a story: a 54-day canoe journey solar plexus, not to mention kills us. unfolds. But until lately, we did not she made in 2005 with five com- hear about it. panions down the Back River to the Arctic Ocean. would assist, but I pried us out, mid-tongue, Kingsley is a keen observer of both landscapes, Kingsley and her long-time paddling partner until we moved beyond the black-on-black interior and exterior. The conflict that arises on the Tim Irvin trawled their community for four others, shadow that waited to toss us over. It passed Back River for her group is a worthy one, a split acquiring a third canoeing veteran they both knew a hand’s breadth from my hip, and we were between devotees of “be here now” and those who well and three others, two women and a man, less home free, for one … two … until I angled favour getting the trip done. Moving on caribou experienced in white water and less known to them. toward the boiling eddy line. Chaos. time, hanging out on the land is balm for three of Prior to setting out, the six of them dealt cre- … Jen reached across the boiling confu- the group. The other three weight their lives more atively with these disparities by agreeing to shift sion and planted her paddle like a tree in firm in the future when the trip will be over: they want tent partners and paddling pairs throughout the soil. She leaned far over, beyond logic, and to move along. This divide is temperamental. trip. They also rotated leadership, with the leader- the whole vessel pivoted around her until we Stamped on the bone is whether we draw our vital- of-the-day empowered to make final decisions. bumped up gently to the head of the eddy. ity more from congress with nature or with people. Other agreements were made at the outset: no food Another source of tension, noted but not drops, no phone contacts, no reliance on outside Hallelujah, finding a travel writer who describes laboured, is Tim’s state of mourning throughout the aid except in dire emergency. They would travel meals. Did ever a group eat so handsomely? trip. His mother had died only two months earlier through Nunavut tundra and reach their endpoint Kingsley is six feet tall, 140 pounds. With a metab- and the effect of his grief on a small, isolated group in the Arctic Ocean under their own power. olism like a furnace she insisted they eat well. “My must have been daunting. For Kingsley, closer to Journeys are a rich mine to plumb, having, as plastic bowl arrived, heaping with quinoa, onions, him than anyone and protective of him, his loss was every good narrative does, a beginning, a middle pine nuts, and crispy trout. The batter crunched hers as well. Tim’s grief deprived her of his avail- and an end. Kingsley’s words, rising from her diary, between my teeth … the fish steamed; onions ability and marooned her in the group. read as freshly as when she laid the scaffold for her sizzled.” The book is an emotional read, a sense of long- book nine years ago. The river they travel is named for George Back, ing or yearning running throughout. Kingsley is a Her writing mirrors the trip’s arc, starting from whose journal Kingsley, noting his light touch, fine and vulnerable writer. She is a very tall woman hesitantly as she and her companions find their frequently quotes. A surprising number of explor- in a culture that shames tall women. Being in fit with the still-winter conditions on the river ers and expeditioners, slogging through appalling wild land put her in line with herself in a way she and with each other. “I longed to be my best conditions, were highly literary. (Shackleton wrote prized. She writes that she came north to feel “both self and was afraid that person wouldn’t show verse.) It is an interesting coincidence, these three small and strong” and the cold sweeping plains of up,” she writes. Her boat capsizes on virtually the traits: love of adventure, high arousal and a gift for Nunavut do that for her. first day, and then never again. By mid trip, she is turning a phrase. She is the same breed as the American paddler fully engaged, the writing at its strongest and most What has changed in adventure literature is and writer Audrey Sutherland. Deep into old age, the focus. Roughly put, nature used to have the Sutherland still spent every summer in Alaska’s Jill Frayne has written for explore magazine, Up starring role, now the observer has. Travel writ- Panhandle tooling around in a six-foot inflatable Here and The Walrus. Her travel memoir, Starting ing these days reflects the trend everywhere, the kayak, bottles of wine stowed fore and aft, prepar- Out in the Afternoon: A Mid-Life Journey into Wild great swelling in the use of the first person. Now ing herself delicious mussel curries in the evenings. Land (Random House, 2003), was nominated for a we expect to know who this person forced to eat Her credo was: Go simple. Go solo. Go now. Governor General’s Award. their moccasins is. Writers pay attention to the That’s Kingsley in 30 years.
October 2014 reviewcanada.ca 13 Climbing Down from Vimy Ridge One of Canada’s leading historians makes a different case for military success. Adam Chapnick
The Greatest Victory: Canada’s One Hundred Days, 1918 J.L. Granatstein Oxford University Press 209 pages, softcover ISBN 9780199009312
his year marks the 100th anniversary of the start of the Great War, and efforts to Treflect on the Canadian wartime experi- ence are well under way across the country. The government of Canada is committing tens of mil- lions of dollars to remember our national achieve- ments and sacrifices, and countless new books will undoubtedly be released to do the same. Some Canadians, and even some historians, will find these commemorations excessive. Indeed, many have already suggested that the money Ottawa has allocated to memorialize Canadian participation in the First World War could be bet- ter spent on services for living veterans. Others, scanning the book shelves in their local bookstore, or the titles offered by their favourite online seller, will inevitably wonder how anything new could who use Vimy Ridge as a proxy for Canada’s entire to all but ignore Canada’s military past. The rest of possibly be written about a conflict that has been First World War experience. Chief among the cul- the book, therefore, seeks to combat the current the focus of such extensive historical scholarship prits is Paul Gessell, an Ottawa-based freelance government’s (and the popular) Vimy narrative for close to a century. (While writing this review, journalist writing in 2013 for the National Post, and restore Canada’s more significant military I entered “World War One and Canada” into the whose interpretation of the Canadian contribution achievements during “the one hundred days” to amazon.ca search engine and was offered 6,454 to western efforts at Vimy Ridge in 1917 Granatstein their proper place in the lore of the Great War. One results.) shuns as “almost completely wrong.” He could gets a sense that Granatstein understands that his J.L. Granatstein’s latest work provides ample have just as easily singled out Canada’s former intended goal is unattainable—there simply is not evidence that many of the latter concerns are mis- defence minister Peter MacKay, who has drawn enough interest in military history to overcome a placed. It is not necessarily that The Greatest Victory: parallels between Vimy and Afghanistan, or even mythology that has been propagated for decades. Canada’s One Hundred Days, 1918 offers much that Prime Minister Stephen Harper himself, who once Nonetheless, one must applaud his effort. is new about the military battles that resulted in implied that Vimy helped turn the war in the Allies’ That effort begins in dramatic fashion with the the German surrender; rather, it is that Granatstein favour. In reality, Granatstein explains in an intro- Allied attack on Amiens on August 8, 1918. By has effectively reinterpreted the historical data duction that establishes his argument, “Vimy did 1918, thanks in part to the victory at Vimy, now through a lens that will resonate with 21st-century not change the course of the war and did not lead Lieutenant-General Currie had a significantly freer Canadians. His account of the Canadian contribu- in a straight line to the Allied victory in November hand than ever before to lead the Canadian Corps, tion to the final 100 days of the First World War is 1918.” The battle, planned by British staff officers, which had evolved to become the largest corps both a celebration of the Canadian Armed Forces’ led by a British general and fought by a major- in the British Expeditionary Force. Granatstein’s greatest military achievements and a subtle attack ity of British-born soldiers who had only recently description of the Canadian general reveals the on the way in which the current federal govern- immigrated to Canada, certainly established the author’s own patriotism as well as his exceptional ment has sought to promote Canada’s history. Put Canadian Corps’ reputation and unleashed a wave understanding of the operational art: “[Currie’s] simply, this book could not have been written even of nationalist sentiment across the country, but it sense of the industrial scale of mechanized war- ten years ago, and the lessons that it imparts make was not, as is so often implied, “Canada’s greatest fare, his ability to see the battlefield as a system it a valuable contribution to the national discussion victory.” where components at the front and in the rear had of the Harper government’s alleged campaign to Indeed, even in the war’s immediate aftermath, to mesh together to create an effective, synergistic militarize the Canadian identity. Canada’s most accomplished general, Sir Arthur whole, and his understanding of how men had to The book’s central message takes aim at those Currie, opposed the decision to erect a Canadian be prepared and supplied to fight had shaped the memorial at the top of the ridge, worrying that Canadian Corps into the most efficient, ferocious Adam Chapnick is the deputy director of education doing so would undermine other military achieve- military organization in the British Expeditionary at the Canadian Forces College and a professor ments. It did not take long for Currie’s fear to be Force.” Amiens saw the Canadian Corps lead the of defence studies at the Royal Military College of realized, a fact that seems to disturb Granatstein British, the Australians and the French to an over- Canada. just as much as have previous governments’ efforts whelming victory over retreating German soldiers.
14 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada The Allies advanced 13 kilometres on the first day coordination of the infantry, the engineers, the matized more than it was looked upon sympathet- of the attack, an incredible distance considering artillery, the armour, and an extensive supply and ically, and while there were exceptions, soldiers that just two years earlier it had taken them four transport system. (Maps of the path that the Corps whose struggles were revealed physically through months to move just 6.5 kilometres at the Battle of took during each battle are included at relevant shaking, crying or worse were often labelled cow- the Somme. The enemy lost 27,000 soldiers, almost points throughout the text. The publisher has ards and shunned. Granatstein also intermixes pro- ten times the number of Canadian casualties. also generously included a number of black-and- vocative data on the effect of influenza on Canadian Three days and six additional miles later, the Corps’ white and full-colour photographs of war art.) It soldiers and citizens at home. The flu pandemic successful contribution to Amiens was complete. was, in Granatstein’s eyes, “the finest example of of 1918 took between 50 and 100 million lives, he British general Douglas Haig praised the Canadian [Canadian] professionalism in the Great War”: a notes, including those of 50,000 generally young effort at Amiens as “the finest operation of the war.” successful, two-week series of battles that, regret- and healthy Canadian men and women, or nearly The psychological impact of the loss on the German tably, saw Currie’s men suffer seven times the cas- as many as the 68,000 who died in combat. army was palpable, and a wider Allied victory was ualties of their British allies, with over 13,000 killed, In just 100 days in the summer and fall of 1918, only months away. wounded or taken prisoner. Whether the losses Granatstein concludes, 45,835 members of the Here, at what appears to be the peak of nation- were excessive—some contemporary readers might Canadian Corps were killed, wounded or taken alist glory, Granatstein interrupts the narrative struggle to reconcile these numbers with the fewer prisoner. These losses, he points out, are greater to trace the history leading up to Amiens. The than 200 men and women who were killed over ten than the total casualties sustained by the First background he provides covers familiar ground: years in Afghanistan—Granatstein leaves for his Canadian Army over the last eleven months of the Canada’s entry into the war was based on its legal readers to decide. Second World War in Europe. They also reflect what obligation as part of the British Empire; initial The Cambrai chapter also takes time away from it took to lead the West to victory at a time when efforts to organize the Canadian forces by Minister the front lines to discuss the social lives of the Canada’s British allies needed assistance and the Sam Hughes were pathetic and embarrassing; the soldiers. Granatstein recounts the importance of country’s soldiers were at their peak in terms of early battles of the war were par- skills, training and performance. ticularly brutal (over 6,000 casual- This book is a valuable contribution to Granatstein leaves it to the reader ties at Ypres alone); national unity to decide whether the losses were was always an issue, with English the national discussion of the Harper worth it, writing only that “the Canadians, and particularly the Corps’ extraordinary victories in British born, doing most of the vol- government’s alleged campaign to the last months of the Great War unteering and the ultimate deci- perhaps justified the price [my sion by Prime Minister Sir Robert militarize the Canadian identity. italics].” He is more definitive in Borden to impose conscription making clear that if Canadians in 1917 dividing the country along linguistic lines receiving letters from home and the ever-growing today wish to celebrate their First World War mil- for over two decades; women were extensively gap between the worldly understandings of the itary achievements, it is the hundred days that they involved throughout a conflict that comprised far troops in Europe and of Canadians who never went should remember, not just Vimy Ridge. more than just guns and bombs; and the Canadian overseas. The wartime environment abroad was effort matured gradually as significant learning what today would be called misogynistic, charac- took place across every element of the national terized by young men spewing crude language and Coming up wartime machine. It is a story that Granatstein tells rude comments about women. Moreover, soldiers well, even if at greater length than he might have. who faced indescribable working conditions in in the LRC The book then returns to the Canadian Corps Europe had little sympathy for workers’ griev- and three more battles. Granatstein devotes a chap- ances at home, and largely opposed the Winnipeg ter to the successful effort to take the Drocourt- General Strike of 1919 when they returned. Piketty’s Quéant Line, another to the attack on the Canal du Within just weeks of their victory at Cambrai, Canadian conclusions Nord and the conquering of Cambrai, and one more the Canadian Corps was on its way to Mont to the liberation of Mons. In each case, the military Houy, which it took relatively easily but which George Fallis story is complemented by insight into another ele- also resulted in what today, Granatstein notes, ment of early 20th-century warfare. In his summary would have been a public outcry. Currie’s soldiers, Managing information of the D-Q initiative, for example—an attack com- apparently incensed by the way that the Germans overload manded entirely by Currie with Canadians in the had treated the French civilians whose land they lead—Granatstein covers more than just the dead, had conquered, chose to kill large numbers of Clive Thompson the wounded, and the general’s organizational the enemy as they tried to surrender peacefully. skills and logistical acumen. He also dedicates a Granatstein does not forgive these actions, call- Residential school days number of pages to how Canadians ate on the front ing them “an appalling breakdown in discipline at Judy Fong Bates lines, noting, for example, that the average soldier every level.” He also criticizes the troops for con- gained six pounds on his 4,300-calorie-per-day tracting the highest rates of venereal disease among Man, by Kim Thuy military diet, and how morale was often affected by their western partners, once again noting their lack Lucy Waverman the availability of fresh food. “The Canadian Corps,” of discipline. Neither issue, however, causes him Granatstein observes, “marched on its stomach.” to depart from his contention that, on the whole, The experience at the D-Q Line was a difficult the Canadian achievements during the war merit Brunch and its one. Canada lost almost 300 officers and more than significant respect when understood in the context discontents 5,000 others, all drawn from less than 25,000 avail- of the time. That Currie called on his troops to use Cynthia Wine able infantry. “In truth,” Granatstein concedes, “the chemical weapons without regret was less a charac- ten battalions that had spearheaded the attack were ter flaw, for example, than a reflection of the utter The great game on replay almost annihilated.” In spite of the losses, however, brutality of the conditions that all soldiers faced in Currie and his men were designated as the “shock early 20th-century warfare. Michael Morgan troops” for the next battle over the Canal du Nord Mont Houy was followed in short order by and through Cambrai. Here, Granatstein is realistic, the final pre-arranged attack by Canadians at Mindfulness USA noting that it was more than just military excel- Valenciennes and the concluding battles at Mons. Keith Oatley lence that put the Canadians on the front lines. The Granatstein’s coverage of this last conflict bal- British had suffered overwhelming casualties over ances details of the military victory—which saw The craze for “curation” the previous four years, and London hesitated to Canadians sustain nearly 500 casualties in the final explain even greater losses to the British public. four days of combat, and during which soldiers Adele Weder British politicians had fewer qualms about send- struggled with the need to risk their lives when ing Canadian soldiers to their deaths. Once again, rumours of an impending armistice spread quickly Recovering from rape then, Currie developed a complicated, innova- across the front lines—with a moving description Clare Pain tive plan that depended on the cooperation and of shellshock. Mental illness at the time was stig-
October 2014 reviewcanada.ca 15 Old Ideas of Air Travel
I’m looking into a blue tarpaulin of sky where the flecks in my vision ascend and glide as if they were, too, the cloud-light dirigibles that once traversed this pinch of hemisphere in record time, and I think of when we lighted upon that fire balloon kit The Beach at in the sudden hangar of your father’s shed its packaging venous as a pinned moth, that we unpacked it and let the breeze bring it to life La Villette and it bobbed up, wingless, a jellyfish calmly At St. Martin’s the stones are celadon, blazing a trail through the pondweed of night. olive, ochre, and lavender, rose-cream. Soon it was aglow at your farmhouse’s height but the flame bent scale, detail and distance At La Villette the sands were grey and in it I saw those Parisian contraptions and pale brown like a tawny fur. that would have looked more at home underwater the Aerostat Reveillon, Garnerin parachute and hydrogen balloon The night we walked up from the beach Blanchard sat in to cross the blunt English Channel our shadows strode before us, more defined the faux wings he’d made of bamboo and linen, the sandbags, coats, pants and provisions, all needing to go over than our dusk selves. No rocks, no gems, once the wind had pulled him too close to the water. nothing to carry home with us — And it hung there, while this flotsam buoyed up in my mind, until it seemed our grey patch of field had been blown but moonlight on the field where, in deep grass, up and into a distance that couldn’t be settled, so I turned, the small white orchids gleamed like dew. and in turning shored up your flush face, a coastline. The dog danced on ahead of us. Jeff Latosik The road was brilliant as a page;
we could have written our names on it.
M. Travis Lane
Jeff Latosik’s work has appeared recently in This Magazine and Maisonneuve. Safely Home Pacific Western, his second collection of poems, will be published in spring 2015 by Ice House (an imprint of Goose Lane Editions). Currently he is reading The Republicby Plato, Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals by Patricia Lockwood and The Sacred Wood by T.S. Eliot.
M. Travis Lane went to Fredericton, New Brunswick, in 1960, loved it, became Canadian in 1973. Her 15th collection of poetry, Crossover, will be brought out by Cormorant Press in 2015. A monograph on her work by Shane Neilson, Jan Zwicky and Jeanette Lynes is also coming out shortly. At the moment Travis is reading The Possible Past by Aislinn Hunter, Moving Pictures by Anne Hollander and The Red Houseby Mark Haddon.
16 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Segovia
The guitarists were sitting around in somebody’s basement room Beautiful Inmate discussing their fingernails. They were comparing the length No soap for the washcloth, no salt for the brine of their fingernails, they were expounding that is dinner tonight. Mercury columns upon the strength of fingernails, insist the cold is too much for a man to endure they were trading chilling tales of broken fingernails. but, closer than ever to God, what you do The guitarists were filing the ragged is endure and endure. With grit. Other inmates ends of their fingernails grown long use their washcloths wrong, weave sheepshanks on one hand only, telltale sign, badge of belonging to the cult, well into the moon time, climb their new ropes and they could not afford tickets out of the dungeon, out of the range to the Julian Bream concert of exquisite redemption, as the first birds and they could not afford guitar lessons but they had all the records, scream. Once it’s the sun time, they toss rocks they had the music, lovingly transcribed they’re tied to off a bridge — but which partition off records, all by ear, hand-scratched hope their speeding chests to pierce? in India ink on music copy-sheets, note by painstaking note. They had All the ocean in this soi-disant world wouldn’t the apocrypha, the word-of-mouth, be enough for their baptism. Beneath the heroes. Segovia was self-taught. that surface dwells a door that’s very locked. Robyn Sarah Water would be nice, you suppose, but God bleeds no fluid when you wound him. His arteries, if pierced, fart dust.
Never the less, the smallest drop would do: just one lick! From one stalactite! The ocean and the heavy rain and the morning dew and
the rations your cleaved lips find ample and the tears of other, better-behaved men would be yours to yank tempests from!
Ben Ladouceur
Robyn Sarah’s tenth poetry collection, My Shoes Are Killing Me, will be published by Biblioasis in spring 2015. She is currently rereading The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million by Daniel Ben Ladouceur is a recipient of the Earle Birney Prize. Mendelsohn and perusing Selected Poems by His first book of poems, Otter, will be published by Coach Conrad Aiken. House Books in spring 2015. He is currently on a short fiction kick, alternating between the stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Alistair MacLeod. On subway rides, he is reading The Trouble with Brunch by Shawn Micallef.
October 2014 reviewcanada.ca 17 When Multiculturalism Fell into the Sea A fictional psychologist attempts to heal the trauma of the Indo-Canadian community. Ava Homa
about disfigured corpses, some attacked by sharks. practising Hindus who suffered from an act of The Ever After of Ashwin Rao Venkat calmed himself through Hindu rituals. Seth sectarian violence perpetrated by the Sikhs. The Padma Viswanathan discovered that prayers soothed him. book takes care to explore the pain of the Sikh com- Random House Canada After returning to Canada, unable to share his munities and offers insight into the massacres and 375 pages, hardcover horrific experiences with his family, Seth began oppression that occurred during the 1984 occupa- ISBN 9780307356345 a quest for a god to heal him and help him make tion of the Golden Temple and the succeeding sense of what he had witnessed. Eventually he battle with the Indian Army. Rao had seen Sikhs became the follower of a guru named Shivashakti, burnt alive whose only crime was being born into ow many times can identity be a man often considered God by his devotees. Seth’s a targeted religious group. Discrimination against hyphenated? What if an emigrant’s new daughter, Brinda, who was romantically involved Sikhs was not limited to India: they were treated Hcountry refuses to accept that person, or with a boy who had been aboard the downed plane, as “first-class fighters [and] second-class citizens” does so only superficially? Does death assign a per- hid her wounds by staying in a sexless marriage for in Canada. When Canada went to war, they were manent identity? What if no country given soldiers’ uniforms but not the claims the corpse? Brian Mulroney sent a letter of privileges that came with them. In The Ever After of Ashwin Rao, Viswanathan compares the effects Padma Viswanathan’s second novel, condolence to the Indian government of the bombing of a plane containing Ashwin Rao, a Canadian-trained hundreds of Canadians with those psychologist, loses his sister, niece but no message of sympathy to the of the 9/11 attacks in the United and nephew in the catastrophic June States. “After the World Trade Tower 1985 bombing of Air India flight 182 grieving Canadian families. attacks, nearly half of all Americans from Montreal to London and Delhi. showed PTSD symptoms … Had After graduation from McGill University as a foreign a decade. She reveals the truth to Rao when she Canadians suffered similarly, following the bomb- student, Rao returns to India. But in 2004, when the finds herself in need of therapy. ing? … Canadians at large did not feel themselves British Columbia Supreme Court begins the trial The chapters alternate between Rao’s, Brinda’s to have been attacked, although nearly every pas- of two suspects, he travels to Canada to interview and Seth’s perspective but written by Rao as his senger aboard that flight was a born or naturalized the families directly or indirectly affected by the therapeutic technique. Little direct detail is pro- Canadian.” disaster. Rao’s therapeutic technique is to turn their vided about the mental state of Venkat, since he The author suggests that the September 11 suffering into a narrative that can help them heal. refused Rao’s interview request. attacks traumatized the western world, but the The Ever After of Ashwin Rao offers scant insight In addition to dealing with grief, religion and Air India bombing was perceived as a “brown- into Rao’s own psyche—a grieving middle-aged history, the novel examines the immigrant expe- on-brown attack,” a matter that did not concern bachelor, a witness to violence against Sikhs in his rience. Lakshimi, Seth’s wife, took up secular Canada. predominantly Hindu community in India—but meditation in search of healing, happy that Canada, Padma Viswanathan is a British Columbia–born details instead the emotional lives of two interview- unlike India, offered her the freedom to be who she author currently based in Arkansas. Although she ees, Seth and his daughter, Brinda, who have lost wanted to be without having to justify her decisions did not lose a family member to the Air India trag- friends in the attack. to every relative. edy, it has coloured her perspective. Hers is not the Seth, a physics professor in Lohikarma (a fic- The bombing was a double trauma for these only book about that tragedy: another, Children of tional town in British Columbia) is in close con- Indo-Canadians, who not only lost loved ones and Air India: Un/Authorized Exhibits and Interjections, tact with Venkat, whose wife and son were on the their sense of security, but felt ignored by Canadian a collection of poetry by British Columbian Renée attacked plane. Venkat, a colleague and a member society—their society. The tragedy was trivialized, Sarojini Saklikar, was recently nominated for a B.C. of Seth’s extended family, and an already difficult sometimes as brutally as when a man pushed Book Prize. And in 2006, Anita Rau Badami’s novel person, grows ever more irrational and is incapable through the crowd in front of the B.C. Supreme Did You Hear the Nightbird Call? made a strong of coping with the tragedy; he becomes a burden Court and spat out, “Go back home to the Dark attempt to address the conflicts and emotional to Seth and his family, who must find a way to care Age! We don’t want your problems in Canada”—a stresses within the Indo-Canadian community for him. remark that made both Seth and Rao feel “too after the bombing. These books provide a means for The book is about grief, about losing loved ones humiliated for eye contact” when Venkat arrived. Indo-Canadians to deal with trauma and to docu- and finding a means to fill the vacuum. It explores Prime Minister Brian Mulroney sent an official ment their history. how characters react to their pain: with denial, reli- letter of condolence to the Indian government but The Ever After of Ashwin Rao is an ambitious gion, logic, depression or revenge. no message of sympathy to the grieving Canadian novel that tries to offer insights into the minds The novel starts in 2004 but contains many flash- families, making Indo-Canadians wonder which of many different characters at many different backs. Seth had been traumatized when he accom- country they belonged to. times, at the same time stitching in passages about panied Venkat to Ireland in 1985 to identify the The trial, lasting almost 20 years, ends without philosophy, physics, mathematics, immigration, recovered bodies. Dazed by the shock, Seth stared providing closure. Three hundred twenty-nine culture clash and other topics. These disparate and into the Atlantic Ocean for hours on end, chased people were killed, 82 of them children, and the offhand elements are not always well integrated after the flotsam the waves washed ashore, unsure Crown obtained only one conviction. into the narrative: their weight and significance of what he might find. Seth and Venkat saw or heard “It is hard to remember the only thing worth remain unexplained. Seth’s story achieves closure, remembering: the difference, if any, between before but not Ashwin Rao’s, who is more interested in Ava Homa, who was born in Iran, is a faculty mem- and after the verdict. Not guilty … Who Are the the lives of others than his own; readers are left ber at George Brown College in Toronto and author Guilty? Only they and their Maker know,” thinks Rao. wondering why the protagonist left his girlfriend of a short story collection, Echoes from the Other Rao interviewed more people, but readers and how his life will change after having written the Land (TSAR Publications, 2010). mainly get details about Seth and Brinda, non- narratives of his interviewees.
18 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Of Music and Espionage The man who played the theremin for Lenin is the unlikely hero of Sean Michaels’s first novel. Mark Frutkin
result, the Soviets send Termen to the United States Beria, the head of the secret police under Stalin. Us Conductors to spread the news of his instrument and his other These sections are written with skill—the meet- Sean Michaels inventions. The plan is for Termen to steal informa- ings feel utterly chilling. Lev is ordered by Beria to Random House Canada tion in the U.S. and market his inventions to amass perfect a remote listening device, which he does. 353 pages, softcover American dollars to help the fledgling revolution- In actual fact, this bug was concealed in a wooden ISBN 9780345813329 ary state. Termen is accompanied by a Soviet hand- carving of the Great Seal of the United States and ler named Pash, who wears several different hats: given as a gift to the American ambassador. For secretary, spy, communist, entrepreneur. Pash is seven years, until 1952, the Soviets heard every con- ince Michael Ondaatje’s 1976 novel, later replaced by two other handlers, both named fidential conversation in the ambassador’s office. Coming Through Slaughter, and Timothy Karl, who are quite a bit more threatening. Beria even used the device to eavesdrop on “the SFindley’s 1977 work, The Wars, histor- Meanwhile, Lev falls in love with Clara man in all the portraits,” Stalin himself. ical fiction in Canada has no longer been con- Reisenberg, a girl with “a laugh like a tumbling kite.” In Lev Termen, Sean Michaels has given us a sidered a species of genre writing. fully realized main character. Lev’s Following the publication of those The plan is for Termen to steal shock at being arrested (“What two works in particular, many have I done?”) is palpable. As for historical novels are counted information in the U.S. and market his the image drawn of the Soviet among the best of literary fiction. Union in that period, seldom has More recently Guy Vanderhaeghe, inventions to amass American dollars to writing so clearly replicated the Emma Donoghue, Joseph Boyden, fear and paranoia of a totalitarian Annabel Lyon, Lawrence Hill, help the fledgling revolutionary state. state. Jane Urquhart, Margaret Atwood, Numerous minor characters, Rohinton Mistry and Margaret Sweatman, among The image is fitting, as the relationship is marked especially Pash (“a manic-depressive spy”) and the others, have explored historical subjects ranging by great heights and sudden descents. Clara, a horrifying Beria, also have the feel of genuine life. from ancient Greece to the Cold War. violin player with a sore arm, evolves into a skilled Clara, on the other hand, appears somewhat distant Herb Wyile, in his 2006 book, Speaking in theremin player. Playing the theremin involves and hazy. For this reader it was difficult to connect the Past Tense: Canadian Novelists on Writing moving one’s hands in the air before two anten- with Lev’s great love and impossible to feel the Historical Fiction, states that “for Canadian writers nas and apparently few players could master the justification for his profound, lifelong loyalty. But, at the turn of the twenty-first century, history has instrument. of course, love too can be a kind of madness. indisputably become a central preoccupation.” In Clara and Lev become minor celebrities in a One minor flaw in the novel is Lev’s interest in a sure sign of literary maturation, these historical world that includes Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, martial arts, which feels somewhat contrived and themes are not limited to Canada. Canadian writ- Jascha Heifetz and numerous others. Lev leads the unnecessary. On the other hand, Michaels has a ers have long felt free to write about anything and much younger Clara through a whirlwind court- fine way with language, especially the use of colour anywhere, and they do. ship in the jazz clubs of Manhattan, jammed with as metaphor: horses in “the colours of pecans and First-time novelist Sean Michaels is a case in patrons doing the Charleston and the foxtrot, and walnuts”; and a diner in Manhattan with walls of point. Us Conductors (perhaps the oddest novel guzzling prohibition gin. But it seems the relation- “an overripe lime green, the tiles a weak milky blue”, title of the year) is set in the Soviet Union (St. ship is doomed. When Lev asks Clara to marry him, where “cooking oil hung like a fine mist in the air.” Petersburg and Moscow) just before and after the she appears to dissolve into thin air. Michaels, who has significant experience in 1917 Revolution, in New York City during the 1920s Nevertheless, Lev never gives up hope that Clara music, founded one of the earliest downloadable and, finally, in Stalin’s Siberian gulags and prisons will return to him and even carries that dream back music blogs on the internet, Said the Gramophone, for talented scientists. As a jumping off point into to the Soviet Union when he runs into unsolvable but this is his first foray into fiction. It stands as an fiction, the book tells the real life story of Russian financial problems in the U.S. and is called back to excellent first novel and proof, once again, that his- physicist, Lev Termen, inventor of the electronic Moscow by his masters. By this time it is 1938 and tory really is nothing but stories. musical instrument known as the theremin, as the Stalinist madness is riding high, but Lev, a true well as many other non-musical inventions such believer in the ideals of the revolution, barely ques- as the altimeter for airplanes and a proto-TV that tions the fact that he is treated like a prisoner on his Get extra insight proved useful to Soviet military and intelligence. return journey by ship. (Intriguing connections can be seen between music On arrival home, Lev, who has been spying for between issues! and scientific invention: Marconi based his discov- the Soviets in America, is arrested as a spy for the ery of tuning, which led to radio, on the concepts of U.S., in a classic case of Stalinist paranoid double- Follow the LRC on Twitter for updates on resonance and harmony in music.) think. He is ultimately sent to a gulag in the far issues and ideas that matter, including Termen gains considerable fame in the Soviet east of the Soviet Union and the novel takes on a breaking book news, cultural events and Union for his musical invention and actually plays far darker tone. Michaels is particularly adept at interesting writing from across the web— the theremin for Lenin, who is impressed. As a showing the suffering of the prisoners at this hell on Earth, with its bitter cold, constant threat of in particular, work published elsewhere Mark Frutkin’s most recent historical fiction is A starvation and its mood of terror. Eventually, Lev’s by LRC contributors. Message for the Emperor (Véhicule, 2012), which scientific skills are noticed and he ends up back in takes place in Song Dynasty China. His novel Moscow, in a more comfortable prison, where he Follow us at Fabrizio’s Return (Knopf, 2006), set in 17th-century is expected to develop new inventions for Soviet Italy, won the 2006 Trillium Award. He lives in intelligence. twitter.com/lrcmag Ottawa. During this period he has several meetings with
October 2014 reviewcanada.ca 19 The Perennial Temptation How fracking is supposed to dig us out of the energy crisis. Jessa Gamble
On Fracking C. Alexia Lane Rocky Mountain Books 127 pages, hardcover ISBN 9781927330807
Groundswell: The Case for Fracking Ezra Levant Signal Publishers 260 pages, hardcover ISBN 9780771046445
n 1945, Canadian homes were still heated either by coal or by wood. My grandparents Ihad shivered through depression-era Ottawa winters, desperate for fuel. Now the war was over, and fortunes were to be made, but to avoid flood- ing the housing and labour markets, the Canadian military did not demob everyone at once. This left my grandfather kicking around at a sniper training series of “manifestos”—lays out the multi-pronged too. At the moment, they are hardly noticeable, and facility in Fort Benning, Georgia, with time on his threat fracking poses to the quality and quantity of we have no motivation to conserve. hands to think about the future. our most essential commodity. Freshwater is used Lane’s book largely eschews the global climate He twigged to a newfangled idea going around: intensely in the fracking process and, although the change conundrum in favour of a practical, locally oil furnaces. Alberta’s big Leduc discovery had yet oil and gas resources are to be found deep below applicable approach. She advocates for a tempor- to happen, and the epicentre of Canadian oil was our groundwater reserves, the wells often pass ary hiatus on fracking until we can develop less still in Southern Ontario. He bought the rights to through drinking water aquifers on their way to water-intensive techniques and finish baseline sell some small gadget to do with oil burners, and the riches. The connection is not accidental—these studies of groundwater resources before we irrevoc- to hear my grandmother tell it, she had to smuggle subsurface deposits of fossil fuels and aquifers ably scramble the subsurface structures we rely on. a prototype into Canada in the folds of an even- formed in tandem with each other. Both are the It is currently impossible to remediate contamin- ing dress (many of her stories involved evening legacy of thousands of years and both are finite. ated groundwater. dresses). As oil grew, so did my grandfather’s heat- The difference is, water has no substitute. Ezra Levant’s Groundswell: The Case for Fracking ing equipment business, expanding into 16 whole- Peak oil, and the scarcity that was to follow it, makes not so much “the case for fracking,” as it sale branches throughout Ontario, Quebec and the made alternative energy development an urgent promises, but rather presents the case against the Maritimes before his death. concern on two fronts: environmental and eco- anti-fracking movement—a sort of rebuttal against On Fracking, by C. Alexia Lane, follows this nomic. We were running out of the very thing that a reaction. This book “looks at the enemies of frac- growth to the Alberta tar sands and unconventional was killing the planet. If the metaphor of addiction king: who they are, what they’re saying, and why oil and gas extraction, in a potted history of North holds true for our society’s perpetual craving for fos- they’re fighting the future so desperately,” con- American hydrocarbons. In hydraulic fracturing, sil fuels, we were staring at a stretch of cold-turkey cludes his introductory note. the latest industry revolution, millions of litres of detox, but it was ultimately for our own good. Levant is witty, and the book is well written. water—usually fresh—are mixed with chemical For once, money seemed to be speaking the Although his topic is nominally the same as Lane’s, additives and “proppant,” sand or ceramic beads. same language as our long-term survival odds. he has little patience with the science—of which This mixture is then injected at high pressure Then the unexpected happened—industry fore- more later—and he really comes to life in the pol- through a well, where its force creates cracks in the sight led to a seamless transition into an oil itical arena. To Levant, the shale gas revolution rock and flushes out oil or gas that was lurking in alternative, leading to plentiful energy. To the dis- represents political freedom. OPEC is bad enough, the fissures. The proppant remains to hold open appointment of environmentalists, that alternative holding 40 percent of the world’s oil reserves, but these cracks. Horizontal drilling, which extends the was also a hydrocarbon. Fracking has let us off the the natural gas equivalent—the Gas Exporting reach of these wells for kilometres around, has been hook just when we need to be hurrying. Countries Forum—represents 70 percent of the combined with fracking to create the once-unlikely As conventional oil dwindled, the full-blown world’s natural gas reserves, enough to collude very scenario of the United States as a net natural gas unconventional gas extraction—coal-bed meth- effectively on manipulating global energy prices. exporter. ane and shale gas fracking—took over, keep- That is, until we all have our own personal fracking Lane is a water management specialist, and her ing energy prices low. It is a pity, because with each operation in our backyards. Power to the people. book—marketed by Rocky Mountain Books in their energy price fluctuation we have seen throughout Whereas oil is priced globally, natural gas prices history, demand has followed suit. Price crashes fluctuate wildly, often depending on physical Jessa Gamble is the author of The Siesta and the lead to inefficient and excessive use while price proximity to the source. European countries sub- Midnight Sun: How Our Bodies Experience Time rises lead to conservation. And while we are at it, jected to Russia’s natural gas protection racket, (Penguin, 2011). She lives in Yellowknife. Lane suggests our water prices should be higher for example, have no recourse. Levant gives
20 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada ample evidence of the shady business practices dictatorships. If Russia regularly spills oil on a scale Qatari media meddling, even going so far as to sug- of Russia’s energy monopoly, Gazprom. Without surpassing Deepwater Horizon and Qatar holds for- gest that Al Jazeera’s English-language freelance energy independence from a foreign country, there eign workers hostage in indentured servitude, then rates fund a “battalion of anti-fracking journalists” can be no real political independence, he argues. we should be grateful for our BPs and Shells that, at by giving them piecemeal reporting work. They Fracking, both locally and in the form of liquid the very least, are meant to be accountable to our turn around and use their Qatari income to make natural gas imports from the United States, would own governments. trouble, closer to home, on channels we all watch. offer a real alternative and some welcome com- As for using too much water, millions of litres For phenomena that defy his intuition, Levant petition. Massive investment is pouring into the per well might sound like a lot, but Levant argues it sets the bar for the burden of proof impossibly infrastructure required for this oil-style commodity is not all that much in the scheme of things, when high. In the same way the tobacco industry clung trading of low-temperature, high-pressure liquefied compared with other water-intensive activity like for decades to its claim that not a single case of natural gas. the crop irrigation that goes into an equivalent cancer had been linked to smoking, Levant raises While Lane is fluent in Canadian government value of ethanol production. suspicions by his very insistence that no proven speak—she calls for things like “proactive frame- When Levant writes “the science, the actual evi- cases exist of groundwater contamination in frack- works,” “comprehensive monitoring programs” dence, proves that all those fracking-contamination ing. Never mind that major court cases have been and stewardship strategies—to awarded to plaintiffs in fracking- Levant, good governance is an oxy- caused groundwater contamina- moron. He uses terms like “Qatari Fracking has let us off the environmental tion. Levant has defined them out sharia gas” and “messiah fuel.” of existence. Why unconventional All environmentalists are extrem- hook just when we need to be hurrying. oil and gas extraction needed its ists, and solar or wind power are hard-fought exemption from the about as likely to pan out into viable energy alterna- claims are mistaken,” he is on very shaky footing Clean Water Act, if clean water had nothing to do tives as cold fusion is. with a scientifically literate reader, because he has with fracking, is not explained. Epitomizing a growing breed of Canadians, already demonstrated that he is not equipped to Neither book addresses what seems to be a Levant comes from the school of thought where evaluate evidence. You see, Levant is a firm denier driver of our energy policies over the years: human America (a word hitherto rarely used in this coun- of anthropogenic climate change. He is incredulous nature. The Northwest Territories, where I live, has try) is the ultimate Good Guy and free market that carbon dioxide, a colourless, odourless, harm- an aboriginal culture–based Water Act, which Lane capitalism will redeem us all if only we will let it less gas, the gas, moreover, “that we exhale countless praises for its forward-thinking and principled do its work. He is also a provocateur, a Sun Media times a day and that nourishes plant life on this stance toward preserving clean water for future personality and the author of several previous planet,” could require regulation. But for the wor- generations. A defining moment in our history books including one called Ethical Oil: The Case for riers among us, he gamely reassures us that natural was the Berger Inquiry, in which every community Canada’s Oilsands. gas is the cleanest-burning of the hydrocarbons, and in the NWT stood up against the Mackenzie Valley Given that we have yet to deal with the demand that the United States has reduced its carbon diox- Pipeline. But even here, it was announced this past side of our energy market, we can hardly object ide emissions because of the fracking boom. summer that fracking would be allowed in the ter- to the on-the-ground realities of hydrocarbon In the same way that my grandfather, the oil ritory despite a report that cautioned against it. extraction in North America. If we do, we are just burner supplier, was known to play up the dangers Wherever money is in the ground, humans will have indulging in NIMBYism, says Levant, and push- of gas stoves, Levant portrays the anti-fracking a hard time resisting. The temptation will always be ing the activity into the hands—and pockets—of movement variously as Russian propaganda and to dig.
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October 2014 reviewcanada.ca 21 Reinventing the Bard Shakespeare in Canada and Quebec. Susan Knutson
our colonial identity as the British The Tempest Dominion of Canada; unsurprisingly, William Shakespeare when Ontario’s Stratford Festival was Oxford University Press founded in July 1953, it featured the 132 pages, softcover artistic direction of British director ISBN 9780199009978 Tyrone Guthrie, starred British actors Alec Guinness and Irene Worth, and Romeo and Juliet played exclusively the works of the William Shakespeare British Bard. On the other hand, as Oxford University Press Moira Day has pointed out, “as early 172 pages, softcover as 1956 and 1966 Stratford had at ISBN 9780199009961 least twice brought the two solitudes together in the same Shakesperean Shakespeare in Québec: play—Henry V—to make an allegorical Nation, Gender and Adaptation comment about the state of the Jennifer Drouin [Canadian] nation.” Today, Stratford University of Toronto Press boasts North America’s largest 286 pages, hardcover classical repertory theatre, drawing ISBN 9781442647978 audiences from around the world for its productions of a wide range of classics, not limited to Shakespeare hakespeare in Canada is and including Canadian plays—for the important business, in all 2014 season Michel Marc Bouchard’s Ssenses of the word, and it can Christina, The Girl King in company be contentious. These realities are with Shakespeare’s King John, A neatly captured by three new books Midsummer Night’s Dream, Antony from Oxford University Press and and Cleopatra and King Lear. And University of Toronto Press. With Shakespeare in Canada is by no means a provocative flourish, two new limited to Stratford—theatres across OUP editions of The Tempest and Romeo and Daniel David Moses and Sky Gilbert. Introductions Canada and Quebec have featured hundreds of Juliet launch the Shakespeare Made in Canada by Fischlin himself and by respected editor and Shakespeare productions and adaptations of all series, under the general editorship of Daniel scholar Jill L. Levenson address critical issues of kinds. Summer Shakespeare out-of-doors is Fischlin, who teaches at the University of Guelph. interpretation and offer production histories with a particularly beloved of Canadians, and the fact that Jennifer Drouin’s critical study Shakespeare in focus on Canada. The front cover for the series gives it is popular does not mean that it is not serious Québec: Nation, Gender and Adaptation shines a Canadian touch, featuring the Sanders portrait of or significant. In Toronto’s Earl Bales Park, in 1987 a very bright light on the ways that “Québécois Shakespeare, made public in Ottawa in 2001 and and ’89, a production of The Tempest by Lewis adaptations … appropriate [Shakespeare’s plays] now housed at the University of Guelph. Fischlin’s Baumander’s Skylight Theatre made Canadian primarily, and often with irreverence, in service “Ten Tips for Reading Shakespeare” reaches out theatre history when it reinterpreted Shakespeare’s of the nation’s decolonization.” All three volumes to school-age readers (“Shakespeare’s sense of play in light of Canada’s colonial and colonizing expose aggression and conflict among nations, humour was closer to the humour in Family Guy history, setting the action in Haida Gwaii and genders and cultures, and open into uncomfortable or The Simpsons than you might expect”), while featuring the work of aboriginal theatre artists questions about Shakespeare’s place in 20th- clear and comprehensive act and scene summaries Monique Mojica, Billy Merasty and René Highway. and 21st-century Canada and Quebec. But narrate the action and highlight thematic hotspots. The electric connect between the First Nations Shakespeare—even when he is being denounced— The whole adds up to a publishing project well- and the Bard is front and centre in Fischlin’s manages to build readership, pull in audiences and poised to replace Orlando John Stevenson’s Canadian edition of Shakespeare’s last play, sell calendars and mugs.1 successful Canadian School Shakespeare Series, and rightly so, for The Tempestis widely seen as The Shakespeare Made in Canada volumes are which sold over a million volumes between 1950 Shakespeare’s commentary on European colonial inexpensive paperbacks featuring new editions of and 1972. In the years between then and now, no expansion. The magus Prospero, deposed Duke the playtexts, accompanied by “short, no-holds- specifically Canadian series has been used in the of Milan, lives with his daughter Miranda on barred” prefaces from celebrated artist-scholars country’s schools. an isolated island where he dominates entirely While Shakespeare’s plays may not have the indigenous Caliban and the spirit Ariel who Susan Knutson is a professor in the Département changed much in the past 70 years or so, Canadian together represent the subjugated peoples of the des études anglaises at Université Sainte-Anne society has—and our approach to Shakespeare, “brave new world.”2 In his daring preface to this in Church Point, Nova Scotia. She is the editor of both on the stage and in the classroom, is a volume, First Nations scholar and author Daniel Canadian Shakespeare (Canada Playwrights Press, fascinating bellwether of those changes. In David Moses defies deference to argue that The 2010). the early years, a deferential stance reflected Tempest is not a very good play: “Had … The Man,
22 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada the genius of English literature, lost his edge? … Was any further evidence of Shakespeare’s elasticity, intensity of the 1980 campaign for national he having an off day?” Is this play a mere curtsey to this book does the trick. sovereignty was distilled into vivid theatrical shock the English King James I, for whom the play was Drouin begins as she will end, with Quebec’s by Jean-Pierre Ronfard’s Lear and Vie et mort du first performed on November 1, 1611? “Was savvy political evolution, thus her first chapter treats Roi Boiteux, based on Richard III. Ronfard uses Will Shakespeare writing for an audience of one readers to historical summary and sorts the “carnival and magic realism to parody … corruption who wouldn’t appreciate even a fiction of treason? tricky question of postcoloniality: “Québec has and decay.” In response to the rise of the feminist … Diverting the king with entertainment with a … [a] complex relationship vis-à-vis its European movement, he created adaptations that “figure happy ending? Crafty strategy for keeping one’s ancestors, the First Nations, and Canada’s English- daughters as the survivors, inheritors, and sources own head?” Noting truly that the world of The speaking majority. The Québécois people are or of regeneration for fictional, bastard nations that Tempest is one that cannot be “approached without have been in colonial, anti-colonial, neocolonial, pass through the disorder of carnival and then deliberation,” Moses questions whether Prospero or postcolonial situations at different times in their hover on the precipice of a new social order which would be at home on Turtle Island, today. history vis-à-vis different groups, sometimes in will be more inclusive of women, and to some A colonized island, enslaved islanders, a ghastly multiple types of relationships simultaneously.” extent immigrants, that is, of the ‘others’ to whom reference to a “dead Indian”—there is no doubt Comparing Shakespearean adaptation in Quebec, carnival gives leave to rule.” In chapter six, “The that The Tempest challenges us as artists, teachers, English Canada, India, New Zealand, Scotland and Second Referendum: Plurality without Pluralism,” readers and students. Fischlin’s introductory Australia, Drouin finds that Quebec has little in Drouin presents a dense overview of the “explosion essay plunges into significant Canadian debates common with English Canada, where adaptations of adaptations since the 1990s. At least twenty- provoked by this play, giving space to the two have often dealt with gender issues, or with India, seven … including the first Québécois adaptations poles of argument that, on one hand, would where “Shakespeare was both a tool of colonization written by women, queers, and aboriginals.” Nation see Baumander’s Haida-themed production in the educational system and a tool of resistance and gender are both strongly configured in these as just another example of colonizing, cultural to that colonization in popular culture.” Like New plays, yet they tend not to live up to their liberatory appropriation, and, on the other, would suggest Zealand, Scotland and Australia, Quebec has a potential. Normand Chaurette’s 1991 Les Reines, that The Tempest is more important for example, stages the lives of the than ever for its challenge to interpret, queens who live in the shadows of adapt, teach and study colonization, In Garneau’s Macbeth, Quebec Henry IV and Richard III—a classic and what it has wrought of our world. feminist strategy, one might think. So, critic Paul Leonard argues that stands in for Shakespeare’s Scotland However, this is not a feminist play: Shakespeare’s play “propagate[s] suffering from tyrannical oppression. “the viciousness with which these an imperialistic vision” without women lie to, spy on, and manipulate even “a kernel of meaning … that each other in their jostle for power applies to Canada”; while Fischlin claims that The more ribald, parodic attitude when faced with the plays into stereotypes about both straight women Tempest explores social attitudes toward power English Bard’s canonical authority. and queer men.” Drouin’s insightful discussion and justice—issues that command Canadians’ Arguing that adaptations and appropriations concludes that in this body of work, the point of attention. In Fischlin’s view, Shakespeare can help must entail significant textual or narrative view is rarely feminist, positive representations us see these clearly, and does so, as a vital part of alteration, Drouin’s second chapter takes issue with of queerness are few and far between, and our living culture. pretty much everyone—including Daniel Fischlin— aboriginals and immigrants show up only briefly. In his preface to Romeo and Juliet, theatre artist who has ever touched down on the subject of “Still unresolved, the national question remains an extraordinaire Sky Gilbert stakes his ground with Shakespearean adaptation. Her tight definition inescapable driving force.” characteristic panache: “Romeo is perhaps the first excludes from her corpus those breakthrough The final chapter,“Québec v. Canada: Inter metrosexual.” Seeing the play as “very much about productions that have transformed our collective culturalism and the Politics of Recognition,” brings masculinity and threats to masculinity,” Gilbert understandings of Shakespeare plays—the us up to date, reiterating the sovereignty argument finds the play to be absolutely relevant today: “The Baumander Tempest, for example, or Yvette Nolan in light of recent history, touching on the relevance concerns in The Tragedy of Romeo and Julietare and Kennedy Cathy MacKinnon’s The Death of of Charles Taylor’s politics of recognition, and also our concerns.” This edition invites readers a Chief, which reimagines Shakespeare’s Julius delving thoughtfully into the question of why to reconsider our Hollywood views of Romeo; for Caesar in an aboriginal world without substantially Quebec’s highly accomplished feminist writers did example: “In most of his dialogue, ROMEO relies changing the Shakespearean language. Likewise not use Shakespeare as a vehicle for their work, on romantic clichés and shows that he lacks the excluded are translations, per se. The discussion of while their nationalist male compatriots did. In creative wit of MERCUTIO.” Romeo is “doting”— appropriation does not address the intense debates an interview with the author, Nicole Brossard has he “grown up at all?” Such questions are bound in English Canada over the colonial appropriation comments intriguingly that Molière and Racine to engage young readers. of aboriginal cultures, although Shakespeare is at would have been more natural referents in Quebec, Jill Levenson’s introduction begins with Northrop issue in those debates, as we see in Fischlin’s new but neither canonical French author lends himself, Frye’s internationally recognized interpretations edition of The Tempest.3 as Shakespeare does, to “lesbian or gay slippages of of Shakespeare’s plays as enactments of powerful Chapters three and four, “The Quiet Revolution: meaning.” Sky Gilbert, we think, would agree. archetypes or myths that give deeper meaning to Passer à l’action” and “Tyrants and Usurpers: An admonitory grace note at the end reminds our humanity. Levenson argues that the Liebestod Tradapting the Conquest” provide close readings us: “Québécois adaptations of Shakespeare are myth of love and death underwrites the tragedy of of the first important adaptations of Shakespeare not Canadian Shakespeares.” Not everyone is Shakespeare’s “star-crossed lovers” and accounts in Quebec, Robert Gurik’s Hamlet, prince du going to agree with Jennifer Drouin, but she makes for its continued currency. Romeo and Juliet has Québec (1968) followed by Michel Garneau’s two a significant contribution to our knowledge of been widely played in Canada and has inspired a “tradaptations”: Macbeth de William Shakespeare: Shakespeare in Quebec. number of radical Canadian adaptations including Traduit en québécois (1978) and La tempête (1989). the 1989–90 bilingual production by Robert Lepage In Gurik’s political allegory à clé, Hamlet is Quebec, and Gordon McCall, which mapped English the Queen is the Church, Horatio is René Lévesque, Notes Canada and Quebec onto the destructive folly and the evil Claudius is l’anglophonie, or all those 1 He or it? Is “Shakespeare” a series of playtexts and their associated industry, or an author? Drouin offers one of the Capulet and Montague feud; or the wildly who speak English. Reading this play entails a answer: “Shakespeare … is a transdiscursive author func- successful adaptation by Ann-Marie MacDonald, reiteration of the most confrontational sentiments tion [so an ‘it’] and arguably also a founder of discursivity Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet), of the Quiet Revolution. Garneau, too, produces in the Foucauldian sense” [so a ‘he’].” which rewrites the story to turn on its head that tired national allegory, such that, in his Macbeth, Quebec 2 This phrase, like “sea-change” and “we are such stuff as dreams are made on,” was coined in The Tempest. In the old myth of love and death, instead pairing love with stands in for Shakespeare’s Scotland suffering play, however, the “brave new world” is not the Americas, life, queering the gender stereotypes, and exposing from tyrannical oppression. The technique of but is Italy. entrenched sexism and racism in academia. tradaptation—Garneau’s own neologism for his 3 An intervention by First Nations women including Lee Maracle and Jeannette Armstrong at the Third Jennifer Drouin’s Shakespeare in Québec: blend of translation and adaptation—relocates International Feminist Book Fair / Troisième foire interna- Nation, Gender and Adaptation is a work of both Shakespeare’s stories to Quebec, and Canadian tionale du livre féministe, in Montreal, in 1988, denounced scholarship and polemic that focuses on the case snow geese fly over Prospero’s island. the unacceptable appropriation of First Nations cultures in the women’s movement and elsewhere. This was one of for Quebec’s sovereignty and views Shakespearian Chapter five, “The First Referendum: Daughters the most important feminist events to ever take place in adaptation in Quebec through that lens. If we need of the Carnivalized Nation” explores how the Canada and Quebec.
October 2014 reviewcanada.ca 23 Pretty Mean City A new “biography” charts the dark side of Toronto’s prosperity. Michael Valpy
Brown detested Roman Catholics and the Irish (and rich-girl-wise, Toronto is home to five billionaires, Toronto: Biography of a City unions and Jews), and why most of 19th-century 1,184 multimillionaires (those with US$30 mil- Allan Levine and a huge chunk of 20th-century Toronto’s nar- lion or more in net assets) and 118,000 million- Douglas and McIntyre rative is a history of religious bigotry (with lots of aires—28 percent of the Canadian total. 437 pages, hardcover discrimination against blacks and, of course, Jews), The personality portrait? He draws a face of ISBN 9781771000222 and why the city from its genesis—except for brief Toronto seldom accentuated, the face of rather interludes of new-broom-sweeps-clean politics— a provincial, unexceptional place that has not has been shaped by politicians who placed public accomplished a whole lot beyond enabling a good llan Levine calls his history of assets and regulations within convenient reach of number of people to get wealthy while providing Toronto a biography—a chronicle of the private entrepreneurs, and why most of the city’s a more or less comfortable home for hundreds of Acity as a personality—and, to underscore newspapers have been huge champions of ruling- thousands of others, either Canadian born or those his intention, he places a quote from Robertson class orthodoxy while nothing has yet explained who have left worse lives to create a good future for Davies just behind the title page that reads: “I think definitively the election of Rob Ford. their children. of Toronto as a big fat rich girl.” Well, that’s RD for “The story of Toronto is really the story of He writes that the beginnings of Toronto were you, reminding me of a focus group The Globe and Canada,” Levine writes. “Like it or not, the adage aesthetically dull; the original planning surveys Mail conducted 25 years ago, when I was its deputy ‘as goes Toronto, so goes Canada’ is all too true.” ignored the features that gave character and managing editor, which inquired into why its read- Meh. “The city,” he goes on, “fixes the pulse of beauty to the venue, Toronto’s hills and wooded ers were overwhelmingly men. We asked a group the rest of the country and has done so for a long ravines, and instead stamped the place with a use- of women to personify the paper ful but boring gridiron layout. So and one responded, “I think of The Eaton’s and Bell Telephone would not Canadian. Globe as an older man you marry Dullness, in fact, has stamped for his money.” In other words, hire blacks. Most hotels would not rent more than the city’s map. As nothing to inspire passion. Leopold Infeld, a Polish physicist, So who is Toronto-the-person rooms to blacks until well after the colleague of Albert Einstein’s and that Levine distills from 220 years a professor at the University of of multicultural occupation since Second World War. Toronto between 1939 and 1950, the 17th-century visit of French wrote in 1941, “it must be good bad boy Étienne Brûlé and the Seneca village of time.” Meh again. Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal to die in Toronto. The transition between life and Teiaiagon on the Carrying Place trail and the arrival and indeed Winnipeg today have cultures very death would be continuous, painless and scarcely in 1793 of John Graves Simcoe? Hint: You are not different from Toronto’s. The values of their social noticeable.” Indeed, exciting is still not a word one going to like him—and Toronto is a “him” regard- strata may be identical to those of their Toronto would choose quickly to describe the city. Safe. less of what RD says—unless you are into the elec- counterparts—urban Canada is urban Canada and Comfortable. But exciting? Not so much. tion of eccentric mayors, exploitation of working the commanding culture coast to coast is bourgeois The first colonial administrator, Peter Russell, people, the celebration of unchecked capitalism, liberalism—but they march to different rhythms was an acquisitive plodder who made sure that pretentiousness, religious bigotry, big dollops of and the pulse of Toronto is increasingly irrelevant to he and his friends and associates, members of the xenophobia, a lot of bad policy decisions on public what happens elsewhere in the country as Canada’s community’s rising upper class, were rewarded transit and policing that has not been positively parts uncouple. with government stipends, offices and lands, set- interested in the exercise of democracy and civil But that is another subject and this is an ting a pattern that would imprint on the relation- rights, because that is pretty much what defines the entertaining book. Levine has made an energetic ships between politicians and entrepreneurs in city through the 435 pages of Levine’s book. career—I hope a successful one; he deserves it—of Toronto for decades and decades to come. Levine is not a Torontonian; he is a Winnipegger. popularizing Canadian history with a big reach In York, as Toronto originally was called, Russell It is a very readable device he has employed, the embracing everything from Christian fundamental- and provincial secretary William Jarvis, the senior city presented as biography. “Like any biography,” ist broadcasting to the campaign for women’s right member of the colonial executive council, were he writes, “it offers a selective, sometimes arbitrary to vote, to William Lyon Mackenzie King, to the major slave holders in the face of an abolitionist chronicle of Toronto’s collective character in all of history of Canadian-Soviet sports rivalry, Quebec movement gathering force elsewhere throughout its different forms and contexts.” Nevertheless the intolerance, senate corruption, the Maple Leafs, the British Empire. collective character he has chosen for the most part the behaviour of the media on Parliament Hill, Toronto’s police throughout the city’s history seems an accurate portrait of Toronto’s identity Winnipeg’s winter weather and so on. He writes have beaten and jailed the unemployed and polit- (up to a point), although it means he has written a chatty history, stuff largely already given birth in ical protestors, arrested people for speaking Yiddish “who” and a “what” book, not a “why” book. newspapers and other people’s books. That’s fine. at public meetings, stood with stopwatches in the In other words, reading it does not explain He is bringing it alive again. wings of the Royal Alexandra Theatre, prepared to why the early members of Toronto’s Eaton family However, we will not find out from reading his pull down the curtain if onstage kisses lasted longer loathed unions and Jews, and The Globe’s George biography of Toronto how the city actually func- than 20 seconds and, of course, trampled appal- tions as one of the most multicultural places on lingly on civil rights during the G20 protests. Michael Valpy, a long-time Toronto-based journal- Earth, how everyone gets along together or does William Lyon Mackenzie was elected the first ist, is a senior fellow at Massey College and a fellow not, how much influence the city still has on the mayor of Toronto in 1834, creating the mould for a at the School of Public Policy and Governance at country, what life is like in its ethnic enclaves, how raft of eccentric chief magistrates who would follow the University of Toronto. He is currently writing a well the city is run today, what the state is of its him through to today. book on social cohesion in Canada to be published social cohesiveness and who has clout and who As mayor, Mackenzie—labelled “a cantanker- by Simon and Schuster Canada. is marginalized. Although he does report that, ous and quarrelsome little cad” by an early city
24 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada historian—was an ineffectual administrator and declared that they would be “unaccustomed to the narrative, as criminologists say—as acts of “the served only one term, but in 1837 he inspired a habits and occupations of Canadians” and would barbarians inside the gate.” Which, in Toronto’s, chaotically led armed rebellion against the colonial “sink down into the sloth to which they had been case they did. authorities resulting in two of his followers being accustomed at home.” Said an editorial in 1858: But to continue, on the same page as the hanged for treason and his own flight to exile in the “Irish beggars are to be found everywhere, and they Robertson Davies quote, Levine places a quote United States with a £1,000 price on his head. are as ignorant and vicious as they are poor. from the celebrated Toronto urbanist Jane Jacobs. In the same 1837 rebellion, Toronto’s fifth mayor They are lazy, improvident and unthankful; they fill “I am frequently asked,” she said in 1969, “whether (1838–41), John Powell, fired a revolver point-blank our poor houses and our prisons, and are as brutish I find Toronto sufficiently exciting. I find it almost at Mackenzie but fortunately the gun malfunc- in their superstitions as Hindus.” too exciting. The suspense is scary. Here is the most tioned. Tommy Church, the 37th mayor (1915–21), The department store Eaton family in the 19th hopeful and healthy city in North America, still opposed bilingual money. Sam McBride, 41st and early 20th centuries was a kind of cherished unmangled, still with options.” mayor (1928–29 and 1936), grabbed a councillor nobility in Toronto, the folkloric narrative about Is it? Exciting, as I wrote earlier, is not a word by the throat and banged his head against a wall them blissfully skipping over the fact that it ran gar- that would come smoothly to the lips of most because he objected to some of his comments. ment sweatshops and waged relentless war against Torontonians. For the most part comfortable, safe, He also authorized the police to arrest anyone at unions and refused to hire Jews. The Eatons paid an easy place to live, all those things, yes. But I am communist meetings who spoke any language sub-subsistence compensation but offered half writing as a white, middle class WASP male of a other than English—an edict aimed primarily wages to single male employees and full wages to certain age. at socialist, Yiddish-speaking garment workers. married employees who signed up for the slaugh- What about the fact that three quarters of Ralph Day, 46th mayor (1938–40) denied welfare terhouse of the First World War, a gesture that cost Toronto’s poor are Canadian newcomers? Or that to the families of Italian-Canadian men interned the company $2 million over four years. so-called immigrant disease has become pandemic during the Second World War. “This country is at Eaton’s and Bell Telephone would not hire in Toronto—newcomers who arrive in the city war with Italy and Italians cannot very well expect blacks. Most hotels would not rent rooms to blacks collectively healthier than native-born Canadians us to spend money for war purposes for the pur- until well after the Second World War. And, as but within seven years are less healthy because of pose of maintaining alien enemies,” he said. Allan Levine notes, racism targeting blacks has shown a the stresses of attempting to integrate themselves Lamport, the 50th mayor (1952–54), was known continuing resilience in the city, although I want to and their families into Toronto life? Or that young for his malapropisms, such as “it’s hard to make argue that his swipe at one of my Globe and Mail Torontonians face not being able to afford to live predictions—especially about the future” and “it’s columns is not an accurate paraphrase of what in the city in which they are growing up, largely like pushing a car uphill with a rope.” Les Saunders, I wrote (and I have the advantage of being able to because of the cost of housing? Or that Toronto the 51st mayor (1954), was a virulent anti-Catholic. defend myself, given that I am reviewing Levine’s is turning into two cities—one for the very rich William Dennison, 55th mayor (1967–72), was the book). Following the killing of a young woman in and one for the poor, with the middle class being last of a long line of Toronto mayors to belong to the a downtown café (the Just Desserts case), Levine squeezed out? Or the gridlocked traffic, the third Protestant Loyal Orange Lodge. Mel Lastman, 62nd says I suggested “that civilized Toronto, as well as world state of downtown streets, the appalling mayor (1998–2003), welcomed world-renowned other large Canadian cities, were being invaded by inadequacy of public transit, the exorbitant cost cellist Yo-Yo Ma to Toronto City Hall by playing with a dangerous and cowardly underclass.” What I said, of child care, the fact that 40 percent of all jobs in a yo-yo. citing the Just Desserts killing and a street shoot- greater Toronto are labelled precarious? The 64th mayor is You Know Who. ing in downtown Ottawa, was that people in our The personality of Toronto still needs biograph- A long, long, long chunk of Toronto’s history gentrified inner cities would see the killings—the ical character development. was given over to violent clashes between the city’s Irish and Scots-English occupants (more or less but not entirely proxies for Roman Catholics and Protestants), with Jews—who for many years were the fourth largest group in town—being the focus of second-tier conflicts, and a foray now and then Moving? against the city’s Asian residents. What is maybe surprising, looking in the rear- view mirror from the second decade of the 21st century in multicultural Toronto, is how open the Don’t lose touch with the LRC! xenophobia, religious bigotry and anti-Semitism were. “‘Foreign trash,’ ‘heathens,’ ‘vermin,’ ‘indol- ent social parasites,’ and ‘foreign scum’ were just Visit us any time of day or night a few of the ‘colourful’ ways the newcomers were contemptuously depicted in speeches, government to manage your subscription online. documents and newspaper and magazine articles’,” writes Levine. “Speaking in the House of Commons in early 1914, E.N. Lewis, a Member of Parliament Existing subscribers: from Ontario, was more succinct. ‘We do not want a nation of organ-grinders and banana sellers in this country,’ he declared.” • New subscriptions: reviewcanada/sub2014 Goldwin Smith, Toronto’s leading public intel- lectual at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, • Inquiries: reviewcanada.ca/mysub wrote anti-Semitic and anti-black articles pub- lished in all the leading newspapers (and was a • Renewals: reviewcanada.ca/renew mentor to William Lyon Mackenzie King, grandson of Toronto’s first mayor and Canada’s tenth and • Pay your bill: reviewcanada.ca/paybill longest-serving prime minister, who also wrote anti-Semitic articles). • Send a gift subscription: reviewcanada.ca/gift Scottish-born George Brown today is revered as the founder of The Globe (in 1844) and a father of Confederation (from 1864 onward), but he was also a hating man who called the Pope “a great foreign tyrant.” A contemporary Catholic reform weekly, For all online account inquiries, subscribers should the Toronto Mirror, said of Brown, “his anti-Popish have their subscription number, surname, postal code tendencies preyed upon his brain like feverish dis- and/or email address handy for easy and secure login. ease.” Almost from the moment that Irish famine victims arrived in Toronto in 1847, Brown’s Globe
October 2014 reviewcanada.ca 25 A Larger Role for Unions Organized labour may be shrinking but the rhetoric is still upbeat. Frances Woolley
out of paying union dues, while enjoying the bene- Only rarely does Unions Matter look inward, and Unions Matter: Advancing Democracy, fits of being in a unionized workplace, including treat unions as institutions made up of people with Economic Equality and Social Justice representation in grievance procedures, have been interests of their own. Matthew Behrens, editor advocated by political parties in several provinces After all, unions are a manifestation of freedom Between the Lines and think tanks such as the Fraser Institute. The of association. As such, they reflect the strengths 206 pages, softcover benefits, especially pension entitlements, enjoyed and weaknesses of classic liberalism: people use ISBN 9781771131322 by unionized public sector workers are also being freedoms in both desirable and undesirable ways. called into question. Past failings of the union movement, for example, Unions Matter generally sees advocacy of less its sometimes slow acceptance of women’s equal- hirty years ago, Sorel boots and Mas- union-friendly labour laws as a product of neo ity rights, are acknowledged. But there is little or no sey Ferguson tractors were union made liberalism and business lobbyists. Yet corporations discussion in Unions Matter of current intergenera- Tin Canada. No longer. Manufacturing that threaten “unionized workers with plant clos- tional tensions in the union movement: the move- jobs have disappeared, to be replaced by ones in ures” are not making empty threats, as the workers at ment toward two-tier workplaces, like Air Canada’s finance, the service sector or small businesses— Caterpillar’s London plant and Walmart’s Jonquière Rouge Airlines, which aims to hire new, mostly parts of the economy less likely to younger workers at a lower pay employ union workers. scale and with fewer benefits than As union participation in Can- Right-to-work laws, which allow are enjoyed by older, established ada has gone down, income and employees to opt out of union workers. Yes, overall inequality wealth inequality has gone up. has not risen as much in Canada Yet correlation is not causation. dues, while enjoying the benefits of as in the United States, but the gap Unionization is a double-edged between older and younger work- sword. It can improve the ordinary a unionized workplace, have been ers has widened more in Canada working person’s wages and work- than in the United States. ing conditions, but it can also cre- advocated by political parties in several It is a pity that Unions Matter ate disparities between better paid does not include perspectives union workers and less well paid provinces and think tanks such as the from across the political spectrum, non-union workers. In theory, as this limits the appeal of what unions’ impact on economic Fraser Institute. is otherwise a valuable collection equality is ambiguous. of essays. Much of the available Some might argue that declining union cover- store learned the hard way. Globalization means that literature on the impacts of unions on inequality age—along with rising economic inequality—is capital is more mobile than labour; private sector is written from an American or other international an unavoidable consequence of globalization, the employers can walk away if they do not get the con- perspective. But Canada is not the United States: shift to an information economy and profound tract they want. Even if the employer is—as Walmart we have a higher unionization rate, especially in the technological change. For the most part, the essays was—found in violation of labour laws, settlement of public sector, and less inequality. We have our own in Unions Matter: Advancing Democracy, Economic such cases takes years, and meanwhile workers are unique labour laws and constitution. Unions Matter Equality and Social Justice, edited by Matthew out of a job. Fundamental economic and political gives a comprehensive and readable synopsis of the Behrens, reject this view. In the words of one con- realities are lessening the ability of unions to negoti- evolution of income inequality and unionization tributor, the decline in unionization “is neither ate gains for their workers. in Canada over the past 30 years. More technical inevitable or irreversible.” One of the contributions of Unions Matter is to chapters, such as Armine Yalnizyan’s contribution, The strongest evidence against inevitability shift the terms of the policy debate, to frame unions avoid jargon and explain terms simply and clearly; comes from the parts of Unions Matter examining more as a democratic force advancing “human they eschew numbers in favour of clear, easy-to- labour law. Unions can only flourish in the absence rights and equality on behalf of all Canadians” and interpret graphs. Unions Matter’s discussion of of barriers to union formation; they can only less as interest groups negotiating benefits for their labour law and constitutional protection of labour achieve significant gains for their members if they members. As Lars Osberg puts it, “the long-term rights was, for me, particularly valuable, partly have leverage—like the right to strike—to use in impact of unions on Canadian trends in economic because I am less familiar with this literature. contract negotiations. If one compares across prov- inequality is primarily through their political action Unions Matter is an answer to a question never inces, across countries and, over time, it appears (or inaction)—and only secondarily through their asked: how can Canada’s labour movement main- that supportive labour laws have stemmed the tide direct impact on wages.” Unions Matter describes tain its relevance now that its traditional base has of union decline. Less supportive laws, like those the past and present of the labour movement’s shrunk, and the typical trade unionist is a woman requiring mandatory certification votes before a political, social and legal activism, from the role the working in the public sector? The response: by union is recognized, have accelerated it. United Auto Workers union played in fighting racial fighting in the courts for protection of labour rights; The essayists’ discussion of labour law is par- discrimination in the late 1940s and early ’50s to by campaigning against right to work and similar ticularly timely given the increasing political and the work the United Farm and Commercial Work- legislation; by advocating for minimum wages and policy interest in Canada’s labour law. For example, ers union does today supporting and promoting the income support programs; by looking for ways, right-to-work laws, which allow employees to opt rights of migrant workers. such as tax reform, to contain the concentration of At times the overwhelmingly upbeat tone of income and wealth in the hands of the one percent; Frances Woolley is associate dean and professor of Unions Matter is a bit hard to take. A discussion by advocating for new immigrants and other mar- economics at Carleton University. Her passion is the of unions as social movements, for example, ginalized workers. In short, to push back “against economics of everyday life. Follow her on twitter @ describes how unions reconfigure workplaces into inequality and towards a more just and hopeful franceswoolley. “places where decisions must be rational.” Really? future.”
26 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada The Boss-Employee Two-Step When workers help run the company, things often turn out well. Peter MacLeod
creating symbols and fixing them firmly in the And yet this is what we have. In fact, outside of After Occupy: public mind. Forget masks and sit-ins and inchoate formal politics, democratic societies practise very Economic Democracy for the 21st Century calls to end capitalism as we know it. Occupy—and little of what might properly be called democracy. Tom Malleson its culture-jamming accomplices at Vancouver- Economic systems are rarely empathetic or par- Oxford University Press based magazine Adbusters—are the principal ticipatory and as the debacles of the past decade 304 pages, hardcover authors of our current fascination with the rise of have once again shown, markets are far from ISBN 9780199330102 the one percent. responsible. And kudos to them. But steady. Malleson is not calling for the over- If those same critics are now beginning to feel a throw of capitalism. Rather, his goal is to promote or several years now I have been press- bit cramped, too bad. Since Occupy there has been what has already been done and has succeeded ing a book into the hands of friends and an uninterrupted run of unlikely bestsellers provid- very well where businesses and governments have Fstrangers who show even the slightest inter- ing all the policy ideas necessary to fill a genera- embraced a more cooperative ethic. And here he est in how businesses can and maybe should work. tion’s worth of party manifestos. From the late Tony is on firm ground. Whether it is Britain’s famed And while I order my copies by the dozen, it is, Judt’s Ill Fares the Land—a masterful, all-purpose employee-owned department store John Lewis, at first glance, an embarrassing book. A 1980s trade account of a society unhinged by materialism and which failed to lay off a single worker during the 2008 paperback published by Time recession, or Spain’s 80,000-strong Warner, it is bound in the sort of Mondragon cooperative, which garish, grinning cover that books Fair pay is only half the picture. operates 289 companies and written by CEOs invariably have. workers’ organizations, preced- The boosterish title, Maverick: The Economic democracy is also a vision of ents that point to the viability of Success Story Behind the World’s genuinely “better businesses” are Most Unusual Workplace, does greater collective agency through which not hard to find. not help. workers do more to influence and shape Regrettably, Malleson ignores Maverick is the story of Semco, Canada’s own better businesses, an industrial conglomerate based their productive activities. including British Columbia’s ubi- in Brazil. While largely unknown quitous Vancity credit union, to the North American MBA set, Alberta’s “Owners Care” WestJet, Maverick has long been one of Latin America’s best- decay—to Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson’s Ontario’s beloved Lee Valley Tools or Quebec’s selling business books. In it, former Semco CEO explosive 2010 hit, The Spirit Level—which linked mighty Desjardins. These case studies deserve to be and heir Ricardo Semler explains the crisis, gamble health status to income disparities across members written and a Canadian school of responsible busi- and resurgence of his father’s ailing enterprise. of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and ness cultivated. Redemption comes only when Semler reaches an Development—a definitive case is forming, draw- But never mind. Malleson is trying to make impasse and, facing bankruptcy, decides to turn his ing to it many of the top minds in political theory, a larger point: that the Anglo-American market back on much of what he learned at the Harvard social science and economics. system encourages too much of the wrong kind of Business School. In a few short years, he devolves Of course, all this still comes before the fren- business, and does too little to favour competitive, virtually all business decisions to Semco’s several zied arrival this spring of the English translation innovative businesses that also recognize that their thousand workers. Today Semco employees fam- of Thomas Piketty’sCapital in the Twenty-First interests and the interests of their workers are not ously set their own schedules, production targets Century, a book that now looks to be the reference so very far apart. and, perhaps most provocatively, their own salar- text not only for a movement, but also for a gen- South of the border, state legislatures are begin- ies. And lo and behold: it all turns out rather well. eration of economic and political thought. What ning to take up the case. In California, a bill has Sound principles, self-determination and a hefty Occupy alleged, Piketty backs up with 200 pages been introduced to set a preferential state tax rate kind of mutual accountability trump stifling man- of footnotes, making it crystal clear that we have for businesses that constrain the pay gap between agement and hierarchical decision making. re-entered dangerously gilded territory. And keep top executives and front line employees. In Rhode It is the sort of book that would surely give hope in mind that when a book published by Harvard Island, the state senate intends to favour public to Tom Malleson, an activist and newly minted aca- University Press and written by a French econo- tenders from businesses that act similarly. demic who is the author of After Occupy: Economic mist explaining historic ratios of wealth in western Slowly the idea of narrowing income inequal- Democracy for the 21st Century. That Malleson countries becomes a publishing sensation, this is, ity and regarding it as a form of “social pollutant” named his book After Occupy is fitting. In fact, it is in the parlance, a tell. Something is shifting. is becoming accepted as a matter of good public a title that might best describe an entire genre of Malleson’s contribution to all this picks up an policy—especially by governments newly alert to books dedicated to returning serve to Occupy’s crit- essential but neglected aspect of the story, not only the carrying costs of the status quo. Businesses that ics, many of whom were quick to feign disappoint- alerting us to the dangers of inequality but point- generate massive inequality while enlisting tens ment that the movement lacked substantive policy ing to the source of its manufacture. His target is of thousands of workers to their oppressive work- ideas or a more compelling call for change. the workplace and he enjoins us to resurrect the places—Walmart, Foxconn, this means you—may This was to mistake how protest movements reforming tradition that brought us responsible some day be recognized to be every bit as damag- gain traction: not by issuing prescriptions, but by government in the 19th century, and to seek to ing to the social ecology as PCBs were to the Love have it applied to business in the 21st. As he states, Canal. Peter MacLeod co-chairs the Wagemark “There is no good reason for a democratic society to But fair pay is only half the picture. Economic Foundation and is principal of MASS LBP. go out of its way to foster undemocratic businesses.” democracy requires more. Fully realized, it is is also
October 2014 reviewcanada.ca 27 a vision of greater collective agency through which 2009 pamphlet from the United Kingdom think tank economic security—is a profoundly humane and workers do more to influence and shape their Demos that provides a more explicit account of how necessary vision. This is why, as much as theory, productive activities. This does not mean the kib- business can be transformed and strengthened. we need examples and vigorous experimentation. butz, but it does mean enfranchising labour. Here Had After Occupy been leavened by the author’s Movements like U.S.-generated B Corporation, Malleson speculates that workplace democracy own direct observations of economic democ- which assists companies to convert toward a more requires “solid parliamentary structures, [includ- racy in action, his recommendations might carry cooperative and responsible footing are essential, ing] a democratic constitution, regular General somewhat more force and greater texture. Instead, as are publicly backed revolving funds that help Assemblies, decision-making transparency and Malleson delivers something closer to a speculative aging business owners sell their shares to workers. availability of information.” work that nevertheless provides a vital service by New private equity that backs start-ups founded In the first instance, this seems heavy-handed, if directing the attention of the “occupistes” toward on democratic principles would complement the not impractical, requiring the grafting of explicitly a neglected, highly relevant economic alternative. recent growth of specialized ecofunds. parliamentary mechanisms to another, very differ- Now it is a question of what it will take for any of Without irony, commerce has long used revo- ent sphere. Better to stick with principles and let it to catch hold. Democratic theorists as varied as lutionary language, promising liberation and the mechanisms evolve to suit the situation. After Britain’s Paul Hirst and Brazil’s Roberto Unger have transformation in the form of whatever products all, we are dealing today with a public not exactly long urged the redemptive power of association, or services it happens to sell. But today we need enamoured of the democratic promise delivered reinvention and agency—qualities that are central more than mere hucksterism or the showmanship daily by Question Period. to any concept of democracy as well as to free of Madison Avenue. In fact, what we need is for Rather than a singular vision, which Malleson to enterprise. Malleson carries forward this tradition, business to simply keep its promise, and direct his credit refuses to propose, the cause of economic imagining the economy as an extension of the this same emancipatory energy and inventiveness democracy needs the biggest possible tent, span- democratic sphere. within. ning the distance from German-style labour man- If it is here at the nexus of personal initiative Malleson’s After Occupy is an important contri- agement committees to employee stock sharing to and collective accountability that the conceptual bution to a first draft of a political and economic Toyota-inspired assembly line autonomy to open gears start to grind, do not blame the democrats; agenda that is gaining momentum. If achieving book management. blame popular culture. Too many paeans casting responsible government was the democratic It also needs to make room for the entrepre- individual freedom against the indifferent weight project of the 19th and 20th centuries, achieving neur—a figure notably absent from Malleson’s of government have made it very difficult to think responsible economics and a universal economic account. To be sure, the entrepreneurial arche- more openly. It is a caricature that deserves to be franchise is a fitting objective for the 21st. This type is popularly celebrated and also deservedly upended. After all, as rigid and bureaucratic as means a reinvigorated commitment to making real suspect. But if modern business and economic government may be, it is well matched and often a more modern, democratic form of capitalism democracy are to share the twin goals of greater exceeded by the inanity of life inside cumbersome while heaping praise and borrowing liberally from creative expression and heightened personal corporations and despotic small businesses. This is unlikely precedents like Mondragon and surpris- agency, then a positive vision of entrepreneurship not a point best made by theorists and radicals—it ing business pioneers like Semler. Here Malleson and personal initiative needs to be articulated. This is made handily by Dilbert. wisely suggests that the best arena for democratic is turf we cannot afford to cede to the Ayn Rand Imagining an alternative, where business is a innovation in this new century may not be the wannabes. collective enterprise and an enlivening and cre- chambers of legislatures and parliaments, but in In some ways, several of these themes are bet- ative experience that yields both spontaneity and the boardroom, warehouse, assembly line and ter covered by Will Davies’s Reinventing the Firm, a shared satisfaction—as well as a strong measure of store.
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28 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada The Clever Science of Commerce How a fur monopoly explained North America to the world. Stephen R. Bown
of the plants and animals), Enlightened Zeal: meteorology (the timing of The Hudson’s Bay the seasons, annual tem- Company and Scientific peratures for air and water, Networks, 1670–1870 seasonal precipitation, etc.), Ted Binnema ethnography (observations of University of Toronto Press the customs and extent of the 458 pages, softcover Native peoples) and geology. ISBN 9781442614758 These were essentially efforts to better understand the vast territory and its potential uses, hen we think such as the best methods and of the eponym- routes of travel and its agricul- Wous and vener- tural and mineral potential. able Hudson’s Bay Company, Enlightened Zeal is a the first thing that comes to book that cleaves strongly to mind might be beavers and knowledge at the expense of their luxurious and valuable understanding. It is not artful pelts, the daring exploits of and insightful in the human explorers who pushed the domain, but it is clear, detailed boundaries of European geo- and explanatory of the eco- graphical knowledge of North nomic and political limits America, or perhaps the ruth- that bound the HBC’s actions less and somewhat unsavoury and hence the people who antics of its most famous figurehead and manager, influenced his decision.” To gain an understanding worked for it. (Fur was the valuable commodity Sir George Simpson, for good reason called the of Fidler’s motivations, Binnema studied Fidler’s that underpinned the company’s success and its Little Emperor. What comes to mind certainly is not scientific interests, interests that Fidler pursued fortunes depended upon the whims of European corporate sponsorship of the scientific study of the within the parameters of his duties with the HBC. fashion, while the company’s monopoly status natural world, yet Ted Binnema shows beyond a “This is when I began to realize that the HBC’s con- was frequently challenged, most notably by the doubt that scientific activities were very important tributions to public knowledge were far larger than Montreal-based North-West Company in the early to the HBC. the literature had led me to expect.” 19th century.) The book is a valuable resource Binnema’s interest in the unlikely topic of sci- Binnema is a professor of history at the rather than a good read, and it should come as no ence sponsored by Canada’s greatest monopoly University of Northern British Columbia, and surprise that it is published by an academic press grew from his interest in the particular scientific Enlightened Zeal: The Hudson’s Bay Company rather than a general trade press. This detailed and endeavours of one man, the enigmatic Peter Fidler, and Scientific Networks, 1670–1870 is the result of technical focus will limit its readership, but it will an English polymath of the late 18th and early 19th years of research into the previously little-studied not detract from the book’s overall contribution to centuries, contemporary of the famous surveyor topic of the HBC’s corporate sponsorship of sci- the understanding of Canada’s past. and explorer David Thompson. Fidler joined the ence. It is not a narrative or a general audience In fact, the information Binnema reveals about HBC as a young man in 1788 and spent decades book. Fidler quickly fades from the discussion and the HBC and its employees is not readily known or wandering the northern plains of North America we learn very little about the personal lives of the appreciated by many who have knowledge or an from his original posting at York Factory along men who populate its pages. Instead we learn about interest in the fur trade and its mightiest company. the chilly western rim of Hudson Bay. He was an their employment and their scientific endeavours The HBC was a great promoter of amateur and pro- inveterate journal writer, chronicling his travels within the evolving framework of the political con- fessional science, encouraging its employees to take and observations from his life among the distant fur straints of the HBC’s monopoly. an interest in these activities as well as providing trading outposts and the native peoples. But he was When the HBC was chartered no accurate map logistical assistance to other professional scientists also intensely interested in astronomy, mathemat- existed of the extent of its domains, or indeed of travelling within its domains in northern and west- ics and meteorology. “Although I could not discover central or western North America. Nor did anyone ern Canada. explicit evidence about why Fidler joined the HBC,” in Europe know of the geography, climate, flora and As Binnema wryly observes, the HBC “was not Binnema writes, “it struck me as entirely possible fauna of the vast land and its regions, the shores a charity.” It had specific reasons for its ongoing that his knowledge of the history of science within of Hudson Bay to the Arctic tundra, the prairies, support of science beyond the curiosity of certain the company, and his own curiosity might have the boreal forests, the western mountain ranges employees, and these, naturally, were not merely and the Pacific coast. The scientific endeavours the byproduct of disinterested altruism. Supporting Stephen R. Bown is the author of eight books of his- primarily supported by the HBC involved what science had a financial cost, but it also had a cor- tory and biography. His latest, The White Eskimo: we would call the travelling sciences: cartography responding benefit. The most obvious benefit to Knud Rasmussen and the Soul of the Polar North, (which included surveying, astronomy and math- the company was the positive public relations will be published in the fall of 2015. ematics), natural history (the study and collection such seemingly disinterested activity generated in
October 2014 reviewcanada.ca 29 Britain. Travel within the domains of the HBC for a books and contributing to science, the London in the extent to which it supported the scientific European would have been extremely difficult with- Governor and Committee ensured that they could activities of its employees and other scientific insti- out the aid and support of the HBC, which main- attract and retain educated, intelligent, and ambi- tutions. Most of the other European chartered mon- tained the only outposts in a hostile and chaotic tious men.” Because they worked in isolated and opolies were operating in densely populated regions land whose native inhabitants held varied views remote outposts, an interest in science kept them of the Earth—they were interlopers and temporary on foreign travellers. Scientific explorers, such as in communication with their peers within the iso- conquerors of politically sophisticated societies natural historians, cartographers and researchers lated network across the sparsely populated terri- with political and commercial traditions and net- from institutions such as the Royal Society, the tory, and fostered a sense of belonging to a larger works that predated the arrival of Europeans. The Smithsonian Institute and the Royal Navy, relied on community of likeminded individuals, engaged in monopolies’ keys to success were more in the realm the HBC for guides, supplies and shelter. In return activities other than the pure commerce of the fur of the military and political rather than the scien- they paid for these services with positive publicity, trade. It was good for morale and community and tific; they were not dealing with great geograph- or as Binnema puts it, “public tribute.” This gave helped fill the dark days of winter. ical, geophysical, meteorological and commercial the HBC “promotional material that no advertis- This naturally leads to the question of why unknowns but with difficulties protecting their ing or lobbying could ever replicate.” It gave them the HBC, more so than the other great chartered status from competing political elites at home and the veneer of an enlightened and abroad. In North America, by con- honourable company instead of trast, the geographical extent of a greedy monopoly that deserved Scientific research gave the HBC the the HBC’s commercial monopoly to have its charter revoked. “The veneer of an enlightened and honourable was unknown until the mid 19th public tributes paid to the com- century, so the parameters of its pany by ostensibly independent company instead of a greedy monopoly commercial domain, and its prof- and unbiased intellectual elite did its, could be expanded by scientific much to enhance the company’s that deserved to have its charter revoked. exploration of the territory under reputation as a positive corpor- its control. ate citizen.” Interestingly, as late as the 1920s, the monopolies of the age, considered science a worthy Since the HBC operated under the auspices of Danish ethnographer Knud Rasmussen relied on investment. Apart from navigation and sailing dir- the British government, whose colonial territory the outposts of the HBC for supplies and mail on his ections, the Dutch East India Company had little they managed, supporting cartography, natural his- own epic dog-sled expeditions throughout the interest in science; neither did the Dutch West India tory and meteorology gave them a better knowledge North and provided this same type of public tribute Company, the English East India Company, the of their own commercial domain, while at the same in the introduction to his books. British South Africa Company or even the Russian time serving the interests of their political masters. The HBC also encouraged scientific interest American Company—other commercial entities Britain gained, at no cost to itself, a greater know- and activities in its employees because it bolstered that, like the HBC, enjoyed commercial monopolies ledge of its North American colonial territories. their international image to have educated man- and exercised political power within their jurisdic- Binnema unnecessarily apologizes in his intro- agers and it helped with the “retention of talented tions. Binnema would like to see studies similar duction for the structure of his book, claiming that men.” By “encouraging their officers to ‘improve’ to his own addressing these and other chartered “deeper research would certainly have revealed themselves by, among other things, reading companies. But I think the HBC might prove unique errors and distortions.” I would suggest that deeper research, by which he means greater depth on one small aspect of his historical survey, may also have rendered the theme and topic impossible to pub- lish, let alone to understand. No matter how valu- able the information, the cost of publishing such The Graphite Club a tome would have been prohibitive and would have diluted the perspective of change over time or the appreciation of how science at the continental monopoly ebbed and flowed along with political need and social fashion. Enlightened Zeal may be “a mile wide and an inch deep,” but that is its principle value as a resource. Devoted to the long-term sustainability of the LRC In academic historical writing, there is often and its elemental place in Canadian life. great value placed upon the “depth” of research or study of a topic at the expense of understand- ing how one “period” of information relates to the Join a visionary group of supporters who demonstrate other periods that border it chronologically, as if their belief in the value of intelligent public conversa- they exist independently from each other and can be meaningfully understood in isolation. But that tion and lively, provocative writing by making a sus- is the objective of the specialist, and certainly it can tained annual commitment. be taken to extremes. Binnema should rest assured that his breadth of study rather than his depth of study—his tracing of this one particular aspect of You have never been more elemental to Canada than now. the HBC’s activities and its employees’ lives over the course of the monopoly’s centuries-long existence— has produced its own specialized way of interpreting We invite you to visit both the company and people who worked for it; he has achieved depth by way of breadth. reviewcanada.ca/graphite While the immediate readership for Enlightened Zeal likely will be limited to specialists, however, for more information. over time it will influence future works, whether they be general histories, popular histories or even historical novels. The scientific networks that were so prominent during many years of the HBC’s oper- Because the ations have been hitherto overlooked, unexplored or not fully understood, but there is no doubt this Public Matters. new perspective will provide a greater and richer understanding of the past—a new setting for appre- ciating and interpreting the lives of the people who shaped large parts of our country.
30 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Letters and Responses
Re: “Saving Medicare,” by Michael various ways to develop effective out-of-hospital harm that others can do to us. We tell a parallel Decter (September 2014) care. social story for each of the delusional motifs, and he graphic symbol of Canada’s increasingly One of the keys to the success of the Elizabeth this underlying coherence is a central reason for Tpoor performance in health care is Exhibit plan was the hiring of skilled nurses. This continues our belief that delusions are unitary and have a ES-1 of the Commonwealth Fund’s country rank- to be a key component, as nurses, like physicians, “psychology” even as they are neural phenomena. ings in healthcare delivery. Placing fifth out of have a comprehensive foundational education, Finally, we were cut to the quick by Shorter’s six in 2010, Canada has fallen to tenth out of eleven unlike most paramedic workers. If their educa- description of our views as “speculative academic in 2014. Clearly, things need to change. Michael tion was the same as nurses they would be nurses concepts” and no more than a list—by implica- Decter argues that Canada must move health care too, and their education costs would also be the tion, an arbitrary list—of the factors we think are out of the hospital system. He is absolutely correct. same. One of the difficulties in Alberta’s privately important to understanding delusion. Our theme Care provided primarily in hospitals is inefficient, run aging care system is a lack of requirement for is the role of the social environment in the etiol- expensive, inconvenient and (with the growth of enough well educated and appropriately educated ogy of psychosis, and we don’t cherry pick to suit hospital-borne superbugs) often dangerous. staff, that is, nurses. Nurses cost more money to our fancy; our presentation of the social factors But this is not a new argument. And most coun- educate and hire so the funding of any and all out in psychosis represents what the research has tries have made substantial progress away from of acute hospital care that requires the education revealed. More importantly, while our account hospital-based models. So the intriguing question and thus the skills and now ledge of a nurse should may turn out to be mistaken in detail or funda- is not really “what should we do” but rather “why is be faced and done. Too often options to this mean mentally flawed, we are pretty confident that it is Canada so far behind almost everyone else.” Thus inadequate health care resulting in some very ser- a theory. Psychiatry is currently sinking under the Decter’s analysis is incomplete: we need to under- iously debilitating consequences for patients. weight of its data. Whatever the success of our own stand not only strategies for change, but what bar- Janet E. Smith attempt, broad theories of some kind are not to riers to even the most sensible strategies doggedly Edmonton, Alberta be disparaged. Without them, it’s hard to see how remain in place. psychiatry is going to stay afloat. The first problem is institutional and histor- Re: “Psychiatric Turf War,” by Edward Joel and Ian Gold ical. As Decter explains, Ottawa originally agreed Shorter (September 2014) Co-authors, Suspicious Minds: How Culture to pay for half of all hospital and physician costs e are very grateful to Edward Shorter— Shapes Madness in a public insurance system. Critically, this did Wwhose historical work has been so helpful not include outpatient clinics or other health- to us—both for his praise and his critique. That Re: “Can’t Lit” by Darryl Whetter care personnel working outside hospitals. From critique, however, is the result of some misunder- (September 2014) a provincial point of view, it made good financial standings of our views, and we appreciate the teach in one of the English departments that sense to keep health care strictly within hospitals opportunity to clarify them here. For reasons of IDarryl Whetter says is ruining creative writing in (and in the hands of doctors) as much as possible. space we focus on three issues. Canada (at the University of Toronto) and I did my However, Decter also notes the impending reduc- First, Shorter says that our target is delusional PhD at the other (at Dalhousie University). I don’t tion of federal health transfers. While a strain on disorder. In fact, our aim is to understand delusion recognize much of either in his bitter caricature. provincial budgets, the glass half full here is that, as a symptom rather than any disorder in which “Rhizomatic poetics” haven’t been “trendy” in by 2037, federal funds will only amount to 6.7 per- delusions appear, just as one might investigate Canadian English departments since the 1980s, if cent of provincial expenditure, so there will be inflammation rather than this or that condition they ever were. I’ve never attended the University considerably less financial incentive to keep health with inflammation as a characteristic feature. As of New Brunswick’s annual poetry weekend, so care in the hospitals. we say, “delusions are symptoms of illness, not I suppose it’s possible that its students “always A second barrier is the medical profession. illness proper … it’s important to think about invoke Jacques Derrida when reading their Canada is unique in the power given to physicians delusions in isolation from illness.” As a result, we poems,” but I doubt it. to be part of the political decision-making process. don’t “drag in” schizophrenia to strengthen an Whetter says English professors, not published The medical profession is thus in an excellent inadequate case. Schizophrenia is front and centre writers, control the education of our writers. The position to block cost-saving measures such as the from the outset because so much of what we know English departments at the University of Toronto utilization of less expensive healthcare person- about delusions (and psychosis more generally) only offer a few creative writing classes, but all nel. In response to Ontario’s attempt to expand comes from schizophrenia research. are taught by faculty who are also writers: George the scope of practice for nurse-practitioners and Shorter’s miscue undermines a good deal of Elliott Clarke, Rick Greene and Rosemary Sullivan, pharmacists, for example, the Ontario Medical the critique that follows. For example, he thinks to name just the Governor General winners. He Association responded that “having these roles that we ignore own our distinction between says Canadian English departments “don’t respect filled by non-medical personnel is like having a form and content. In fact, we say nothing living Canadian writers,” but we teach books by liv- member of a flight crew fly an airplane.” about form and content in psychiatric illness. ing Canadian writers every year, and we’ve never Third, many of these new strategies involve Since our target is delusion the symptom and not yet appointed a dead writer-in-residence. Maybe discussing the role of the private sector. Decter delusion the illness, it is no confusion to identify it’s different elsewhere in the country, but again, describes Nova Scotia’s use of “community para- jealousy as a form. I don’t think so. medicine,” but does not mention that this is a pri- The second important objection Shorter If our universities and our government are vate, for-profit operation from training to service makes is that delusions are not, as we claim, all as biased against educating and supporting provision. Once the issue of using more private social phenomena. His doubt, for example, that creative writers as Whetter suggests, the bias health care is addressed explicitly, the simplicity of the delusion that vermin are creeping on one’s has been stunningly ineffective. There is no paramedicine becomes a politically loaded debate. skin is a case in point. On the face of it, indeed, shortage of creative writers in Canada; there is, Katherine Fierlbeck “delusional parasitosis” seems to have nothing to rather, a shortage of readers of creative writing. Halifax, Nova Scotia do with the social. And yet it does: social living in Any “hostility”—“skepticism” would be a fairer primates brings with it the risk of parasitic infec- term—in Canadian English departments toward he article on this subject is quite comprehen- tion. Parasitic infection is thus the ur-social threat, creative writing as a discipline isn’t directed at Tsive in addressing existing newer avenues to and the thought that one’s skin is infected is, we writers, but at the booming industry of creating health care and understanding the need for more hypothesize, related to the paranoid fear of the ever more writers, what Whetter calls a “cash cow”
October 2014 reviewcanada.ca 31 for the humanities. Literature departments have a What he overlooks in his focus on universities is The Atlantic and the New Yorker that maintain responsibility not just to the bottom line but to the the vast growth of other creative writing institutions ratios of 75–25 in books reviewed and reviewers. best books already in the world, old or new. If we, and informal associations. My own college graduate The New York Times does somewhat better. or the books we teach, should happen to inspire certificate program has had hundreds of grads go As the LRC does not appear in these lists, it or help a future writer, lovely, but that’s not our on to publish over a thousand books, and informal seemed useful to try to compare your record. main job. Our job isn’t to produce more and better associations such as the Writers’ Community of I took all the issues from 2013 (ten) and the first writers: it’s to produce more and better readers, Durham Region (300 members) are lively and five of 2014. I counted each author as a separate to foster a sophisticated appreciation for literary expanding. English departments have no role in case and counted book reviewers, authors of books art that will stay with our students as they become creative writing education outside the universities. reviewed, authors of essays and poems. There may consumers and citizens. We make readers, and for My only quibble has to do with his complaint be one or two cases where the sex of the author the most part leave it up to the world to make writ- over yarns about yesteryear, yet another casual was not evident, but most were able to be retrieved ers. At the moment the world is ahead, and that’s sideswipe against historical fiction. Funny about by searching the article or on Google. the real problem. that—it is a Canadian complaint that is found Here are the results: Nick Mount laughable in Europe, with its dark and undigested Of the 244 books reviewed, 160 (66 percent) University of Toronto history. I once asked Kazuo Ishiguro on a panel were by men, 84 (34 percent) by women. Of the about why this subject should be such a big deal 202 reviewers, 133 (66 percent) were men, 69 s anyone who has followed creative writing in Canada, and he said it was a sign of our well- (34 percent) were women. There was improve- Adevelopments in the United States, United intentioned earnestness. Hilary Mantel, Martin ment from 2013 to the first five issues of 2014: from Kingdom and Australia knows, Darryl Whetter’s Amis and David Mitchell can hardly be accused of 31 percent in 2013, women authors counted for complaint about the lack of creative writing pro- merely spinning yarns. 42 percent in 2014, and from 30 percent of review- grams in Canadian universities and their domina- This quibble aside, Whetter’s call to arms is ers in 2013, women counted for 43 percent in 2014. tion by English departments is bang on. In the important and enlightening. Writers of Canada Of the 25 essays over the 15 issues, 17 (68 percent) U.S., creative writing departments mostly freed unite! You have nothing to lose but your footnotes! were by men, 8 or 32 percent by women. There was themselves from English departments a couple Antanas Sileika no increase, but rather a decline in 2014, where of decades ago. Canada has the lowest number of The Humber School for Writers only one author of an essay in eight was a woman. graduate programs of the four anglophone coun- Toronto Poetry is the one category where women auth- tries he mentions—we are like colonial expats ors outnumber men. Of 68 poems published in here, tea and crumpets traditionalists. Re: The Gender Ratio in the LRC 2013–14 so far, 41 (60 percent) were by women, 27 And if anyone doubts the importance and n the New York Times Book Review of November (40 percent) by men. influence of creative writing education, consider I3, 2013, Anna Holmes wrote: “The gender The 2014 figures for books and reviewers are the 2007 Granta issue that featured new American ratio at many literary publications is shameful.” encouraging, but essays need attention. writers. Most of the submissions and virtually all An American group called VIDA (Women in the Iain Gow of the published pieces were written by students Literary Arts) provides annual scores for a number Montreal, Quebec from writing programs. Jazz musicians used of U.S. and British publications (www.vitaweb.org). to learn their craft in honkytonks. Now they go to While they show some improvements, they iden- [Editor’s Note: For an interview that LRC editor-in- school. Much the same has happened in the field tify a number of “immovable giants” like the New chief Bronwyn Drainie gave on this subject, visit of creative writing. Get used to it. York Review of Books, the London Review of Books,
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Mink is a witness, a shape-shifter, who is compelled to follow the story that has ensared Celia and her village in Nuu’chalnulth territory on the coast of British Columbia. An ordeal begins to unfold that pulls Celia out of her reveries, into the two-fold tragedies of her son’s suicide and the physical assault sustained by her cousin’s granddaughter. Celia must now regain confidence in her abilites as a seer, and unite the women and men of her family, in order to save the life of the child.
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Celia’s song • A novel by Lee Maracle • Now available in bookstores ISBN 978-1-77086-416-0 • $24.00 • 280 pages
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New from Ronsdale Press Cadillac Cathedral How I Won the War for the Allies z Jack Hodgins One Sassy Canadian Soldier’s Story z Doris Gregory An engaging memoir of life overseas in London during WWII, serving with the Canadian Women’s Army Corps, and opening up a view of office life in the Army — with Doodlebugs dropping all around. 50 b&w photos. 978-1-55380-317-1 (PRINT) � 978-1-55380-319-5 (EBOOK) � 220 pp � $21.95 The White Oneida z Jean Rae Baxter An unusual YA historical novel in which Baxter explores the attempt by Joseph Brant to create a country for all the First Nations people, with the help of Tecumseh, and using as his protegé a white youth adopted by the Oneida, whom Brant sends to one of the first Residential Schools. 978-1-55380-332-4 (PRINT) � 978-1-55380-334-8 (EBOOK) � 280 pp � $11.95 A new Jack Hodgins novel! — a humorous and moving tale about an old-time Finnish logger who rescues a 1930’s Cadillac Cathedral Vancouver Is Ashes hearse to drive it down-island to pick up The Great Fire of 1886 the body of an old friend and attempt a z Lisa Anne Smith reunion with his childhood sweetheart. Using first-person eye-witness accounts, Smith recreates the great fire that (PRINT): 978-1-55380-298-3 razed most of Vancouver to the ground — as the population first battled (EBOOK): 978-1-55380-300-3 the blaze and then ran for their lives. 45 b&w photos. 220 pp � $18.95 978-1-55380-320-1 (PRINT) � 978-1-55380-322-5 (EBOOK) � 228 pp � $21.95
Available at your favourite bookstore or order from PGC/Raincoast Ronsdale Press www.ronsdalepress.com Our Ice Is Vanishing / Sikuvut Nunguliqtuq Fall A History of Inuit, Newcomers, and Climate Change SHELLEY WRIGHT Cloth, e-Book
“… authoritative and entertaining, original, exhaustively researched, Comes and informed by personal experience. Wright spent years living in the Arctic and it shows. She has written a wonderful book.” to –Ken McGoogan, author of 50 Canadians Who Changed the World Becoming Inummarik Men’s Lives in an Inuit Community PETER COLLINGS MQUP Cloth, paperback, e-Book A critical look at how Inuit men balance traditional values and social circumstances to find their place in the contemporary Arctic.
“Collings provides details of community life that are authentic, intimate, and insightful; his candour and clarity in describing the everyday life of cultural anthropologists doing fieldwork is poignant and gripping.” –Edmund Searles, Bucknell University
Thumper The Memoirs of the Honourable Donald S. Macdonald DONALD S. MACDONALD with Rod McQueen Cloth, e-Book
“… an important piece of Canadian political history, written with passion and wit. As a memoir it will rank among the finest that deal with the second half of the twentieth century.” –John English, University of Toronto and author of Citizen of the World and Just Watch Me.
N E W I N PA P E R B AC K
The Idea of Liberty in Canada during the Age of Atlantic Revolutions, 1776–1838 MICHEL DUCHARME Translated by Peter Feldstein Cloth, paperback, e-Book • Newly translated in English
WINNER The Once and Future Great The Edge of the Precipice Prix Lionel-Groulx Fondation-Yves-Saint-Germain Lakes Country Why Read Literature in the Institut d’histoire de l’Amérique française (2011) An Ecological History Digital Age? Prix du Canada en sciences sociales Federation for JOHN L. RILEY EDITED BY PAUL SOCKEN the Humanities and Social Sciences (2012) Paperback, e-Book Paperback, e-Book Sir John A. Macdonald Prize “A masterful recounting of the implications of “Taken together in all their contradictions, Canadian Historical Association (2011) human actions for nature. It now stands, in my these essays do an admirable job of laying out opinion, as the best single-volume survey of the the situation of literary reading in the digital Great Lakes environmental past. Historians of age – of separating what is genuinely changing the Great Lakes country must read this book, from what is not. Despite the thrust of its title, as must any concerned citizen.” the answers are surprisingly optimistic.” –H-Environment –The Globe & Mail
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