Taxman’s blind eye PAGE 23

$6.50 Vol. 23, No. 7 September 2015

Martin Patriquin Quebec’s Messy Mosaic A vague policy stunts newcomers’ integration

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE Candace Savage Who are the Métis?

Christopher Dummitt Donald Creighton’s bird’s-eye history

Triadafilos Triadafilopoulos The tenuous grip of pluralism

PLUS: non-fiction Shawn McCarthy on George Soros’s global ambition + James Miller on China’s political virtues + Mark Sholdice on Leo Strauss, man of peace fiction Robin Roger on The Night Stages by Jane Urquhart + Gail Singer on Under the Visible

Publications Mail Agreement #40032362 Life by Kim Echlin Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to LRC, Circulation Dept. poetry Lucas Crawford + Barry Butson + Michael Johnson PO Box 8, Station K Toronto, ON M4P 2G1 New from University of Toronto Press

Big Pharma, Women, and the Labour of Love by Thea Cacchioni The Myth of the Born In this fascinating book, Thea Cacchioni Criminal investigates the lack of science behind Psychopathy, Neurobiology, and the female sexual enhancement drugs Creation of the Modern Degenerate and how the medicalization of female by Jarkko Jalava, Stephanie Griffiths, sexuality affects women’s lives. and Michael Maraun The Myth of the Born Criminal is for anyone who wonders just what truth – or fiction – lurks behind the study of psychopathy.

Kensington Market Collective Memory, Public History, and Toronto’s Urban Landscape Northrop Frye’s by Na Li Uncollected Prose In Kensington Market, Na Li explores the dynamic history of Toronto’s iconic by Northrop Frye; edited by Robert neighbourhood – Kensington Market D. Denham – and how heritage and collective This book illuminates Northrop Frye’s memory define neighbourhoods like it early life, his research methodology, around the world. and his thought processes and is further proof of the remarkable depth and range of his work.

Toronto, the Belfast of Canada The Orange Order and the Shaping of Municipal Culture Swedes in Canada Invisible Immigrants by William J. Smyth by Elinor Barr This book presents the history of how municipal politics in Toronto were so Elinor Barr explores the impressive dominated by Irish Protestants of the Swedish legacy in Canada and the Orange Order that the city was known reasons for their invisibility as an as the ‘Belfast of Canada.’ immigrant community.

Also available as e-books at utppublishing.com Literary Review of Canada 170 Bloor St West, Suite 710 Toronto ON M5S 1T9 email: [email protected] reviewcanada.ca T: 416-531-1483 • F: 416-531-1612 Charitable number: 848431490RR0001 To donate, visit reviewcanada.ca/support Vol. 23, No. 7 • September 2015 INTERIM EDITOR Mark Lovewell [email protected] MANAGING EDITOR 3 Invisible Roots 17 A Geranium Lives Longer Than Michael Stevens A review of Métis: Race, Recognition and Childhood CONTRIBUTING EDITORS the Struggle for Indigenous Peoplehood, by A poem Mohamed Huque, Molly Peacock, Robin Roger, Anthony Westell Chris Andersen, French Canadians, Furs and Barry Butson Indigenous Women in the Making of the Pacific ASSOCIATE EDITOR Northwest, by Jean Barman, and Metis and the 17 Lucky Judy Stoffman Medicine Line: Creating a Border and Dividing A poem POETRY EDITOR Moira MacDougall a People, by Michel Hogue Michael Johnson Candace Savage COPY EDITOR 18 Love Hurts Madeline Koch A review of The Night Stages, by Jane Urquhart 6 Empire Man ONLINE EDITORS A review of Donald Creighton: A Life in Robin Roger Diana Kuprel, Jack Mitchell, History, by Donald Wright 19 Sisters in Jazz Donald Rickerd, C.M. Christopher Dummitt A review of Under the Visible Life, by Kim PROOFREADERS Rebecca Borkowsky, Heather Schultz, 8 Scarlet Letter Echlin Robert Simone, Rob Tilley Gail Singer A review of Alice in Shandehland: Scandal and RESEARCH Scorn in the Edelson/Horwitz Murder Case, by 20 Rule by Merit Rob Tilley Monda Halpern A review of The China Model: Political EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Debra Komar Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy, by Emmett Livingstone Daniel Bell DESIGN 9 Purchasing Power James Harbeck James Miller A review of Buying a Better World: George ADVERTISING/SALES Soros and Billionaire Philanthropy, by Anna 23 Shifting Fortunes Michael Wile Porter A review of Canada: A New Tax Haven — How [email protected] Shawn McCarthy the Country That Shaped Caribbean Tax Havens DIRECTOR, SPECIAL PROJECTS Michael Booth 10 Ties that Bind Is Becoming One Itself, by Alain Deneault, translated by Catherine Browne PRODUCER A review of Interculturalism: A View from Harrison Lowman Quebec, by Gérard Bouchard, translated by Michael C. Webb DEVELOPMENT MANAGER Howard Scott 26 Leo’s Web Elizabeta Liguri´c Martin Patriquin A review of Leo Strauss: Man of Peace, by PUBLISHER 13 Drug Deals Robert Howse Helen Walsh [email protected] A review of Ideas and the Pace of Change: Mark Sholdice BOARD OF DIRECTORS National Pharmaceutical Insurance in Canada, 29 Seeds of Hate Tom Kierans, O.C., Mark Lovewell, Australia and the United Kingdom, by Katherine A review of From Tolerance to Tyranny: A Don McCutchan, Jack Mintz, C.M., Boothe Cautionary Tale from Fifteenth Century Spain, Trina McQueen, O.C. Danielle Martin by Erna Paris ADVISORY COUNCIL Bruce Livesey Triadafilos Triadafilopoulos Michael Adams, Ronald G. Atkey, P.C., Q.C., Alan Broadbent, C.M., Chris Ellis, 16 Your Fat Daughter Remembers 31 Letters and Responses James Gillies, C.M., Carol Hansell, Geoffrey James Donald Macdonald, P.C., C.C., Susan What You Said Reisler, Grant Reuber, O.C., Don Rickerd, A poem C.M., Rana Sarkar, Mark Sarner, Bernard Lucas Crawford Schiff, Reed Scowen POETRY SUBMISSIONS For poetry submission guidelines, please see reviewcanada.ca. LRC design concept by Jackie Young/INK Founded in 1991 by P.A. Dutil The LRC is published 10 times a year by the Literary Cover art and pictures throughout the issue by artist. Review of Canada Charitable Organization. Jonathan Dyck is an illustrator and designer from southern Manitoba. Now based in Montreal, he is part of the ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION RATES Individuals in Canada $56/year plus GST/HST. GUTS Magazine editorial collective and has worked with a variety of publications including The Globe and Mail, (Libraries and institutions in Canada $68/year plus Briarpatch and Geez. GST/HST.) Outside Canada, please pay $86/year for individuals, or $98 for libraries and institutions.

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September 2015 reviewcanada.ca 1 “GRIPPING. DISTURBING. MADDENING. A MUST READ.” JOSEPH BOYDEN

Children of the Broken Treaty: Canada’s Lost Promise and One Girl’s Dream by Charlie Angus

“Discomforting reading, but essential.” John Ralston Saul

Children of the Broken Treaty exposes a system of apartheid in Canada that led to the largest youth-driven human rights movement in the country’s history. Using extensive documentation assembled from Freedom of Information requests, author Charlie Angus provides chilling insight into how Canada denies First Nations children their basic human rights.

2 Broken Treaty ad for LRC.indd 1 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review2015-08-06 of Canada 4:18 PM Invisible Roots Three books provide distinctive versions of Métis history. Candace Savage

Métis: Race, Recognition and the Struggle for Indigenous Peoplehood Chris Andersen University of British Columbia Press 284 pages, softcover ISBN 9780774827225

French Canadians, Furs and Indigenous Women in the Making of the Pacific Northwest Jean Barman University of British Columbia Press 458 pages, softcover ISBN 9780774828055

Metis and the Medicine Line: Creating a Border and Dividing a People Michel Hogue University of North Carolina Press 328 pages, softcover ISBN 9781469621050

y friend Susan remembers walking everything, right out to the edge of this spinning fully many years afterward. “There were no white on the log sills of the Métis longhouse, world. From the summit of Anxiety Butte, ten min- men here at that time. We hunted the buffalo, had Mbut that was decades ago, when she utes’ hike from here, you can see all the way south enough to eat, and were satisfied.” was a child. “I’d say it was about 40 feet long,” she to Montana when the sky is clear. By the time Hogue brings his narrative to a close, says, tracing a line in the air with her finger, “and This is the Canadian-American borderland in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, those good there was a pit, some kind of cellar, I guess. The last that Carleton University historian Michel Hogue old days are long gone. The white men have, of time I came here, I couldn’t find it.” She peers and invokes in his new book, Metis and the Medicine course, turned up in force, armed with theodolites then plunges into the tangle of scrubby aspen that Line: Creating a Border and Dividing a People. for dividing the land, and racial categories and has pushed up along the margin of the site. “No,” With the same painstaking regard for detail that an citizenship requirements for dividing the people. she says when she re-emerges a few minutes later, archeologist might bring to excavating a long aban- Although the Canadian and American authorities “I don’t know where it is any more.” But she can still doned site, Hogue has devoted himself to fingering differed in their tactics, Hogue concludes that, find the fallen chimney, a scatter of large, spatulate through archival collections in seven states and in both jurisdictions, “federal policies … were stones half-hidden in the grass. They are splotched four provinces to uncover the boundary-crossing based on geographic fixity and clear-cut divisions and whorled with rust-coloured lichens. history of the Plains Métis. His story opens in 1803, between members of different tribes, races, and We are on the up-slope of a broad, flat-bottomed amid a tumult of barking dogs, squalling babies and nations that simply had not existed as such in the valley on the edge of the Cypress Hills, in the far squealing carts, as a supply brigade pulls away from past … These new and more restrictive markers southwestern corner of Saskatchewan. Below us, a trading post at Pembina, now in North Dakota, [of race and nationality] were intimately linked sunlight ripples over the fall of land as it sweeps on an errand for the North West Company, based to settler colonialism’s logic of dispossession.” toward the scrawl of brush that marks a water in Montreal. The families in this caravan have Significantly, the penultimate chapter in his book course. On the far side, beyond the creek, an oppos- been born into the fur trade, and most of them are is entitled “Exile.” ing wall of hills rises steeply, but up where we are of blended Euro-Canadian, often canadien, and South of the line in the United States, the Métis standing, in this place where a Métis family once indigenous descent. (The term “métis” derives were forced through the sieve of colonial categor- cooked meals on a stone hearth and drank in the from an old French word meaning “half and half.”) ization and found wanting: too white to be Indian, very same view, we are so high that we can see over Succeeding decades will find these individuals or too Indian to be citizens, too “British” to belong. In their descendants following opportunity north to Canada, by contrast, where the people of Red River, Candace Savage is of mixed Swiss (Pennsylvania the Red River Settlement, south to Lewiston, north led by Louis Riel, mounted a successful resistance Dutch), English, Irish—Protestant and Catholic— again to the Saskatchewan country, south to the against the unilateral assertion of national sover- and other unknown descent, inheritances brought Dakota Plains, west to the Cypress Hills. eignty in 1869–70, the Métis were recognized as together by prairie settlement. She lives and writes “There were no lines anywhere then,” an old buf- holders of aboriginal title. But this right, as encoded in Bois de Fleche, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. falo hunter named Louis Lafountaine recalled wist- in the Manitoba Act and subsequently extended

September 2015 reviewcanada.ca 3 across present-day Saskatchewan and Alberta, was women and men provided the labour and special- Indigenous community is ‘older’ than Red River, only intended to be acknowledged in the moment ized skills—including preparation of skins, transla- if the individual or group lacks a connection to of its extinguishment. Unlike the signatories of the tion services and cultural mediation—that made the historical core in the Red River region, it is not numbered treaties, who ceded their aboriginal title the Pacific fur trade a commercial success and filled Métis.” in return for communal reserves of land, the Métis the coffers of investors in Montreal, St. Louis and At the risk of oversimplifying his argument, were bought out with “half-breed” scrip, certificates London. It was this profitability, Barman argues, his logic runs something like this. The definition issued to individuals that could be exchanged for that motivated the British government, in the 1840s, of Métis as “mixed race” derives from discredited land or cash. to resist American claims to what they saw as “their concepts of race and racial hierarchy (notably In theory, eligibility for scrip depended solely on just and clear territorial rights”—advanced under white superiority) that were aggressively deployed ancestry, together with residency at a given place the bellicose banner of “54° 40’ or Fight”—by press- in the assertion of colonial rule. These weapons and date, but in practice, the petty czars who ran ing a counterclaim for what would become British can be seen doing their dirty work of dispossession the system made up the rules to suit themselves Columbia. “Except for French Canadians’ numbers on page after page of both Hogue’s and Barman’s and frequently chose to disqualify applicants who and occupational persistence,” Barman writes, “it books. Even now, Andersen observes, these “forms were too “foreign” for their tastes, whether through is highly likely the Canadian province of British of power” continue to exert a poisonous influence marriage (a woman who married an American) or Columbia would not have come into being, and on our social relationships, normalizing inequality, through temporary or permanent settlement in the Canada would have no Pacific shoreline.” oppression and, for those deemed “impure,” dimin- United States. As Hogue demonstrates in excruci- By the mid 19th century, many of the French ished status. If your indigeneity is perceived to have ating detail, the issuance of scrip was also notori- Canadians whom Barman credits with “saving been “diluted” by interbreeding, how can you hope ously susceptible to fraud, extortion and ruinous British Columbia for Canada” were actually people to be acknowledged as fully indigenous? delay—so much so that, in 2013, the Supreme of combined canadien and indigenous descent. Yet The solution, Andersen argues, is to delegitimize Court of Canada, responding to a case brought by she never refers to them as Métis. In her telling, racialized definitions as a basis for Métis identity the Manitoba Metis Federation, ruled that the fed- their “double inheritance” must always be parsed and look instead for evidence of Métis “people- eral government had “acted with hood”—self-aware, politically and persistent inattention and failed culturally actualized identities to act diligently” in fulfilling its “The category Métis is not a soup that existed “prior—and in con- legal obligations, leaving a “rift in tradiction—to the settler state’s the national fabric” that “remains kitchen for Indigenous individuals and subsequent, overlapping, and unremedied.” intruding claims.” And where were If Hogue’s account of the communities disenfranchised in various those defining qualities achieved? Plains Métis experience is mel- Uniquely, Andersen argues, ancholic, Jean Barman’s account ways by the Canadian state.” among the Red River, or Plains, of a parallel history, transposed Métis. “Only in Red River did the to the west of the Rockies, is encounters, intimacies, and antag- unexpectedly celebratory. A professor emeritus with careful formality, as “French Canadians, the onisms that characterized previous ‘separateness’ in the Department of Educational Studies at the indigenous women with whom they partnered, bloom into full political maturity: the Métis people University of British Columbia, Barman is the and their families.” This precision is necessary, she of the northern Plains are thus the only Métis author of more than 20 previous works, including, says, because, unlike the people who lived in that people.” In his view, individuals and communities most notably, The West Beyond the West: A History ruined house on the hillside and the others who from other parts of the continent who lay claim to of British Columbia, now in its third edition and still animate Michel Hogue’s book, fur trade families Métis identity on the basis of their “mixed” ancestry regarded as the “premier” account of the province’s in the Pacific Northwest had neither the means not only perpetuate the racist indignities of the past beginnings and development. Her latest book, nor the opportunity to forge a cohesive identity. but also obscure their true, local identities. “These French Canadians, Furs and Indigenous Women in Personally, based on some of the evidence she communities are not Métis,” he writes; “rather, they the Making of the Pacific Northwest,offers a cor- presents—French folk tales told in indigenous are whatever they called themselves (assuming rective to her own canonical narrative, by opening languages; post fur-trade communities linked by such a collective self-consciousness­ existed).” up space for two foundational, but marginalized, kinship webs; individuals who moved, effortlessly Elsewhere in the book, he drives home a groups of people—the French Canadians and or not, between cultures—I would be inclined to similar point with rhetorical insistence: “The cat- indigenous women of her title—who, she argues mark this conclusion with a giant asterisk. Further egory Métis,” he writes, “is not a soup kitchen for persuasively, have been denied the recognition that studies required. But there is no doubt that, without Indigenous individuals and communities disen- they deserve. even the frangible legal status attained by Canadian franchised in various ways by the Canadian state.” Building on a compendium of biographies Plains Métis, fur trade descendants in the Pacific Those are fighting words, as Andersen is surely constructed by Bruce McIntyre Watson, Barman Northwest were cruelly exposed to colonial con- aware: his argument is intended not as a salve focuses her attention on 1,240 men with recogniz- cepts of gender, race and nationality. Their double to historic wounds but as a salutary incitement to ably French-Canadian surnames who were drawn inheritance had to be negotiated “deliberately, what he calls “a more nuanced conversation.” Yet as to the Pacific Northwest by the fur trade between determinedly, and at a cost.” I review the evidence of injustice and displacement the late 18th and mid 19th centuries. Among As for Barman’s assertion that métis, in the that Hogue and Barman have uncovered—when them, for example, were the six braves gars whose sense of mixed-race fur-trade descendants, are not I think of the flesh-and-blood people who lived on muscle propelled Alexander Mackenzie overland always Métis with a capital M—well, it turns out that beautiful hillside and vanished, no one knows to the Pacific coast—and a knighthood—in 1793, that I have not been paying attention. Over the past when or where—I cannot help but wonder if these yet whose “inexpressible toil” has seldom been several decades, unbeknownst to me and, I suspect, new exclusivities based on genealogy are really acknowledged. Ditto the dozens of voyageurs who many other Canadians, a debate has been sim- much of an improvement over old exclusivities laboured on subsequent expeditions across the mering among scholars, politicians and the legal based on race. Absolute categories have already region—with Simon Fraser, David Thompson and profession about the boundaries of Métis-ness. One caused so much disentitlement and pain: can our William Price Hunt, among others—accomplish- of the most fiery interveners in this discussion is ills really be cured by more of the same? ments that wrote their leaders, but not themselves, Chris Andersen, director of the Rupertsland Centre When I ask Susan (who knows all her neighbours into history. Even the Lewis and Clark expedition, for Métis Research in the Faculty of Native Studies back for two or three generations) if there are still Barman argues, although “sponsored by the at the University of Alberta, who puts forward his Métis families in her part of the country, she says, American government, was a French Canadian position, con brillo, in Métis: Race, Recognition and no, not as far as she knows. Then she reminds me affair in its achievement.” the Struggle for Indigenous Peoplehood. His stance about a childhood friend we’ll call Ronita—Métis Of Barman’s 1,200-plus French-Canadian is clear: there were no Métis, sensu stricto, in British by any definition—who grew up in the hills but subjects, about a third appear to have returned Columbia, or in Quebec, or in Atlantic Canada, or left; whose mother gave birth in a dugout in a river east as soon as their contracts were up, but hun- (with strictly delimited exceptions) in the United bank, for lack of anywhere else; who, as a girl, was dreds of others stayed in the region and put down States. turned away from church for being poorly dressed. roots, often establishing families with indigenous “From my perspective,” he writes, “whether or Today, Ronita is loved, admired, successful, strug- women. Whether in present-day British Columbia, not an Indigenous individual or community self- gling. She carries a mixed heritage of strength and Washington, Oregon or adjoining states, these identifies as Métis today, and whether or not the disquiet.

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September 2015 reviewcanada.ca 5 Empire Man A new look at the complicated life and work of Donald Creighton. Christopher Dummitt

history only as an afterthought. Donald Creighton: A Life in Unable to afford travels to archives History in France, he opted instead for the Donald Wright cheaper, if utterly less glamorous, University of Toronto Press option of summer visits to Ottawa. It 496 pages, hardcover was there in the public archives that ISBN 9781442626829 he had his first epiphany. Reading through the papers of colonial gov- ernors general, Creighton noticed oward the end of his exceptions to the usual colony-to- career, the Canadian histor- nation constitutional story, which he Tian Donald Creighton began found uninteresting. He noticed the to think “that I will be remembered, if pleas of merchants about tariffs and I am remembered at all, as a pessim- taxes. If this does not seem the stuff ist, a bigot, and a violent Tory parti- of excited epiphanies, bear with me. san.” Conservatives are usually right The merchants were talking, when they are wrong. That is, they Wright notes, “about a commercial sense the direction of change and cry empire based on the St Lawrence out that a way of life is fading into his- River and the Great Lakes, the only tory. They are often right about what is threatened, editing the most important Protestant publication waterway to connect the centre of British North but wrong to think that anyone will care. in the country, the Christian Guardian. America to Great Britain and, in turn, Great Britain So it was with Donald Creighton. Donald Creighton, then, grew up like many a to the centre of its greatest prize—the northern He is remembered, when he is remembered at middle class Ontarian, in a world where the sinful- half of North America.” This became the theme of all, for all of those things: as a conservative histor- ness of drink and cards were hot topics of discus- Creighton’s first book, The Commercial Empire ian who wrote the wrong kind of history, as some- sion. He also grew up in a house full of Dickens of the St. Lawrence: A Study in Commerce and one who was unsympathetic if not outright bigoted and Tennyson, his imagination populated by Uriah Politics. This book set up Creighton as someone toward French Canadians, the Métis and aborig- Heep, David Copperfield and Miss Havisham. who could explain the origins of Canada as a sep- inal peoples. He wrote Great Man history, long Creighton’s parents instilled in him the life lessons arate nation in North America not according to character-driven accounts of the nation itself—not of turn-of-the-century common sense, the need the logic of loyalty or constitutional bickering, but the subjects or the peoples we now privilege. Old for “discipline, hard work, personal responsibility, because of its geographically situated economy. fashioned, prejudiced and seemingly irrelevant: delayed gratification, patient accumulation, abstin- Like his close friend Harold Innis, Creighton offered why would anyone write a biography of Donald ence, and service.” Canadians an explanation of their country’s origins, Creighton? One of the great joys of this biography is the and its often perilous predicament, rooted in eco- Donald Wright has two answers for us. For one, glimpse it gives us of the young Creighton rebel- nomics, empire and the country’s great northern Creighton was more than this. He was, above all, a ling against these strictures. The young Donald waterways—the historical equivalent to the image brilliant writer of history, the non-fiction equivalent Creighton was a modern, the male intellectual of the country the Group of Seven was painting and of a great novelist. And second, Donald Creighton version of the flapper, a reader of the works of promoting. mattered. “The time in which he lived,” Wright D.H. Lawrence, Émile Zola and H.L. Mencken. His The real essence of Creighton’s legacy, though, argues, “can be fully understood only if we under- student essays on literature would have been a came with his two-volume biography of John A. stand his life and his work.” These are forceful argu- joy for professors to read. On the most successful Macdonald. It was in these works that Creighton ments, and convincing. Canadian novelist of the day, Creighton wrote that finally found his true calling. The character Donald Creighton was born into a reform- Ralph Connor “could have been a very interest- sketches were Dickensian in inspiration; the side minded family of Methodists who immigrated to ing preacher or a very interesting novelist, but in flashes of detail and colour came out of his read- mid 19th-century British North America, earning attempting to be both, he became uninterestingly ing of the great late 19th- and early 20th-century their livelihoods on the land and in the pulpit. neither.” fiction. Yet the biography itself told of the making His maternal grandmother, Eliza Jane Creighton In the mid 1920s, Creighton went off to Oxford of Canada, the continuation by other means (by Harvie, helped found the Hospital for Sick Children and thence to the Sorbonne in Paris. By this time, confederation, tariff and rail) of the logic of Canada in Toronto, the Women’s Medical College (the first he had also fallen in love with Luella Sanders that Creighton first explored inThe Commercial medical school in Toronto to accept women) and Bruce, and the two discovered the joys of mar- Empire. Creighton’s John A. is a man obsessed with the Ontario Women’s Christian Temperance Union. ried life in France. Luella would eventually turn an idea, the idea of Canada. Creighton’s father, William Black Creighton, was a to writing, becoming a novelist in her own right. Everything that is right and wrong with the book Methodist minister who spent most of his career Wright’s biography is not a full double biography, flows from this. Creighton took on the prejudices but he sketches her life in several sympathetic and of his main character, looking askance at John A.’s Christopher Dummitt is a Canadian historian and thoughtful sections. opponents. At a time when other Canadians were chair of the Department of Canadian Studies at When Creighton returned to Toronto in 1927 as beginning to resuscitate the reputation of Louis Trent University. a young professor of history, he took up Canadian Riel, Creighton had no time for the mad rebel who

6 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada tried to derail Macdonald’s national vision. Still, ­government’s introduction of official bilingualism. Similarly, like many Canadian historians today, by the mid 1950s when the second volume of the One must also throw into the mix Creighton’s Wright is sympathetic to the critique of capitalism John A. biography was published, Creighton had anger at the Canadian drift into the American and the very idea of progress that is very much become not just a pre-eminent historian but a true sphere of influence in everything from defence of our era—rooted in environmental concerns, public intellectual. More books would come, but policy and economic affairs to popular culture. sympathy for aboriginal peoples, and a left-wing the solid edifice of his accomplishment had been Creighton was a historical George Grant, the critique of globalization and capitalism. You would established. philosopher whose Lament for a Nation in 1963, be hard pressed to find a Canadian historian who For all this, the life of Donald Creighton is although conservative in orientation, inspired anti- would go on the record today talking about prog- more than just one book after another. If we trace American Canadian nationalists from all political ress. To read the works of contemporary historians Creighton’s life trajectory up to his death in 1979, stripes. is to live in a world where nothing gets better, only we are following Canada’s history through the Great In a series of articles, public lectures and books, different or worse. All of this means that we come Depression to the struggles over national iden- Donald Creighton became an ever more strident at Creighton from a world view that he would not tity in the post-war decades as the ties to Britain critic of all of these developments. He had never have agreed with. When you add to this the way weakened, as the American goliath loomed, and shied away from expressing a point of view. At the bicultural view of the country that was so hotly as French Canada redefined itself debated a generation or two ago and demanded that the rest of is now simply taken for granted Canada do so as well. Amid all of When our morality supersedes the values among the Canadian educated these debates Donald Creighton, classes, then what you are left with national historian, stood out as of the past, what do we owe those with is a recipe for mutual misunder- an increasingly forlorn figure—a whom we no longer agree? standing. But we are the only ones voice of authority, slowly seem- left talking. Creighton and his ing less and less reasonable to his world are gone. bright young forward-looking contemporaries who Oxford, Creighton helped create a club with other Historians only seem to have a soft spot for cer- were willing to bend and shift with the changing friends called the Hotbed of Virtues and Vices. Each tain underdogs. Because we are so keen to define world. Creighton, tall and stiff, his gaze slightly off member took a name based on the Seven Deadly ourselves as better than an earlier idea of Canada, to the horizon, did not change—a lonely pine of Sins. Creighton took Ira—anger. In the 1960s and because we are supposed to be moving toward a British Canadianism. ’70s, Creighton became much more than a histor- view of Canada not just as a nation of two found- He started off in good company. In the 1930s, ian: he became a voice of anger, denouncing the ing peoples but a country that ought to have been Creighton was called upon to serve on the Royal destruction of the nation whose history he helped founded in a better relationship with aboriginal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations. write. peoples, and which is now proudly multicultural, Sad, it is true, that in the midst of a national crisis It was not a pretty mix: anti-French, unsympa- it is hard to look back on someone such as Donald of poverty and unemployment, Mackenzie King’s thetic to aboriginal people and the Métis, Creighton and feel his loss. Yet surely that is exactly government opted to study federalism. But this is anti-American, pro-British. It is hard to find a com- our task. When our morality supersedes the values the essential Canadian question. Before we had the bination of viewpoints that could be less in keeping of the past, what do we owe those with whom we welfare state, before unemployment insurance and with the common ideas of national decency that no longer agree? This otherwise brilliant book offers universal health care and universal old age pen- have come to dominate in this country, especially some sympathy, but not enough understanding. sions, we studied federalism. among writers of our history. Creighton was among the large consensus of It is not surprising, then, that Wright admits all scholars in these years who believed in a strong of these faults, and in fact, gives Creighton’s crit- centralized federation. He came to this conclu- ics more time than his friends (who became fewer a national festival of sion not out of a great support of socialism or the and fewer over the years). As the book moves into politics, art and ideas welfare state but from his reading of Confederation. Creighton’s middle and old age, we see a man with RADIO It is a viewpoint that has long since gone out of many faults, not especially likeable (not even by fashion. But in the midst of the depression and his children). He is increasingly bigoted and cut Introducing then the Second World War, it made sense to many off from the country around him. He is a historian Spur Radio Canadians. of a country he cannot understand. He is, Wright As the British Empire divested itself of (and was argues, a historian “without a thesis.” divested of) its colonies, Creighton was called upon The book itself is elegantly done, a tribute in now available at spurfestival.ca Currently featuring podcasts from these Spur 2015 to sit on a commission into the political fate of style to a master stylist. Divided into four sections— events: Currently featuring podcasts from British colonies in southern Africa. Back in Canada, the four seasons from spring to winter—Wright these Spur 2015 events: Creighton responded with increasing alarm to the tells Creighton’s life as an elegy, from youthful way a rising Quebec nationalism was changing spring blossom to the withering of autumn and the symbols and national identity of Canada itself. winter death. Each chapter is prefaced with a line In the 1950s the Liberals continued to slowly drain from Creighton’s John A. biography—Creighton The Future of Alberta Politics recorded at Spur Calgary the country of British symbols, culminating in the on Macdonald, now turned back on Creighton. creation of the new Maple Leaf flag in 1965. What Wright’s first book was a history of the profession- From Hunger to Health is often forgotten is just how unpopular this move alization of history in Canada. In this biography we recorded at Spur Winnipeg was among English Canadians. The slow drag of see a historian at the top of his powers, masterfully inevitability has meant that the passion is gone weaving Creighton’s life into the age in which he The Quantifi ed Self from this issue, but in 1965 it mattered to someone lived. It is a technical masterpiece. recorded at Spur Toronto like Creighton. The book’s one great weakness is its moral Creighton also decried the rise of a bicultural certainty. All historians add something of them- The Wealthy Community recorded at Spur Calgary view of Canada. These were the years of the Royal selves to their books—their assumptions of right Commission on Biculturalism and Bilingualism, and wrong, good and evil. And so it is with Donald Currently featuring podcasts from these Spur 2015 that Pearson-era committee that found a crisis Wright on Donald Creighton. events With more podcasts arriving weekly at in the Canadian federation. Creighton served Canadian historians today largely do not like the Currently featuring podcasts from these Spur 2015 on the Ontario government’s response to this idea of the nation. We do not tell national stories. events: spurfestival.ca/multimedia crisis, Premier John Robarts’s Ontario Advisory How, then, to write of a national historian except to + soundcloud.com/spur-radio Committee on Confederation (from 1965 to find him lacking? Wright tells us that the very idea 1970). He played the role of increasingly trucu- of Canada itself is a “lie.” The reader is warned to lent critic, dismayed at the extent to which his be wary that Creighton’s books “seduced readers @SpurFest fellow English Canadians were willing to throw into believing that there really was such a thing facebook.com/SpurFestival overboard the historical truths of the country (as called Canada, that there really was a commun- Creighton saw them) in order to appease Quebec. ity of people with a shared history and a common His criticism grew stronger with the Trudeau purpose, and that there really was a ‘we’ and an ‘us’.”

September 2015 reviewcanada.ca 7 Scarlet Letter A forgotten murder reveals our shifting sexual ethics. Debra Komar

ably,’ ‘maybe,’ and ‘perhaps,’” claiming such words living and actively participating in the community Alice in Shandehland: Scandal and Scorn in “can be unsettling and irritating for the reader.” On that allegedly shunned her. the Edelson/Horwitz Murder Case the contrary, such terms are mandatory, as they flag The only documentation supporting the conten- Monda Halpern an author’s opinion masquerading as fact. Halpern tion is “a lone, unidentified Yiddish article” that dis- McGill-Queen’s University Press believes such words are unnecessary because “the parages Alice as “the most pitiful figure in the tragic 268 pages, softcover reader will trust in the knowledge and integrity of triangle.” Without the article’s author, date or attri- ISBN 9780773545595 the author,” asking for the reader’s trust, but not bution, it is hard to give it any credence. In the end, reciprocating it. the notion that Alice was publicly shamed seems to Halpern concedes she “had to rely, to some exist solely in the mind of the author, which is the he Urban Dictionary defines the word extent, on conjecture,” although that is an under- definition of fiction, rather than solid scholarship. slut as “a woman with the morals of a statement. In Alice in Shandehland, the argument The same can be said for the book’s secondary Tman,” yet there is no male equivalent for rests on speculation and generalizations. The case thesis that Ben Edelson was acquitted because the the term. Boys will be boys but girls, apparently, study raises serious questions regarding anti- jury followed “the unwritten law … that an incensed can only be whores, a toxic double standard that is Semitism and the portrayal of Jews in the main- husband … could justifiably kill a man who sexually sadly enjoying a renaissance in a new age of cyber stream media, yet the text comes dangerously close seduced his female kin.” To be fair, the argument is bullying. Scarlet letters are now one of inference, but persuasive branded with zeros and ones, debate still requires evidence to and anyone looking to do a little The book successfully illustrates what support speculation. The presen- slut-shaming has myriad online tation of Edelson’s murder trial is venues in which to do it, including happens when the worlds of inductive so truncated and superficial that female-initiated Twitter threads and deductive reasoning collide. it is impossible to judge whether such as #stopactinglikewhores. he was acquitted because of the Given the rise of digital humilia- unwritten rule, or because of the tion, any discussion of society’s skewed perceptions to perpetuating certain stereotypes. The problem forensic evidence, or because of his defence law- of male and female sexuality is timely, but Monda is the author’s treatment of the “Ottawa Jews” as yer’s “Brilliant, Effective Address.” That Halpern Halpern’s latest contribution to the discourse sug- a single-minded entity. Repeated ­references to believes it was the unwritten law does not make gests it is also timeless. In Alice in Shandehland: “the Jewish community”—five times on one page it so; there is still the burden of proof to be met. Scandal and Scorn in the Edelson/Horwitz Murder alone—ascribe a uniform opinion to its diverse Readers, like jurors, must see the full evidence in Case, Halpern—a professor of women’s and Jewish membership based on the comments of an iso- order to reach informed conclusions. history at Western University—uses a historic lated few. Halpern paints with a broad brush, as What the book successfully illustrates is what homicide trial to explore culturally specific issues evidenced by phrases such as “like most middle- happens when the worlds of inductive and deduct- of gender, sexuality and class. class Jewish women” or “like many Jewish seniors.” ive reasoning collide. The social sciences, including On the evening of November 24, 1931, three Argument by analogy is only as strong as the under- history and Jewish studies, often extrapolate larger prominent members of Ottawa’s Jewish community lying premise, and since Jewish women and seniors conclusions from anecdotes and individual wit- met in a downtown jewellery store. Ben Edelson, are not unified predictable organisms, such debate ness statements, while the medicolegal disciplines the store’s proprietor, confronted his wife, Alice, rings hollow. Other shopworn Semitic narratives embrace physical evidence and replicable testing and her long-time lover, Jack Horwitz, about their abound, including “attempting to obscure a tragedy derived from large sample populations. Historians affair. Accusations flew, a gun was drawn and and even erase it from memory is not a strategy may take informant statements at face value, but Horwitz was mortally wounded. Ben Edelson was emblematic of the Jews.” the forensic sciences were developed because wit- charged with his murder but, as Halpern contends, Credible sources are equally problematic. ness testament is notoriously unreliable. Social it was his adulterous wife who stood trial in the Factual content is drawn from newspaper accounts scientists wishing to draw examples from the legal court of public opinion. of the trial. These reports supposedly featured “ver- realm must play by its rules or risk having their evi- The book is categorized as Jewish studies and batim court testimony”; yet there are no extant trial dence and arguments appear flimsy by ­comparison. true crime, although fans of the latter genre will transcripts with which to compare, calling the asser- Case in point: the author’s contention that likely be disappointed. The emphasis here is on tion into question. Halpern also relies heavily on Edelson’s lawyer, Moses Doctor, committed sui- academic argument, not story telling. Within the interviews she conducted with selected members cide. Halpern bases her assertion on family lore first four pages, the identities of the victim and killer of Ottawa’s Jewish community, an arguably biased recounted by the lawyer’s distant descendants. Out are revealed, as is the outcome of the criminal trial, sample that includes relatives of the victim and wit- of curiosity, I retrieved Doctor’s death certification destroying any pretence of mystery or suspense. nesses too young to recall the event first-hand. from the Archive of Ontario (RG80-8, 010110-1934, While a crime serves as the book’s illustrative The danger inherent in using a case study to MS 935/483)—a reference not cited by Halpern. example, it is misleading to suggest that Alice in illustrate a point is that it must support the argu- It indicates his death was natural, the result of Shandehland belongs on the same shelf as Helter ment being advanced. In the case presented here, heart failure. Overlooking credible documentation Skelter or In Cold Blood. the opposite occurs. There is little compelling evi- in favour of gossip or hearsay is not best practice Academics may also take exception to the book. dence to support the contention that Alice Edelson in any discipline. At the very least, both sources Halpern eschews “conditional terms such as ‘argu- was publicly shamed or that she suffered greater should have been presented, allowing the reader to indignities than her murderous husband. Alice decide which to trust. Debra Komar is a retired professor, forensic scien- was absent from the courthouse during the trial, Speculation is not proof, and one anonymous tist and human rights investigator. Her latest book and was barely mentioned in the media accounts, newspaper quote is not a public scandal. In the end, is The Bastard of Fort Stikine: The Hudson’s Bay yet Halpern reads much into that absence. the only shame evidenced in Alice in Shandehland Company and the Murder of John McLoughlin Jr. Furthermore, this supposed social pariah remained is the opportunity squandered on a poorly chosen (Goose Lane Editions, 2015). happily married to her husband after his acquittal, case study.

8 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Purchasing Power George Soros’s precarious political legacy. Shawn McCarthy

to Porter, he provides little evidence of empathy or for his public pronouncements on the dangers of Buying a Better World: compassion. Rather, he appears an imperious figure American exceptionalism. George Soros and Billionaire Philanthropy uninterested in the views of others and impatient Here in Canada, Finance Minister Joe Oliver Anna Porter when people, including presidents and prime min- invoked Soros’s name in his campaign against Dundurn isters, fail to see the world on his terms. environmental groups launched in January 2012. 224 pages, softcover He made his fortune as a hedge fund manager Oliver, who at the time was natural resources min- ISBN 9781459731035 and currency speculator who undermined national ister, decried environmental groups such as Tides economies by precipitating runs on the British Canada that opposed Canadian oil sands pipe- pound and, later, the Russian ruble. His support lines while being funded by what Oliver referred eorge Soros is in his mid eighties. for financial regulation is analogous to the fund- to as “billionaire socialists,” naming Soros as an “This is his last active decade,” said Anna ing of a peace prize by Alfred Nobel, the Swedish example. GPorter in her new book Buying a Better armaments manufacturer who invented dynamite, In the United States, Soros is seen as serving as World: George Soros and Billionaire Philanthropy. and yet he has spent a great part of his fortune a counterpoint to the Koch brothers, the controver- “He has been in feverish overdrive since his seven- on projects that promote political empowerment, sial industrialists who bankroll the Republicans’ tieth birthday, wishing to accomplish what he ­anti-corruption and a fairer society, values that libertarian Tea Party movement and lobby aggres- set out to do back in his fifties: inspire people to form the bedrock of functioning democracy. Soros sively to dismantle America’s social safety net and embrace ‘open society’ and convince the world of sees himself not so much as a charitable donor environmental regulations. Liberals and leftists intellectuals that his theories and ideas are funda- but a public intellectual and social activist with, paint the Koch brothers as a malevolent force, in mental to understanding the human condition.” as Porter puts it, “very specific ideas about how to terms similar to those conservatives use for Soros. Titans of industry have long sought redemption change the world.” While the Kochs finance the Tea Party, Soros has and some measure of immortality in the charitable Soros’s Open Society Foundations, which been a major funder of Barack Obama and, now, work they have undertaken. Think Nobel, Carnegie, finance projects around the world, are founded on Hillary Clinton. Rockefeller and Pew. Men today like Bill Gates and seven core principles, or what he calls the condi- But New York Times columnist Frank Rich has Toronto’s Peter Munk carry on in much the same tions needed for an open society: regular, free and noted the key difference between the Kochs and tradition, endowing charitable works and academic fair elections; a free and pluralistic media; the rule Soros. Although David Koch has made some large institutions with their very public benevolence. As of law upheld by an independent judiciary; con- donations to medical and cultural institutions, Porter reveals, Soros is consumed with an even stitutional protection for minority rights; a market the Kochs typically finance political activity likely grander vision: to use his riches to promulgate his economy with a safety net and opportunities for the to improve the profitability of their energy and own ideas in an attempt to steer the broad course disadvantaged; the peaceful resolution of conflict; industrial empire. Soros supports causes that are of events. Whether in central Europe’s emergence and the enforcement of laws to curb corruption. unrelated or indeed antithetical to his business from communism, Africa’s battle with corruption His greatest project came in eastern and central interests. The Kochs pursue a libertarian agenda or America’s struggle with inequality, he aims at Europe after the fall of the Iron Curtain and break- grounded in social Darwinism; Soros embraces a nothing less than to have the world bend to his will up of the Soviet Union. Soros spent huge sums liberal ideal in which the state provides a moral and the grand arc of human history shaped by his supporting liberal politicians, creating think tanks foundation and checks the worst excesses of a cap- monumental ego. and even founding the Central European University italist economy. But is he actually a philanthropist—a “lover of in Budapest, all with the aim of entrenching Will he succeed? Porter, who like Soros is humanity”? The same question could be asked liberal democracy. The New Republic magazine Hungarian by birth and has published two previous of other billionaire donors. In Soros’s case, he once described him as “the single most power- Hungarian-themed works of non-fiction, suggests has, Porter tells us, “such a low opinion of human ful foreign influence in the former Soviet empire.” that his impact may not be as demonstrably effect- nature that he is rarely surprised by what we do to Not all his influence turned out as planned. In his ive as he would wish. ourselves.” It is not clear whether her book’s title is native Hungary, young men whom he supported as Soros, now living his third life as a public intel- meant to be ironic. Can one “buy a better world”? emerging liberal leaders have embraced a virulent lectual (speculator and philanthropist were the first Is “billionaire philanthropy” an oxymoron? form of nationalism and intolerance for dissent. In two), is hated by many people throughout Europe As detailed in previous biographies of Soros and Russia, the oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who and the United States. While that may be the fate quickly sketched by Porter, he spent his earliest was Soros’s ally, had his business confiscated and of all soothsayers, in his case it matters a great deal years as a Jewish child in Nazi-occupied Hungary, was jailed on what western observers insist were because those who could change the way the world as his father concealed the family’s Jewish identity. trumped up charges in a bid by Vladimir Putin to functions are not listening to him. Without delving into pop psychology, it is safe to crush opposition. Porter ends her book on an almost wistful say that experience coloured his world view, includ- Soros was an easy target for Putin, who demon- note—that Soros’s lasting legacy may be limited to ing his distaste for the “tribal loyalty” of Jewish ized him as conspiring with corrupt oligarchs to the university in Budapest. That would be “ironic,” people worldwide. Now, in the interviews granted undermine the Russian state. Ironically, Putin’s she says, “because the one thing that Soros has denunciation foreshadowed a similar line of attack never wanted was an edifice, a building to house Shawn McCarthy is a national business corres- from a slew of right-wing commentators in the West. his ideas.” But if he finds it possible to set aside his pondent for The Globe and Mail, covering energy In particular Soros has become the bête noire of the ego, Soros can take pride if not in his attainment of and the environment from the paper’s parliament- American right for his support of liberal causes and an ideal, at least in his strenuous effort of its pur- ary bureau in Ottawa. He has served as The Globe’s politicians. For example, his foundations have been suit. He has put his shoulder to the wheel—and his New York correspondent and parliamentary a prominent force in the effort to reform a harsh fortune to the service—to achieve a more open and bureau chief. He is also president of the Canadian penal system that has been devastating to African- just society. Surely, that is legacy enough for any Committee for World Press Freedom. American men. He is also denigrated by the right man.

September 2015 reviewcanada.ca 9 Ties that Bind Understanding Quebec’s unique brand of multiculturalism. Martin Patriquin

of acceptance in Quebec. The Interculturalism: English version, Interculturalism: A A View from Quebec View from Quebec, was published Gérard Bouchard in January. It is less an addendum Translated from French to the Bouchard-Taylor report than by Howard Scott a treatise on “interculturalism,” one University of Toronto Press of the report’s little understood 221 pages, softcover precepts. ISBN 9781442615847 Although you have probably never heard of it, interculturalism is the Quebec government’s official he Muslim teacher, she accepted way of integrating immi- worried, would drive her grants into its society. You read that Tchild to extremism. A man right: much as Quebec did not sign was convinced the Muslim faith was Canada’s Constitution Act, 1982, ruining Christmas in Quebec. A it never endorsed the country’s fellow from Quebec City said he multiculturalism policy of 1971. was sick of being forced to purchase Multicultural in fact, Quebec is not kosher food at the supermarket. multicultural by law. In Gatineau, a man stood up and Not that the Quebec govern- stabbed the air with his finger. “Why ment realizes as much. The earliest do the Jews have their own hospi- ­reference I could find to intercultur- tal?” he bellowed, referring to Montreal’s Jewish “Consultation Commission on Accommodation alism was in a Quebec government policy paper General Hospital. Practices Related to Cultural Differences” as one of in 1981. It remained a favourite of certain policy These comments were made voluntarily, in my first assignments for Maclean’s. Up until the rea- wonks, Bouchard included, until at least 2011, public, by citizens who, far from being cowed by sonable accommodations business—you run out of when I first wrote about the subject. Despite being the abject ignorance tumbling from their mouths, breath trying to say the formal title—the most I had official Quebec policy, no one in government could often seemed possessed by or drunk on their own suffered from Canadians living outside of Quebec tell me how long it had been in place. “It’s been like righteousness. At the head of these often packed was the typically earnest cluelessness about the that for a number of years, I think,” a spokesperson meetings, two weighty intellectuals nodded and province’s French fact. for Quebec’s immigration minister told me at the (usually) thanked the participants. Sometimes they Things changed when, in early 2007, the town time. He did not appreciate my chuckle, or seeing asked questions. Often their faces were masks of of Hérouxville (population: 1,235 almost entirely his name attached to the quotation the following weariness and frustration. white, francophone souls) published a code of con- week. So went the latter half of 2007 for Gérard duct outlawing, among other things, religious face To be fair to the poor fellow, Bouchard him- Bouchard and Charles Taylor, the two intellectuals coverings, stoning of women and the “genital muti- self cannot pin down the date in a book largely who were mandated by Quebec’s Liberal govern- lation” of the town’s womenfolk. More than one dedicated to the subject—much less give it a def- ment of the day to travel the province to take its friend called me to ask, more earnestly than usual, inition that does not span a 30-page chapter. A pulse on “reasonable accommodations”—the “What the fuck is going on there?” Hérouxville non-verbose definition of interculturalism is a tall practice of granting special provisions to religious seemed to confirm the unspoken beliefs many have order, because as Bouchard points out it describes minorities. It was a long slog, for Bouchard and about Quebec society as an unwelcoming bastion a policy as well as the process by which this policy Taylor as well as for the press corps, which faithfully of social austerity, one perpetually frightened that came to be. “[Interculturalism] particularly found followed the pair around as they attracted roomfuls its uniformity might be disturbed. I could stand the its source in what was perhaps the most important of mostly disgruntled people. endless stripper, poutine and dépanneur jokes from cultural change of the Quiet Revolution, namely a To be fair, many people were disgruntled pre- my Ontario brethren. But Quebec as a racist back- redefinition of the French Canadian nation, now cisely because there were so many other people water? It hurt—much as the truth might. centred in Quebec,” Bouchard writes. inferring that immigrants and other non-whites Clearly, Gérard Bouchard was off put as well. In the interest of clarity, here is my definition: were ruining Quebec’s distinctly lapsed Catholic Apparently, co-authoring a 310-page report on interculturalism is a contract between new arriv- version of Christmas and the like. Yet as Bouchard what became known as Quebec’s reasonable als to Quebec and Quebec society itself, through and Taylor found out, it was impossible to ignore accommodations crisis with Charles Taylor was which integration of all Quebecers—immigrant the legions of mouth breathers for whom, to borrow not enough for the Saguenay-born professor of or ­otherwise—occurs through a shared, French- the words of an even weightier intellectual, l’enfer, history and sociology (and older brother of Lucien, speaking culture. Or, even simpler: speak French c’est les autres. Quebec’s former premier). In 2012, four years after in public, engage Quebec culture in general, and I covered what was officially known as the this report was published and promptly ignored anxieties over cultural differences will evaporate by the very Liberal government that had commis- like so much sap through a still. Martin Patriquin is the Quebec bureau chief for sioned it, Bouchard published a book furthering Interculturalism lies somewhere between Maclean’s magazine. his thoughts on immigration and the conundrum multiculturalism’s fetishization of difference

10 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada and France’s assimilate-or-die model that has of Quebec society to reduce underemployment the PQ’s proposed charter sought to restrict the effectively disenfranchised several generations of among new arrivals, a factor that exacerbates social wearing of what it called “overt and conspicuous” mostly North African immigrants. For Bouchard, marginalization.” religious symbols by Quebec’s public sector work- interculturalism is both a survival mechanism for In a sense, Interculturalism is at odds with ers. Unlike Bouchard, who favours a restriction on French in Quebec and the balm to soothe Quebec’s Bouchard’s own work on the Bouchard-Taylor com- religious accoutrements only for those with powers ailments vis-à-vis the integration of newcomers mission. There was a good reason that the trusty of coercion (police, judges and the like), PQ minis- within its borders. media corps followed Bouchard and Taylor around ter and charter architect Bernard Drainville wished “What matters is that the exchanges and inter- the province for nearly six months. Outraged people to restrict such things from the heads, necks and actions advocated by interculturalism engage the make for good copy; outraged people saying outra- lapels of anyone drawing a government paycheque. majority and the minorities in a dynamics of open- geous things on the record is even better. It points Such a prohibition was necessary, he said at the ness and rapprochement rather than one of to a larger truth about the reasonable accommoda- time, to “recognize and affirm some of the funda- entrenchment and tension,” he writes, in a sentence tions debate: it was by and large a media construct, mental values that define us as Quebecers.” only an intellectual could conjure. Multiculturalism ginned up and splashed onto the front page of Le Others saw it as a cynical pre-electoral gambit to celebrates differences at the expense of all else. Journal de Montréal, Quebec’s largest circulation rally the Parti Québécois base—the white, French Interculturalism—“born of the rejection of multi- newspaper, which catalogued just about every per- nous (“us”)—on the backs of the province’s cultural culturalism,” as Bouchard writes—makes difference ceived immigrant affront to Quebec’s culture, often communities. Notably, Quebec’s Muslim, Jewish possible through the radical sameness of a com- with 60-point headlines. and Sikh communities were united in their out- mon language. The Bouchard-Taylor report documents every rage, and more than one wag suggested Montreal I wonder. Doubtless, part of many Quebecers’ flashpoint leading up to the 2007 reasonable should be renamed Drain Ville. That is exactly what prickliness with immigration is language based. accommodations “crisis” in its table of contents; would happen to the blessed city if the charter Many Quebecers were outraged when Montreal’s it reads like a chronology of the Journal’s own became law. Hasidic community asked the admin- Bouchard was apoplectic at the istration of a city YMCA to frost their Interculturalism lies somewhere prospect of such a law. His defining front windows, if only to shade the moment came during an appearance eyes of the little pischers from the between multiculturalism’s with Drainville on the popular talk phalanx of sweaty female flesh jig- show Tout le Monde en Parle in the gling away on the treadmills. They fetishization of difference and fall of 2013. “You are legislating on were all the more so upon discovering matters that you don’t understand,” that much of Quebec’s Hasidim can France’s assimilate-or-die model. Bouchard said, with a hint of his hardly speak French. brother’s deliciously indignant fury. And Mordecai Richler did not only enrage breathless coverage, which gave the perception that “You went into this whole thing being ignorant of nationalists by pillorying Quebec language laws, immigrant hordes were carpet bombing Quebec the situation.” but also by his inability to string two French words society with endless, religiously based demands for The PQ government lost the ensuing election in together when defending himself on television accommodation. 2014, and along with it went Drainville’s charter. as well. (This was hardly his fault; like the vast Predictably, reality was slightly more benign. In It is a moment of triumph for Bouchard, who sees majority of non-Francophone students of his era, 2013, I asked Quebec’s transport ministry, which the PQ’s collapse—it was the party’s worst electoral the Quebec government kept him from attending has more than five million yearly interactions defeat in terms of popular vote in 44 years—as a French school.) with the public, how many requests for religious kind of reaffirmation that Quebecers are funda- Language, though, is hardly the passport into accommodations it had received. The answer: five. mentally a welcoming people. “Every opposition blissful Quebecitude that Bouchard seems to think. No wonder Bouchard and Taylor referred to the party in the National Assembly came out against Take Quebec’s Islamic population. It doubled reasonable accommodations debate as a “crisis of the proposed charter and close to half of Quebecers between 2001 and 2011, according to Statistics perception.” rejected the charter,” he writes. Canada data, and today represents nearly 10 per- In Interculturalism, though, Bouchard gives So: is Quebec more xenophobic than the rest of cent of Montreal’s population. As far as language legitimacy to these loud voices, suggesting they are the country? Maybe, maybe not. One thing is certain, and education are concerned, you could not ask for a reflection of profound and perpetual uncertainty though. The question cannot be answered based better candidates. The bulk of these immigrants are as to the future of French in North America. “Public solely on the sideshow of the Bouchard-Taylor com- from the former French colonies in North Africa, sentiments, especially in times of crisis, can be mission. Mistrust of difference is alive and well across and are by and large university trained. Unlike fueled by baseless or objectionable motivations, the country as it is everywhere. The one difference Quebecers de souche, they are generally prolific at and we therefore need to be wary of them and fight is that the Quebec government, for good or ill, gave making babies, which is all the better to bolster the them,” he writes. “But the mood of the population people a public forum to proudly voice this mistrust. province’s moribund birth rate. can also express a form of wisdom.” And, later, Okay, two differences. Quebec is also home to Yet immigrants to Quebec, North Africans very “francophone Quebec faces constraints that are the only mainstream political party in Canada much included, suffer from the highest unemploy- a source of vulnerability and that fuel a feeling of to exploit this mistrust for political gain. Although it ment rate of any such group in the country—nearly insecurity.” failed miserably in 2014, its current leadership has 12 percent, according to a 2011 Statistics Canada Of course, of course. The man practically retch- since doubled down. During a March leadership study. Part of the fault lies with Quebec’s guilds ing at the prospect of consuming kosher food and debate to replace Pauline Marois, who resigned and professional orders, which like many others in the woman worried that her son’s hijab-wearing on election night, leadership hopeful Pierre Karl Canada are often slow to recognize degrees from kindergarten teacher will convince him to strap on Péladeau pressed the necessity of separating foreign universities. a suicide vest are not blatantly xenophobic; they Quebec from Canada post haste. “We don’t have There is another potential, more troubling rea- are merely expressing their worry that new arrivals 25 years ahead of us to achieve it,” he said. “With son. First generation Muslims tend to be more reli- to Quebec cannot properly conjugate the verb être. demographics, with immigration, we’re definitely giously observant; as such, many Muslim women It is all the more disappointing that Bouchard losing one riding each year.” wear the hijab and, less often, the niqab and abaya. gives even an ounce of credence to this hateful There were echoes of Jacques Parizeau’s “money They tend to stick out on the streets of Montreal— claptrap, given his own take on immigration. Like and some ethnic votes” comment, which he uttered never mind in the off-island hinterland—even the Maple Leaf–draped multiculturalist he decries following the Parti Québécois 1995 referendum more than their typically swarthy, bearded hus- throughout the book, Bouchard is a firm believer in defeat. Unlike Parizeau, Péladeau apologized for bands. Although they speak French like blazes, the necessity of immigration. He takes to task the his remarks. Many Péquistes, though, wondered these immigrant groups do not always adhere to the paleo-nationalist argument that increasing immi- aloud why he would do such a thing. After all, they “Quebec values” of secularism, equality between gration levels will turn Quebec into some sort of said, it is the truth. men and women and what Bouchard obliquely multiculturalist gulag. Perhaps the real measure of Quebec’s tolerance refers to as “national memory.” Bouchard hits his stride in Interculturalism’s for others does not hinge on Quebecers’ embrace Could this be a factor in the dismal unemploy- afterword, written in the wake of the Parti of interculturalism. Perhaps it depends on how suc- ment numbers? This is a huge problem, as Bouchard Québécois government’s so-called “Quebec values cessful the Parti Québécois will be in seeking out quite rightly points out in Interculturalism. “The charter.” Introduced to the Quebec public by way electoral favour by targeting those who do not look most serious failure of integration is the inability of a leak to (you guessed it) Le Journal de Montréal, like nous.

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12 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Drug Deals How to shift policy toward universal pharmacare. Danielle Martin

accelerated. The dusty shelves Ideas and the Pace of of parliamentary libraries are Change: replete with recommendations National Pharmaceutical spanning decades for universal Insurance in Canada, public pharmacare from royal Australia and the United commissions; yet still many Kingdom patients take their medicine Katherine Boothe every other day when it gets University of Toronto Press close to the end of the month. 217 pages, hardcover The burning question in ISBN 9781442648630 Canadian pharmaceutical policy reform is not whether change is needed. It is how we can make realized my patient that change happen. “Julie” probably had mul- This is the kind of question Itiple sclerosis. She did not that political scientists thrive on, know it yet. She had come in and Boothe does not disappoint. to see us in the family practice She proposes a framework for clinic because she had suddenly how change in pharmaceutical lost her vision in one eye. What policy has taken place in three followed was a blur of special- countries based on the notion ist appointments, MRI scans, that the pace of change matters. difficult moments breaking the For Boothe, three key factors news to her family and friends, drive whether and how quickly and the slow process of coming policy change occurs: the degree to terms with life as a young of centralization of institutional woman with two small children decision-making power, the living with a chronic and poten- particular policy ideas that are tially debilitating disease. Canada is the only developed country in the entrenched in the minds of political elites, and the That should have been enough for her to deal world that has universal hospital and medical motivations of voters to rally behind certain policy with. But when the price tag for the medication she insurance but lacks equivalent pharmaceutical proposals or ideas. needed came in, things got worse. The annual cost coverage. In a country where so much national For me, like many Canadian physicians and for the medicine Julie needs is $25,000—and she pride is invested in our healthcare system, how can advocates determined to push, pull and, if neces- probably has to take it for life. She has insurance this be? sary, drag Canada toward universal public pharma- coverage through her husband’s employer, but like In Ideas and the Pace of Change: National care, this analysis is not purely academic. I read many private insurance plans, it does not cover the Pharmaceutical Insurance in Canada, Australia Boothe’s book with an eye for strategy, seeking full cost. Julie and her husband were left wondering and the United Kingdom, Katherine Boothe tries some instruction on what is needed to achieve a where they were going to find the balance. to answer this “understudied empirical puzzle.” An breakthrough. The decentralization of power in Across Canada, one in ten people do not take adaptation of her doctoral dissertation, the book Canadian health care is unlikely to change and medication as prescribed because of concerns uses archival, interview and polling data to com- public support for universal pharmacare in Canada about cost. I see those people in my practice pare the pharmaceutical policy histories of Canada, is already high. So I zeroed in on her concept of every day. Some have no drug coverage at all: they the United Kingdom and Australia. The purpose policy ideas among elites. Where do Canadian pol- are self-employed consultants, people working of the analysis is to understand why, when it comes itical elites get their policy ideas from? And what part-time jobs, nannies, taxi drivers. Others have to pharmaceutical insurance, Canada has followed will it take to convince them that it is time to make coverage through private or public drug plans but, a path of policy stasis. a big change in the world of pharmaceutical policy like Julie, they cannot afford their co-payments or This book is aimed primarily at an academic in Canada? deductibles. audience, but it addresses an issue that should Ideas about the feasibility and wisdom of concern us all. We have a drug problem in Canada: pharmacare have been highly resistant to evidence Danielle Martin is a family physician and the vice- a problem of high prices, poor access and variable and common sense. Boothe politely explains that president of medical affairs and health system solu- quality of prescribing. Change is needed, so a book this is because “both radical and limited ideas share tions at Women’s College Hospital in Toronto. She about how it happens should be welcomed by all of a tendency to become sticky: early ideas become is a senior fellow at the WCH Institute for Health us, especially in an election year. entrenched and difficult to change over time.” System Solutions and Virtual Care and an active I cracked the spine of this book with hope in In other words, once a politician—or a political researcher, policy expert and unabashed advocate my heart. In doing research for my own upcoming policy advisor—has made up his or her mind about for national pharmacare in Canada. She is grate- book on how we can make good on the promise whether pharmacare is worth an expenditure of ful to Jay Shaw for his assistance in preparing this of Canadian medicare, I have been seeking to political capital or public funds, it is going to be review. understand how change occurs, and how it can be hard to change that person’s mind.

September 2015 reviewcanada.ca 13 This is not specific to those working in politics— Why? In part it is because the narrowed scope Tinkering around the edges, as we have done for ideas are sticky for all of us. A study in Medical Care of those sticky ideas held by political elites has a the last 50 years, is clearly inadequate. But in order in 2013 demonstrated how the beliefs of those with strong tendency to resist growing any wider. We for quick, radical change to happen in health care, knowledge of politics were more resistant to fact are prisoners of our own history, and the prospects many constellations of stars have to align. checking about “death panels” in the United States for health policy reform are held captive by the Boothe suggests that “perhaps the first goal for than those with less knowledge of politics. The relatively narrow ideas of those who set our health setting reforms in motion is to convince a broad more we know, the less we think we can learn. system in motion. range of Canadians that the problem of public So where do the “restricted policy ideas of elites” Boothe demonstrates the importance of these pharmaceutical insurance is worthy of attention on pharmacare come from? Boothe traces a long central ideas through her in-depth case studies and action, even amid other pressing concerns history of ideas passed on from government to of policy change in Canada, the United Kingdom about health policy reform.” Considering the government, including the idea that “initiating this and Australia. The three countries examined have entrenchment and divisiveness of political ideolo- type of benefit would result in an expensive pro- much in common, but a study of their approaches gies, perhaps remaining focused on the public is gram with no potential for cost control.” to developing health insurance policies reveals indeed the only way ahead. The concern about the potential cost of pharma- important differences. I closed this book with a heavy sigh, because care is a sticky idea that has proved hard to push The UK implemented universal public pharma- at the end of all that analysis one comes back to a back against. This is ironic, given the fact that care simultaneously with the forming of the painfully obvious observation: if you want the pol- countries with universal public iticians to do something, the people pharmacare spend much less than have to demand it. No amount of we do on drugs. A year’s supply Across Canada, one in ten people do economic analysis, policy dooms- of cholesterol-lowering Lipitor, day predictions or international for example, costs at least $811 in not take medication as prescribed shaming will cut it. Canada ($140 for the generic ver- There is some sign of movement sion); in New Zealand, where a pub- because of concerns about cost. on the political front—the NDP, lic authority negotiates prices on the Liberals and the Green Party behalf of the entire country, it costs of Canada have expressed varying $15. On the basis of numbers like those, a recent National Health Service in the 1940s. In other degrees of support for some amount of change. economic analysis I co-authored with my colleague words, it did “radical” change all at once, and sub- The centrality of the issue in their platforms and Steve Morgan and others estimated that Canada sequent refinements have generally respected the during the campaign will depend on us. Until the could save $7.3 billion annually under universal, basic structure of a national public health service phones of the country’s constituency offices ring single-payer pharmacare. that supports hospital, medical and pharmaceut- off the hook and candidates are questioned on If we negotiated centrally for prices more as is ical needs. front stoops and in local debates, change will come done in other countries, bought our medicines in Australia, like Canada, implemented its health slowly, if it comes at all. If only all those people who bulk and substituted generics where appropriate, insurance plan in phases—but unlike Canada, it suffer from a lack of drug coverage could take time the billions of dollars saved could be reinvested in started with pharmaceutical insurance. Boothe away from their precarious employment to commit ensuring that everyone has access to the medicines therefore compares the UK, in which national to such advocacy for their needs. they need. Yet concerns that pharmacare would public insurance was established all at once (a big But pharmacare is not just a policy for the poor. be too expensive persist among decision makers, bang or radical approach to policy implementa- Even for those Canadians who have drug coverage or dragging the file to the bottom of their priority lists. tion), to two countries that chose more incremental can afford considerable out-of-pocket spending on In the face of resistance among elites, there are approaches. drugs, the rising cost of prescription medicines and two possible approaches to making policy change. The central argument presented in this book is the potential for avoidable health system costs if they The first is incremental: start small, and go slow. In that “a country’s pace of policy development in a are not used correctly should be of concern. One 2002, the Romanow Commission recommended given policy area is predictable ... [and the] early can hope, then, for a coalition of advocates across that the place to start would be catastrophic drug approach to policy development has a crucial effect income lines on this issue in the months to come. coverage, a type of public plan that protects patients on the scope of program adoption, as it produces Books about political economy face a test of with very high drug costs from going bankrupt. and maintains restricted ideas among elites and relevance to present-day struggles. If we are to use In the 13 years since that recommendation, the public that limit future program expansion.” The rigorous analysis of history to make the world a nearly every province has adopted some form of history of the healthcare policy portfolio acts on the better place, that analysis needs to offer us a way catastrophic plan, so that once a person spends ideas of political elites, and vice versa. When they forward. Ideas and the Pace of Change sketches a between 3 percent and 10 percent of income on inherit a limited scope, prospects for meaningful pretty bleak picture of our prospects for change prescription medicine, public coverage kicks in. change are slim. when it comes to pharmacare in Canada, but it In theory, incremental change should lead to So where does that leave us on pharmacare in also suggests fairly convincingly that with the right more small steps along the path. In practice, at least Canada? Having started with incremental ideas, political will, there is a route to universal coverage. in Canada, it seems to have led nowhere. The stra- and then allowed sticky concepts to shape the view If “major change is rare but not impossible,” the tegic intent of the Romanow Commission was that of what is possible and achievable in the minds of current election cycle may offer that rare moment “starting with a more limited universal program policy leaders, can we hold out any hope? where it happens, perhaps first among the public [i.e., catastrophic coverage] would allow for later Despite the incremental path we have fol- and then among policy makers themselves. expansion.” Despite this hope, the views of elites lowed in Canada, pressure for universal public My patient Julie found a way to pay for her MS about the feasibility of subsequent steps on the pharmacare is mounting. Provincial ministers of medication. Her private insurance plan picks up road to universal pharmacare remain unchanged. health are increasingly recognizing that, with the part of the tab. A paid employee in the public hospi- And on the ground, few people have 5 percent of rise of expensive “blockbuster” drugs that save tal MS clinic whose job it is to figure out how to get their income available to spend on medicine in lives but cost huge amounts of money, their only medicine for patients with MS helped her apply for order to meet the bar for public coverage. So the hope of controlling budgets is to drive prices down a “compassionate access” program run by the phar- change cannot be over yet. to the levels seen in other member countries of maceutical company that covers much of the rest of There is another school of thought besides that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and the cost. Extensive system navigation skills, persis- calling for incremental change. Known as the “big Development. This can be done only if they band tence and savvy are required for patients like Julie bang” approach, it has been highlighted in the together and pool their purchasing power in the to get their basic medical needs met in our country. work of University of Toronto health policy scholar global market for pharmaceuticals. Boothe calls our history on this file “not encour- Carolyn Tuohy, and now by Boothe. Employers, who currently provide drug coverage aging.” I think it is downright depressing. This is the policy equivalent of ripping off the for a slim majority of Canadians, are increasingly The major lesson to be drawn from Ideas and Band-Aid. Herein lies the key to the argument of vulnerable as the costs of their insurance plans rise. the Pace of Change is that big change requires the Boothe’s book: contrary to theories of incremental Private insurers have no incentive to control costs “rare conditions” of a strong idea, a strong gov- change, in practice it is the pace of policy change that or ensure appropriate prescribing. In short, we are ernment and an energized electorate with high itself dictates opportunities for future policy reform. in a pickle. So if there is something to be learned expectations. If change is going to happen it needs Big bang change reinforces its own outcomes. about how to do better, we should learn it—and to happen quickly. To my mind, it cannot come fast Incrementalism makes big change more difficult. fast. enough.

14 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada CO-PRESENTED WITH a national festival of politics, art and ideas

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Jaron Lanier Lee Maracle Penderecki String Tim Lilburn DJ Cyclist American computer Aboriginal writer Quartet Canadian poet and Mark Penner has been scientist, computer and critic who has Quartet-in-residence essayist, and author a fi xture in Canada’s philosophy writer published six novels at Wilfrid Laurier of nine books of live funk scene for and composer. A and collections of University since 1991, poetry and several years. As “Cyclist,” pioneer in the fi eld short stories. earning international anthologies of his solo sound is of virtual reality. recognition as one poetry criticism. infl uenced by the of Canada’s most early 1980s era of respected chamber underground dance ensembles. music.

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The Literary Review of Canada convenes a panel discussion with recipients of the 2014 SSHRC Impact Awards, to consider the value of the social sciences and the humanities, the potential interconnections among their various research agendas, and the ramifi cations for Canada’s children and youth. The annual SSHRC Impact Awards recognize the highest achievements in social sciences and humanities research. They highlight exceptional researchers and celebrate their achievements in research, research training, knowledge mobilization and outreach activities.

Thomas Lemieux, professor of economics and director of the Vancouver School of Economics at the University of British Columbia, will examine the gap between rich and poor, youth in the labour September 29 | 5pm market and education inequality. George Ignatieff Theatre Nico Trocmé, director of the School of Social Work and the Philip Fisher Chair in Social Work 15 Devonshire Place at McGill University, will look at child welfare agencies, child abuse, neglect and the placement of Toronto children in out-of-home care, often with a focus on First Nations children. Wendy Craig, professor and head of psychology at Queen’s University, will focus on healthy relationships, bullying and victimization, sexual harassment and aggression in girls. Kirk Luther, Ph.D. candidate at Memorial University specializing in forensic psychology, will consider at how to improve youth access to legal information and working with youth protection agencies, law enforcement and international networks. Moderated by Mark Lovewell, interim editor of the Literary Review of Canada

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September 2015 reviewcanada.ca 15 Your Fat Daughter Remembers What You Said

My dad was in the hospital cafeteria eating lasagna when I was born.

I was making lasagna at home when he flat-lined. Months before he died, my dad carried a small portable cabin Symmetry. through the woods with a buddy and said If that doesn’t kill me, nothing will. My mom has low blood pressure. My dad’s was high. And I Irony is the new black, Dad, am a gymnastics school dropout and you know it’s slimming. with an inherited need to redefine balance (I always sat immovable on the seesaw You’ll be 200 pounds with a pile of kids trying to dethrone me.) by the time you’re in grade eight. (Age 10) (CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!) I’m fifteen, telling my parents I’m gay. Dad says: I was eating smoked meat yesterday on the Boulevard I know you think you are and noticed that the goods are measured on a silver scale ’cause you’re a bigger girl emblazoned with the slogan: “We Weigh the World.” and boys don’t like you. The same company produces a tool called a “strain gauge” which indicates how much pressure is being put upon an object. I start a list of his remarks like this. I saw a picture of a strain gauge glued across a crack in a brick house. When his heart stopped for the first time, Am I the house or the gauge or am I the picketer with a placard that I was making lasagna with my first girlfriend. says She was closeted and was supposed to be elsewhere, the possibility of collapse cannot be determined by formula—? maybe on an elephant eating cardamom marshmallows and counting every lucky constellation that she and her father I’m sorry I’ve been so hard on ya. can’t find in the light-drowned night sky of Mumbai. Don’t want you to end up like me. (Age 18)

There you were when you were skinny as a rail! Lose weight was the last thing my dad ever said to me Dad says this when we all watch an old video. but I don’t think it was the first. I am four in the video. The sea that crashes in my stomach is percussive Lighten up, he’s just trying to encourage you! Dozens of Captain Morgan mickeys clinking as they bob atop the waves Encourage me to what? A voice crying out for a recitation of the messages stuffed in those bottles Choose a photograph from your hard drive and invert the colours. Heavy ambient ocean air that drowns them out Stare at it for thirty seconds. Close your eyes and then open them in front of a flat white wall. His last line echoed only with the empty-theatre hollowness of his Now, each time you blink, you will see the photograph own gut as if it’s been branded on your insides. With the hum of capsizing winds passing over the beer bottles that I’m sure that somewhere a nun is doing this sat in his stomach with a digitized painting of white hippie Jesus They were jammed with his mother’s own abusive misspellings She’s shrieking with vengeful glee, “That is the power of the holy and with fortunes that didn’t come true spirit!” Is it possible to hate a ghost The image is everywhere and nowhere, but it’s no spirit. who has always already It is a matter of light and the physics of memory and haunted himself It is the way in which this list of comments reappears to me through you? each night and blink. Even if trauma is so last season. You are going to trim your chin hairs I’m doing just fine. for your grandmother’s funeral. I still check my vital signs when I microwave lasagna. Oh yes, you can see them. I rub my stomach when it gets choppy. I was noticing them in the light the other day. I eat lots of berries and dip my mozzarella sticks in ranch. Get your sister to help you do it. I’ve known since age four Girls don’t have chin hair. (Age 14) how to distinguish a lightning rod from a switch from an olive branch. My dad had wild white and black hair and a neck beard. My mother’s family has curls that go Brillo-pad in Atlantic air. I have these dreams, though, where I’m floating. I have it all, from chin to chubby toes. How was I to know Where I wave down to my chiropractor, that I ought to be ashamed my old music teacher, and my dad. to be the heir apparent All I know is that I’m going really far away to my parents’ hair? and when I wake up, I can’t remember if the dreaming-I was sad. You thought holy communion was a snack? You would think that. (Age 6) Lucas Crawford

16 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada A Geranium Lives Longer Lucky

The Guinness Book number Than Childhood is seven — the most anyone He has to stay home alone after school today. has been struck by lightning. His mother is going uptown shopping. Roy. A park ranger. I imagine It is already a dark January afternoon as he watches her taxi leave. him tall, a slight curve He can hear the house’s small noises and looks around for something, to his shoulders as if cocked a place to wait. He can almost smell the winter for the unexpected. Burns, in the geranium on the windowsill. lost toenails, cuts from above. A single icicle hangs down outside, directly He had his hair catch fire twice. above the red flowers, like Damocles’ sword. What hurts most is the note: But the geranium is safely indoors and will he was a suicide years later, still be safe when the icicle falls in spring; after the woman he loved geraniums live longer than icicles or winter; rejected him. Scarred shoulder, geraniums live longer than childhood. ankles that twitched and ached at static and ozone, that musk He already wants to be a bit like that, making his skin crawl — student in the back row, potted flower without fragrance, what else but to be deserted just an earthy odour that men trust and old women find comforting. by love? By God’s hand made: Tough, leathery branches concluding in blossom a fingerprint in stone and dust, year after year. A little water and sunlight is all he figures returned — lucky, unlucky — he’ll ever need. Like now, he will be able to stand to this earth whose love darkness and neglect for a while all by himself — should of our bones is all we know. not everyone? must not everyone? whom would you make immune, besides yourself? Michael Johnson

He pulls up a stool and waits by the window for the taxi to return in the dark, headlights feminine as any embrace he’s felt. He is glad he isn’t his mother. He is relieved to be just a boy, a plant someone waters. It must be nasty to go out in the cold and jump into a tobacco-stinking taxi, then do your shopping with scarce money, come home to a helpless son. A son who might just occasionally have the gall to ask for a certain main dish — or dessert. It is easier sitting here with perfect eyesight waiting for cars to come down the street piercing the dark with lighted lances. He is content to see the quick kiss before the door opens and his mother gets out. The man also gets out and hands her parcels from the trunk. In the red of tail-lights and exhaust, they stand toe-to-toe, shopping bags in her hands, her head and back in his. The boy will not ask why she kisses taxi drivers, because right now he doesn’t have to know.

Barry Butson

Lucas Crawford is the author of Sideshow Barry Butson’s sixth collection of poetry comes out Michael Johnson is from Bella Coola, British Concessions (Invisible Publishing, 2015), which from Altadore Press in fall 2015 and is called small. Columbia, and works at a vineyard in Okanagan won the 2015 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative He is currently reading as many George Gently Falls. His work has appeared recently in Poetry, and Transgender Architectonics (research mysteries by Alan Hunter as he can find. Another Shenadoah, Weber, Poetry East, Event and PRISM monograph, 2015). Lucas is the R.W.W. Junior book he is actually re-reading is a memoir by Welsh International, among other publications, and Chair at Simon Fraser University and the 2015 writer John Barnie called Footfalls in the Silence: his first collection, How to Be Eaten by a Lion, is Critic-in-Residence for CWILA (Canadian Women A Memoir. forthcoming in 2016 from Nightwood Editions. He in the Literary Arts). In preparation for teaching a is currently immersed in Brigit Pegeen Kelly’s The course on food writing, Lucas is currently reread- Orchard, Jeff Latosik’s Safely Home Pacific Western ing Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential: and the memoir A Childhood: The Biography of a Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, Jeanette Place by Harry E. Crews. Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry, as well as travel- ogues about pastrami and olive oil. Lucas grew up in rural Nova Scotia and is currently based in Vancouver.

September 2015 reviewcanada.ca 17 Love Hurts Lovers face up to loss and betrayal in Jane Urquhart’s new novel. Robin Roger

For the characters in this novel, substitute par- lover, Tam contemplates the adulterous couple The Night Stages ents fill the void. In the case of Tamara Edgeworth, in the mural painted by an artist who dabbled in Jane Urquhart her nanny compensated for parents who were infidelity himself. There is always a third party, who McClelland and Stewart otherwise engaged: “She had loved her nan … and is present in the heart of one of the lovers but phys- 396 pages, hardcover loved her still in some buried, deep way, often ically absent from the picture. ISBN 9780771094422 dreaming about her very early in the morning, Yet for all these trysts and clandestine loyal- so that she would wake with the comforting feeling ties, The Night Stages is not an erotically charged that this uncomplicated, affectionate woman was book, even though physical contact is movingly n her eighth novel, The Night Stages, Jane sleeping in the next room.” described: “There was always that one moment Urquhart revisits and elaborates themes fam- Niall, her sometime lover, has a brother Kieran, she waited for,” writes Urquhart of Tam, “when he Iiliar to readers from such earlier works as The from whom he is estranged. When their morphine- would place his forehead at the intersection of her Underpainter and The Stone Carvers. Anchored by addicted mother jumped off a cliff, the childless neck and shoulder … the rest of her life without the story of the creation of a monumental work and widowed housekeeper Gerry-Annie proved a him vanished; then language, then geography until of art, as well as the aesthetic and sentimental far more effective caregiver, particularly for Kieran, there was only the white rectangle of the bed and apprenticeship of the artist, her new novel explores whom she transformed from a tantrum-throwing how they moved there. There was the soft zone the vicissitudes of familial and romantic love and misfit to a local hero. beneath his ribs at the place where his waist met his the struggle to heal from its dis- hips, and her own waist twisting in appointments. The additional his hands, his breath entering her theme of a sustained and complex Yet for all these trysts and clandestine throat.” sibling rivalry makes The Night The exchange of breath rather Stages equal to The Underpainter, loyalties, The Night Stages is not an than bodily fluids, the caress of which justly won the Governor erotically charged book. non-erogenous zones, conveys the General’s Award in 1997. tenderness and nurturing quality In the early 1960s, 40-­something of this couple’s encounters. Niall’s Tamara Edgeworth, a British transplant to Ireland, Fathers are similarly deficient. Niall and Kieran’s gesture of placing his forehead against Tam’s neck is finds herself grounded by fog for three days in father becomes “prematurely old and absent” when one of trust, not lust. It is mute physical commun- Gander International Airport while en route to their mother dies. (He is a poignant variation on ion. Ironically, this kind of trust only seems possible an uncertain future in New York City. This stalled Austin Fraser’s distant father in The Underpainter: between lovers who are betraying someone else. condition illuminates her own emotional paralysis “Emotion was almost entirely absent from the In the culminating scene, Niall recounts to as the enthralled lover of Niall Riordan, a married contact we had with each other.”) Tam regards her Tam his realization that his fiancée had betrayed man with whom she has been entangled for many father as a “fool … Opinionated, sometimes blind to him when he sees her weeping over Kieran’s years. Tam had been a trailblazer during World War the suffering of others, and, always opportunistic, injured shoulder. Observing Niall’s rage at the sight Two, flying, landing and hiding crucial military air- … the kind of fool who preys on the foolishness of of the tender care given to his brother, Tam fully craft (the character was inspired by the remarkable others.” Niall becomes the protégé of the meteorol- grasps the depth of envy that drove him to enforce Canadian female aviator Vi Milstead Warren, who ogist McWilliams while Kieran is coached to a state the marriage, not only to separate Kieran and his earned her pilot’s licence in 1939). Yet she now lives of physical and spiritual perfection by the mystical fiancée, but also to condemn himself to a loveless a shadow life, sketching planes instead of piloting role model Michael Kirby, whose understanding of marriage as punishment for defeating his brother them, while waiting for Niall’s visit, “(becoming), in brain development is decades ahead of his time. in love. every possible way, a passenger.” It is as if Tam and the Riordan brothers had “I don’t believe that life offers us many con- As she endures her weather-imposed passivity multiple partial parents rather than two whole solations of the same size and weight as it offers us Tam studies the mural that dominates the pas- ones. This may explain why there are so many love hurts,” wrote the Irish novelist and memoirist Nuala senger lounge, Flight and its Allegories, by Kenneth triangles in The Night Stages (as well as in other O’Failain. “But we can patch things over with what Lochhead, a seminal Canadian artist known as one Urquhart works). After one looks for love from life does offer.” fifth of the Regina Five, finding figures and motifs multiple sources, one partner is never enough. That Jane Urquhart shares this Irish sensibility is that stir thoughts about her life and its impasses. Before Tam, Niall was the angle in another triangle evident in the modest, domestic way that Tam and Like a striking number of characters in composed of himself, his fiancée and his brother, Kieran patch over their lives. Solitary, industrious Urquhart’s work, Tam has suffered from chronic- Kieran. Kenneth Lochhead, whose fictionalized household maintenance seems a rather mundane ally inadequate parenting. Even though Urquhart’s story threads through the narrative, recalls his men- solution to their dramatic struggles, but it locates characters do not suffer violent abuse for the most tor at the Philadelphia School of Fine Art, Harding, each of them in a secure domain that gives them part, they are often victims of a different kind of a married man who recounts his torturous involve- hope. Tam aborts her trip to New York and returns cruelty. Parental shortcomings in her fiction tend ment with another man’s wife. While working in to the Kerry County cottage where she once felt in the direction of childishness, preoccupation, 1957–58 on the mural that catches Tam’s attention loved by Niall. Kieran ends years of homelessness obtuseness, neglect and other insensitivities stem- a few years later, Lochhead reminisces about the by returning alone to Gerry-Annie’s now empty cot- ming from severely limited characters. married woman who failed to meet him for the tryst tage and taking up its repair. they arranged in Italy, and depicts another philan- Like many of us, Urquhart’s characters set out in Robin Roger is a psychotherapist in private prac- dering couple he observed during his travels. life with major hopes and end up living in a minor tice in Toronto, as well as a contributor to Musical The mural acts as a kind of telescope on infidel- key. It is this plaintive melody that makes her writ- Toronto and senior editor of Ars Medica. ity. While trying to break away from her married ing so resonant.

18 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Sisters in Jazz In Kim Echlin’s novel, music brings two troubled women together. Gail Singer

American. At the time of the murders, Mahsa was was look away for a moment while her young child Under the Visible Life only 13. was playing by the water. Kim Echlin It is clear that Mahsa adored her father Abbu, Mahsa thinks, “I do not know why I did not squat Hamish Hamilton who had played jazz piano for fun, but what she down beside him … and coax him away from the 348 pages, hardcover remembers most clearly is her father’s adoration shore.” And then, the boy reappears, unharmed. He ISBN 9780670065325 of her mother, known as Mor. The sexual charge is safe but Mahsa’s own fears and guilt feelings (she within her parents’ relationship is imprinted on had, after all, brought the boy to New York!) engulf Mahsa’s memory. Mahsa recalls, “That night Abbu the child, and he cries. “I pulled him away as if my im Echlin, in Under the Visible Life, traced his finger along Mor’s blouse below her neck imagined dangers were more important than his her first novel since the success of The and said, Your collarbone is the place on earth contemplation of what was real.” Perhaps because KDisappeared, which was nominated for I love the most.” As she develops as a pianist, very Mahsa’s own parents, who would have gathered her the 2009 Giller Prize, tantalizes the reader with much against her strict and humourless aunt and in their arms and made sure she knew how much a brief epigraph from jazz genius John Coltrane: uncle’s wishes, she struggles against the intensity of she was loved, had been snatched away from her “I start in the middle of a sentence and move in her liminal attachment to her father. in so horrifying a way, she is not able to connect both directions at once.” Perhaps because Echlin has chosen to regulate herself to that level of maternal emotion. If that had been on a playbill for a Coltrane the pace of her narrative by alternating chapters Katherine has married a fellow musician. concert, I would have been there in Although her husband is most a minute, because he really knew Katherine’s deep memories have given often on the road playing music how to do that, not because he was and dallying with drugs and other telling a particular story (which her a courage lacking in Mahsa, who women, she seems to understand he could also do brilliantly) but and forgive him so powerful is because he could reach so deeply opts for an arranged marriage to an the man’s attraction and her love inside himself that he made you for him. She repeatedly takes feel as if you were one with him, unpleasant self-absorbed businessman him back, wanting the thrill he one with the music, no matter provides her and the comfort where it lead. Echlin, on the other who cannot give her love. he gives to their children. The hand has assumed a different kind passages that dwell on their of role: she is going to tell you only what you need to between these two characters, the story is at times physical relationship are hot, steamy, sexy, know, and it is up to you, the reader, to decide if you hard to follow. They do not match up emotionally believable, and in stark contrast to Mahsa’s cold want to come along on this trip. Her story structure or aesthetically, their fundamental rhythms are and dutiful relationship with her husband. is more like the musical notation for a piece of at odds, but they share the struggle of mixed The reader may recall Patti Smith’s memoir Just improvised jazz, “trading eights” or “sixteens,” two parentage, love-addled mothers and an attachment Kids, which charts the course of Smith’s life from instruments playing with a melody, four or eight to music, specifically the piano, as a kind of her beginnings as the child of a successful waitress bars at a time, until one or the other musician runs salvation. Eventually, when Katherine and Mahsa to her unconditional determination to becoming an out of steam. So this has the feel of a very modern meet in Montreal and play music together, their artist. The names of the great music, art and literary novel. respective losses tie them to one another. characters of the 1960s are sprinkled through the Echlin weaves her melodic or narrative lines Echlin draws out the moments in these women’s pages. In Under the Visible Life, the names of jazz around two characters. The first is Katherine, a lives that hearken back to the circumstances of greats similarly pepper the narrative, as idols, as Chinese Canadian who grows up in Hamilton, their childhood. Katherine’s deep memories have friends, as great musical artists. Katherine had a Ontario, never knowing her father, who had long given her a courage lacking in Mahsa, who opts real life with these folks; Mahsa, except for the latter ago returned to China. She and her single mother for an arranged marriage to an unpleasant self- portion of her life, seems, by comparison, to have shared a love for—we learn early on—Frank Sinatra absorbed businessman who cannot give her love, learned and experienced little. and Billy Holiday. but requires her to appear to be a good wife. In An aneurysm ends Katherine’s life prematurely. Katherine’s mother brought her to the hotel his words, “I have done everything I was supposed I found myself missing her and resenting Mahsa’s where she worked; here Katherine would sit and to.” He is the antithesis of her beloved father, late-life good fortune. It is Mahsa who is there to listen to musicians plying their trade. The young his demands the polar opposite of her father’s play the piano, to make a solo recording, to mourn girl’s way out of the narrow life she saw her mother enchantment with her mother. When Mahsa and the loss of her dear friend, and to be with her own condemned to was to offer her services as a her husband have children together, they become very first love, to love him and be well loved in self‑taught pianist to the ballet classes in her school his weapons. He makes demands upon her by return. gym. She was not quite 16 and this was her first gig. playing on her maternal anxieties. It is a terribly sad tale and, like certain jazz tunes, The second character is Mahsa, a half Pakistani Her attempts to free herself read as childish and flounders a little toward its conclusion. There are and half American “mixie,” whose parents were fraught with danger. One day Mahsa turns up in no happy endings here, just great music to console murdered by relatives “dishonoured” by the New York, taking with her the baby and her young the listener, and the reader. Echlin has taken us marriage of their Pakistani sister to a forbidden son Asif. She and Katherine meet in a park with into the jazz world of the 1950s and ’60s, a world their children. Mid conversation, Mahsa discovers unlikely to be rekindled, but with a certain flavour Gail Singer is a jazz lover and documentary film that Asif is missing. The reader (me) panics. Does of melancholy and intensity that should not be maker living in Toronto. she really deserve this turn of events? All she did forsaken by us.

September 2015 reviewcanada.ca 19 Rule by Merit Is China’s political system superior to western democracy? James Miller

system of government. Bell argues not just that appalling outcomes of recent democratic revolu- The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the China model, which he defines as democracy tions or military impositions of democracy across the Limits of Democracy at the bottom, experimentation in the middle and the world, it would risk a disaster of epic proportions Daniel Bell meritocracy at the top, is overall quite successful if China were to undergo a similar revolution. With Princeton University Press in terms of results. He even dares to suggest that the well-being of a fifth of the world’s population at 336 pages, hardcover political meritocracy is, on its own merits, a rational, stake, not to mention the impact on global finance, ISBN 9780691166452 fair and viable alternative to liberal democracy. trade and economics, no one can afford the risk of Now is the time, he believes, to have a debate about Chinese turmoil. But it is not unrealistic to expect the merits of liberal democracy and the merits that China should enact administrative reforms to t was a typical Beijing scene. I was in a of the broadly Confucian model that China is in promote worthy cadres and improve the process of private room in a restaurant having dinner with the process of enacting. But Bell knows from bitter political decision making. In fact, it is already doing Ia handful of academics, the head of a Daoist experience how difficult it is to raise the question so. China’s cadres must now pass a whole series of temple, a rich young businessman, a senior official of democracy’s flaws and at the same time praise exams, performance reviews, peer assessments and in the central government, plus the usual coterie of China’s successes. In careful, clear and measured other mechanisms designed to reward competence wives, protegés and assistants. The 15-year Maotai prose, he works hard to overcome prejudice, defuse and talent rather than patronage, class or privilege. was flowing and the boisterous At the same time, it must also be priest was making frequent and noted that China is experiment- extravagant toasts around the Daniel Bell uses his intimate knowledge of ing with democratic reform on table. I had just finished reading local levels and within the party, The China Model: Political China to argue that political meritocracy and it is not yet clear which Meritocracy and the Limits of is better than liberal democracy. reform process will be effective Democracy and my head was in weeding out corruption. buzzing not with the smooth and A tug at my arm interrupted potent spirit but Daniel Bell’s compelling argument emotions and discuss the pros and cons in the cool my intellectual reverie. The priest had come over in favour of political meritocracy, the notion that language of political philosophy. This, perhaps, is to offer a toast. I stood up, and together we shouted power should be distributed according to ability the book’s greatest contribution. “gan bei,” drained our glasses and displayed their and virtue rather than on the basis of democratic Of course, Bell readily admits that the China emptiness for all the table to see, a time-honoured elections. model has its flaws in practice, but not substantially tradition of male bonding through the performance For a Torontonian who survived the Rob more so than democracy in countries such as of alcoholic prowess. The women sat across from us Ford years, it was not hard to be convinced that America or Canada. Democracies distribute power and smiled demurely. The assistants and protegés democracy may not be the best way to distribute to those with superior wealth, looks, charisma, pol- were starting to wonder when they would be able political power. The only way the city made any itical cunning or rhetorical flair. Is there any really to leave the table and steer their staggering patrons progress during those dark ages was thanks to good reason why a televised leaders’ debate or the home. And then I realized that it did not matter to the unelected, meritocratically promoted civil ability to perform well in a parliamentary question me whether or not people in the West should accept servants who tried to make the best out of the period should be a mark of political talent? Why Bell’s arguments, or even read his book. What really circumstances. The city’s ongoing transit fiasco, should the administrative talents of unprepos- mattered was whether political meritocracy could not to mention Vancouver’s failed referendum, also sessing civil servants ultimately be subject to the truly be embedded in China and overcome the provide compelling evidence that the democratic class of people who are able to charm and captiv- powerful, patriarchal and homoerotic networks process inhibits rational policies that should ate the public with their catchphrases, one liners of political, cultural and economic interest, such advance the social and economic well-being of the and sound bites? Is it truly democratic when the as the one that was being performed around the general public. Add to that federal tax and spend- uneducated poor are bamboozled by carefully dining table that night. Perhaps the litmus test of ing policies that favour the wealthy and the elderly crafted messaging into voting against their own political systems should be which most quickly over the poor and the young, and the program for social, political and economic interests? When achieves equality of political power between men political meritocracy that Bell lays out should come liberal democracy becomes a vehicle largely for the and women. I could be persuaded to ditch liberal as a welcome relief. A Canadian political philoso- legitimation of the interests of the rich and power- democracy for Confucian political meritocracy if pher who has spent many years teaching in China, ful, as it arguably has become in the United States, I could be convinced that meritocracy could truly Bell uses his intimate knowledge of the country and to a lesser extent in many other western coun- achieve gender equality. But the practical reality of to argue that political meritocracy is better than tries, then surely it is more than flawed; it is deeply Confucian culture has been to promote patriarchy liberal democracy, not only in terms of its ability immoral. When hypocrisy is so deeply entrenched and meritocracy in equal measure for more than to deliver social and economic benefits, but also in in the democratic process, surely it is no wonder 2,000 years, and there are few signs that this per- terms of its underlying fairness. that The Daily Show takes over from the New York verse alignment is about to end. In so doing, he attacks the sacred cow of western Times as the leading form of political discourse. As for Bell’s pro-meritocratic arguments, will liberal democracies, namely, that democracy must Here lies the crucial point: the solution to they be influential? In the West, only those will- intrinsically be, if not the best, then at least, in China’s problems lies not in swapping one flawed ing to contemplate the potential flaws of our own Winston Churchill’s famous terms, the least bad political system for another but rather in making political system will pay The China Model much sure that practical, successful meritocracy is attention. But its distinctive perspective deserves to James Miller is a professor of Chinese studies and ever more deeply embedded within China’s be injected into China’s internal debates. If it is, Bell the director of the cultural studies interdisciplinary government. It is simply unrealistic to expect that will have achieved a rare feat—to span the chasm of graduate program at Queen’s University in China’s Communist Party will voluntarily move to misunderstanding that so often bedevils relations Kingston. a multiparty liberal democracy. Given the often between China and the West.

20 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada The 2015–16 season THE LRC PRESENTS

@ Hart House at U of T

Michael Den Tandt Measuring Canada’s Middle Class is a Canadian writer and political journalist. He is the winner of numerous Ontario newspaper awards for his reporting on the October 6 rise of political debate over the state of Canada’s middle class. 7:00 pm Hart House, Music Room

Marc Lewis Why Addiction Is Not a Disease is a neuroscientist and professor of developmental psychology and author of the critically acclaimed book Memoirs of an October 20 Addicted Brain: A Neuroscientist Examines His Former Life on 7:00 pm Drugs. George Ignatieff Theatre

Alain Deneault Tax Haven Canada is a researcher at the Réseau Justice Fiscale, a lecturer in Political Science at Université de Montréal and the author November 3 of Canada A New Tax Haven: How the Country That Shaped 7:00 pm Caribbean Tax Havens is Becoming One Itself. Hart House, Debates Room

Bessma Momani The Silent Promise is a professor of political science at the University of Waterloo of Arab Youth and the Balsillie School of International Aff airs, focusing on the December 3 International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, petrodollars 7:00 pm and economic liberalization throughout the Middle East. Hart House, Debates Room

Gordon G. Chang China’s Turbulent is the author of The Coming Collapse of China and Nuclear Third Era Showdown: North Korea Takes On the World. He has briefed the February 2 National Intelligence Council, the CIA, the State Department 7:00 pm and the Pentagon, and has appeared on CNN, BBC, CBC and Hart House, Debates Room The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Girl Power: Sally Armstrong The Rising Economic is a journalist, documentary fi lmmaker and human rights Potential of Women activist. She was a member of the International Women’s March 1 Commission at the United Nations and covered stories in 7:00 pm confl ict zones across the globe. Her most recent book is Ascent Hart House, Music Room of Women: A New Age Is Dawning for Every Mother’s Daughter.

Tickets are FREE for subscribers, $10 for the general public and $5 for students. Special subscription rate available at $49/year including a ticket to this event and subscriber access to future events in the series.

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September 2015 reviewcanada.ca 21 TRUE GRIT

June Mickle is an inspiring biography of a woman Rogues and Rebels introduces dozens of larger-than- who grew up during the depression on a small ranch life Westerners—some infamous, some obscure—who in southern Alberta. Thanks to her steely determination, dared to be different. Bestselling author Brian Brennan sense of adventure, and true grit, she led her family to chronicles mavericks, iconoclasts, and adventurers become one of the most important mountain outfitters in who threw away the rulebook, thumbed their noses at Western Canada. convention, and let their detractors howl.

Rocky Mountain Books rmbooks.com uofrpress.ca

22Shared Ad ad for LRC.indd 2 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review2015-08-13 of Canada 1:40 PM Shifting Fortunes Uncovering Canada’s role in corporate tax evasion. Michael C. Webb

Canada: A New Tax Haven — How the Country That Shaped Caribbean Tax Havens Is Becoming One Itself Alain Deneault Translated by Catherine Browne Talonbooks 224 pages, softcover ISBN 9780889228368

ublic conversations about taxation have long been dominated by conservative Pdemands for tax cuts for those much cited icons—job-creating businesses and hard-working families. Less attention has been paid to the issue of who pays more tax to fund tax cuts for others. This is changing in many countries. Economic insecur- ity, inequality and pressure on government budgets create a receptive environment for scandals about wealthy individuals hiding money in offshore tax havens and profitable multinational companies such as Apple avoiding taxes in many countries in which they operate. Alain Deneault has been deeply involved in the Canadian backlash against international tax evasion and avoidance, and the publication in English of Canada: A New Tax Haven trast, tax avoidance means using legal mechanisms also accompanied by lax regulation. Businesses — How the Country That Shaped Caribbean Tax to reduce taxes owing. Aggressive tax avoidance establish shell operations with little substantive Havens Is Becoming One Itself aims to aid the cam- is using tax provisions to reduce taxes in ways activity in tax havens, and use a variety of tech- paign by social justice advocates to pressure Ottawa not intended by the legislation. It is difficult to niques to shift income and profits to those shell to take the issue more seriously. draw precise boundaries between acceptable and operations to avoid paying taxes in the countries The book is grounded in a spirited defence of aggressive tax avoidance, and between aggressive in which the income actually was earned. Classic taxation’s role in funding the state and its programs, tax avoidance and tax evasion. examples include tiny offshore islands such as the including social programs but also the economic Deneault argues that the language of tax Caymans and Barbados, as well as land-locked policies and legal system that benefit corporations avoidance helps legitimize questionable moves Luxembourg and Switzerland. Tax havens began and wealthy individuals. This is in sharp contrast to to reduce taxes, and that we should focus on the to emerge as soon as governments started taxing most of the specialist tax literature, which revels in real consequences rather than get bogged down personal and corporate income, although their complexity, technicality and legal issues, obscuring in definitional and legal issues. He claims that number and impact have grown enormously in the the crucial political and social issues at stake. In Ottawa’s approach is to “fight tax fraud by legal- era of globalization. Importantly, if perhaps sur- fact Canada: A New Tax Haven occasionally suf- izing it. The government simultaneously condemns prisingly, the emergence of offshore tax havens was fers from the opposite problem, as technical details the fraudulent use of tax havens and encourages long tolerated and sometimes even encouraged by with important political and social implications their legal use by corporations and the very rich.” powerful western countries because the existence get lost in the course of criticizing government This is viewed as part of a much larger problem: of these jurisdictions eased the global expansion of policy and corporate behaviour. Still, this is a valu- “the framework of capitalist globalization makes it business across national boundaries. This para- able contribution to a debate that merits serious possible for powerful people to bypass the consti- dox has been examined by Ronen Palan, Richard attention.­ tutional principles that are the foundation of states, Murphy and Christian Chavagneux in their land- It is useful at this point to define some key and Canada in this sense is actively pursuing its mark 2010 study Tax Havens: How Globalization terms. Tax evasion is intentionally concealing or own destruction.” Really Works. misrepresenting activities to escape taxes. In con- These are strong claims. Let’s begin with the Deneault argues that Canada played a key role assertion in the title. Most analysts, including in the development of Caribbean tax havens such Michael C. Webb is a professor of political science Deneault, agree the two key features that define as the Bahamas, Barbados and the Cayman Islands, at the University of Victoria whose research and a tax haven are: a) low or no taxes on income, at one point describing them as “Canada’s crea- teaching focuses on global political economy. He is especially income from business and investment; tures.” This is an overstatement; while Canadian author of a number of studies of the Organisation and b) secrecy rules that enable individuals and banks, individuals and businesses played a role, the for Economic Co-operation and Development and businesses to hide assets and income from other historical literature shows the United Kingdom’s its work on international corporate taxation. governments. Low taxes and secrecy are usually government and the City of London were much

September 2015 reviewcanada.ca 23 more important. Lengthy chapters in Canada: A lem of tax-exempt earnings from tax havens worse duced to block aggressive tax avoidance usually New Tax Haven focus on the development of vari- in 2009, when it extended the exemption to income carve out a range of activities that are acceptable— ous Caribbean tax havens and include lots of enter- repatriated from countries that did not have a consistent with the book’s claim that Ottawa fights taining stories about criminals laundering money tax treaty but were willing to sign a tax informa- tax fraud by legalizing it. Anti-avoidance measures and about the misdeeds of various Canadian tion exchange agreement with Canada. Current also, in the words of Canadian tax experts Brian J. investors, but most are only loosely relevant. To TIEAs do little to reduce tax avoidance and eva- Arnold and James R. Wilson, “often provide taxpay- support the claim that Canada had a role in creating sion because information is provided only when ers with a road map to avoid the application of the the Caribbean havens distinct from the roles of pri- the requesting country has detailed information specific rules.” Deneault shows how the problem vate individuals with connections to Canada, more on the suspected tax fraud—the kind of informa- is made worse by the willingness of the courts to attention needs to be paid to describing and analyz- tion often unavailable because of secrecy rules permit aggressive tax planning as long as the tax- ing what the Canadian government did or did not in the tax havens—and because many havens do payer can show any possible business purpose for do to support the emergence of these havens. For not collect or have the administrative capacity to transactions designed mainly to avoid taxes. For example, it would be helpful to example, in 2012 the Supreme explain the events and reasoning In 2012 the Supreme Court legitimized Court legitimized a common behind the 1980 decision to sign aggressive tax avoidance strat- a tax treaty with Barbados that a common aggressive tax avoidance egy by siding with pharmaceut- allowed Canadian companies to ical company Glaxo against the repatriate untaxed profits from strategy by siding with pharmaceutical Canada Revenue Agency. The CRA Barbados to Canada exempt from had claimed that Glaxo’s Canadian Canadian tax. company Glaxo against the Canada subsidiary paid far too high a Regardless of how they came to price for a drug it imported from a be, there is no doubt the Caribbean Revenue Agency. Swiss affiliate, thereby reducing its tax havens enable large-scale tax Canadian tax bill by $51 ­million. avoidance by multinational corporations. This provide relevant information. Deneault is rightly Canada: A New Tax Haven, like the author’s leads to the book’s central claim: “instead of fight- outraged: “tax havens couldn’t line up fast enough earlier co-authored Imperial Canada Inc., pays ing tax havens, Canada is bringing its own regime to enjoy the benefits of a Canadian-style agree- particular attention to mining companies, arguing into compliance with the pattern established by its ment, including the certainty of attracting money that Ottawa and Ontario have made a concerted formidable rivals.” Hence the book’s subtitle: “How seeking to escape the taxman.” He accuses the effort to establish Toronto as the global centre of the country that shaped Caribbean tax havens is government of duplicity, “stimulating offshore mining investment using tax incentives and secrecy becoming one itself.” activity while pretending to fight tax havens.” rules that shelter companies from accountability But is Canada itself becoming a tax haven? However, he only briefly notes the move in the G20 for exploitative labour and environmental practices Ottawa does tax Canadian-owned compan- and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation in developing countries. However, aside from the ies lightly on profits earned abroad. In theory, and Development since 2013 to exchange infor- already-discussed exemption of overseas corporate Canadian-owned companies are taxed on their mation automatically rather than only on request. earnings from Canadian tax, most of the discus- worldwide income, in contrast to countries that tax This promises to make tax information exchange sion of mining focuses on domestic tax incentives nationally owned companies only on the income much more effective. In 2014 Ottawa committed to or non-tax supports Canada provides for mining earned in the home country. But in practice, as introduce automatic exchange of information start- companies at home and abroad, and therefore adds Deneault documents, Canadian multinationals ing in 2018—­consistent with the recommendation little to the title argument. This points to a weakness take advantage of a variety of policies to avoid in Canada: A New Tax Haven that Ottawa adopt of the book; there is a tendency for the core argu- Canadian tax on their international earnings. Most something like the Foreign Account Tax Compliance ment to get lost in details of corporate misbehav- important, the earnings of affiliates in countries Act in the United States. (Canada’s new policy is iour of many kinds, matched by insufficient clarity that have tax treaties with Canada are exempted based on the OECD standard, which was inspired on the specific tax measures in need of reform. from Canadian taxation, on the assumption that by FACTA.) Questions remain about the implemen- Deneault also points to cuts in corporate tax the income was already taxed abroad. However, tation of the new standard, but the impact on tax rates as evidence of Canada’s becoming a tax haven. Canada has tax treaties with a number of tax havens evasion likely will be substantial. The federal rate is now below that of the United such as Barbados that do not tax the income in The automatic exchange of information will States and many other OECD countries, which question. Canadian companies therefore chan- have less impact on tax avoidance, the key problem Ottawa touts as an incentive for investment. This, nel a large share of their international operations for corporate taxation. It is well documented, by plus relaxed enforcement of anti-avoidance meas- through tax havens. Unfortunately, Deneault pro- Deneault and others, that Ottawa tolerates some ures, should undermine frequent business calls vides few recent examples of specific Canadian degree of tax avoidance by multinational busi- for lower taxes: “there is absolutely no need to try companies’ tax-avoidance accounting, no doubt in nesses. The reason was made explicit in the Finance and make the Canadian jurisdiction competitive; part because of the secrecy that surrounds corpor- Department’s response to the auditor general’s it already is.” Still, the combined federal and aver- ate taxation, but aggregate statistics are illuminat- 1992 criticism of the non-taxation of foreign affili- age provincial rate is comparable with that of many ing. Citing a study by Jean-Pierre Vidal, Deneault ate earnings: “international norms limit the range other OECD countries and notably higher than in notes that the share of Canadian foreign investment of options available to the Canadian government tax havens such as Ireland and Switzerland. The going to Barbados rose from 0.7 percent in 1987 to and, in this context, the government’s policy has overall burden of corporate taxes in Canada is right 7.7 percent in 2006. The share going to Barbados generally been to favour competitiveness concerns at the OECD average (2.9 percent of gross domestic and other tax havens has continued to increase; over those of revenue generation.” In effect, other product). In 2013–14, Ottawa took in $36.6 billion according to Statistics Canada, in 2014 the stock taxpayers subsidize the overseas expansion of in corporate income tax revenues, far less than the of Canadian foreign direct investment in Barbados Canadian multinationals and the investments of $130.8 billion in personal income tax revenues but totalled $71 billion. This amounts to $249,000 for foreign multinationals in Canada, though we have substantially more than from the goods and servi- each of the 280,000 Barbadians, and is enough to no estimates of the size of these subsidies. In this ces tax ($31.0 billion). rank this tiny tax haven second only to the United and other policy areas, competitiveness seems to It is true that $36.6 billion is a lot of money, States among recipients of Canadian foreign dir- be an all-purpose excuse for pro-business policies. and it is hard for this observer to reconcile that ect investment. The UK has slipped to third, with Canada also lowers the tax burden on Canadian- amount with the book’s depiction of Canada as the Cayman Islands and Luxembourg—both tax owned multinationals by allowing loopholes in an emerging tax haven. One answer to the puzzle havens—filling out the top five. Rapid growth in the so-called anti-avoidance rules intended to prevent is that the CRA’s anti-avoidance measures are not Caribbean operations of Canadian banks also testi- companies from shifting profits to foreign tax wholly ineffective. By focusing almost exclusively fies to the increasing role of tax havens in Canadian havens. The most important are rules about transfer on the part of the glass that is half empty (i.e., companies’ overseas operations, and (not incident- prices, the foreign accrual property income rules on opportunities for tax avoidance by Canadian- ally) helped the banks dramatically increase the and rules to limit income stripping by means of owned multinationals), Canada: A New Tax Haven share of tax-exempt income in their total earnings. interest payments on loans from tax-haven affili- misses reasons why corporate tax revenues remain Tax avoidance is the reason for the concentration of ates to Canadian operations. Deneault identifies substantial. Even though outnumbered by the outward investment in tax havens. important flaws in these rules and concludes they armies of accountants and lawyers employed by The Conservative government made the prob- are ineffective. Anti-avoidance measures intro- multinational corporations, tax auditors do limit

24 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada opportunities for income shifting and tax avoid- foreign accrual property income or transfer-price radically different approach. Nevertheless, stricter ance, and the courts do rule against some avoid- regulation, but the public should be able to assess enforcement of OECD guidelines could improve ance schemes. The rules are occasionally revised the overall impact of government policies. The tax fairness. The guidelines are complex, which to block tax planning techniques that exceed what recent Offshore Leaks, Luxembourg Leaks, and puts a huge administrative burden on governments Ottawa is prepared to accept, although Deneault Swiss Leaks data releases by the International wanting to defend tax revenues against the armies points out that in some cases rules are changed Consortium of Investigative Journalists show that of tax experts employed by multinational firms to make legal what was previously not permitted. publicity can generate pressure on governments to and the tax service industry. Stricter enforcement A recent example of the former is the 2015 budget do more about tax avoidance and evasion. would require hiring more tax auditors, but the proposal to limit companies’ ability to avoid taxes Opportunities for international tax avoid- resulting rise in tax revenues means the increase on income shifted to so-called captive insurance ance are made worse by another recent trend in would be self-financing. The 2015 budget proposes companies in tax havens. Multinational compan- Canadian tax policy. In the past, light taxation of steps in this direction, with an increase in aud- ies establish these companies in order to pay them corporate profits was sometimes justified with the its of large, complex businesses—domestic and for insuring Canadian risks, with the profits earned argument that the profits would eventually be taxed ­international—expected to net almost $200 million from that insurance going to the tax-haven affili- in the hands of shareholders. But Canada has also annually. ate. The foreign accrual property Canada should also strongly income rules are supposed to ensure While multinational companies have support an ambitious conclusion Canadian companies pay tax on the to the OECD’s BEPS project, which profits of the captive insurance com- lots of scope to avoid Canadian Deneault suggests Ottawa has so pany, but tax specialists found ways far been reluctant to do. The BEPS around those rules and in recent corporate taxes, the country is not project does not fundamentally years the CRA has been continually change the flawed traditional OECD playing catch-up in response. becoming a tax haven—yet. approach to taxing multinationals, What does all this mean for the but it initially promised to address book’s central argument? While multinational dramatically reduced the taxation of investment the key mechanisms of international corporate tax companies have lots of scope to avoid Canadian earnings at the level of individuals, by reducing avoidance created by that approach. BEPS now corporate taxes, the country is not becoming a tax capital gains taxes, taxing dividends at a reduced faces intense opposition from multinational busi- haven—yet. If not taxing the overseas earnings rate and introducing generous tax-free savings nesses, the international tax planning industry and of nationally owned companies makes a country accounts. Corporate profits now are lightly taxed at American political leaders concerned it will help a tax haven, most countries are tax havens and both the corporate and individual levels. The fact foreign governments tax U.S. multinationals more the term becomes meaningless. Canadian- and that most investment earnings and the associated heavily. Without strong political support from other foreign-owned companies together pay a substan- tax breaks go to the wealthiest Canadians makes the member-country governments the BEPS project tial amount of income tax, even if one believes problem worse. could suffer the same fate as the failed Harmful Tax they should pay more. Deneault also provides little Can anything be done to limit international cor- Competition project launched by the OECD in the evidence that Canada fulfills the traditional role of porate tax avoidance and promote tax fairness? The late 1990s. a tax haven—a location in which to establish a shell concluding chapter of Canada: A New Tax Haven Incremental and diplomatic measures like these company and shift foreign-earned profits to it in lists a variety of technical solutions identified by would not meet the more far-reaching demands order to avoid foreign taxes—although the situation other analysts, and expresses the hope that growing outlined in Canada: A New Tax Haven, but could of some mining companies comes close. citizen awareness led by social advocacy groups make the tax system less inequitable. The efforts This does not mean the problems identified in means “the people will learn to re-establish insti- of groups such as Canadians for Tax Fairness and Canada: A New Tax Haven are insignificant—to the tutions in their own likeness.” This seems unlikely the global Tax Justice Network show it is difficult to contrary, the book highlights some critical issues. if the book’s description of the political power of generate public understanding and concern about Ottawa has made a great deal of tax avoidance legal economic elites is accurate. But Deneault is correct a policy area as dry as corporate taxation, and for businesses and wealthy individuals, thereby to highlight the need for greater pressure from cit- it is also difficult to mobilize a social movement lessening the burden on those best able to pay. In izens, which will require continued efforts to lift the around incremental and diplomatic measures such contrast, individuals earning wages and salaries shroud of secrecy that surrounds corporate taxation as those just described. While not the definitive have no choice about how their income is taxed in Canada. These efforts should include pressur- analysis of the problem, Canada: A New Tax Haven and cannot structure their earnings to minimize ing the government to provide estimates of the tax should help inspire concern and possibly even taxes. Furthermore, the complexity and secrecy gap as discussed earlier. Also crucial are efforts to greater pressure from the Canadian public. that surrounds international corporate taxation reveal the international tax-avoidance strategies mean those taxpayers who compensate for the lost used by specific companies—Canadian and foreign corporate tax revenues—mainly wage- and salary- owned—and the impact on their tax bills in Canada. earners—are not aware of how they are subsidizing The international Tax Justice Network has called for the expansion of multinational businesses. The country-by-country reporting of the activities and Give monthly. situation is exacerbated by the growth of a sophisti- tax payments by multinational companies. This cated legal and accounting sector devoted to help- could have a powerful impact by enabling citizens Support the LRC with a monthly ing multinational firms avoid taxes. The sector also to assess whether those companies are paying a fair donation and help us sustain all is the most influential lobby on international tax share of taxes. our publishing and program- issues, for example supplying many of the experts There are also measures Canada could take ming activities. drafted by government to advise on policy. to tax multinational firms more effectively. These Another important contribution Canada: A include a modest increase in the corporate tax Provide ongoing, reliable, regular New Tax Haven makes is to highlight the Canadian rate, especially since recent cuts have not gener- government’s refusal to gather and publish infor- ated the promised increase in business investment. sources of funding for the LRC mation about international tax avoidance and Anti-avoidance measures could be strengthened. with automatic withdrawals. It’s evasion, in contrast to the attention it pays to small- The OECD has developed detailed guidelines for an easy and convenient way to scale domestic tax fraud. The government refuses taxing multinational corporations, and is currently give. And you can change your to estimate the revenues lost to international tax preparing specific recommendations for combat- mind at any time. avoidance and evasion, unlike many other coun- ting so-called base erosion and profit shifting. The tries including the United States and the United OECD’s traditional approach is partly responsible Kingdom. In various reports the auditor general of for the problem of aggressive tax planning; it Every gift—at every level—makes Canada estimates losses in the hundreds of millions requires multinational corporations to artificially a significant impact. of dollars. The Department of Finance rejects those divide their integrated global operations into separ- estimates but has not provided its own. Information ate national accounts, and companies take advan- Visit like this is critical for democratic accountabil- tage of this to locate profits in low-tax jurisdictions reviewcanada.ca/donate. ity. It is not realistic to expect the public to have and costs in high-tax jurisdictions. It is not feasible well-articulated views on the technical details of for a single country such as Canada to pursue a

September 2015 reviewcanada.ca 25 Leo’s Web A new look at Strauss’s ideas helps reveal their influence in Canada. Mark Sholdice

key offices in the Bush administration. This attempt What explains the popularity of these ideas Leo Strauss: Man of Peace nevertheless failed to take notice of more import- about Strauss’s agenda and influence? Perhaps, Robert Howse ant influences on neoconservative foreign policy, like all conspiracy theories, the idea of Straussian Cambridge University Press such as the nuclear war theorist Albert Wohlstetter. subversion helps to give a simple and coherent nar- 202 pages, softcover The differences between Strauss’s thought and the rative to complex world events (such as the Second ISBN 9781107427679 ideas of his students and followers were blurred in Iraq War) or political ideologies (such as Stephen an attempt to place the roots of the Iraq War in the Harper’s unique brand of modern Canadian con- philosophic work of an obscure German émigré servatism), which would otherwise have to be n recent years, particularly after the who had died in 1973. acknowledged to arise from a confusing multipli- United States invasion of Iraq in 2003, there has Straussian conspiracy theories are currently city of sources and motives. For instance, the fact Ibeen a flourishing cottage industry in portraying popular on the Canadian left, frequently drawing that Strauss was a major influence on a decidedly political philosopher Leo Strauss as the godfather a spurious connection between Stephen Harper non-neoconservative Canadian such as George of a nefarious and multigenerational neoconser­ and the teachings of Leo Strauss. Numerous writers Grant is conveniently forgotten by the promoters vative conspiracy to promote the rule of strife and have tried to find the roots of Harper’s conservatism of these theories, as it needlessly complicates the unreason. As an undergraduate, narrative. Who, then, is the real I first discovered this German pol- At the University of Calgary, Harper, Leo Strauss? itical philosopher through a 2004 Leo Strauss: Man of Peace is BBC documentary by filmmaker albeit a student in economics, supposedly an excellent corrective to the con- Adam Curtis entitled The Power spiracy theories, because Howse of Nightmares, which purported fell under the sway of a Straussian returns to Strauss’s lectures and to show the parallels between writings to get at the real meaning Strauss and the modern theorists of coterie at the heart of the Department of of his ideas. Howse claims that Islamist terrorism. Robert Howse, Strauss’s mature work can be seen a professor of international law at Political Science. as an act of t’shuvah, the Jewish New York University, has produced concept of return or repentance, in a new book, Leo Strauss: Man of Peace, which dis- in the ideas of Strauss, which are presented by these atonement for his earlier flirtations with the immod- pels the conspiracy theories while at the same time individuals as consisting of elite rule, nationalism, eration of the German nihilist school, as repre- promoting a critical engagement with Strauss’s work. religiosity and the promotion of war. In September sented by such thinkers as Heidegger, Nietzsche Through careful studies of his writings on Machiavelli 2010, Rick Salutin was fired from The Globe and and Carl Schmitt. Unfortunately, Howse does not and Thucydides and his exchanges with two promin- Mail shortly after writing a column accusing Harper provide much evidence for the thesis, instead not- ent political theorists, Howse demonstrates that of allegiance to these so-called Straussian ideals.2 ing a transgression-repentance pattern as a major Strauss was not a bellicose warmonger. Instead, he The Tyee’s David Beers inferred that Salutin’s impu- theme in Strauss’s work. One of our only hints that was a firm believer in constitutional democracy and dence in exposing Harper’s covert Straussianism Strauss moved away from his youthful philosoph- respectful of international law. Howse shows that (along with Salutin’s final column, which criticized ical interests is a 1935 letter to his close friend Karl one of Strauss’s major concerns was the limitation then Toronto mayoral hopeful Rob Ford) provoked Löwith, in which he admitted that Nietzsche “so and moderation of political violence, an import- the dark forces who control the employment of dominated and bewitched me between my 22nd ant precondition for the practice of philosophy. As newspaper pundits.3 Donald Gutstein has been and 30th year, that I literally believed everything Strauss himself wrote: “Socrates was a man of peace another promoter of the Harper-Strauss conspir- I understood of him.” Others have pointed to a 1933 rather than of war. It should go without saying that a acy theory, especially in Harperism: How Stephen letter to Löwith as evidence that Strauss supported man of peace is not the same as a pacifist.” Harper and His Think Tank Colleagues Have the authoritarian right. Howse ably proves that The modern suspicion of esotericism (a major Transformed Canada. Strauss was in fact suggesting liberalism would fail interest of Strauss), along with the loyalty of the The crucial link in these theories is Harper’s to successfully challenge the Nazi regime. Overall, scholar’s students and followers, has led to an time in graduate school at the University of Calgary, evidence for Strauss’s allegiance to Nietzsche and outpouring in Straussophobic conspiracy theor- especially his connection to the “Calgary School” of likeminded German thinkers is rather scarce, if not ies. One of the pioneers of this strand of thought is conservative scholars, such as Barry Cooper, Tom nonexistent. Canadian political scientist Shadia Drury, whose Flanagan, Rainer Knopff and Ted Morton. It was at Perhaps a more useful concept to understand 1988 book The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss con- Calgary that Harper, albeit a student in econom- Strauss’s intellectual trajectory is that of Socrates’ demned Strauss for corrupting the young—the very ics, supposedly fell under the sway of a Straussian “second sailing.” In the Phaedo, Socrates tells Cebes charge the Athenians made against Socrates. Later, coterie at the heart of the Department of Political of the “second voyage” or “second sailing” in his the supposed connection between Strauss and Science. Aside from the popular conjecture about intellectual development, in which he abandoned bellicosity emerged around the time of the lead- the indirect role these political scientists might his youthful abstracted examinations into nature in up to the Second Iraq War, especially in May 2003 have played in Harper’s intellectual development, favour of a new kind of inquiry. To my mind, Strauss’s with the publication of influential essays by Jeet the theory falls apart for a simple reason: the mem- second sailing began in the 1930s, and is linked, like Heer and Seymour Hersh.1 An attempt was made bers of the Calgary School were not real Straussians. Howse’s t’shuvah thesis, to his criticism of Schmitt’s to draw a connection between the ideas of Strauss As Flanagan recently stated, neither he nor Cooper The Concept of the Political. For Strauss, this involved and some of his former graduate students who held had been influenced by Strauss in any significant a reorientation toward an examination of the con- way; additionally, although Knopff and Morton crete historical development of philosophy.­ Mark Sholdice is a PhD candidate in the had been taught in graduate school by students of Strauss was an important proponent of the Department of History at the University of Guelph. Strauss at the University of Toronto, they remained theory that past philosophers often wrote in an He was born in London, Ontario. outside the fold of his loyal followers.4 ­esoteric way, the main reason for which was to

26 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada avoid persecution by intolerant societies. Some State,” which would mark the End of History and, some of the liberal partisans of diversity for its own have read his own writing as a similar exercise in quite possibly, the end of philosophy. But although sake. This openness to alternative ideas and ways esotericism. Howse insists on avoiding an eso- skeptical of what he argued were utopian projects, of life is one of the original meanings of liberalism. teric reading of Strauss’s work, as he perceives the Strauss nevertheless supported the moderating Leo Strauss: Man of Peace is particularly practice to be unnatural in the modern era: “In influence of international laws. Still, this prudent notable for Howse’s use of hundreds of hours Persecution and the Art of Writing, Strauss makes skepticism has often been mischaracterized as of audio recordings students made of Strauss’s it clear that one must not assume a hidden mean- bellicosity by modern thinkers habituated to more lectures. These recordings, digitized and made ing unless the tensions or apparent contradictions hopeful objectives. available online by the Leo Strauss Center at the in the author’s work cannot be lucidly understood Howse’s great contribution is to show that University of Chicago, help refute the notion that even after a careful reading of the surface of the text Strauss was largely not a polemical thinker. In fact, Strauss ­delivered a nefarious secret teaching to guided by a plausible notion of the author’s intent.” this is what set Strauss apart from Schmitt in the his pupils. In these crackly tape recordings, made Of course, it could be debated whether all of these first place. By turning toward philosophy’s past, so long ago in classrooms at the University of conditions apply to Strauss’s work. Second, it is Strauss rediscovered the practice of non-polemical Chicago, Claremont College and St. John’s College not necessarily hard to find the centre of Strauss’s thought, in which the possibility of grasping the Annapolis, we hear the voice of another Leo writing. Lastly, the esotericism of his writing is only truth was seriously considered. It is perhaps this Strauss—an elderly scholar devoted to his students controversial if one assumes this opacity exists for attribute of his thought that could partly explain the and the life of scholarship. It is the same voice that unnatural and nefarious purposes. Arthur Melzer great animosity toward Strauss: if he mostly refused Howse has so ably presented to us. Strauss is among shows, in Philosophy Between the Lines: The Lost to engage in present-minded polemics, what was he the most important thinkers of the 20th century, History of Esoteric Writing, that there are various hiding? Many hostile scholars, refusing to believe in bequeathing to us vital insights into the nature of reasons for the practice, such as pedagogy. an alternative to polemic, thus see dangerous and war, philosophy and peace. Howse’s engagement with Strauss was spurred hidden political motives within Strauss’s work. by his studies as an undergraduate under the The most outstanding aspect of Strauss’s Notes prominent Straussian Allan Bloom at the University thought is his openness to alternatives, to the roads 1 Jeet Heer, “The Philosopher,” Boston Globe, May 11, of Toronto in the late 1970s. The latter returned not taken in the history of ideas. He could take 2003, http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/ to the University of Chicago in 1979, and Howse seriously the fact of revelation alongside the truths articles/2003/05/11/the_philosopher, and Seymour Hersh, enrolled there in graduate school, but he became from reason, as shown by his lifelong interest in the “Selective Intelligence,” New Yorker, May 12, 2003, http:// www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/05/12/selective- disenchanted with the culture of the Straussians. tension between “Jerusalem” and “Athens.” Strauss intelligence. Leo Strauss: Man of Peace is in part a critique of sought to understand the thinkers of the past in 2 Rick Salutin, “Stephen Harper—The Last Straussian?” what Howse calls the “Straussian cult,” those schol- their own terms and tried to present their ideas Globe and Mail, September 17, 2010, http://www.theglo- beandmail.com/globe-debate/stephen-harper---the-last- ars who have drawn together due to their common from their own perspectives. He was a key figure in straussian/article621870/. tutelage by Strauss or his students (like Bloom), the contemporary renaissance of interest in Islamic 3 David Beers, “Rick Salutin’s Last Words,” The or their interest in the line of inquiry developed philosophy, and was fluent in Arabic, along with Tyee, September 30, 2010, http://thetyee.ca/ by Strauss. I think Howse can be perhaps too several other languages. This is a great irony, that Opinion/2010/09/30/RickSalutinLastWords. 4 Tom Flanagan, “Legends of the Calgary School,” critical of the Straussians, especially as he does a notorious “conservative” such as Strauss could VoegelinView, 25 January 2015, http://voegelinview.com/ not adequately address their internal divisions and be a greater promoter of intellectual diversity than legends-calgary-school-guns-dogs. disagreements, such as the popular classification of the esoteric scholars of “East Coast Straussianism” versus the conservative polemicists of “West Coast Straussianism.” However, some of Strauss’s more outspoken The unforgettable memoir of Giller Prize–winning devotees remind me of Bloom’s description in author and poet Austin Clarke, Love and Friendship of Apollodorus, a disciple of Socrates who appears in the Symposium: “Canada’s first multicultural writer.”

Such followers were not designed to win friends or influence people, although their capacity to retell Socrates’ interesting speeches did have an effect in transmitting something of Socrates’ teaching. This is a problem faced by all great teachers, the fan- atic loyalists whose fanaticism is quite alien Available from your to the teachers’ disposition. They develop an almost religious reverence for this man whose favourite bookseller teaching they are so deeply impressed by but are not themselves in a position adequately to judge. 496 pgs • 6" x 9" Howse can sometimes be imprudent in his criti- paperback $39.99 cism of Straussian scholars, but he demonstrates epub $19.99 that it is possible to engage with Strauss’s ideas with a critical distance that can steer between total agreement and absolute rejection. Howse’s presen- tation of Strauss’s thinking is not a rehabilitation of Strauss so as much as a representation of his work to a new audience of readers. As a specialist in international law, Howse has reconstructed Strauss’s views on political violence, to debunk those who claim that he was an enthusi- astic advocate of bellicosity. Strauss certainly gained a reputation for conservatism due to his skepticism about the possibility of a permanent settlement of all international conflict—in his dundurnpress | @dundurnpress | dundurn.com famous debate with Alexandre Kojève (discussed by Howse) this was the “Universal and Homogenous

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28 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Seeds of Hate Tracing tyranny back to medieval Spain. Triadafilos Triadafilopoulos

the world of the Moors to their own, it From Tolerance to Tyranny: A comes at a cost. The pluralism of the Cautionary Tale from Fifteenth caliphs of the Umayyad dynasty was Century Spain based on a fundamental distinction Erna Paris between Muslims and non-Muslims; Cormorant Books while compulsory conversion was 316 pages, softcover rejected, a strict political hierarchy ISBN 9781770863972 privileged Muslims and placed restric- tions on non-Muslims. The degree of voice and agency granted to religious uthor of several influen- minorities was limited and, as Paris tial works on prejudice and notes, discrimination based on religion Ahuman rights, Erna Paris has was built into the system (Christians republished her 1995 book, The End of and Jews were subject to special taxes Days: A Story of Tolerance, Tyranny and and prohibitions). In the absence of a the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain, common citizenship, there was little rightfully convinced that its focus to draw members of differing groups on the fragility of pluralism in multi- together. While non-Muslim subjects ethnic societies remains a resonant who demonstrated talent had some theme. From Tolerance to Tyranny: A access to positions of influence, in the Cautionary Tale from Fifteenth Century Spain has The speed at which such shifts in predispositions absence of conversion these men would always two objectives. First, it seeks to chart the decline occur typically leaves victim groups in a state of be regarded as inferior to their Muslim superiors. and ultimate collapse of convivencia (coexistence) incredulity, marvelling at how quickly they have To liken such a system to contemporary multicul- among Muslims, Christians and Jews in medieval been transformed into pariahs. turalism, which is based on equal citizenship in a and early modern Spain. Second, it draws on that Tolerance, then, is unnatural and pluralism is liberal-democratic state, is misleading. history to arrive at a more general understanding of always vulnerable, according to Paris—something In any case, pluralism was tenuous even in why diverse societies are susceptible to “tyranny,” as true of 15th-century Spain as it was of Nazi Muslim Spain. The invasion of the North African understood as the rejection of pluralism and the Germany or of Rwanda during the 1994 genocide. Almohads at the end of the twelfth century brought marginalization and, in some cases, destruction Recognizing this is key to making sense of where the era of tolerance to an end. Jews and Christians of minorities by majority groups. A new conclud- we may be heading: “To glimpse the universality had to convert or emigrate. Those who refused con- ing chapter titled “Echoes and Mirrors” contrasts of human emotion, desire, and vice across the cen- version moved to Christian Spain, where, despite “twenty-first century events to the twentieth- turies is to link the past with the future … There is continuing intolerance, a pragmatic convivencia century parallels that were included in the original nothing like the study of history to help one under- based on the satisfaction of mutual interests shaped edition.” stand that humankind is not perfectible.” social interactions: “Before long, educated Jews The book’s central claim is pessimistic. The col- Paris maintains that the seeds of tyranny in were co-opted as royal advisors, ambassadors, lapse of convivencia in 15th-century Spain and the Spain were planted long ago, with the Visigoths’ and physicians,” says Paris, “just as they had been demise of pluralism at other times and in other invasion of the Roman province of Hispania in under the Moors. Like the caliphs, the Christian places can be traced to an essential characteristic 409, followed by the persecution of minorities, kings of Castile and Aragon became protectors of of human nature. “Distrust of the Other seems to especially the Jews. The conversion of the Visigoth ‘their Jews’.” This practical pluralism spread with slumber within us, ready to erupt under certain King Reccared to Catholicism in 587 compounded the ideologically driven Reconquista of the lands conditions of xenophobia and violence,” says matters. “Once Catholicism and the political state previously won by the Moors. “Pacification was in Paris, citing unforeseen natural catastrophes and merged,” she says, “the mere presence of uncon- everyone’s interest,” Paris notes. “The monarchs periods of economic hardship and political insta- verted Jews in the land became politically intoler- of Christian Spain had other things on their minds bility, which create opportunities for individuals able … The Jewish challenge to Christianity became than abstract notions of religious orthodoxy; they and groups who stand to benefit from pluralism’s a challenge to the government itself.” had to settle border territories … and promote the obliteration. Self-interested elites use ideology Conditions improved with the arrival of the local economy. For this they depended on the skills and propaganda to dehumanize minorities and Muslim Moors. Paris describes as “astonish- of their newly incorporated citizens, which meant mobilize popular support for their homogenizing ing” the world that the Moors crafted. “While accepting minority cultures and religions, just as projects. Dehumanization campaigns also dissolve Europe embraced ignorance and superstition, the the Moors had done.” the bonds of empathy that might have otherwise Moors promoted scholarship,” she says, noting How did this pragmatic pluralism devolve into mobilized popular opposition to the persecution of that the Moors encouraged general literacy and the terror of the Inquisition and the expulsion first of victim groups. Bystanders’ passive complicity fills even allowed for the education of girls. “While the Jews and then the Moriscos (Muslim converts to the space vacated by solidarity and fellow feeling. Christianity denigrated the senses, the feel of Christianity)? For readers interested in the broader Moorish Spain was nothing short of sensual.” ramifications of Paris’s story, this is one of the most Triadafilos Triadafilopoulos is a professor of politi- Perhaps most importantly, the Moors did not illuminating points in her account. The details cal science at the University of Toronto Scarborough force Christians and Jews to convert to Islam, pre- are significant, with Catholicism, in its intolerant and the School of Public Policy and Governance. ferring convivencia to enforced uniformity. Paris backward-looking mode, figuring prominently. He is the author of Becoming Multicultural: likens convivencia under the Moors to contempo- Ambitious religious leaders rejected the pragmatic Immigration and the Politics of Membership in rary forms of pluralism and multiculturalism. While pluralism favoured by their political counterparts. Canada and Germany (UBC Press, 2012). this interpretive decision may help readers connect Outbreaks of plague and unpredictable climatic

September 2015 reviewcanada.ca 29 changes linked to the Little Ice Age prompted a religious hatred than by a coldly calculating consid- Catholicism. Most did but, as with the conversos search for scapegoats, which religious ideologues eration of political interests: “Ferdinand divorced before them, their Christian status was questioned skillfully exploited using anti-Semitic myths spread politics from ethics and married government to and they soon “became suspect heretics, new fod- from northern Europe as a useful means of framing national interests, making him the first of a modern der for the Inquisition.” Their own expulsion ulti- Jews as the harbingers of woe. These forces came to breed.” mately came in 1609. a head in the late 14th century, instigating a series The Inquisition served several purposes, con- Paris sees the end of convivencia in Spain as a of pogroms that culminated in the massacre of Jews solidating and advancing the interests of the crown harbinger of later tyranny. Like the victims of the across Spain in 1391, a fit of violence accompanied while satisfying popular anti-Jewish (and later Holocaust, for example, the Jews of Spain were by efforts to convert Jews to Christianity en masse anti-Muslim) sentiment and the Catholic church’s subject to racial exclusion, attempted assimila- by Catholic priests. long-standing interest in rooting out heresy among tion, pogroms and then “a final solution.” And in Conversion offered Spain’s Jews a way around the new Christians. both cases, the destruction of long-standing Jewish the strict prohibitions that limited social mobility. Conversos suspected of heresy were rounded communities was pursued through a program of Many took this route, leading to the emergence of a up and detained. Their possessions were confis- dehumanization that took advantage of our basic large class of “new Christian” converts (conversos). cated and they were compelled (oftentimes after distrust of others. Given this fundamental aspect of While conversion granted new Christians access being subjected to torture) to admit their trans- human nature, says Paris, spurring racial hatred in to occupations that had hitherto been off limits, gressions during a public “act of faith” (auto de diverse societies is “as easy as paint-by-numbers.” their efforts to assimilate into the dominant society fe). Absolution required a range of punishments, Or is it? Paris maintains that our tendency to was doubly limited. The idea that one could simply including lengthy prison terms, public floggings reject pluralism persists and has become even leave one’s old life behind was, in many cases, unre- and forced labour. Those sentenced to death were sharper of late, a consequence of the end of the alistic. Paris notes that many conversos continued released to the secular arm of the state and burned Cold War and the anti-Muslim reaction catalyzed to effectively live as Jews, as reflected in their main- at the stake. The first Inquisitor General, Tomàs de by the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. She tenance of Jewish dietary restrictions and other Torquemada, ordered some 8,800 such executions. cites the bloody disintegration of the former practices. Meanwhile, old Christians typically did The decision to expel Spain’s Jews came soon Yugoslavia, the Rwandan genocide of 1994, recent not embrace their new co-religionists. Even those after the end of the Reconquista in 1491. Paris notes bans on the niqab in France and anti-Muslim senti- conversos who did accept their new religion and that the decision was based on a hard-nosed con- ment in the United States in support of her claim. made the difficult decision to leave behind their old sideration of interests on the part of the Catholic Canada stands as a more positive case, with its life were not accepted as true Christians. The idea monarchs. Thanks to the Inquisition, it was already policy of official multiculturalism, but even here that Jewishness was immutable was fed by discom- possible to appropriate the possessions of con- recent events in Quebec raise concerns. Paris’s fort at the rapid success of many new Christians. victed conversos, but other Jewish fortunes could conclusion regarding the durability of pluralism The fate of the conversos was sealed by the union be acquired solely through taxation. “A general thus remains bleak: coexistence is always tenuous, of the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon under the expulsion would appropriate entire fortunes in an subject to political elites’ manipulation of our very dual monarchy of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand instant,” and “also cancel all outstanding debts, human nature. Paris warns that we must temper of Aragon. Despite his mother’s converso origins, including those of the beleaguered and danger- our optimism about future progress by reflecting on Ferdinand spearheaded an inquisition against new ously volatile lower classes.” The edict was signed history and carefully guarding against its repetition. Christians suspected of heresy, then expelled Jews in the Alhambra palace in Granada in July 1492. One need not be a wide-eyed optimist to take unwilling to join the ranks of the converted. His Spain’s Jews were forced to leave en masse. By 1502, issue with her conclusion. Contemporary multi- reasons for doing so, says Paris, were driven less by the remaining Moors were compelled to convert to cultural societies differ from 15th-century Spain in fundamental ways. Social life in contemporary liberal-democratic states is structured by institu- tions that developed over time in response to the absolutism of early modern monarchs and the hor- rors of the Second World War and the Holocaust. Subscribe! 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30 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Letters and Responses

Re: “Locked Up,” by Rose Ricciardelli the refusal of Millhaven inmates to sit on a chair in associated with Kingston Penitentiary, I was (June 2015) a classroom that had been used by someone from speaking to his photographs, not his short essay am grateful for the attention that Rose Kingston Penitentiary. I wish I had been able in my (which I read). I had hoped this was clear in stating IRicciardelli paid to the photographs in my book book to answer the “glaring” question she poses: “James’s images” or “As night falls in James’s Inside Kingston Penitentiary (1835–2013), and “given prisoners have no choice but to be shaped pictorial account.” Whether or not it is possible to for her thoughtful reading of them. But I am not by their incarceration, what can be done to make capture abstract concepts such as stigma in images sure that she read the short essay I wrote about prison a more civilized and rehabilitative place?” is something I would trust those with expertise, my experiences, because she would have found This is perhaps something that is beyond the scope like James, to determine. In his letter he also cites that I dealt with the special stigma attached to of photography, which is best at showing how the rhetorical question with which I concluded being in Kingston Penitentiary—a stigma that things look. The most I could hope for was to cast my review. Never would I suggest either he or she says was overlooked. As I said in that essay, some light onto these dark places. the other author whose book I reviewed, Gary corrections officers frequently referred to Kingston Geoffrey James Garrison, provide an answer to how prison can be Penitentiary inmates as “the lowest of the low,” and Toronto, Ontario reformed! transferees to other prisons were routinely beaten up. When these inmates were sent to neighbouring Rose Ricciardelli responds: The LRC welcomes letters — and more are avail- Millhaven, they did indeed, as she suggested, have eoffrey James was clearly successful in able on our website at www.reviewcanada.ca. a target on their backs, which is why they were Grevealing some of the realities of prisons. As We reserve the right to publish such letters and segregated in their own ranges. What I didn’t write I said in my review, he “cast some light onto these edit them for length, clarity and accuracy. E-mail about are the small cruelties they could face—as in dark places.” As for my discussion of the stigma ­editor@­reviewcanada.ca.

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Coming up in the LRC

Gunworld Ian Weir Harper globalism Political biographies Paul Heinbecker The pretensions John English of English Insomnia’s allure Stephen Henighan Mining Africa Jessa Gamble Erin Riley-Oettl Aboriginal land Pamela Palmater

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32 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Congratulations to our award-winning authors

2015 2015 Canada Prize in 2015 Aboriginal History Sir John A. the Humanities Book Prize Federation for Macdonald Prize Canadian Historical the Humanities and Canadian Historical Association Social Sciences Association

2015 2015 2015 Jeanne Clarke Armitage-Jameson Basil Stuart-Stubbs Award for Book Prize Prize for Outstanding Publication Coalition for Western Scholarly Book on Prince George Women’s History British Columbia Public Library UBC Library

2015 2014 Lifetime Melva J. Dwyer Achievement Award Award for author Art Libraries Society Elsie Paul of North America – Canadian Chapter Canadian Historical Association

Defending Battered Women on Trial Métis Lessons from the Transcripts Race, Recognition, and the Struggle for Indigenous Peoplehood Elizabeth Sheehy Chris Andersen WINNER | 2014 David Walter Mundell Medal for Legal Writing, Office of the WINNER | 2015 NAISA Best Subsequent Book Prize, Native American and Attorney General of Ontario Indigenous Studies Association

Wife to Widow Chinese Comfort Women Lives, Laws, and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Montreal Testimonies from Imperial Japan’s Sex Slaves Bettina Bradbury Peipei Qiu with Su Zhiliang and Chen Lifei WINNER | 2015 Francois Xavier Garneau Medal, Canadian Historical Association WINNER | 2015 Best Book Award for Non-fiction, Chinese American Librarians Association The Muslim Question in Canada A Story of Segmented Integration Coping with Calamity Abdolmohammad Kazemipur Environmental Change and Peasant Response in Central China, 1736-1949 WINNER | 2015 John Porter Tradition of Excellence Book Award, Canadian Jiayan Zhang Sociological Association CO-WINNER | 2014 Academic Excellence Award, Chinese Historians in the United States Death or Deliverance Canadian Courts Martial in the Great War The Way of the Bachelor Teresa Iacobelli Early Chinese Settlement in Manitoba WINNER | 2015 C.P. Stacey Prize, Canadian Commission for Military History and Alison Marshall the Canadian Committee on the History of the Second World War WINNER | 2015 Book Prize, Canadian Society for the Study of Religion

Equality Deferred Living Dead in the Pacific Sex Discrimination and British Columbia’s Human Rights State, 1953-84 Contested Sovereignty and Racism in Genetic Research on Taiwan Dominique Clément Aborigines WINNER | 2015 CLIO Prize for BC, Canadian Historical Association Mark Munsterhjelm WINNER | 2015 Gertrude J. Robinson Book Prize, Canadian Communication Oral History at the Crossroads Association Sharing Life Stories of Survival and Displacement Steven High Labour at the Lakehead WINNER | 2015 CLIO Prize for Quebec, Canadian Historical Association Ethnicity, Socialism, and Politics, 1900-35 Michel Beaulieu Food Will Win the War WINNER | 2015 M. Elizabeth Arthur Award, Thunder Bay Historical Museum The Politics, Culture, and Science of Food on Canada’s Home Front Ian Mosby CO-WINNER | 2015 Political History Group Book Prize, Canadian Historical Association

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Visibly Canadian Negotiations in a Imaging Collective Identities Vacant Lot in the Canadas, 1820–1910 Studying the Visual KAREN STANWORTH Family Ties in Canada The Writings of David Cloth, eBook – 476pp, Living History in Canadian EDITED BY LYNDA JESSUP, Thompson, Volume 2 colour and b&w illustrations House Museums ERIN MORTON, AND KIRSTY ROBERTSON The Travels, 1848 Version, ANDREA TERRY and Associated Texts “… makes a powerful argument for Cloth, paperback, eBook – 312pp, Cloth, paperback – 296 pp, 40 photos why visual culture matters, and 80 colour and b&w images DAVID THOMPSON, how historians can enrich our Edited by William E. Moreau understanding of the past by paying “… includes new and interesting “Throughout the book, some Co-published with the attention to images of all kinds.” research that advances our under- of Canada’s most prominent art Champlain Society standing of how house museums –Gillian Poulter, Acadia University historians reflect on the relevance Cloth, eBook – 436pp function to create a unified and of nationhood in a globalized unifying memory of a Canada society. Together they offer a shift that never was.” The second in a planned three in the terms of the discussion.” volumes of Thompson’s writings, –Anne Dymond, –Canadian Art this edition completes the great University of Lethbridge surveyor and fur trader’s spirited autobiographical narrative. Praise for Volume 1: “William Moreau has edited the New from MQUP definitive version of Thompson’s work and provided a scholarly synthesis of his life and impact. It is an elegant and necessary book.” –The Globe and Mail

Alice in Shandehland Scandal and Scorn in the Edelson/Horwitz Murder Case MONDA HALPERN Anthems and Cloth, eBook – 344pp, 47 b&w photos Minstrel Shows The Life and Times of Calixa ‘This is a well-written and often Lavallée, 1842–1891 surprising investigation of a The Canadian Oral Frank Underhill and the once-prominent scandal and the History Reader BRIAN CHRISTOPHER THOMPSON –Booklist Politics of Ideas aftermath.” EDITED BY Cloth, eBook – 556pp KENNETH C. DEWAR KRISTINA R. LLEWELLYN, “Based on meticulous research, Foreword by Bob Rae ALEXANDER FREUND, “Illuminating Lavallée’s internation- Alice in Shandehland is a superbly- AND NOLAN REILLY al influences, ambivalent relation- Cloth, paperback, eBook – 232pp written and illuminating portrait ship to Canada and dedication of Jewish life in Ottawa and the Cloth, paperback, eBook – 400pp to Anglo-American culture, “[This] fine book reminds us of an struggles toward a middle-class Thompson refutes neat nationalist important strand in our political respectability.” Provides a rich resource for narratives about the famous “O and intellectual tradition, one –Amanda Glasbeek, York University students of Canadian history Canada” composer. More than a that seems far removed from the and serves as a springboard for revisited biography, the book asks cynical politics of the Harper era.” global discussions about Canadian larger questions about how and for –The Chronicle Herald contributions to the international what purpose nations claim artists.” practice of oral history. –Literary Review of Canada

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