Trudeau’s Tactics • Surveillance • The Rite of Spring
$6.50 Vol. 21, No. 4 May 2013
Michael Cleland The green energy dilemma We need it—but we don’t want to pay. Luckily there’s a solution.
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE
Michael LaPointe CanLit’s classroom invisibility
Theresa Tedesco The bank that invaded America
Yuen Pau Woo Decline of the downtown elite?
PLUS: non-fiction Jennifer Clapp on agricultural counter-revolution + Michael Higgins on papal controversy + Philippe Le Billon on Canada’s mining supremacy + Sheema Khan on minor league hockey + Tim Cook on women’s World War One + Kenton Smith on graphic memories of Jerusalem fiction Lesley Krueger reviews The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud + James Fitzgerald
Publications Mail Agreement #40032362 reviews Mount Pleasant by Don Gillmor Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to LRC, Circulation Dept. poetry Louise Carson + David Zieroth + Merle Nudelman + Robin K. Macdonald + Peter PO Box 8, Station K Toronto, ON M4P 2G1 Stuart-Sheppard + David Huebert conGrATULATionS!
The Donner Canadian Foundation is pleased to announce the outstanding book chosen for the 15th annual Donner Prize, the award for the best public policy book by a Canadian:
$50,000 winner Jeffrey simpson for Chronic Condition: Why Canada’s Health-Care System Needs to be Dragged into the 21st Century (Allen Lane Canada)
Congratulations to the other fine nominees. These shortlisted titles received $7,500 each:
Mary Janigan Jennifer Clapp for Let the Eastern for Hunger in the Bastards Freeze in the Claude Castonguay Balance: The New Politics Dark: The West Versus the for Santé: l’heure des choix of International Food Aid Rest Since Confederation (Les Éditions du Boréal) (Cornell University Press) (Knopf Canada)
www.donnerbookprize.com
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Editor 3 Decline of the 16 Water Runs in 24 Patriation Myth Bronwyn Drainie [email protected] Downtown Elite? Ancestral Lines A review of Canada’s Constitutional Revolution, by Contributing EditorS A review of The Big Shift: The A poem Mark Lovewell, Molly Peacock, Anthony Seismic Change in Canadian Robin K. Macdonald Barry L. Strayer Westell John D. Whyte Politics, Business and Culture 16 The Telling Stream Associate editor and What It Means for Our Robin Roger A poem 26 The Overlooked Future, by Darrell Bricker and Merle Nudelman Majority Poetry Editor John Ibbitson Moira MacDougall A review of A Sisterhood of Yuen Pau Woo 16 fat rain copy editor Suffering and Service: Women A poem Madeline Koch 5 Buy American and Girls of Canada and David Zieroth Online Editors A review of Banking on Newfoundland During the Diana Kuprel, Jack Mitchell, America: How TD Bank Rose 17 Ceol na Mara [Music First World War, edited by Donald Rickerd, C.M. to the Top and Took on the of the Sea] Sarah Glassford and Amy ProofReaders U.S.A., by Howard Green A poem Shaw Mike Lipsius, Heather Schultz, Rob Theresa Tedesco Peter Stuart-Sheppard Tim Cook Tilley, Jeannie Weese research 6 Demand Better 17 Equine Tide 27 Resuscitating the Rob Tilley An essay A poem Working Class Editorial Assistant Michael Cleland David Huebert A review of Raising the Lindsay Jolivet, Prerana Das 9 The Rite of Spring 17 Fire haiku Workers’ Flag: The Workers’ Design Unity League of Canada, James Harbeck at 100 A poem 1930–1936, by Stephen L. ADVERTISING/SALES An esssay Louise Carson Endicott Michael Wile Colin Eatock 19 Creative Crimes Sam Gindin [email protected] Exporting A review of The Woman Director, Special Projects 10 29 Den of Religiosity Dispossession? Upstairs, by Claire Messud Michael Booth A review of Jerusalem: publishers A review of Imperial Canada Lesley Krueger Chronicles from the Holy City, Alastair Cheng Inc.: Legal Haven of Choice 20 Lament for Rosedale by Guy Delisle [email protected] for the World’s Mining A review of Mount Pleasant, Kenton Smith Helen Walsh Industries, by Alain Deneault [email protected] by Don Gillmor 30 A Much Less Secret and William SacherTranslated James FitzGerald Board of Directors by Fred A. Reed and Robin Service John Honderich, C.M., Philpot 21 What’s Happened to A review of Secret Service: J. Alexander Houston, Frances Lankin, Jack Mintz, Trina McQueen Philippe Le Billon CanLit? Political Policing in Canada Advisory Council An essay from the Fenians to Fortress 12 Defender of Michael Adams, Ronald G. Atkey, P.C., Michael LaPointe America, by Reg Whitaker, the Church Q.C., Alan Broadbent, C.M., Chris Ellis, 23 Minor Hockey as Big Gregory S. Kealey, and Andrew Drew Fagan, James Gillies, C.M., A review of Soldier of Christ: Parnaby Carol Hansell, Donald Macdonald, The Life of Pope Pius XII, by Business Jez Littlewood P.C., C.C., Susan Reisler, Grant Reuber, Robert A. Ventresca A review of Selling the O.C., Don Rickerd, C.M., Rana Sarkar, Michael W. Higgins Dream: How Hockey Parents 32 Letters and Responses Mark Sarner, Bernard Schiff, Charles Burton, Bernie Reed Scowen 13 Eating and Surviving and Their Kids Are Paying the Price for Our National Koenig, Mariana Valverde, Poetry Submissions A review of Consumed: For poetry submission guidelines, please see Obsession, by Ken Campbell Christopher Alcantara
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2 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Decline of the Downtown Elite? Canada’s old leaders lost power by ignoring new realities, argues this lively polemic. Yuen Pau Woo
Bricker and Ibbitson give a nod to the The Big Shift: historic contributions of Laurentians, The Seismic Change in Canadian but one gets the distinct impression Politics, Business and Culture and that “Laurentian” is basically a term What It Means for Our Future of abuse and derision, like “luddite” Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson or “fundamentalist.” Woe betide the HarperCollins person who believes 294 pages, hardcover ISBN 9781443416450 that [Canada is] a fragile nation; that the federal government’s job is to bind together a country that would ortune favours those who otherwise fall apart; that the biggest recognize major shifts in society challenge is keeping Quebec inside Fahead of others and act on Confederation; that the poorer regions them. No wonder there is an army must forever stay poor, propped up of pundits and prognosticators who by the richer parts of the country; that promote their version of the next big the national identity—whatever it is— thing. The stakes can be very high. must be protected from the American In Canada, we have only to think juggernaut; that Canada is a helpful of Blackberry underestimating the fixer in the world, a peacekeeper, a importance of consumer applications joiner of all the best clubs. for smartphones, or Future Shop not adjusting quickly enough to online The good news is that the number shopping for electronic appliances. Bricker and Ibbitson are just barely able to of people in positions of real influence who hold To the litany of famous “missed boats,” Darrell avoid gloating about the Liberals’ demise but they the above views as sacrosanct is probably very Bricker and John Ibbitson add the Liberal Party certainly do not hold back in their rebuke of the small. While there are versions of the above that of Canada. The Big Shift: The Seismic Change in “Laurentians”—referring not to the mountain chain social democrats, liberals and conservatives Canadian Politics, Business and Culture and What in Southern Quebec but rather to a group of people can subscribe to, the totality of the Laurentian It Means for Our Future is a lively and highly who are identified by this shorthand. consensus as described by Bricker and Ibbitson is readable account of how the May 2011 federal I confess to a feeling of inadequacy as I read surely a caricature. election marks a “fracture in time” that signals the early chapters because I did not know who the There is nothing wrong with the use of a straw profound changes in the geography of political Laurentians were. That the authors did not clearly man to elucidate an argument, but the undue alliances due to demographic change. Because the define this group made me feel worse. Are they so emphasis on why the Laurentians are wrong Liberals failed to recognize the way in which these well known that a definition was unnecessary, even detracts from what should have been the most new alliances could be formed, the party suffered condescending to the reader? interesting part of the book, which is advertised an ignominious defeat. We are given occasional hints as to the identity in the subtitle as “the seismic change in Canadian But that is only the beginning of this story. of this group, including references to “professors,” politics, business and culture and what it means for Bricker, a well-known pollster, and Ibbitson, of The “the media” and “elites … [who are] ensconced in our future.” Globe and Mail fame, believe the Liberals will face their leafy downtown enclaves—Toronto’s Annex, There is certainly a lot on the implications oblivion if they resist the big shift. Conversely, they Ottawa’s Glebe, Montreal’s Outremont.” My best for politics, but mostly in the narrow sense think the Conservatives are well positioned to be effort at defining the Laurentians is that they are of electoral politics, that is the mathematics of the new natural governing party because the shift the people who refuse to recognize the big shift. winning coalitions and the political alliances to is fundamentally in the direction of conservative In other words, the Laurentians are those who form such coalitions. There is rather less insight policies. Lest the big “L” liberal reader write off disagree with Bricker and Ibbitson. But who exactly about how the new Canadian polity—driven this volume as a triumphalist history of the future, are they? Every time I came across an example of in large part (according to the authors) by new I should clarify that the authors allow for an Laurentianism, I found myself wondering if I knew Canadians from Asia—will affect the country’s alternative scenario in which a progressive alliance anyone with that affliction (readers of the LRC economic future. Yes, they believe in balanced (led more likely by the NDP than by the Liberals) should be squirming in their seats even if they have budgets and do not like crime, but what else? might take power. On balance, however, the book not been outed as such). What will this newly powerful electorate mean for does not see much prospect for a centre-left The authors do name names and I will leave trade, investment, infrastructure development, the alliance being able to overwhelm the Conservatives the curious reader to find out who these people environment and productivity—the issues that will in the foreseeable future, and the authors are fine are by purchasing the book. That these folk have in fact determine our future? with that. disagreements with the authors on particular Bricker and Ibbitson do well to remind us that points is obvious, but do they really have a common the wave of immigration over the last decade— Yuen Pau Woo is an Asian immigrant, a westerner identity that is usefully summed up by the authors’ largely from India, China and other Asian and CEO of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. coinage? countries—has changed Canada for the better. That
May 2013 reviewcanada.ca 3 the Conservatives have successfully connected skills and leadership by the political class to of nearly $20 billion in oil-related revenues over the with this population to create a winning electoral challenge the many phobias that Canadians have next three years compared to estimates just a year coalition is indeed a “big shift” in Canadian politics, about China and other Asian countries. ago, because of lower oil prices. and a testament to the party’s strategists. The book recounts the education of Prime It would be reasonable to assume that with Having voters of Asian ethnicity on the winning Minister Stephen Harper on the importance of a western-dominated government in power in team, however, will not in itself reorient Canada to China for Canada, and his transformation from Ottawa, the chances of getting an oil pipeline to the look west, much less turn “Ontario from a European, dragon slayer to panda hugger between 2006 and Pacific Ocean are as good as they ever will be. Yet Atlantic province into an Asian, Pacific province.” 2009. There is no question that the Canada-China there is much skepticism about the pipeline coming To be sure, the large Asian Canadian population relationship has strengthened dramatically in the to fruition even if the National Energy Board gives is an important marker of Canada’s ties across the last three years and that the Harper government is the go-ahead (as it surely will). As a result, many Pacific, and I certainly hope Canada becomes more determined to build stronger ties with Asia through champions of diversified energy exports are calling “Asian” in its orientation—but that will require a ministerial visits and trade agreements. But the on a greater level of leadership from the federal bigger shift than the one that Bricker and Ibbitson reality is that Canada is catching up with the rest government, indeed for a pan-Canadian energy have described, and it will certainly require more of the world in paying closer attention to China, strategy that includes carbon pricing. than suburban and rural Ontario voters teaming up and that the most difficult part of building stronger This sounds suspiciously like a Laurentian with westerners to win an election. relations is just beginning. scheme except that it is cooked up by mostly Rocky According to an Asia Pacific Foundation The acquisition of Nexen by the Chinese Mountaineers (my coinage), including the Calgary- of Canada poll, only 13 percent of Canadians National Offshore Oil Corporation is a case in point. centred Energy Policy Institute of Canada. Premier consider Canada as part of the Alison Redford has also called for Asia-Pacific region. Support for a national energy strategy, and an Asia-Pacific identity is stronger The call is loud and clear for federal was able to persuade her fellow in the West, but even in British premiers to endorse the idea. To Columbia the figure rises to only leadership on energy—and it is coming be sure, this is not a replay of the 33 percent. Canadians are five from westerners. National Energy Policy, but the times as likely to see themselves call is loud and clear for federal as part of the Americas and leadership on energy—beyond nearly four times as likely to identify with the What should have been a routine commercial streamlined permitting and smart regulations— North Atlantic. If a big shift has taken place so transaction turned into a heated public debate and it is coming from westerners. that “a country that was once part of the Atlantic about the merits of investment from a Chinese Bricker and Ibbitson have skillfully turned world is becoming part of the Pacific world,” most state-owned company. The deal was eventually what is a generally well-known story about the Canadians would not know it. approved, but it came with a clear statement of the Conservative Party’s success in attracting “ethnic When asked to rate how they feel about different Canadian government’s discomfort in dealing with voters” to one that is about how the future direction countries, Canadians place Asian countries far state-owned enterprises. of the country has been forever changed by the below western counterparts—a perception that The Big Shift is premised in large part on the mobilization of those voters. The problem with does not alter significantly from west to east. China, economic power of Western Canada, as captured this post facto interpretation is that immigrants are for example, is rated warmly by only 12 percent of in this syllogism: “Throughout the West, robust typically courted—by all parties—as vote banks Canadians, and India not much better at 14 percent. growth is a constant. With growth comes wealth. rather than as Canadians with diverse views about These dismal numbers do not contradict the book’s And with wealth comes power.” Bricker and the economy, the environment and society. It is assertion that the Asia Pacific is becoming more Ibbitson wax enthusiastic about the West’s “gift not at all clear that politicians want the input of important for Canada, but it would be simplistic to to Canada,” which is “to make it a country of the immigrants on the big policy issues of the day. assume that having citizens of Asian ethnicity will future, based on policies and principles that look to I have attended too many dinners where politicians lead to a sea change in Canadian trade and foreign that future with confidence.” dressed in ethnic garb offer greetings in a language policy. There is a tendency in The Big Shift to a In the light of recent austere provincial budgets other than French and English, and proceed mystical hope in the future because of a winning in British Columbia and Alberta, westerners might be to make a speech about how important ethnic electoral alliance that included immigrants from forgiven for being rather less sure about the golden community X is to the country, with scant reference Asia. The reality is that deeper and more enduring age that is to come. Both economies are highly to issues that you would find in any mainstream ties with Asian countries will require some old- dependent on resource exports, which are subject newspaper. I think immigrants are catching on to fashioned (Laurentian?) effort from governments, to sharp price fluctuations and changing supply this duplicity. The recent ethnic voter–targeting business and civil society: expanded diplomatic conditions. There is a dangerous complacency scandal in British Columbia is surprising only in ties in the region, more emphasis on teaching about in this country about our superior performance that the B.C. Liberals were caught red-handed, but Asia and Asian languages in Canadian schools, compared to other G8 economies since the 2008 there is no doubt that many ethnic voters find the investment by the private sector in Asia‑relevant global recession. Much of our income growth has practice odious and will grow increasingly resistant been due to terms of trade gains (higher prices for to it. commodity exports relative to import prices) rather One last quibble: for all their reliance on than productivity improvement. This will all end in data to support the “conservatives rule” thesis, Get extra insight tears if commodity prices take a sharp and sustained the authors are slippery in their appeal to tumble. The reality is that western provinces are not history. According to Bricker and Ibbitson, “two- between issues! much better than central Canada when it comes party, ideologically divided electorates choose to productivity improvement. Indeed, the province conservative governments more often than For more of the content you care with the lowest growth rate in labour productivity progressive governments.” They cite the United about, follow the LRC on Twitter. between 1996 and 2011 is none other than Alberta. States as an example, using the period from 1952 We’ve overcome our future shock to To be fair, Alberta has the highest level of labour to 2012 as proof. But Democrats ruled the White provide timely, 140-character updates productivity in the country, but if you take out the House during the preceding 19 years (and will for on issues and ideas that matter to oil and gas sector (which is very capital-intensive), the next four), which means the finding is very readers, including breaking book news, labour productivity in the province falls below that different depending on your period of reference. cultural events and interesting writing of Ontario. It is in any case dubious (and such a Laurentian from across the web—in particular, If anything, the foreseeable future suggests conceit) to assume that Canada is a slave to work published elsewhere by LRC sharply lower U.S. demand for western oil and gas, American electoral patterns. contributors. which in turn means lower prices, smaller royalties In political terms, it would be entirely correct and tighter budgets. The obvious solution is to find to describe what happened in May 2011 as a “big alternative markets, but the challenge of building shift,” but its effect in reorienting Canada to be Follow us at an oil pipeline from Northern Alberta to the West more of an Asia-Pacific country was at best a “gentle Coast seems more difficult than ever. If you have nudge.” The really big shift has yet to come, and it twitter.com/lrcmag any doubt about Alberta’s vulnerability, consider will take more than a well-crafted electoral strategy that the recent provincial budget projects a shortfall to make that happen.
4 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Buy American How a Toronto-based bank stormed the U.S. market. Theresa Tedesco
in 2010 when he spotted Ed Clark in the room. in a sandbox in the offices of a major Toronto Banking on America: How TD Bank Rose to Banking on America tells a feel-good story of broker at a time when all of its competitors were the Top and Took on the U.S.A. what TD has done right in the United States, while clamouring to buy established investment dealers. Howard Green others, such as the Bank of Montreal and Royal In 1983, TD bucked the trend and assigned Gray HarperCollins Bank, have struggled or failed. It is by no means a the task of building a discount brokerage inside the 277 pages, hardcover comprehensive corporate biography. In fact, the bank. It took nearly a decade and millions in losses, ISBN 9781443407762 early post-merger years of the Toronto Bank and but GreenLine finally became a major money maker Dominion Bank in 1955 get short shrift. Green’s for TD. Thirteen years later in 1996, Charles Baillie, main focus is on the modern era, the strategy and who had replaced Korthals as president, joined t is a rich bit of irony. Back in 1964, Finance the players that propelled the Canadian giant forces with Gray to convince the cautious Thomson Minister Walter Gordon sowed the seeds of deeply into a massive market famous for closing to acquire U.S. discount brokerage Waterhouse Iwhat would eventually become Canada’s ranks against foreigners. Investor Services. It would be a watershed moment banking oligopoly when he imposed a 10 percent Green, a long-time television anchor for BNN, for TD, although it almost did not happen because ownership limit on Canadian banks, ostensibly to delivers a fast-paced, chatty narrative filled with of the dithering former CEO. protect Toronto-Dominion Bank from the clutches anecdotes and rare glimpses into the internal The transformative transaction, though, was the of Wall Street giant Chase Manhattan. The tactic battles, the victories, losses and petty power $8 billion acquisition of Canada Trust in 2000, two worked: Chase Manhattan retreated and Canada’s plays that marked the bank’s ascent over the past years after the federal government nixed big bank banks remain widely held. Four decades later, the 30 years. Predictably, by prying open the executive mergers. TD’s purchase of Canada Trust, the anti- tables have turned. TD, Canada’s second biggest vault, he reveals a sycophantic environment bank whose cheeky marketing campaigns mocked bank by assets, has launched an aggressive assault where middle-aged men in pinstriped suits slam bankers’ hours and named its automated machines into the lucrative U.S. market that is unprecedented phones, bark threats and compliment each other JohnnyCash, catapulted TD from a cellar dweller to in this country’s banking history. Today, TD Bank as geniuses, “extraordinary” or “the smartest guy near the top of the heap among the Big Five. More has the largest U.S. presence of any Canadian I ever worked for.” Much of the credit for TD’s surge importantly, the deal brought Clark, Canada Trust’s financial institution with 1,300 retail branches and success in the U.S. is given to two very different CEO at the time, into TD’s orbit. (compared to 1,150 in Canada). That is not quite men: a gritty self-taught entrepreneur named Keith The “sickly” executive with “flat feet” built on ubiquitous in a country littered with 7,800 banking Gray and Ed Clark, the former federal bureaucrat, Baillie’s legacy by increasing TD’s U.S. footprint with institutions, but enough to rank TD ninth largest Harvard graduate and PhD in economics who has two seminal acquisitions. The first was 51 percent of in the United States, and sixth overall in North been CEO since late 2002. BankNorth for US$5.1 billion in 2004, followed three America. Clark is cast as the brains behind the brawn years later by Commerce Bank for US$8.5 billion. In Banking on America: How TD Bank Rose of Gray, and as beneficiary of a smart lineage of Under Clark, TD shed assets in faraway places like to the Top and Took on the U.S.A., Howard Green predecessors who positioned the bank’s balance India. He shrank TD’s corporate lending book and chronicles the journey of how the smallest among sheet and secured a valuable U.S. beachhead. he brought about a change in attitude, the so-called the Big Five Canadian banks not only bulked “While Ed Clark gets all the glowing press, he is “theology of TD,” whose gospel preaches profits up, but did so on a steady diet of American sitting on top of an institution that has a history through friendly customer service, not fancy and acquisitions that had long given TD’s Canadian of building brick by brick,” Green writes. “Clark complicated financial products. Still, managing peers indigestion. With luck and good timing has the benefit of following three other successful the clashing cultures is comical. In the U.S., where (and a healthy measure of risk aversion), TD has CEOs and many other sharp TD executives, both banks are treated as retail outlets and employees emerged a behemoth with half a trillion dollars current and past.” as “whack jobs,” Americans are schooled in the in assets, 74,000 employees and profits of more A Protestant farm boy and high school dropout, history of the Canadian bank at TD University in than $11 million a day. Essentially TD has seized Keith Gray started at TD in rural southwestern New Jersey, using Rotary Club techniques, “retail- opportunities that opened up after the 2008 Ontario in 1954 as a junior clerk filling inkwells for tainment” and corny slogans that make uptight financial crisis. As U.S. banks continue to struggle $23.08 a week at a time when bank branches did Canadian executives cringe. to regain their footing, Canada’s major financial not have ballpoint pens but kept loaded guns on “I think what Ed has done is a great job creating institutions, armed with their sterling credit ratings, the premises to deter robberies. Over the course of the culture,” Green quotes a former Canadian TD have been scouring this once forbidden market 43 years, he rose within the bank’s ranks as a teller, executive. “You all wear your little green pins. The on the strength of their balance sheets and deep lending officer and branch manager. The perennial question is, how real is it? This is bullshit. At the capital reserves. Almost US$38 billion has been outsider who thought like an entrepreneur— end of the day, it’s trying to make the most money.” spent in the past four years by Canadian banks— definitely not an MBA graduate—was deployed The criticism is rare in a book that is at times overly and TD has been the biggest shopper, staking its by TD’s senior brass, led by then president Robin sentimental. Furthermore, readers would have green logo all along the U.S. eastern seaboard from Korthals and patrician CEO Dick Thomson, to do benefitted from independent commentary and a Maine to New York to Florida. “a lot of the bank’s dirty work” during the recession more critical, not necessarily skeptical, perspective. Even influential U.S. bankers, renowned for their of the early 1980s. In fact, Thomson once sent the Nonetheless, Banking on America is an easy myopic self-importance, are taking notice. “The “hardboiled” Gray to lean on a TD bank director read, although not an unsophisticated one. Green triple-A bank is here,” quipped Jamie Dimon, CEO who was behind on a loan. makes the arcane common and decodes complex of JP Morgan Chase & Co., at a CEO conference In those days, TD was heavily into corporate financial terms into simple elucidations. Some lending, much of it to major cable companies such may quibble that the conversational writing style Theresa Tedesco is chief business correspondent at as Rogers Communications Inc. Although Thomson undermines the weightiness of this insightful the National Post, a columnist and author who has and Korthals believed in local banking, they were work, but by making this tale accessible to a wider written extensively about banking for numerous nonetheless inspired by U.S. discount brokerage audience beyond Bay Street, Green has performed publications, including The New York Times. giant Charles Schwab. TD’s version was conceived a public service.
May 2013 reviewcanada.ca 5 Essay Demand Better Fixated on energy supply, from wind to oil sands, most policy makers ignore our greenest opportunities. Michael Cleland
n 2009, the Ontario govern many decades. Power generation ment embarked on a bold plants typically live for up to 60 years Ipolicy experiment: to transform or more; as important, they are Ontario’s electric power sector connected to consumers by equally radically, to base it largely on long-lived transmission systems, renewable sources such as wind and with even planning and approval to solar, and to establish a new industry in develop new ones requiring multiple Ontario based on those technologies. years and great controversy. Most Ontarians, probably thinking Second, it takes a great deal of about it only in passing, likely saw that energy to produce and transport as a good thing. useful energy products such as And then everyone was mugged gasoline, natural gas and electricity, by reality, or by several realities. It meaning that it often takes several turned out that the Ontario residents units of energy at the supply end to who would actually live with the produce one unit of useful end-use new generating facilities were not so energy. Reduced energy demand keen, and several Liberal members therefore has large and beneficial of the provincial legislature felt the multiplier effects. consequences directly in the 2011 Third, it is essential to keep election. Upon reflection, many environmental protection as an people in Ontario were not so sure objective of energy policy in realistic that paying from twice to ten times perspective. Most policy makers the market rate for electricity was know, or eventually discover, that such a good bargain, despite the affordable cost most often trumps touted future benefits. The policy of environment; security often trumps preferring Ontario suppliers then both; and the lure of economic ran into the inconvenient reality of longstanding to unintended effects such as those experienced development usually pushes environment even international trade obligations. by Ontario. More often, they have paralyzed policy further to the bottom of the priority list. And for all that, the policy only addressed itself makers due to the large new capital investment and We have seen this time and again in consumer— to something less than 20 percent of Ontario energy industrial adjustment challenges—and, of even and voter—reactions to escalating gasoline prices, use, the rest being made up by transportation and more significance in Canada, the exacerbation of to changes in regulated power rates and to the heating fuels. As Kermit the Frog put it, it’s not easy regional tensions between so-called hydrocarbon supposed perils of carbon taxes. Polling results being green. provinces and so-called hydro provinces. show environment dropping below economy Like many environmental initiatives over the last In the national debate in Canada today, the whenever the economic outlook is clouded. We decade, Ontario’s Green Energy Act was motivated focus of virtually all commentators is principally rarely see security arise as a primary consideration, by the issue of climate change. According to on questions of supply: on the one hand—for those but that is mainly because the system works as well sources that were accepted by most governments as who emphasize environment—wind, solar and as it does; on the rare occasions when it fails, no authoritative, most notably the Intergovernmental biofuels; on the other—for those who emphasize one is in any doubt as to what the highest priority is. Panel on Climate Change, countries such as Canada economic growth—oil sands, natural gas and As to the priority given to economic develop needed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by export pipelines. If the objective of energy policy is ment, there are many examples where it has at least 80 percent over the next four to five decades, economic development or energy security, there purportedly or actually trumped other energy in effect, rebuilding the whole energy system. is some logic to focusing on supply. But if the objectives. Oil sands production in Alberta has The case for urgent and radical action seemed driving objective is environmental protection, then become the most infamous in this regard. But so compelling that the unavoidable costs and a fixation on supply is perverse—akin to viewing Quebec has long used low-priced hydro power to tradeoffs involved were simply wished away (but the problem through the wrong end of a telescope. attract electricity-intensive industry and subsidize not washed away, as it turns out) by political More time looking from the demand end of consumers, despite the fact that this encourages rhetoric. Those same costs and tradeoffs have led the system—the right end—reveals a wealth overconsumption—in high use of electricity for of possibilities that are otherwise invisible to policy space heating, for instance, by general agreement Michael Cleland is Nexen Executive in Residence for makers. a misuse of high-quality energy in a low-quality the Canada West Foundation and former president application. And, of course, Ontario has gone and CEO of the Canadian Gas Association. He is a t is important to start with several fundamental the other way, adding consumer costs in order to former assistant deputy minister for energy in the Iperspectives. subsidize a new industry. federal government. This essay was written with First, energy transformation is a long game, The proper focus of energy policy is all four the generous support of Max Bell Foundation, as because the system is made up of many highly aims: security, affordable cost, environmental part of the 40th Anniversary Max Bell Essays and interconnected and interdependent parts, most of protection and economic development. As it turns Lectures. which have lives measured in decades, sometimes out, a demand perspective can serve all four, but
6 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada none more than the objective of environmental in an economy-wide energy efficiency increase of Canada’s communities were and are organized protection. about 18 percent between 1990 and 2009, reducing around certain suppositions, including an Fourth, it is important to emphasize that the emissions by 67.3 megatonnes and decreasing abundance of land, low-cost energy, abundant environment is about more than climate change. energy expenditures by $26.9 billion in 2008. water, readily available dumping grounds for waste, Over the past decade, a great deal of effort has This fact, combined with the performance of and a relatively young and increasingly wealthy gone into thinking about the problem of reducing comparator countries, suggests the potential to population. But all those suppositions are now or greenhouse gas emissions, or carbon for short further reduce the energy intensity of Canada’s are becoming obsolete. (although carbon dioxide is only one source of economy. One of the best-known sources for We are increasingly land constrained in most emissions, it is by far the most important). By estimates on energy efficiency potential is a major communities. Of course, this is Canada and there and large this effort has focused on supply, often U.S. consulting firm, McKinsey and Company, is lots of land, but sprawl has multiple costs: much through development and deployment of low- whose analysis of the American economy suggests near-to-urban land has alternative uses such as carbon energy sources such as wind, nuclear or that the United States could reduce its demand agriculture or provides ecosystem services such biofuels. But one of the great mistakes of the rush for energy in the residential, commercial and as water management; low-density development to try to eliminate carbon from the energy economy industrial sectors by nearly a quarter, at a net is getting increasingly expensive; and one of the was the inexplicable blindness in many quarters to economic saving. Underscoring the point, the U.S. consequences of sprawl is productivity-killing other environmental or social consequences. Energy Information Administration is projecting traffic congestion. While future energy costs are Start with “clean” electricity. Hydro power is a continuing decoupling of economic growth and uncertain, a smart bet would be on them growing, clean in emission terms but almost always entails energy use, with energy use per unit of GDP—as especially if and when we begin to price electricity controversy, mainly driven by environmental well as corresponding energy-related emissions per and carbon at their real cost. Water, if not actually concerns over things such as wildlife habitat. Wind unit of GDP—projected to decline nearly 50 percent scarce in most places in Canada, is becoming power is emission free but has proved intrusive on between 2010 and 2040.1 more expensive to deliver. The era of conveniently the landscape, running up against competing social Continuing our investigation from the demand located garbage dumps is long in the past. values. And ethanol production for fuel, especially end, we would see that half of the energy we use is We are also getting older. According to census when based on corn, is energy, land and water in the form of heat: space heat, domestic hot water data, in 1971 the median Canadian was 26.2 years intensive, and contributes to food price inflation. and industrial process heat. Canada is particularly of age. In 2011 that Canadian was 39.9 years old. No form of energy production comes without heat intensive because of our climate and industrial Statistics Canada estimates that in 2036 the median environmental or social costs, and policy that structure, but, even world-wide, close to half of will be somewhere between 42 and 45 years with ignores this point simply displaces the carbon energy use on average is in the form of heat. And yet consequences for housing, access to services problem. in a further perverse consequence of over-attention and mobility that will reshape our communities. to electricity and transportation energy supply, we Whether we continue to become wealthier is an o be clear, reducing supply-side impacts— have largely ignored this fact. open question, but it seems highly unlikely that we Tincluding the carbon footprint of all energy The potential savings here is substantial. will again witness the explosive growth in affluence supplies—is a vital necessity. But this is not enough. A building like the Manitoba Hydro Place— that characterized the second half of the 20th What if we spent at least half of our time looking awarded a platinum rating under the Leadership century. through the telescope from the demand end? What in Environmental and Energy Design (LEED) All things taken together, it is difficult to escape would we see? green construction standard, and incorporating the need for us to rethink many habits from the We would first be reminded that the purpose renewable energy and efficiency features such past century, extending to the way we design, grow of energy is to fuel and power the economy— as geothermal heating, passive air handling and and organize the communities in which we live. to deliver energy services that we need and automated solar shades—takes 70 percent less And while ideal urban policies are obviously hotly desire: heating/cooling, mobility and electrical energy to heat and cool than a conventional office contested, if we consider this process with energy applications, including lighting and electronics. We building of comparable size. If these efforts to in mind, various opportunities come into focus— do not demand oil or electricity; we demand what reduce energy demand for space and water heating including some that help resolve other community they give us, and what they give us can be achieved and cooling were replicated for every commercial challenges. The following are just a few examples. by using different mixes of fuels, technologies, building, we would see a 5 percent reduction in • Challenges to electricity reliability can often capital equipment and management methods. overall energy use in Canada. If we include homes be mitigated by locally sited power generation— But in Canada, we tend to spend more energy as well as commercial buildings, we start getting and, in the form of combined heat and power, can achieving these benefits than our economic peers, energy-use reductions of 15 percent. And while capture otherwise wasted heat energy. even other cold, resource-based countries. Simply building costs and energy performance vary widely, • Mixed land use and higher density generally put, Canada is a laggard in managing energy use; depending on design, location and management produce more socially and economically we are ranked third highest among the 34 members practices, meeting LEED silver or gold standards vibrant communities; they also produce energy of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and can add as little as 2 percent to total costs, opportunities by creating possibilities for more Development in energy use per capita and energy according to the Canada Green Building Council, effective heat management and cost-effective use per unit of gross domestic product (referred to and reduce energy use by up to a third, according development of local renewable sources such as as energy intensity). Americans generate nearly a to the National Research Council. geothermal and solar energy. quarter more economic activity per unit of energy This effect is compounded by the fact that less • A large part of the operating budget of than Canadians do, Swedes a third more, Norwegians than half of the primary energy that enters the many water and sewer authorities is for energy; half more and the British over twice as much. Even economy is actually used. The rest leaves as lost typically about two thirds of municipal electricity Australia, with its resource-based economy, low energy, essentially in the form of waste heat from consumption is for water and wastewater pumping population density and large distances between power plants, buildings, industrial processes and and treatment. This means that reduced water use urban centres, generates 30 percent more economic vehicles. Not all this energy can be effectively or is reduced energy use. activity per unit of energy than Canada, and uses economically captured, but much can, through • Solid waste from urban and near-to- nearly a fifth less energy per person. combined heat and power systems, waste heat community sources, such as agricultural or forest On a more encouraging note, Canadian energy recovery systems and district energy systems, product waste, can be an energy resource while intensity has been steadily falling. There are in which a central heat source serves multiple reducing land-use impacts. For example, in Ontario several factors behind this, some of which have buildings. To put it in perspective, if for the sake Hamilton’s wastewater treatment plant captures pushed it higher and some lower, but energy of argument 20 percent of waste heat could be biogas from its effluent to generate heat and efficiency accounts for 80 percent of the intensity captured, that would be the energy equivalent of electricity used in plant operations, and Carleton decline, driven by investment in new capital and meeting all of the energy needs of all commercial Corner Farms collects biogas generated from technology. Homes and commercial buildings and institutional buildings in Canada from agricultural wastes and manure to fuel a generator are better insulated and have more efficient environmentally benign sources. And yet this that feeds electricity to the grid, in the process heating equipment; vehicles’ controls have gotten resource is largely being ignored by policy makers. eliminating odours and pathogens associated with better and their materials lighter; and the energy Finally, we would see from a demand perspective traditional manure disposal. efficiency of lighting technology continues to that over half of our energy budget is spent in urban These sorts of synergistic effects also point improve. According to Natural Resources Canada and small town communities—and that those toward the potential for changes in the organization estimates, these and other improvements resulted communities themselves can be sources of energy. of our energy delivery infrastructure. Locally
May 2013 reviewcanada.ca 7 generated power and heat can be combined or To place this idea in perspective, traditionally means that, by themselves, are far more costly in integrated with more traditional energy approaches a hospital or a university or an office building economic, social and environmental terms. by tying them all together with three grids: gas, (or a home, for that matter) contains all manner of At the beginning of this essay I suggested that electricity and thermal energy. Traditionally equipment to produce space heat and hot water, as underlying our energy challenges are several the gas and electricity grids have been entirely well as rarely used backup power systems. Most of tensions or tradeoffs among energy objectives. separate, both physically and institutionally (most the equipment is old, much of it is badly run and These include the industrial adjustment issues notably the way they are regulated), while thermal energy inefficient, and some of it is unsafe—leaving associated with moving away from a carbon-based grids were a rarity. But in future, the gas delivery facility owners with one more headache that they are energy system, the particular regional tensions that system—supplied partly from local waste and not well suited to manage. New energy equipment this engenders in a country that sometimes takes biofuel sources—could be the backbone of a more and energy-efficiency investments compete in badly to such tensions and the practical challenges distributed electricity generation system. Gas-fired the capital budget with MRI machines, computers of essentially rebuilding in a short time a system of generation would function as one of the primary and productivity-enhancing improvements to capital stock that took more than 100 years to build “batteries” required for development of more buildings, so—for good reasons—often fall to the in the first place. intermittent renewable sources such as solar, as bottom of the priority list. Nothing makes these challenges go away, well as helping support thermal energy distribution In the future, energy management could but some approaches make them harder and systems, which would draw on local renewable increasingly be undertaken at the scale of some make them easier. A supply-dominated sources such as geothermal. neighbourhoods and communities. Even in approach will make energy cost more and leads to A lot of this is still about supply. But when we view individual buildings, the system manager—and a less robust system (dominated by electric power supply through the prism of energy demand, the owner—may not be the building owner but rather supplied over long and vulnerable transmission focus is on the desired service, encompassing an energy utility that delivers a package of energy systems). A demand emphasis on higher efficiency the many combinations of technology and fuel that services, drawing on diverse resources including and local sources offsets those costs and makes can deliver it. The economic incentive from the energy efficiency. In British Columbia, Fortis the system more resilient. The massive industrial supply perspective is to sell more energy; from the has already struck an arrangement with Delta adjustment issues are unavoidable, and neither demand perspective it is to achieve high levels of School District to replace conventional boilers in a supply focus nor a demand focus cures this energy service at low cost and high levels of reliability 19 schools with a mix of high-efficiency condensing problem. A demand focus, however, is regionally and safety—and so tending toward efficiency. On boilers and geo-exchange systems. Fortis BC, neutral. As Canadians we are not hydro people or this view, it is by no means fanciful to envisage many through a separate business entity, owns and oil people. We are energy-using people, and our buildings and parts of communities as possible operates these energy systems in exchange for a habits are remarkably similar from one side of the net contributors to the energy system, significantly return overseen by the provincial regulator. country to the other. As to the cost of changing reducing environmental effects of all sorts. Everyone potentially wins in this world—in our capital stock, it is happening all the time— All this adds up to a new way of dealing with community health, productivity, energy efficiency, especially at the community level—and for many energy at the demand end, an idea much more safety and environmental performance. reasons. If we attend to how we transform all of our transformational, economically efficient and capital stock, bit by bit pointing things in a better environmentally benign in its implications than uch a vision of our energy future will not come direction, the cost and difficulty of doing so will any of the central supply technologies that we Sabout easily or quickly. But the alternative be spread much more widely over time, among have in front of us today. The power or gas utility would be simply to walk away from the carbon regions, among industries and among individual becomes the energy service utility. challenge, or attempt to address it only through Canadians. The argument here—to repeat a point already emphasized—is not to avoid the fundamental Continue this conversation in person! changes needed in our energy supply systems, but to simultaneously make the complementary demand-side changes that can help the Join the article’s author, Michael Cleland, environment most, at lowest cost and soonest. for more on saving the environment by managing energy demand. As underscored by a recent report from the International Energy Agency, energy efficiency can play a key role in halving growth in global May 23, 2013 energy demand and carbon emissions, stabilizing 6:00 PM long-term energy prices while the slow process of decarbonizing supply plays itself out. Asia Pacific Hall In a liberal society, policy has limited reach in Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue shaping our energy choices and communities. But 580 West Hastings Street many policy measures are at hand to drive such a vision—at least as many as on the supply side. Vancouver It starts with the pricing of energy and carbon. It entails more investment by government and private entities in demand-end technology development. Please join us for a thought-provoking talk, Q&A and reception. This event is part It includes increased attention to energy in the of the 40th Anniversary Max Bell Essays and Lectures, in which four exceptional rethinking of what we mean by truly sustainable communities. And it includes a fundamental Canadians each publish an essay and deliver a public lecture about a policy issue rethink of regulatory frameworks, to allow the critical to the country’s future. The series was announced in celebration of Max Bell necessary reshaping of the energy delivery system. Foundation’s 40th Anniversary, and in honour of the thousands of charities across A bit more time looking through the other end of Canada that work every day to improve society. the telescope could prove rewarding.
For more about the foundation and its work, visit
Note 1 This analysis is controversial and many argue that this Places at this free event are limited, so RSVP to low-cost potential, or much of it, is illusory or that improved energy efficiency produces a “rebound” [email protected] by May 20, 2013, to reserve yours. when users essentially spend the reduced energy cost by using more energy. Against these arguments stand the observed facts that energy intensity has steadily This event is presented by Max Bell Foundation declined over recent decades, mainly driven by increased energy efficiency. In other words, not only are efficiency and the Literary Review of Canada, in association gains real, but also, at most, a fraction of them are being with Carbon Talks. obviated by rebound effects: our rich society continues to get richer using proportionately less energy.
8 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Essay The Rite of Spring at 100 With a century’s perspective, does Stravinsky’s work still seem pioneering? Colin Eatock
laude Debussy famously described the publicity-hungry Diaghilev told some friends, the terms of the debate were firmly established. Richard Wagner’s music as “a beautiful following the performance, that the Rite’s reception For better or worse, the Rite has cast a very long Csunset that was mistaken for a dawn.” was “just what we wanted.” shadow over the 20th century. Virtually all the era’s The French composer was not the only one The year 1913 was a pivotal moment for western esteemed composers—a list that includes such who saw Wagner as the culmination of an old era, civilization. It marked the end point of the “long diverse figures as Arnold Schoenberg, Béla Bartók rather than the beginning of a new one. Friedrich 19th century,” just before the old political and social and Olivier Messiaen—are deeply indebted to it. Nietzsche called Wagner’s music “the song of order was swept away by World War One. And it Even dissenting composers, striving to escape the a dying swan.” And the Austrian critic Eduard was also the year of New York’s Armoury Show of gravitational pull of the Rite’s musical values, found Hanslick wrote, “Wagner’s art recognizes only modern art, which introduced America to cubism, the piece impossible to ignore. Carl Orff’s Carmina superlatives, and a superlative has no future. It is an fauvism and other European trends. Stravinsky’s Burana (composed in 1936) is in many ways a end, not a beginning.” rejection of modernism, but it is hard What, then, should we say about Fights began to break out in the to imagine how it could have been Igor Stravinsky’s ballet score The Rite written without the Rite. of Spring, a century after it was first audience and the police were called Stravinsky did very well by his performed? Who could deny that scandalous ballet: it became the this music was the bright glow of a in to restore order. According to some chief pillar supporting his reputation newborn sun on the horizon, three as a brilliant, daring and strikingly decades after Wagner’s death marked accounts, Stravinsky fled the theatre, original composer. Yet in his later an “end” of musical history? Surely its compositions, he turned away rhythms were revolutionary and escaping out a back window. from primitivism, in favour of a its harmonies were unprecedented, sophisticated neo-classical style. n’est-ce pas? ballet was an intrinsic part of the forward drive When he died, in New York in 1971, he was Te events surrounding the Rite’s creation and of art. But nothing is ever entirely new or without mourned as the greatest Russian composer of the premiere have become the stuff of legend, making foundation, and the Rite was no exception. 20th century. (However, in recent decades, Dmitri fact and fiction hard to disentangle. Evidently, Many of its stylistic devices—complex and Shostakovich has largely usurped this crown.) Stravinsky began to think about a new ballet set in dissonant harmonies, and constantly shifting A century after the Rite’s pounding rhythms pagan Russia in 1910—and he consulted Nicholas rhythms—can be traced back to earlier works by were first heard, it has become a repertoire item. Roerich, an artist, mystic and folklorist to create a Stravinsky: his Petrouchka, or his short Fireworks Indeed, no professional orchestra can hold its dramatic framework for the piece. He wrote most of music. His interest in obscuring tonality owes much collective head high if it has not mastered the the piece in Clarens, Switzerland, during 1911 and to Debussy, and his compatriot Alexander Scriabin piece. It has been interpreted and recorded by a 1912, in a spartan little room, furnished only with a pursued similar ends (through very different host of conductors, and even found its way into piano, a table and a pair of chairs. means) in his later works. Also, in keeping with the the soundtrack of Disney’s animated film Fantasia. TheRite was intended for performance by Sergei Rite’s evocation of a mysterious pre-historic past—a Yet to this day it does not enjoy the consensus- Diaghilev’s Paris-based dance troupe, the Ballets fanciful portrayal of a human sacrifice in pagan based appeal of Beethoven’s symphonies or Verdi’s Russes. Stravinsky and the Russian impresario had Russia—the score is shot through with ancient folk operas—at least, not among “ordinary” concert already collaborated on two ballets: The Firebird, melodies. Finally, it is worth noting that the massive goers. The Rite retains a frisson of controversy, premiered in 1910, and Petrouchka, first staged orchestra required to play the Rite owes much to with opinion divided as to whether it is gloriously in 1912. Both had been great successes with the the instrumental demands of Wagner’s operas. If thrilling or disgustingly ugly. Parisian public. there had been no Ring, there might have been no And the musical revolution that Stravinsky However, this new work, premiered on Rite. invigorated is also still with us: today there are May 29, 1913, at Paris’s Théâtre des Champs- Yet if the Rite was not entirely revolutionary, it several thousand composers in the world who Élysées, elicited a very different response. Current seemed revolutionary, drawing together various adhere (more or less) to the tenets of modernism. scholarly thought attributes the famous “riot” ideas incubating in European music in a bold and But now they are the old guard, adherents to a more to Vaslav Nijinsky’s choreography than to unifying way. And when the work was subsequently musical ethos that once enjoyed the status of an Stravinsky’s score. But whatever the reasons, the performed at an orchestral concert (with no ballet) “official” style. They are largely ignored by the wider audience divided itself into pro and anti factions— in Paris in 1914, the enthusiastic response it won world, and have been challenged by a phalanx of with the anti-Rite contingent determined to noisily demonstrated that there was an audience for this post-modern composers who do not share their disrupt the performance. Soon the din in the hall new kind of music. values: Philip Glass, Steve Reich and Arvo Pärt, was such that the dancers on stage could barely This is why the Rite quickly became—and among others. Modernism is no longer the newest hear the orchestra. As the story goes, fights began remains, to this day—so much more than an kid on the block. to break out in the audience, and the police were excellent composition. More than any other single This little essay began with mention of sunrises called in to restore order. According to some work from the early 20th century, it encapsulated and sunsets, and the possibility of confusing one accounts, Stravinsky fled the theatre, escaping out the spirit of modernism in music. It quickly with the other. So what may we say of the Rite? Was a back window. And according to other accounts, became a de facto manifesto, plain for all to it the dawn of a new era of modernism? Or was it read: to be truly modern, a musical composition a dramatic and colourful sunset—the decline of Colin Eatock is a Toronto-based writer, critic and should be tonally distressed, melodically angular, the “classical” composer in the 20th century? One composer. Last year his book Remembering Glenn rhythmically irregular and vividly outlandish thing is certain: it was and is an astonishing work. Gould was published by Penumbra Press, and his in its instrumentation. Composers, performers, Few century-old cultural artifacts can dazzle as this compact disc Colin Eatock: Chamber Music was critics and audiences might argue about whether music does—and that is reason enough to celebrate released on the Centrediscs label. these developments were good or bad things, but The Rite of Spring in its centennial year.
May 2013 reviewcanada.ca 9 Exporting Dispossession? Through Canada’s global mining dominance, domestic rules have world-wide effects. Philippe Le Billon
commodities, but also an economic and Imperial Canada Inc.: regulatory model of dispossession. Legal Haven of Choice for the Of particular interest to Deneault and World’s Mining Industries Sacher is the role of finance in enabling Alain Deneault and William Sacher Canadian predominance in the global Translated by Fred A. Reed and Robin mining sector—a cornerstone of what Philpot the back cover terms a “customized Talonbooks trading environment that supports 243 pages, softcover speculation, enables capital flows to ISBN 9780889226357 finance questionable projects abroad, [and] provides government subsidies.” The book sketches out this broader n September 27, 2009, local financial landscape, and also provides Mayan community leader Adolfo Ich a detailed and convincing explanation OChamán—an outspoken critic of min- of why so many mining companies (of ing impacts on his community—died during violent all sizes) flock to Canada, listing on the clashes near his home in El Estor, Guatemala. In Toronto Stock Exchange—despite not a suit brought before the Ontario Superior Court, corporate conduct and holding mining interests within our Ich’s widow alleges that he was snatched, beaten independent examination of borders. Indeed, the authors note that and ultimately shot by private security personnel complaints. Following the defeat of by 2011 the TSX channelled one third of employed by the nearby mine. The project in ques- Bill C-300, debate has continued regarding the best global equity financing for mining ventures (three tion, a nickel open-pit mine, had been acquired the approach to improve extractive sector practices times as much as the runner-up, the London Stock year prior by Canadian company Hudbay through and accountability for the overseas activities of Exchange) and handled 90 percent of the shares of its purchase of yet another Canadian company, Canadian mining companies. mining companies throughout the world. Skye Resources. The acquisition and the project In Imperial Canada Inc.: Legal Haven of Choice The book, furthermore, extends into the were taking place within a politically charged for the World’s Mining Industries, Alain Deneault and multiple ways in which the Canadian government context of land disputes with local communities William Sacher wade into this controversial terrain. seeks to promote “Canadian” mining interests and the broader historical context of violent dis- Their book seeks to explain the links between overseas, whether it is in the form of ad hoc possession of Mayan communities in this Central Canadian mining finance and both domestic and diplomatic support for mining companies in their American country. In pressing her suit, Ich’s widow overseas mining activities. Why are Canadian dealings with local authorities (for example, to joined two other claims against Hudbay now in the companies linked, as the authors argue, to negative resist contract cancellation or renegotiation by the Ontario courts, regarding the shooting of another consequences in so many mining communities host government) or through foreign investment local man that same day and the alleged gang rape around the world? The answer, according to the protection agreements tailored for extractive of eleven women during evictions in January 2007. authors, lies in Canada’s permissive regulations, ventures (through, for example, sidelining Based on Hudbay’s own investigation, the Toronto advantageous tax structure for mining companies, environmental impacts in host countries). Stock Exchange–listed company asserts on its web- unusually strong anti-libel protections for mining One can imagine the criticisms of Imperial site that allegations of abuses by its Guatemalan companies and active government support for the Canada Inc. Canada is a major commodity subsidiary personnel are “without merit,” and sold industry (each of which is explored in a separate exporter, and many Canadians celebrate oil and the property to a Cyprus-based Russian mining chapter). This combination, as detailed in Imperial gas, metals and minerals as the bedrock of Canada’s company in 2011. Canada Inc., draws speculative investment capital economic performance and the guarantor of future The activities of Canadian mining companies into one of the most environmentally and socially prosperity. Promoters of the mining companies have generated much debate over the past decade. decried industries in the world. listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (many of This is an important issue, given that Canada hosts Deneault and Sacher further argue that this which were listed on the Vancouver Stock Exchange approximately 75 percent of publicly listed mining phenomenon has deep historical roots: Canada’s before their merger) will argue that both listing companies in the world. Environmental and unparalleled position in the world of mining finance companies and investors find in Canada many human rights complaints from local communities reflects its own history as a resource-based colonial positive qualities: political stability, efficient market in several developing countries led to the venture. Indeed, the authors argue, according to the mechanisms, highly qualified personnel and one of organization of a national roundtable on extractive book’s back cover, that “rather than turning away the world’s best-regulated banking sectors. From industries in 2007, and motivated the introduction from the imperial ambitions of its mother country, this perspective, Canadian involvement in the of (the narrowly defeated) Bill C-300 that would Canada has actively embraced, appropriated and mining sector is beneficial. have introduced federal government guidelines for perpetuated them.” Tracing this exploitative pattern Proponents of Canada’s mining industry back to the British North America Act of 1867, they would also point to the government’s supportive Philippe Le Billon is an associate professor at the argue that the antiquated and deeply inequitable measures designed to help companies and host Department of Geography and the Liu Institute for but highly profitable Canadian model of resource authorities avoid future incidents and secure Global Issues at the University of British Columbia. extraction is now actively promoted overseas to greater benefits for local communities—mostly He is co-author of Oil (Polity Press, 2013) and of ensure the most crucial variable of the mining through its “Building the Canadian Advantage: Wars of Plunder: Conflicts, Profits and the Politics industry: “worldwide resource access.” In essence, A Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy for of Resources (Oxford University Press, 2012). argue the authors, Canada is exporting not only the International Extractive Sector.” While rarely
10 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada at the helm, the government has also been only province in Canada to enact such protection. corruption, when host country jurisdictions are involved in significant international regulatory No sooner had Talonbooks, the publisher of unlikely to do so. So far only a few cases are being initiatives. Ottawa has been a major supporter Imperial Canada Inc., announced the book’s pursued, that of Hudbay mentioned above and of of the Kimberley Process, which, despite its publication in 2010 than it received a letter from the recently settled case of corruption by Griffiths inability to broaden its mandate beyond narrowly Barrick’s lawyers suggesting litigation if it printed Energy after the new corporate executive team had defined conflict diamonds to environmental and anything about the company without prior approval discovered and self-disclosed the bribing of the human rights concerns, has nonetheless brought from the company. Some contributors withdrew at wife of Chad’s ambassador to Canada—through greater transparency and allowed governments that stage, and the book was postponed and has what the Crown and company’s agreed statement to tax the sector better. Canada is also among been reconfigured over the past two years to focus of facts describes as a “consulting agreement” the largest funders of the Extractive Industries less on individual mining companies and more on for $2 million—in the pursuit of oil blocks in that Transparency Initiative, which has made major the historical and institutional context supporting Central African country (NB Griffiths obtained the inroads in bringing greater transparency (and the Canadian mining industry. Nevertheless, this is blocks, gave shares to embassy personnel reported possibly accountability) in revenue flows between clearly contentious terrain. by The Globe and Mail in January 2013 to be worth companies and governments. Denault and Sacher are to be admired for their more than $20 million, paid the consulting contract Canada, however, is not yet an implementing persistence, and for the salient information they and, finally, pleaded guilty to corruption and paid member of the scheme, in contrast to Norway provide. Imperial Canada Inc. is at its best when a $10,350,000 fine; neither the corporate officials and the United States. Last year the Canadian it provides detailed accounts and clearly explains and legal counsels involved in the consulting government announced the creation of a the multiple processes through which mining contract nor the ambassador and his wife have university-based Canadian International Institute industries in Canada are supported. However, been prosecuted). Passed in 1999, the Corruption for Extractive Industries and Development of Foreign Public Officials Act had been mandated to reduce poverty in developing so weakly applied that Transparency countries through more efficiently Canada hosts approximately International, until 2011, listed Canada as a taxed and managed extractive sectors country with “little or no enforcement.” This [disclosure: the reviewer participates in this 75 percent of publicly listed is now hopefully changing—Canada passed institute]. Taken together, these initiatives mining companies in the world. in 2012 into the “moderate enforcement” demonstrate, proponents would argue, category—although anticorruption that the government is taking seriously its enforcement remains understaffed and responsibilities in the global mining sector. And, their tendency to extrapolate from their analysis investigators recognize the need to tread lightly overall, transparency is increasing. runs at times the risk of overgeneralization. One and carefully given that even rumors of corruption Critics, however, point out that many of these of the weaknesses of the book arises from its charges against a company can negatively affect initiatives are voluntary, even though some, systematic (and at times simplistic) discrediting its stock prices, and thereby “our pensions”—an such as the EITI, are backed by mandatory of any progressive reforms on the part of mining often-voiced comment that illustrates how deeply disclosure legislation in implementing countries. companies, regulatory authorities or governments. extractive industry interests runs throughout Furthermore, some argue that these initiatives Canadian mining companies have been more Canadian society. largely serve as mechanisms for companies transparent than many of their counterparts in The main recommendation of Imperial Canada to protect corporate reputations through, for other jurisdictions. One of the conclusions of the Inc. is for greater awareness of the colonial roots example, certification schemes that leave many lead campaigning organization on transparency of extractive industries’ conduct, for stronger issues unaddressed such as broad human rights and accountability, Publish What You Pay, was alternative sources of information on cases of concerns, “prior, free and informed consent” by that transparency on the part of mining companies abuses, and for political mobilization to achieve local communities and the maximization of local was relatively high in this country—but that non- “ethical” and “responsible” investment through not beneficiation (fair taxation) in host countries. governmental organizations were making relatively only better regulations but also personal choices Moreover, they point to disappointment with the little use of the information revealed. Certainly about financial investments. The mere existence concrete impacts of the Office of the Extractive more can be done, and Publish What You Pay is of this book, and the debate it has inspired, might Sector Corporate Social Responsibility Counsellor, now rightly calling for mandatory disclosures in lead to a final reflection. The fact that Deneault and which requires company consent to pursue its Canada akin to those required from companies Sacher have felt the need to act as self-appointed dispute resolution role (rather than independent publicly listed in the U.S. and Europe: a call industry watchdogs stems in part from Canada’s investigation), as well as with the termination supported by major mining associations, but not relatively weak environmental governance and of government funding for the Centre for CSR by petroleum companies nor, so far, by the federal regulatory frameworks—an issue that is not Excellence in March 2012 and the resignation of key government. Yet it is also the area of accountability confined to the extractive sector. In Green Leviathan: civil society organizations’ representatives from its in which regulators could do more. The Case for a Federal Role in Environmental Policy, executive committee a year later. Deneault and Sacher are tenacious and much- Inger Weibust’s comparison of environmental Greenwashing or genuine corporate social needed critics of the Canadian extractive sector. By governance across federal states highlights the responsibility? Denault and Sacher are clear in providing a detailed, historically grounded account fact that Canada’s highly decentralized approach arguing the former. Indeed, they are two of the of the emergence of mining finance in Canada, they to governance has produced a relatively “light most strident critics of the Canadian mining remind us that Canada’s colonial past is not past, touch” regulatory framework for a broad range of industry, their previous book Noir Canada: Pillage, but deeply present in the ways extractive industries resources. Combined with political factors, this corruption et criminalité en Afrique having led continue to operate. has led to a phenomenon that University of British Barrick Gold in 2008 to launch a lawsuit against But do not read this book expecting a balanced Columbia political scientist Kathryn Harrison the authors and their publisher, Écosociété. The review of the sector. Nor, the authors clearly called passing the buck, in her 1996 book of the case inspired much debate in Canada and abroad feel, should this be their objective. Deneault same name, a phenomenon in which significant on the topic of the strategic lawsuit against public and Sacher’s goal is to politicize debates about regulatory gaps open up between different levels of participation, a type of lawsuit (generally for libel extractive industries, by exposing Canada’s government. or defamation) “intended to silence, intimidate, colonial present and rejecting the falsehoods of Deneault and Sacher’s analysis would have or punish those who have used public forums to “consensus” and “good governance.” Following benefited from a more coherent contextualization speak, petition, or otherwise move for government the recommendations made by the roundtable on of debates over Canadian mining companies; action on an issue” of public interest or social extractive industries advisory group in 2007, for many of the issues they point to are symptoms of significance. The case was eventually settled out of example, they expressed concern in Noir Canada a broader malaise in environmental governance in court in 2011, while Écosociété’s motion to stay an for the capacity of an “ombudsman” to bring Canada, which they clearly demonstrate through action for libel by Banro Corporation in an Ontario Canadian-based companies to account, calling pointed criticism of practices in their own home court was denied by the Supreme Court of Canada. instead for judicial inquiries. The government did province of Quebec. Their book thus underscores It is very interesting to note that the government not heed the call for an ombudsman, preferring the need for a greater degree of objective of Quebec passed in 2009 an Act to Amend the a “counsellor office,” but the Canadian judicial scholarship, informed debate and stronger Code of Civil Procedure to Prevent Improper Use system now seems (finally) to be moving toward accountability mechanisms regarding what will of the Courts and Promote Freedom of Expression filling this gap to ensure accountability with continue to be one of the most controversial issues and Citizen Participation in Public Debate, the regard to allegations of human rights, as well as for Canada in the foreseeable future.
May 2013 reviewcanada.ca 11 Defender of the Church A new biography attempts to capture the most puzzling of 20th-century popes. Michael W. Higgins
of Hitler by Gerard Noel and the incendiary phrase expresses the reasoning behind Soldier of Christ: The Life of Pope Pius XII Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XIIby John Pius XII’s refusal to speak out forcefully to Robert A. Ventresca Cornwell. Ventresca’s biography, by contrast, is condemn directly Nazism and its manifest Belknap Press of Harvard University Press defined by its meticulous reliance on archival crimes throughout Europe. The principle 405 pages, hardcover materials, its avoidance of polemical fire and its of avoiding greater evil was consistent with ISBN 9780674049611 measured assessment of the complex factors that all his diplomatic training and his cautious shape a pontificate. character. Ventresca rehearses all the known details of he recent election of Jorge Mario Pacelli’s life: his deep Roman roots, the family’s His rigorous, although personally often deeply Bergoglio as the successor of Pope standing in the lower nobility, his education, his unsettling, adherence to this principle has come TBenedict XVI was surprising on several early career in the Curia (the administrative arm of to define the Pacelli pontificate, and any student counts. The new pope took the name of Francis, the Vatican), his posting as papal nuncio to Munich of the modern papacy or biographer of Pius XII comes from what the Vatican still thinks of as the and Berlin, his appointment as secretary of state by must face directly the whirligig of emotions and New World and is a member of the Companions of Pope Pius XI (Achille Ratti) and his election as pope opinions—scholarly or otherwise—occasioned by Jesus or the Jesuits. All papal firsts. in the 1939 conclave. Pacelli’s decision when confronted with egregious He has communicated by gesture, tone and style From the outset, Pacelli entertained no doubts behaviour by secular governments to elect that the accoutrements of papal living, the ornate that the destiny of Rome and the papacy are diplomacy over condemnation, no matter how vesture and the spirit-constricting protocols that inextricably linked, that the fortunes of the Vatican heinous the situation. Ventresca does not shy away have defined the papacy for centuries, will be put and the Italian state are connected. The loss to the from addressing this issue because he recognizes its aside as so much imperial baggage, the residue of papacy of its large swath of land known as the Papal centrality in passing any kind of fair judgement on an earlier time and a more monarchical modality. City States during the unification of Italy in 1870, the Pius of the war years. Francis is not the first pope to begin stripping the retreat into the Vatican by the then Pope Pius IX But Ventresca is right when he struggles to away the majestic rubrics and finery associated and the compelling need to resurrect and jealously situate the controverted legacy of the wartime pope with the papacy. John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, guard the history and mission of papal Rome were within the larger context of Pacelli’s nearly two John Paul II and even Benedict XVI sought to moral and spiritual imperatives for him: “If Eugenio decades of papal oversight. To that end, his final simplify the ministry of Peter: the Noble Guards Pacelli did fit the model of the prete romano, it chapter, “The Universal Pope,” and his epilogue, were disbanded, the sedia gestatoria (the throne was because, unlike many priests who came from “A Virtuous Life?,” serve both a summary and upon which the pope was borne aloft by twelve outside Rome or Italy, he accepted and defended apologetic purpose, no matter how subtle the latter, footmen and flanked by two elaborate fans) was the claims of papal supremacy and saw the pope’s in an attempt to show the touches of greatness, shuffled off to the museum, the triregnum tiara or survival in Rome as providential and historical genius and sanctity that fill out the picture of Pacelli, papal crown was dispensed with, and more besides. proof of Rome’s ‘universal mission’.” the prete romano of delicate health, emotional The pope, however, for whom all of this The papacy’s destiny and Pacelli’s are one and anguish and formidable conviction, the soldier of ceremonial and ancient custom was as natural the same. And so, although he would occasionally Christ with a Teutonic devotion to obedience. as the air he breathed, is the subject of Canadian confess that his preference was for the pastoral role Ventresca’s biography is a factual narrative, historian Robert A. Ventresca’s new biography: of an ordinary parish priest, from the very beginning linear, intelligible and informative. But in the Soldier of Christ: The Life of Pope Pius XII. This is he was engineered (it was in the Pacelli family’s end it is too cautious, too tentative—his efforts to but the latest of an eclectic range of biographies DNA) for diplomatic service in the interest of the redress the damage caused by decades of scorching and critical studies of the most Roman of Roman church. Trained at the Pontifical Academy of Noble partisanship limited by his focus on the pontifical pontiffs, Eugenio Pacelli, and Ventresca diligently Ecclesiastics, schooled in canon and civil law, and record to the exclusion of the life. It suffers from works to establish a perspective on the pope that under the patronage and tutorship of key Vatican his disinclination to interpret a life as opposed to is not confined to the controversies that continue insiders, Pacelli was fast-tracked through the chronicling it, his preference for evaluating the to swirl around his legacy: his reputed inaction hierarchy and stationed in the hottest of European pontificate instead of the man. This prevents his during the Holocaust, the debates around his cause hot spots: post–World War One Germany. biography from becoming an aperture into the soul for canonization, his involvement with the shaping Pacelli’s well-known Teutonophilia (when of a quiet, shy, eccentric and tortured leader of the of post–World War Two Europe and his alleged he was pope his immediate inner circle of Roman Catholic Church. reactionary approach to modernity in all its forms. confidants consisted of German Jesuits and nuns) Pacelli eludes his latest biographer as he has The actual record, of course, is both more enabled him to build up a measure of trust and done many before. And in great part that is not complicated and ambiguous, and Ventresca respect among most of the warring factions that a failure of the biographers per se but rather a labours admirably to ensure that his portrait of constituted the messy political reality of between- testament to the mystique of the papacy Pacelli Pacelli eschews the polarizing rhetoric, selective the-wars Germany. To that end he worked with a harnessed for his numerous battles with the forces indignation and pious piffle that has defined the maddeningly inhuman intensity to negotiate the that would sunder Rome; he allowed himself to work of the pro- and anti-Pacellists over the last 1933 Reichskonkordat with the Hitler government become subsumed by the papal persona. In the three decades, work that includes such recent because he was persuaded—and he never budged end, Pacelli was the apotheosis of a papacy that publications as the quirky Pius XII: The Hound from this position during his tenure as nuncio, eliminated the individual in a grand heroic drama secretary of state or as pope—that negotiating that demanded nothing less than promethean Michael W. Higgins is the author and coauthor of with unethical regimes rather than engaging in dedication. more than a dozen books including the bestselling denunciations was the only way to guarantee any This Olympian perception of the Office of Peter Power and Peril: The Catholic Church at the protection of the church’s rights and freedoms: the Fisherman is too costly for the man and the Crossroads (HarperCollins, 2002). His most recent church. And that is why the style of the subtle and work is the CBC Ideas series “Genius Born of As he explained to Bishop von Preysing simple Jesuit from Buenos Aires is as distant from Anguish.” He is a Vatican affairs specialist for CTV of Berlin, the aim was to avoid a greater the august Pacelli style as the Tiber is from the River and The Globe and Mail. evil—ad majora mala vitanda. This single Plate. And that is why it is a blessed liberation.
12 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Eating and Surviving The case for more government support of sustainable food—and less meat in our diets. Jennifer Clapp
Consumed: Sustainable Food for a Finite Planet Sarah Elton HarperCollins 340 pages, hardcover ISBN 9781443406673
limate change is poised to have a profound impact on the world’s Cagricultural systems in the coming decades. Already, scientists are documenting more robust weeds and drier soils that threaten crop yields. This scenario looms against a worrying backdrop that features ongoing food price volatility, more than 860 million people on the planet without enough to eat on a daily basis and world population growth that is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050. If humans are to thrive on this planet well into the future, our food system must not only be productive in the face of rising temperatures, but must also be sustainable on a long-term basis. The dominant food system today, based on industrial food production that is distributed on a global scale, is not on course to meet these requirements. But how processed foods that threaten our health, to name the seeds of alternative systems for food and can we fix it? This is the key question that Sarah just a few. agriculture have found fertile ground and are Elton sets out to answer in Consumed: Sustainable If it took just 50 years for the globalized already taking root. The examples she highlights Food for a Finite Planet. industrial food system to become as entrenched are just a small sample of the many extraordinary Elton reveals her position early on by taking as it has today, Elton asserts, it should not take any people around the world who are devoting their a strong stand in the broader debate about food more time than that to dig our way out of it. And we lives to building sustainable food alternatives. system sustainability. She disagrees with those who could get there faster if we put our minds to it. If we Elton introduces us to a successful organic say that only large-scale industrial food production retrace our footsteps, so to speak, we should be able farmer and community organizer from India and distribution systems have the efficiency to return to smaller-scale and more localized food named Chandrakalabai, whose story is revisited to meet future needs while doing the least systems, which would enable us to break free from throughout the book. Formerly a subsistence environmental damage to the planet. Instead, she today’s dominant system. To get us there, Elton farmer who had adopted the “modern” agricultural argues, we need to reorient our food system toward maps out the key steps needed in each of the next methods of the green revolution that included a more human scale and focus on agro-ecological three decades that will bring us closer to a more hybrid seeds and chemicals, she had difficulty farming methods and shorter distribution chains sustainable way to feed ourselves. These steps form making ends meet. Finding the resources to between producers and consumers. Elton is clear the three main sections of the book and revolve purchase the necessary inputs to farm in this way about why she takes this stance. Although she around the broad themes of soil, seeds and culture. was an ongoing challenge, and the chemicals acknowledges some benefits such as year-round Soil entails more environmentally attuned food bothered her skin. By the 1990s, Chandrakalabai fruits and vegetables, she points out that the current production systems that embrace agro-ecological had had enough and switched to organic farming industrial food system that has risen to dominance farming methods that give nutrients back to the soil methods that she learned about from a local in the past half century has also brought profound and help to regulate the climate. Seeds refer to the non-governmental organization. The results were problems. It is not only responsible for just under a need to maintain diversity in what we grow if we transformative. Her farm became a resounding third of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, but want to protect ourselves from genetic erosion that success, and improved her income, the quality of has also contributed to chemical overload in soils can wipe out crop and animal varieties. And culture her soil and her health. and waterways, poor returns for farmers working focuses on place-based food systems that provide a Elton also spent time with an elderly artisanal within the system and nutritionally dubious close link between farmers and eaters. If we focus cheese producer in the Aubrac mountain region of on these components, she argues, we can build a France, who has worked tirelessly to protect local Jennifer Clapp is Canada Research Chair in Global more sustainable food system. farming and food production traditions. She visited Food Security and Sustainability in the Faculty of Elton travelled across three continents and with rare cattle breed advocates in the Charlevoix Environment at the University of Waterloo. Her talked at length with leaders in alternative food region of Quebec who aim to enhance genetic recent books include Food (Polity Press, 2012) movements and others who are deeply engaged diversity by reviving the threatened Canadienne and Hunger in the Balance: The New Politics of in food issues to glean lessons. Her conversations dairy cows that produce a special kind of milk used International Food Aid (Cornell University Press, with these fascinating individuals in India, China, in local cheese production. Elton met with a local 2012). France, Canada and the United States reveal that woman who explained the challenges of preserving
May 2013 reviewcanada.ca 13 seed diversity in the rice terraces of Yunnan in dominates. If we want to fully support the consumption in particular and animal products China, and visited with an Ontario couple who development of smaller-scale, environmentally more broadly is not discussed by Elton, despite dramatically transformed their industrial tobacco sensitive food systems, we need to go beyond just the book’s focus on the power of individual action farm into a successful grass-fed organic cattle encouraging producers and consumers to opt as a major transformative force. Organic meat ranch. out of the existing system. We need to convince and dairy production are in fact featured in the In highlighting these and other inspiring governments to build a new framework of rules book as examples of sustainable food initiatives. examples, the thrust of Elton’s book is to call for and practices that promotes food production and But an individual choice to eat an entirely or at a commitment to a new approach to food and consumption on a more human scale. Such a least mostly plant-based diet would make an agriculture. She shows that producers who have framework should prioritize a shift in government enormous contribution to both food security and opted out of the dominant system to create local support from industrial to ecologically sensitive sustainability on a global scale. alternatives for eaters can be highly successful. And agricultural farming methods, so that farmers Around 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions she makes the case that others should follow them. can more easily switch to organic production. from agriculture are linked directly to the livestock She stresses: “We need farmers. Particularly family Also needed are stronger regulations on financial sector. The emissions specifically tied to livestock— farmers, who provide ecological goods and services markets to curtail speculation in agricultural methane, nitrous oxide and ammonia—also to society as stewards of the land. And these small commodities as well as fairer international trade contribute to other environmental problems such farmers don’t need to be poor.” as acidification of ecosystems. Bottom-up initiatives to build Canadians eat on average around Toxins from animal wastes, clear- a new food system that Elton calls cutting of forests to make way for for are of course important, but 95 kilograms of meat per person per grazing land, and high levels of on their own they are unlikely to water use are also associated with be sufficient to effect the kind of year, nearly 25 kilograms per person meat production. Moreover, most systemic change needed before it of the world’s corn and soy crop is game over for agriculture due more than they did 50 years ago. actually feeds animals destined for to climate change. The dominant supermarket meat sections rather food system is deeply entrenched. It is enmeshed rules to ensure that developing country farmers than being directly consumed by humans. And in our economic and social systems in complex are not outcompeted by a flood of cheap grains the meat sector’s use of energy is highly inefficient ways. Action is required on multiple fronts at the from industrialized countries. Stronger rules are compared to the plant-based food sector. On same time if we are to make profound and widely needed to limit corporate concentration in the average, the fossil energy input to output ratio of the accessible change that goes beyond serving niche agrifood sector and to enforce standards in global livestock sector is a whopping 25 to one compared markets. Here are two further areas for action that value chains that ensure fairness to farmers and to grains at just over two to one. will be vital for building sustainable food systems: environmental protection. Localized production Organic meat and dairy production, as promoted the very macro scale of governance systems and the and distribution could also be better supported by Elton, typically has a lower environmental very micro scale of personal choice of diet. with reduced subsidies for fossil fuels. And rules to footprint than large-scale confined animal feeding First, a major overhaul of the rules and norms ensure that productive farmland is apportioned operations typical of the industrial food system. that govern the dominant global food system to farmers in a fair and equitable manner are sorely The difference, however, is not particularly stark. is urgently needed if we want the bottom-up needed. For example, a recent survey of research on this alternatives Elton calls for to thrive and grow. A number of voluntary initiatives have emerged topic in Europe shows that while energy use and The laws, agreements and regulations that guide in recent decades that go some of the way toward greenhouse gas emissions are lower per product practice provide the base upon which food creating parallel rule structures for alternative food unit for organic compared to conventionally systems are built and shape how they operate. The markets, but these remain small in scale compared produced beef, emissions are actually higher per current rules encourage and reinforce a global- to the global picture. Fair trade and organic product unit for some organic dairy products and scale industrial food system, making broad-based certification systems, for example, have become for pork. Organic meat production still uses vast and widely accessible alternatives particularly popular among those wanting more sustainable quantities of water and requires large areas of land challenging to foster. Even if some producers options. But certified alternative food products, for grazing. and consumers choose to break free from the while important and growing in both size and Determining which method of meat and dairy dominant system, they are still affected by it. The scope, still only make up a tiny share of global food production is more environmentally friendly is not environmental impact of the system as a whole, markets. The fair trade coffee market accounts for really the issue. Rather, it is the amount of meat including its contribution to climate change, is just 1 percent of the global coffee trade. And less and animal products that humans consume and hard to escape. And those producing for alternative than 5 percent of global food sales are certified its overall impact on the planet that we should be markets still operate within a broader context in organic. Scholars have also raised important concerned about. Meat consumption has increased which large supermarket chains offer comparatively questions about the quality of the standards and sharply over the past 50 years in most countries lower prices and capture the lion’s share of the food accountability systems associated with various around the world, increasing from an annual dollars spent by average consumers. food certification systems. Voluntary initiatives like average of 23 kilograms to 42 kilograms between It is important to remember that the global these, while an important step, are limited in the 1961 and 2009. Canadians eat on average around industrial food system rose to dominance in face of the policy and governance changes required. 95 kilograms of meat per person per year, nearly the first place because the rules and regulations We need government buy-in for a sustainable food 25 kilograms per person more than they did 50 years governing it rewarded “efficient” production and system and strong state-backed rules to support it. ago. In the United States over that same period, consumption on a large scale. Governments have No doubt the political process involved in this effort meat consumption increased from 89 kilograms to long been heavily involved in shaping the sector in will be difficult, messy and mired in debate. But it is more than 120 kilograms per person. If individuals this direction. As Elton notes, they supported public worth the effort if we are serious about long-term would take the step of eliminating or drastically investment in the development and promotion of sustainability within the food system. reducing their consumption of animal products, it the new seeds and inputs of the green revolution Second, diet at an individual level also deserves would go a long way toward building sustainability in order to increase production. Governments a bigger role in the sustainability makeover plan for into the food system. played a big role in expanding global markets for our food system. The global industrial food system Overall, Elton’s book provides an excellent entry grain through food aid, subsidies and other export serves up some dubious processed “food” products, point into the broader debate about how we can promotion policies. At the same time, there has from brightly coloured breakfast cereals to the sustainably feed the planet in a hostile and changing been a distinct lack of government rules to prevent notorious “pink slime” (centrifuge-extracted beef climate. Her focus on bottom-up, producer-centred excessive corporate concentration, which has particles used as meat filler). We should think twice initiatives is an important ingredient to building encouraged transnational agrifood companies to about consuming such foods, especially because a lasting ecologically and socially sensitive food grow enormously in size. Governments also relaxed they rely heavily on fossil fuels in their processing, system. Such initiatives, however, require strong the rules so that financial investors were able to packaging and transport, not to mention the governance systems to support them. And if these pour billions of speculative dollars into agricultural dangers these products can pose to our health and measures are combined with a major shift toward a commodity futures markets in recent decades. well-being. But we also need to be much more more plant-based diet, we will be much more likely Given this governance framework, it is not aware of the environmental consequences of all the to achieve the kind of sustainable food system that surprising that the global industrial food system foods we eat. The environmental impact of meat Elton envisions.
14 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada POETRY IS A FINE ART*
a rhythm to stand All the Daylight Hungry A Bee Garden beside Hours
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The LRC Presents... We Can’t Drink Oil When it comes to protecting Canada’s water, warns environmental writer Andrew Nikiforuk, no one can afford to stand idle.
Canada, a water-rich country, now champions a militant new vision May 6, 2013 for the economy. Ottawa wants to become a global energy superpower 7:00 PM by exporting unconventional hydro The Gardiner Museum carbons. But petro states operate 111 Queen’s Park like plantation economies, Andrew Toronto Nikiforuk observes: everything is sacrificed or subjected to the goal of oil or gas exports. Consequently, he argues, Canada’s water resources and water legislation have come under sustained attack by pipeline lobbyists and the This free public discussion Harper government. (with light refreshments and a cash Nikiforuk is an award-winning investigative journalist and policy analyst, whose critically acclaimed books include Empire bar) will include a talk by Nikiforuk of the Beetle, The Tar Sands and, most recently, The Energy of and subsequent Q&A. Slaves, nominated for the W.O. Mitchell City of Calgary Book Award. Drawing upon stories about the extreme water demands of Alberta’s tar sands, hydraulic fracturing and the impact of Seating is limited, so reserve ruptured pipelines, Nikiforuk will outline the scale of the assault a place now by emailing on our water resources. But he will also highlight the inspiring example of aboriginal women responding with civic strength, [email protected] through the Idle No More movement.
May 2013 reviewcanada.ca 15 Water Runs in Ancestral Lines
My mom had a bath every night. Sounds of water sliding through copper pipes, rushing out of faucets, were a lullaby. Childhood baths in hand-me-down water, a tepid body, small enough to float. Sometimes water was my mother.
Learning to read, the door’s spill of steamy spirals, meant do not disturb. Once a male babysitter walked into my bathtime, fat rain cornered in a tub, cloaked only in water and pink skin. “It reached us. It passed us, totally unimpressed.” Chilled bones and hot water medicine rattle and hum in maternal lines. — from “Small Rain” The year I lived at the cabin, no running water. Melted snow by Norman MacCaig bucket baths in front of the wood stove were enough.
storm boughs bucking The first dive into an underwater world, I resurfaced blue. far up the cedar trunk The divemaster named my mouth beginner diver’s smile, wave like arms of a woman poured a kettle of hot water between skin and wet suit, an outfit of bath. too busy for fitness, flesh under raised limbs flapping — In the town where everyone two-steps, stories of the waitress spun dark, slipped and spit out. She told me she held her baby’s high pitches each branch conducts a breeze under water, and all the ways the clay of her hard life hardened. in a direction different from emerald counterparts — Courage is the mother who stayed in that small talking town, paler tones for her got her baby back. The yogis say water is imagination; virginal upward gestures you can walk across the river, leave the skin of an old life behind.
summoning in small offspring Robin K. Macdonald who play in downpour and (made mad by mud) reach and pass that point
of the icy shaking skinny frailties their mother sees, her wanting to fatten them against frost The Telling Stream when rain chunks up David Zieroth For Richard B. Wright
He binds them without knot, twine or even splice, binds the agreeable words one to the other and others like the elements of water they cleave in storied delight while each continues to expound: sprung leaves on a rushing stream, unbound.
Merle Nudelman
Peter Stuart-Sheppard’s poems have appeared in a variety of journals in Merle Nudelman is a lawyer, poet, David Zieroth’s The November Canada and abroad including The editor and teacher. Her first collection, Optimist will be published by Stinging Fly (Dublin), Contemporary Borrowed Light (Guernica, 2003), Gaspereau Press this fall. In 2008 he Verse 2 and The Antigonish Review. Robin K. Macdonald is completing won the 2004 Canadian Jewish Book founded The Alfred Gustav Press, a He is currently reading Olivia a creative non-fiction novel about a Award for Poetry. True as Moonlight, micro press for publishing poetry. Manning’s wonderfully observed The solo pilgrimage through the boreal which is her fourth poetry collection, He has recently read Tom Wayman’s Balkan Trilogy and the Memoirs of forest of northern Manitoba. She has will be released in 2014. Her other Dirty Snow, Russell Thorton’s Birds, the Verney Family During the Civil work published in Where There’s Fire, books are We, the Women and The Metal, Stones and Rain, Adam War by Lady Frances Parthenope Ottawater and North Roots maga- He We Knew, both published by Zagajewski’s Without End: New and Verney. He has also been reading lots zine. She is currently reading The Guernica in 2006 and 2010 respect- Selected Poems, Tamas Tobozy’s of poetry, including Yevtushenko’s Book of Marvels by Lorna Crozier, ively. She is poetry editor of the jour- Siege 13, Martha Gellhorn’s Travels Selected Poems, W.S. Graham’s The We the Animals by Justin Torres and nal Parchment. She has recently read with Myself and Another and Nicolas Nightfishing and Jane Kenyon’s sub- Long Life by Mary Oliver. Rules of Civility by Amor Towles and Freeling’s The King of the Rainy lime achievement of Twenty Poems Home by Toni Morrison. Country. by Anna Akhmatova.
16 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Ceol na Mara [Music of the Sea]
This, the story of how it came into our possession. It wondered where its children were — why Equine Tide It couldn’t be always with them. There was such peace when the sea Black Rock Beach moved our body, uterine … Dying. Birds A thousand angry horses took off from the wall foaming at the mouth. a flock of souls. Sun Came out to keep an eye on things. Behind them is a haven: Calves skittered back to mother, the first time, the stretching disc not the second. A small item a pin or awl where grey Atlantic sea was used to remember what life was like. meets grey Atlantic sky. In an empty swing Played Elysium. wind. A woman in blue shawl stood at an open door. A spirit The beasts reject this refuge Dressed in black turned choosing, instead, to face from her prayers. Another moved past an empty window the obstinate rocks. In a roofless house. One by one, spines twist Clop-clip, clip-clop, hooves come, go, echoes and recoil — water, as always, Of upturned cups. And people turning back on itself. moved on the horizon. A man with a bunch of flowers David Huebert Stared out to sea. Sea air filled lungs. Waves swam for the eyes. All ages smiled. No one could get enough of it. Minds Moved in peace. Cows ran wild. Fire haiku
Peter Stuart-Sheppard Perfect kindling the empty clementine box a last sweet segment.
Louise Carson
David Huebert works, lives and writes Louise Carson’s work has recently in Halifax. His poetry and fiction appeared in Montreal Serai, Other have appeared in journals such as Voices, Vallum, subTerrain, Geist, Event, Matrix, Existere, Vallum and Prairie Fire, Contemporary Verse 2 The Antigonish Review. David has, and The Montreal Review, with work with great admiration, been reading upcoming in Carousel and Event. Her James Longenbach’s The Virtues of book Rope was published in 2011 and Poetry. He has also been dabbling Mermaid Road in 2013 both from in Margaret Atwood’s Wilderness Broken Rules Press. She is currently Tips and Federico García Lorca’s The reading The Complete Idiot’s Guide Gypsy Ballads. to Slam Poetry by Marc Smith and Lord Peter Takes the Case by Dorothy Sayers.
May 2013 reviewcanada.ca 17 Coming up in the LRC
British Columbia in writing J.B. MacKinnon, Beth Haddon, Kevin Patterson & more Building schools that learn Ben Levin Quebec nationalism, left and right Jerry White Shyam Selvadurai’s The Hungry Ghosts Kamal Al-Solaylee Giving non-citizens the (municipal) vote Graeme Cook & Patti Lenard Mothers who drink Ibi Kaslik Preaching murder in Shediac Margaret Conrad The battle over Adams Mine Joy Roberts On burning books Rinaldo Walcott Elemental to Canadian culture.
The Literary Review of Canada is the country’s leading forum for intelligent discussion and lively debate about art, politics and ideas. Since 1991, we Donate periodically. have featured in-depth articles on culture and public affairs from some of the Donations can be made by cheque, payable to the Literary Review of Canada country’s most provocative thinkers, critics, journalists and writers. at 170 Bloor Street West, Suite 710, Toronto, ON M5S 1T9. You can also give by In recognition of this role as one of the basic building blocks of credit card on our secure site at
18 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Creative Crimes How artists befriend and betray in the name of their work. Lesley Krueger
likes and nobody seems to remember. At night Sirena’s confidence energizes Nora. She works The Woman Upstairs and on weekends, she still makes art in the second on her boxes with renewed vigour, eventually Claire Messud bedroom of her apartment, but not even Nora takes embarking upon a series of seductive night-time Knopf her shadow boxes seriously. walks with Sirena’s husband, Skandar, who is 253 pages, softcover Into this constrained life comes a charming little lonely, and whose loneliness—Nora knows this— ISBN 9780307596901 boy. Reza Shahid, a new arrival in Nora’s classroom, the busy Sirena is glad Nora can assuage. It is a is soon followed by his equally charming mother, subtle tripartite relationship, hugely important the symbolically named Sirena. Sirena is an Italian to Nora, but not unimportant to the Shahids and, n her seminal work The Journalist and the artist teetering on the edge of a big career, in town initially at least, not unequal. Murderer, Janet Malcolm launched a scandal because her Lebanese husband, an academic star The tipping point comes when Nora happily Iwith her famous opening sentence: “Every named Skandar, is spending the year at Harvard. agrees to become Reza’s part-time babysitter, journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself We quickly learn that Nora falls in love with all plummeting in caste from professional teacher to notice what is going on knows that what he does three, and that they end up betraying her. On the to unpaid servant. I closed the book, thinking of is morally indefensible.” first page, Nora’s cry: “FUCK THEM ALL.” the time I was a newly hired 23-year-old chase Malcolm’s 1989 essay is a withering look at an In her four previous books, Messud has often producer on CBC Radio’s As It Happens and host otherwise-forgotten true-crime book. She claims written about peripatetic, deracinated characters. Barbara Frum asked me to call the groomers about that as he did his research, the journalist groomed Ukraine, west-end Toronto, London, the south of her dog, subtly testing the waters to see if I would the murderer, Jeffrey MacDonald, by leading him to France, Algeria and, in her 2005 bestseller, The agree to become her unofficial part-time personal believe the book would exonerate him. In fact, the Emperor’s Children, Manhattan: Messud’s people assistant. I was both too stupid and too smart journalist thought MacDonald was guilty, and used are at once at home and lost in a series of precisely to agree, and after I pretended not to hear, she his quotes against him. MacDonald felt betrayed observed locales, often during the great moments pretended I was not 23 and stupid, and went on to and sued. of history. teach me everything about doing interviews. Malcolm was questioning the morality of Messud was born in the United States, educated But Nora becomes a personal assistant, making journalists who took advantage of their subjects. at Yale and now lives outside Boston with her herself useful to the Shahids, a dogsbody rather Yet it later emerged that, several years before husband, the critic James Wood, and their children. than an equal, and her slide begins. She helps publishing her book, Malcolm had herself been Her mother is Canadian and she spent her early Sirena with her art while neglecting her own, goes sued by Jeffrey Mousaieff Masson, a psychoanalyst years in Toronto; her father is Algerian French; a tantalizing distance when Skandar calls and she had profiled in The New Yorker. Masson and she went to Cambridge University. Perhaps it fantasizes Reza as her son. The book is a mystery: claimed that Malcolm had misquoted and defamed is this outsider’s perspective that keeps her more what does Sirena end up doing to make Nora feel so him by saying he had called himself “an intellectual alive to the unsettled, mongrel nature of the world betrayed? The mystery is heightened when we learn gigolo.” He lost his case, but that only makes it than many American writers and makes her such that after leaving Cambridge, Sirena has become an more fascinating to see Malcolm calling work done a precise observer of class. I would like to ban U.S. internationally renowned artist. Whose work, when by journalists like herself “morally indefensible.” writers from defining their characters by saying Nora sees it, makes her faint. Especially when both the murderer and the they went to Smith or Brown or Yale, which many The novel is not without flaws. In all her books, psychoanalyst are named Jeffrey. seem to think says it all. Messud understands the Messud has a tendency to create secondary The complex world of subject and objectifier, importance of unimportant things—a tattered characters whose sole purpose seems to be to this Wonderland of user and used, is the thematic photograph of a port, a bride’s dress of sea-foam move the story forward or underline themes—in playground for Claire Messud’s angry new novel, blue—and reliably says more. this case, Nora’s two lesbian friends. Like her The Woman Upstairs. In Messud’s case, the focus The Woman Upstairs is a departure from other convenient characters, they do nothing is visual art, its subject the relationship of a naive Messud’s earlier work, its concerns narrower, if no inconvenient to the plot, and therefore fail to come weekend artist to the compelling woman who takes less significant, and its narrative more compressed. alive. This novel, Messud’s tightest, could have been her as a studio mate. This sharp-eyed book explores Told after the fact by a furious Nora, it documents even tighter and lost nothing by it. the relationship, step by step, as it enters the realm her transition from having a degree of power over Yet overall, The Woman Upstairs is an intelligent, of complicity. Is the more established artist justified the Shahids—she begins as Reza’s teacher, after uncompromising book, thought provoking and in making use of the naive weekender who offers all—to putting herself at their service. sexy. It is also sly. At the end, Nora plans to use her herself so freely? And how does it feel once you Shortly after they meet, Sirena invites Nora to experience of being used, and we find ourselves realize you have been used? share a studio. They end up working in separate looking down a hall of mirrors. For Nora Eldridge, the answer is a howl. Nora is corners of a warehouse atelier, Sirena growing Perhaps this novel is itself a mirror. I cannot help a former art student and failed New York artist who, preoccupied with her large-scale conceptual work, wondering if Messud has felt used and bruised by as the novel opens, has retreated to Cambridge, a so-called Wonderland of lava flows, aspirin another writer, or whether she has been provoked Massachusetts, where she teaches grade 3. Our flowers and video cameras. To my taste, it sounds into taking a walk in the shoes of someone who felt narrator, Nora, defines herself at 42 as one of those less interesting than the Joseph Cornell–like boxes used by her. Whatever the reason, Nora’s howl of quiet, single, upstairs neighbours whom everybody that Nora assembles nearby, although that might pain echoes loudly, like the door that Nora Helmer be part of Messud’s point, and, in any case, it is slams at the end of A Doll’s House, or like the Lesley Krueger is a novelist and filmmaker living irrelevant. Sirena does the type of work curators reverberating yes at the end of Ulysses that James in Toronto. Her last novel was The Corner Garden love these days, has international contacts and, Joyce famously stole from his wife, Nora Barnacle. (2003) from Penguin. She is co-producer of a feature most importantly, possesses an artist’s self- Questions crowd in, and, in the end, I put the film by writer/director Bill Taylor, Don’t Get Killed doubting, never-doubting, entirely believable book down another time to wonder. in Alaska, now in post-production. self‑confidence.
May 2013 reviewcanada.ca 19 Lament for Rosedale A ruthless portrayal of entitlement in free fall. James FitzGerald
Old Money, “steering the money of old white people grandfather, a real estate tycoon who built his Mount Pleasant to safe harbours.” But latterly he scored a personal fortune on luck and likely bribery. Out of guilt over Don Gillmor windfall with an oil company aptly named Pathos; an affair with a girl “seventeen going on thirty,” Random House Harry anticipates a million-dollar inheritance that he gave his money to the Anglican Church. Harry 291 pages, hardcover will liberate the debt that is “his mistress, the dirty testily confronts his grandfather’s ghost, who ISBN 9780307360724 siren who clawed his back.” Yet his father bequeaths stoutly returns fire: “Everyone here is haunted by only $13,000, an insulting sum that Harry must something. Two hundred acres of regret. No one divide with his well-heeled, married sister Erin, rests in peace. Even Banting, the saint, had mistress ne of the supreme advantages of whose razor tongue she inherited from their problems … There’s no vaccine for death.” being born a child of privilege is the emasculating mother, Felicia. Harry’s unrealized rebel streak emerges while Ofreedom to reject the values of one’s Even worse, following his second divorce, Dale teaching a course on Revolutionary Toronto. own class—having one’s cake, eating it and spitting had taken up with Dixie, a predatory gold-digger He asks his young charges, the generation of it out. Far harder to expel is a clinging feeling of of Harry’s age with sun-damaged skin and a “smile the Occupy Toronto movement, if they are entitlement that can consume a lifetime. honed in the hospitality industry.” Dixie, the capable of enacting the dream of William Lyon Mount Pleasant, the title of Mackenzie—the leader of the Don Gillmor’s mordantly powerful The barbarians have long since crashed thwarted 1837 uprising against the new novel, refers at a surface level Family Compact—to burn down to the fabled Toronto cemetery the gilded gates of the old plutocracy, Rosedale. Harry’s own ancestors while even more richly and were members of the Tory elite deeply symbolizing the feral, buckling the marble veneer; in the moral that Mackenzie yearned to burn: underground forces that entomb their daguerreotypes hung in three generations of an epically quicksand of this profane new world, his parents’ house, “mouths like unpleasant WASP family—the zippers, etched straight across, living as well as the dead. all you need is greed. closed and unyielding, people Engulfed in mid-life angst in who may have felt communication the wake of the 2008 market crash, Harry Salter is grasping outsider, fails to grasp the hermeticism was a sin.” Yet Harry remains a prisoner of his a former broadcast journalist turned left-leaning of old money: “Trying to gain entry to it was like own cynicism, impotently denouncing the political science teacher—“a white male at the one re-entering the earth’s atmosphere; you had to eternal elasticity of the ruling class even as he moment in history when this wasn’t an advantage.” approach at precisely the right angle. If you didn’t, notes his “failure to evolve” up the status ladder Harry grew up in the exclusive enclave of Rosedale, you’d either bounce back into space or burn up.” while shopping for a used car. He is failing to “a fountain of money that shot out of the ground, Yet Harry shares with his father’s quasi-prostitute revolutionize his own life. and in the gush of afterbirth came the nannies and a scorching sense of entitlement that makes Regan An award-winning journalist and author, cooks and gardeners who made multiculturalism and Goneril look like Care Bears. As he forms an Don Gillmor grew up in middle class Winnipeg, such a success.” His aspirations have moved lock- unholy alliance with Dixie to recover the imagined which makes his laser-sharp, open-heart surgery step with the city—“all hours were rush hours bag of gold—acted out through an impulsive carnal of the monied elites of contemporary Toronto all now”—yet, like the city, he now teeters dangerously dalliance—Harry wonders: “Were her fourteen the more impressive; a reportorial drive to expose, beyond his means, saddled with maxed-out credit months of occasional sexual sacrifice worth more coupled with a novelist’s x-ray vision, has created cards and a depreciating house that embodies his than his and Erin’s years of paternal neglect?” an unflinching portrait of class warfare worthy slide from middle class respectability to genteel Suspecting that the money has been embezzled, of Tom Wolfe. From capitalists to hippies, no poverty. His 25-year marriage to Gladys, a recently Harry hires a forensic accountant he cannot afford one escapes the timeless taint of corruption and down-sized librarian, is tenuously held up by their to probe the rogue’s gallery of tanned profiteers that collusion. A man not sure if he wants what he has, co-conspiratorial boomer devotion to conspicuous populate his father’s firm. The barbarians have long Harry seeks hopefully for “some tragedy amid the consumption. Their passively resentful son, Ben, since crashed the gilded gates of the old plutocracy, caramelized sea scallops in truffle sauce ($48) and listening to the Grateful Dead on his iPod, mirrors buckling the marble veneer; in the moral quicksand the 2008 Puligny-Montrachet ($465),” but finds Harry’s own alienated youth. of this profane new world, all you need is greed, for only pathos: He “didn’t mourn his father’s passing, The plot hinges on the untidy aftermath of money is “the essential architecture of existence.” or even the passing of his money. He mourned the the death of Harry’s father from brain cancer. An Over a high-end Bay Street lunch, Harry questions absence of possibility, the procrastination of his life archetype of the carnivorous, hard-drinking, chain- an oily colleague of his father’s who delivers a with Gladys, the failure of his own imagination.” By smoking, Bay Street alpha male, Dale Salter was a murderous, up-to-minute dispatch from the front: the end, we feel pity, not envy, for the relentlessly classically absent father obsessed with bond yields “The rich got rich by fucking the poor … so the only unsympathetic cast of “privileged” characters—no at the expense of familial bonds; his high social people left to fuck are the rich. The market looks small feat. station failed to insulate him from the low acts of like that soccer team that crashed in the mountains. Gillmor falls short of dancing on the grave of drunken wife-beating and sexual infidelity. Dale Everyone’s eating each other.” the Family Compact; rumours of its death may spent most of his career specializing in preserving Harry finds little solace from his aging mother, be exaggerated. But if it is true that Canadians are Felicia, who has retreated from her empty Rosedale unified in their hatred of Toronto, then perhaps James FitzGerald won the 2010 Writers’ Trust Non- manse, echoing with memories of a hellish his in-your-face, take-no-prisoners cautionary fiction Prize for his family memoir, What Disturbs marriage, to a condo edging Mount Pleasant tale makes painfully clear what it is that unites Our Blood: A Son’s Quest to Redeem the Past cemetery. With her familiar, gin-fuelled “cobra them; some things are worth hating. Don Gillmor (Random House, 2010). His first book, Old Boys: smile,” she declares: “Money isn’t much help. Not has given the best and worst of us something The Powerful Legacy of Upper Canada College, was as much as people think, anyway.” In the nearby truly valuable to invest in: an excoriating—and published by Macfarlane, Walter and Ross in 1994. mausoleum, Harry visits the crypt of his maternal exhilarating—wake-up call.
20 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Essay What’s Happened to CanLit? In classrooms today, cultural nationalism seems to be a non-starter. Michael LaPointe
y the time a Canadian graduates from Massey Report’s recommendations were intended “several men had a profound effect on our view of high school, there is one Canadian poem to defrost Canadian creativity through financial the nature of man,” while if teachers are seeking Bhe or she is likely to know: “In Flanders empowerment, with a view to fortifying against examples of blatant sexism, “Women in Canadian Fields.” We might mistake McCrae’s poem for the every “twitch and grunt” of Trudeau’s famous Literature” suggests we read “some of the lyrics central text of Canadian literature, so unfailingly sleeping elephant, America. of Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones” or “any issues” of can our students intone it. If one aim of mandatory The Canada Council for the Arts emerged in the Police Gazette. Despite such shortcomings, schooling is to guarantee basic knowledge of 1957 from the Massey Report, spurring a decade however, the resources mounted a strong, one’s country, the Canadian literary education of nationalist literary projects in the run-up to the panoramic argument for the vitality of Canadian cannot claim success.1 Insufficient resources are 1967 centennial celebrations. One such endeavour literature and formed the practical foundation of compounded by conspicuous indifference and was the creation of the New Canadian Library a course, or even just a unit, of Canadian literature confusion about which authors are essential. paperback series by McClelland and Stewart, at the secondary level. With such an apparatus Whose place in the Canadian canon is firm enough engineered to act as a stable, trustworthy canon in place, we might consider money well spent on for teaching? Who can challenge McCrae? from which consumers and teachers could draw. occasional revisions, reflecting the latest critical Setting out to map not the ideal, but the de The predictably white, English series canonized trends, not to mention the emergence of new facto Canadian canon, by examining the basic such authors as Stephen Leacock, Mazo de la Roche authors. The goal, after all, is changeless: “to help texts of a Canadian’s education—and by talking and Morley Callaghan. Publisher Jack McClelland students form their own impressions of Canadian to the instructors who teach identity and culture, using them, or do not—we find our As a teacher in Vancouver said, “if literature as a medium.” curricula strangely untouched No new editions were by the 1960s and ’70s, decades Canadian publishers want Canadian schools developed. Students of that saw the sustained efforts teachers still heeding advice to of writers, critics, publishers to teach Canadian authors, they could offer use “the songs of Anne Murray, and legislators to reverse- Gene MacLellan, [and] John engineer a canon, aggrandize us class sets at a deeper discount.” Allan Cameron” can only be our literature and instil it in our considered a lost generation. schools. The abiding paucity of Canadian authors in perceived his project patriotically: “If we want to It was not until 2002 that the Canada Council the classroom belies a nation-building project that continue to be Canadian for very long, we can’t decided to reinvestigate the state of Canadian failed to endure. Canada has missed its national follow a course of passive acceptance of everything literature in high schools, wondering, “might moment. American and everything that seems easy.” it be time to produce another series of guides?” It It has long been held that we are what we read. In The Writers’ Trust of Canada, founded as the commissioned the Writers’ Trust to write a report. Robert Kroetsch’s celebrated phrasing, “we haven’t Writers’ Development Trust in 1976, commissioned That report, “English-Language Canadian got an identity until someone tells our story. The one of the more peculiar artifacts of the nationalist Literature in High Schools,” concluded that fiction makes us real.” If this is so, then today’s high era. Intending to bridge the gap between students although “there have been profound changes in schoolers are something other than real Canadians. and the canon, the trust developed “resource the educational environment since the 1970s,” the This is not to sound the alarm, however, for it is guides for the teaching of Canadian literature.” “challenges remain very much the same as 30 years unlikely that it would rouse attention. With tidal The guides’ composition was national and a g o.” 3 Few students could identify ten Canadian regularity, someone steps forward to decry the representational: “five work groups were assembled writers, and most read no more than five Canadian absence of our literature in schools. Instead, we to provide nation-wide talent and representation, books during their secondary education. Only seek to trace the perishing of Canada’s nationalist and topics were similarly chosen to reflect national 31 percent of schools offered a Canadian literature literary pedagogy. Its goal—what one grade 12 interests.” With audacious critical assurance, the course, mostly as an elective, and the report teacher terms “a civic and national pride, one that authors claimed the chosen books were “with predicted that that number “will continue to allows [students] a certain confidence in their no exceptions, of proven literary merit.” The ten- decline.” Some teachers make room for Canadians pride as a people”—slides further and further volume set cost $15. in the independent study units, although a retired out of reach, as nationalism becomes ever more Its introduction begins with a lament we might teacher from an independent Anglican school in retrograde in a 21st-century context.2 find in this morning’s editorial pages: “It may Port Hope, Ontario, commented, “I don’t believe Canadian cultural nationalism first took seem odd, even sad, that it is still necessary in that books are really on the curriculum unless legislative shape following the 1951 report of the Canada to provide reasons for wanting to see the everyone reads them.” Why did our zealous, if Royal Commission on National Development in national and regional experience of Canadians sometimes foppish, nationalism fail to sustain? the Arts, Letters and Sciences, aka the Massey dealt with more adequately in our school systems.” The Writers’ Trust report details some basic, Report. We can even detect the origins of Canadian The authors delineate the everlasting anxiety of tangible impediments. Lack of resources remains canonic anxiety in the report: “Is it true, then, teaching Canadian literature. Opposition to their the most pressing. As a grade 11/12 teacher in that we are a people without a literature?” A few project springs, they wrote, from “the conviction Vancouver said, “if Canadian publishers want years earlier, reviewing The Book of Canadian that one should teach only the best, and Canadian Canadian schools to teach Canadian authors, they Poetry, Northrop Frye diagnosed this anxiety as writing isn’t good enough; and … a fear [of] those could offer us class sets at a deeper discount.” Over “the colonial position of Canada … a frostbite who want to see it taught overwhelmingly, as the past two decades, however, this has become less at the roots of the Canadian imagination.” The some kind of nationalist exercise, to the exclusion and less feasible. Canadian publishers lean heavily of international literature, to the exclusion of ‘the on heritage and cultural programs, which between Michael LaPointe is a writer and literary journalist classics’.” 1994 and 1998 alone were cut by 23.3 percent. in Vancouver. He contributes to the Times Literary The age of the resources is now all too apparent. Following the hostile takeover of Chapters by Indigo Supplement. The “Social Realism” volume informs us that Books and Music Inc. in 2000, and the subsequent
May 2013 reviewcanada.ca 21 collapse of Stoddart’s General Distribution Services restless and ready to break free from high school, experience. A curriculum drawn from a 100-mile in 2002, more than 60 Canadian publishers relied parents and other things that restrict them. In some radius will not always be positioned to achieve this. on the emaciated Department of Canadian Heritage ways the rebellion they demonstrate against the Baird’s response: “So what?” The practical reality for a bailout. Taking a cue from Jean Chrétien, system is similar to the way they react to home- is that, as a grade 11/12 teacher in Charlottetown Harper’s Conservatives cut that department’s grown literature and ideas.” Others see it as a simple said, “our novels are mostly by American writers.” budget by a further 5.6 percent in 2011. matter of quality: “in truth,” said the Calgarian, Meanwhile, indifference reigns. Ten years ago, Certain intangible variables continue to thwart “Canada has not produced a Shakespeare or an Baird’s report fell on deaf ears as, she told us, the the teaching of Canadian literature. One is Austen or a Mark Twain.” Writers’ Trust became increasingly focused on what the report calls the “new definition of ‘text’,” Several remedies to CanLit’s terminal dullness awards that “praise exactly the kind of authors a theory that trickled down from the revisionist have been offered. Some suggest regionalism, that teachers say don’t click.” Neither, apparently, frenzy of the academy. A 1997 study of the Alberta which satisfies the instinct to decentralize the do they click with staff. A teacher in Vancouver secondary school literary canon noted the post- canon, while yet instilling a sense of citizenship. reported that “our English department made national attitudes of anthology editors, combined Jean Baird, for example, advocates for something an effort a couple years ago to find Canadian with what Brenda Reed, in her study of Ontario akin to a literary locavore diet, right down to replacements for some of the ‘traditional’ novels, secondary school curricula, calls “the increasing the neighbourhood. Students in Vancouver’s but it was met with a lukewarm response. Teachers move away from text-based interpretations of Chinatown should be exposed to Wayson Choy couldn’t bother to read the books.” literature to reader response and post-modern and Sky Lee, while East Vancouver schools should Very few teachers observe anything like theories.” Interestingly, this expanded, post- incorporate Wayde Compton and Evelyn Lau. nationalism in today’s students. A grade 10/11/12 national definition of literary legitimization did Others are skeptical that regionalism can teacher at an independent school in Toronto told not derive from Canadian criticism. It is itself, like escape the problems of nationalism. Tracy Ware, me that students “are unaware, most of the time, our dog-eared copies of To Kill a Mockingbird, an a professor of Canadian literature at Queen’s that a book was written by a Canadian. I introduce imported product. University, told me that “if the problem of an the fact but it slides away as irrelevant at some While broadening the received definition of inflexible nationalism is that it assumes that all point in the teaching.” “I don’t make a big deal text stimulated the academy, says the 2002 Writers’ Canadians are of the same nature, then regionalism about the authors’ nationalities,” said the teacher in Trust report, in high schools it “means that students is all too likely to make the same error. No one Vancouver, and “I don’t think students question the are reading less print texts of sustained length, would now assume that all Canadians are the same, nationality of a story’s author.” Either the Trudeau specifically novels.” English has been replaced given the current interests in diversity, but unless generation failed to pass the torch, or someone by “English language arts,” while libraries have you are careful it is all too easy to read Alistair failed to grasp it. transformed into “learning resource centres,” MacLeod and assume that all Nova Scotians are Are we content with this? Should we embrace which, a Saskatoon teacher reported, “have many miners and fishers of Scottish background.” This the post-nationalism of the 21st century, or revive computers but will never be adequately equipped issue could be avoided, said Ware, if we invest in some fraught sense of literary protectionism? A with sufficient materials.” Only conservative the regionalist program wholesale, reading more cosmopolitan pedagogy is attractive to the liberal schools, hostile to revisionism, teach text strictly than one book, “in the case of Nova Scotia, perhaps imagination, but cosmopolitan so often means, of the old-fashioned, between-the-covers kind. A Ann-Marie MacDonald or George Elliott Clarke” in simply, American, and it would not be thoughtful grade 11/12 teacher at an independent Catholic addition to MacLeod. In so doing, said Ware, “we to extend post-nationalism beyond the cultural school in Calgary told me that “we emphasize time- mirror the best kind of nationalist assumptions, sphere, into, say, the treatment of our natural honoured works … Because we are a conservative which assume that Canadian writers disagree on resources. We do not want to ghettoize or tokenize Catholic school, much of the Canadian feminist core issues.” Canadian literature, or teach a book for its author’s canon is not acceptable to us.” If a central anxiety of Canadian identity is our origin rather than its aesthetic strength, but left Another intangible is what Jean Baird, author sense of vastness and disconnection, however, alone, we do not seem to cherish that strength of the Writers’ Trust report, calls “ghost parents.” regionalism runs the risk of further isolating where indeed it can be found. “Speaking as Teachers fear community reprisal, should a book’s students, reinforcing the sense that we are little someone who has taught at the high school level content be more mature than the average dinner more than a loosely aligned cultural archipelago. all the plays of Shakespeare, three of Austen’s table chat. Baird’s report phrases it euphemistically: It is appealing to teach students more about novels and several works by Twain,” that teacher “a huge issue for teachers is content that is themselves, specifically in urban, multicultural in Port Hope said, “I believe that Canada’s best acceptable by community standards.” Mordecai areas. In the Toronto District School Board, for authors hold their own.” This is a judgement every Richler, for example, may be “my personal favourite example, where seven out of ten students are Canadian shares, on November 11. Canadian author,” says the Catholic school not white, two thirds of surveyed students said Calgarian, “but much of his writing is a little spicy learning about their own race would make school for our conservative parents.” After all, one duty of more interesting and almost half believed it would Notes 1 For the purpose of this essay, only English-language teachers, according to the Ontario Education Act, is improve their grades. But we would probably not literature and education will be treated. “inculcate by precept and example … the principles advocate for a locavore diet in areas of cultural 2 Some of the quotes in this essay come from unpublished of Judaeo-Christian morality.” homogeneity, where the notion of “learning about interviews with Robert Lecker, Jean Baird, Tracy Ware and Meanwhile a third, apparently invincible your own race” has a more sinister aspect. Surely seven teachers across Canada. 3 The full report is available on the Writers’ Trust of Canada intangible continues to haunt the teaching of a key function of literature is to place the reader website at
Black and adventure dwells beyond the boundaries of Black & White version their cities and their country,” said the teacher in Ticketsat $20start! Saskatoon. “It may be an age thing where they are CMYK
22 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Pantone Minor Hockey as Big Business The disturbing shift from kids’ game to pricey investment. Sheema Khan
Percentage of NHL players by birth month since 1917 North Bay, Ontario. At age seven, The relative age effect is the January 10.4 Selling the Dream: he broke Wayne Gretzky’s record, well-documented phenomenon February 9.4 How Hockey Parents and Their Kids Are scoring 109 goals in 17 games. By where players born in the first six Paying the Price for Our National Obsession age eight, he was lifting weights, March 9.8 months of a given calendar year Ken Campbell with Jim Parcels guided by his father. At Peewee April 9.5 are more likely to be selected for Viking Canada level, his team was playing to win May 9.1 advanced training than those 360 pages, hardcover its division at the Capital Cup, a born in the last six months, June 8.2 ISBN 9780670065738 premier international tournament due to natural differences in held annually in Ottawa. But Davis Six-Month Total 56.4 development and a cut-off date was ejected from the semi-final July 8.1 of January 1. As children progress on pays, ce n’est pas un pays, c’est game for making physical contact August 7.2 through the ranks, a seven-year- le hockey would be an apt way to with an opposing player while div- September 7.7 old born in January will often describe our identity. Whether ing during a backcheck and was advance faster than one born in October 7.4 theM World Juniors, the Stanley Cup, international automatically suspended from the December of the same year. The championships or the Olympics, our collective finals. He was devastated. More November 6.8 percentage of players by birth mood rides on the efforts of athletes who give their telling is his father’s “pep talk,” in December 6.6 month that have played in the heart and soul to do this country proud. Christine which he reminded Davis of the Six-Month Total 43.8 NHL since 1917 reflects this trend Sinclair and the Olympic women’s soccer team inferiority of his teammates and (see table). Source: QuantHockey.com followed a majestic path of true grit last summer, their indebtedness to him: This is further evident by the
May 2013 reviewcanada.ca 23 Patriation Myth It took more than Trudeau’s vision to bring the constitution home. John D. Whyte
ments a hostage to the special interests of Canada’s Constitutional Revolution any province.” This was in part a reflection Barry L. Strayer of his social democratic political leanings, University of Alberta Press whose constitutional elements Strayer 335 pages, softcover was imbibing from two mentors—Tommy ISBN 9780888646491 Douglas, premier of the province, and legal scholar F.R. Scott, who was serving as a constitutional advisor to the Saskatchewan n 1953, Barry Strayer, a University government. Reflecting the then dominant of Saskatchewan law student, was in viewpoint of Canadian socialists, both these ILondon on his way to a student seminar men stood for the need for a strong central in India. He witnessed Queen Elizabeth’s government whose powers should be pro- coronation and marvelled at its power and tected in any new constitutional agreement. pageantry, reflecting not just royalty but a After graduate work at Harvard Law vast and diverse empire—an empire crum- School and teaching law in Saskatchewan, bling yet still grand. Nearly 30 years later, on Strayer was offered the opportunity to a wet and dismal day, he joined thousands participate in the renewed federal constitu- of Canadians on Parliament Hill to watch tional initiative. His NDP sympathies were that same queen proclaim in force the con- well known, but this seemed not to bother stitution that would place Canada, at last, the man soon to be his boss, the newly beyond the reach of British politics. This appointed justice minister Pierre Trudeau. moment, far less grand, was considerably Both men shared much in common, not more momentous for Canadians, and for least a debt to F.R. Scott’s constitutional very few was it more gratifying than for Barry ideas. From the beginning, according to Strayer. For nearly 15 years he had toiled mightily in constitutional reform in Canada has not, in spite Strayer, the two hit it off, perhaps due to Strayer’s the labyrinthine structures of federal constitutional of Strayer’s provocative title, been revolutionary. gleeful chiding of Trudeau, the first time they met, planning and in the chambers of federal-provincial All of it—meetings, proposals, disputes, legal drafts over his opulent ministerial office. No doubt this negotiations to get to just this moment. In Ottawa and resolution—has unfolded according to staid personal rapport with Trudeau and their common that day Canada’s sovereignty was formalized; legal lineage. But there is, nevertheless, a revealing training helped propel Strayer to a key advisory role it gained untrammelled authority over its own history to be told. The substance of constitutional in the successive rounds of constitutional debate constitution and it declared its subscription to reform has never been easy to arrive at, and dis- and discussion. human rights. covering the appropriate process for measuring Strayer’s book is full of anecdotes—sometimes Strayer was crucial to the federal government’s national agreement has mostly been unsettled. The with excessive detail of meetings and persons that constitutional endeavours, from policy consulting contribution to history provided in the accounts of he worked with. While at times these accounts with the prime minister to reassuring parliamen- participants in those processes should, in the face enliven the narrative, they do not convey a full tarians, to preparing court cases, to organizing of only meagre scholarship, be welcomed, notwith- sense of the actual dynamism of the constitutional strategic planning and the writing of constitutional standing their inevitable biases and limited per- negotiation process. Strayer is more concerned to drafts. He was at the very centre of Canada’s mod- spectives. (In full disclosure, I am among this class offer a constant and stout defence of the federal ern constitutional moment. Over the years, Strayer of participant-authors and not at all exempt from campaign for constitutional reform, particularly in has created a highly estimable body of constitu- the charge that the facts and analyses of that work the ways this campaign reflected the political views tional scholarship and now he has added to that were filtered through the perspective of personal of Trudeau himself. This leads the author to an work his account of constitutional reform, combin- experiences of its authors.) extended discussion of the evolution of Trudeau’s ing a memoir of his experiences as constitutional For those readers unacquainted with all the political and constitutional ideas from early man- advisor with a history of the process by which twists and turns of this history, Strayer’s book gives hood. It also leads him to spend much time and Canada achieved constitutional renewal. interesting texture on the by-play between prov- energy rationalizing Trudeau’s every tactical con- In light of the national importance of the history inces and the federal government over method and stitutional move. of creating Canada’s modern-day political frame- substance. For Strayer, this began before he reached Although perhaps understandable in a memoir, work, the literature dealing with constitutional Ottawa. He was part of the Saskatchewan delegation this emphasis on one viewpoint, complete with an development is not large (although, strangely, the that in 1960 and 1961 participated in four confer- almost constantly approving treatment of each fed- failure of the 1987 Meech Lake Accord has led to ences on constitutional amendment. He recounts eral purpose and strategy, undermines this book’s a vast body of history and analysis). The making of his reaction to the amending formula advanced historical or critical value and prevents it from the 1982 constitutional reforms has received lim- by federal justice minister Davie Fulton. Fulton conveying an overarching view of how the 1982 ited treatment. Why is this so? Perhaps it is because had proposed that any new constitutional amend- amendments came about. Not only is the power- ment should initially require unanimous provincial ful influence of the provinces’ collective role in John D. Whyte is a professor of law emeritus approval. Strayer, like some of his Saskatchewan the making of these constitutional reforms under- at Queen’s University and is a policy fellow at colleagues, was stunned. “To us it seemed incred- played and barely explained, but also missing is the the Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School at the ible that the federal government should be so importance of partnerships and networks, to say University of Regina. He was Saskatchewan’s reckless of its own future,” he says, “that it was nothing of friendships and trust among the large director of constitutional law from 1979 to 1982. prepared to render any prospect of future amend- cast of protagonists, in coming to this moment of
24 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Canadian political accommodation. As always in was an accurate description of an established con- history, the moral value of events is not tied up stitutional practice) and that the court should not exclusively in the substantive result but also res- have ventured into this aspect of the constitutional New from ides in the process. The way a country conducts order. But the court has every right to consider both its political life constitutes its reality and values as legal and conventional forms of the constitution much as its formal declarations of intent do. This and if it had failed to do so would have provided a book’s most serious shortcoming is its hiding of the highly distorted description of our constitutional powerful influence of relationships, bold choices regime. This decision, issued just when Ottawa and genuine statecraft. was pressing the British parliament to proceed on There is no gainsaying Trudeau’s determination its unilateral request to implement constitutional to bring about the constitution’s modernization. changes, was fatal to that plan and, of course, led to After the failures of the early 1960s, the constitu- a far different outcome than the one that the federal tional file lay more or less dormant until its resusci- government had designed for Canada.1 tation under Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau Strayer writes in defence of the proposed federal in the late years of that decade. Trudeau’s primary amending formula, and, indeed, it had a reason- agenda of constitutional patriation and the intro- able provenance. But it did not survive an hour duction of constitutional rights not only shaped the once federal justice minister Jean Chrétien and emerging framework for constitutional agreement, Saskatchewan attorney general Roy Romanow but it also gradually captured national sentiment. agreed, in the famous “kitchen meeting” of With Trudeau’s unexpected return to office in 1980, November 4, 1981, to propose to first ministers a along with Quebec’s election of a separatist govern- compromise package that included the amend- ment, his aggressive stance began to compel most ing formula developed by the provinces. Strayer provinces into a genuine search for constitutional ignores the fact that just a few months earlier renewal. Still, provincial priorities continued to Trudeau had mockingly denigrated this formula, fuel intransigence with respect to the objects and yet it established the rules for amendment that The Constructed Mennonite terms of reform, while Trudeau’s sense of his own Canada now lives under. superior constitutional vision and his conviction Creating a charter of rights was at the heart of History, Memory, and the that he was the custodian of the national will for the federal strategy. In the second half of the 20th Second World War constitutional change were also high barriers to century, this was hardly a surprising or radical con- Hans Werner arriving at constitutional accord. Ultimately it took stitutional idea, even if, lamentably, it was resisted One man, four identities, and a son’s quest his federal colleagues and other allies to draw him by many premiers. However, this key aspect of the to reconcile the public and private histories away from his frustration over the views of his federal agenda was conceptually deeply under- of his Mennonite father in WWII. opponents and, then, from his reluctance to agree mined through Trudeau’s agreement, at the elev- to concessions. For Strayer, however, Trudeau’s enth hour, to include the notwithstanding clause “Werner’s struggle with his ethnic identity intransigence is never painted in anything other that allowed provincial and federal legislative over- as illuminated in the numerous name than a heroic light. rides of basic human rights. This shift, which with- changes he experienced in his lifetime It is not a significant element of Strayer’s out doubt deeply distressed Trudeau, was made, it provides important and rare insight into account that time and again federal strategies is widely thought, at the insistence of the Ontario issues of belonging and identity.” produced intense provincial opposition and that, premier, Trudeau’s strongest provincial ally. These —Marlene Epp, Peace and Con ict in due course, those strategies were abandoned in eleventh-hour adjustments are not mentioned in Studies, University of Waterloo favour of provincial preferences. For instance, just Strayer’s book, yet they defined the constitutional before the 1981 first ministers’ meeting meant to reforms that were achieved. By now, the force of PB • $27.95 • 978-0-88755-741-5 | E • $25 • 978-0-88755-436-0 finalize agreement based on federal–provincial the notwithstanding clause has withered away, but negotiations, Michael Kirby, the chief federal for a time a crucial term of Canada’s rights regime manager of constitutional reform, prepared a was shaped by the earnestly held views of a group memo, which Strayer praises, that claimed the of provincial premiers. federal government could, without provincial par- All of these—and many other—instances of pla- ticipation, bring about amendments that would cing the intergovernmental relations that defined entrench rights, patriate the constitution and cre- constitutional reform in the shadow of federal strat- ate a domestic constitutional amending formula. egies and policies weaken, although do not destroy, Clearly, this did not match constitutional practice; this constitutional history. Strayer’s book does tell nor did it accord with the moral foundations of well the important story of a group of talented and Confederation. The first ministers’ meeting that fol- dedicated federal politicians and officials striving lowed, already fraught with tension, proceeded in to bring about constitutional renewal. But Canada a complete absence of trust. After the Kirby memo, is a diverse and complicated country. Its political the conditions for finding common ground simply life and, especially, its constitutional development disappeared until, a little more than a year later, rests on a complex of accommodation. Explaining the government realized that constitutional reform why, and how, things turned out the way they did Centering Anishinaabeg Studies based on unilateral federal action would never suc- when we brought our constitution into its own time ceed and agreed to new negotiations. and back to its own country deserves a more bal- Understanding the World In 1981, when the Supreme Court was asked anced treatment. through Stories for its opinion on the rules for making consti- Jill Doer er, Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark, tutional amendments, the federal government and Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair, eds. again insisted that no provincial participation was Notes “Doer er, Sinclair, and Stark have ushered required. A majority of the justices stated that, as a 1 In La bataille de Londres: dessous, secrets et couilisses du in a new era of Anishinaabeg scholarship. matter of legal rule, the changes required nothing repatriement constitutionnel, Frédéric Bastien contends that two Supreme Court judges communicated with the eir collection of stories, by some of the more than enactment by the British parliament. Canadian and British governments prior to the court most creative and insightful Anishinaabeg However, a majority of the court also said that delivering its decision on the constitutionality of the thinkers, celebrates the intellectual constitutional convention and practice required government’s plan—in the case of Chief Justice Bora Laskin with both governments and in the case of Justice diversity of contemporary Indigenous the amendments to have support of a substantial Willard Estey with the British government. Bastien thought.”—Dale A. Turner (Temagami majority of provinces. Strayer condemns the court claims that Laskin reported to the governments the sharp First Nation), Dartmouth College for venturing into this aspect of the constitution, divisions within the court over the constitutional issues raised. At the least, Bastien’s claims will generate doubts and criticizes its opinion for “both its illogicalities 978-0-88755-761-3 about the legitimacy of the court’s role in constitutional PB • $29.95 and its harmful consequences.” He claims that patriation. uofmpress.ca there was no such convention (although, in fact, it
May 2013 reviewcanada.ca 25 The Overlooked Majority Recovering stories of women and children from the Great War’s home front. Tim Cook
multiple ways. While men were pressured to enlist, their lives in the conflict (a red maple leaf). This A Sisterhood of Suffering and Service: women were often expected to serve in patriotic ground-breaking research opens up the field of Women and Girls of Canada and organizations. Several articles explore volunteer public grieving in war-shattered Canada. Newfoundland During the First World War work on the home front, from raising money for To round out the essays, there are two devoted Sarah Glassford and Amy Shaw, editors soldiers’ families to large-scale recruitment parties, to nurses in the Great War, a field of study that is University of British Columbia Press to the knitting of socks for overseas soldiers. In already rich and nuanced, and three articles that 356 pages, softcover these volunteer spheres, women dominated the examine the writing of poetry in Newfoundland ISBN 9780774822572 work and many framed their support as a means of and Canada, and, even more specialized, the “doing their bit” for the war effort. display of gender norms in representations of Women were also engaged in paid labour. Kori disability in Canadian novels. he labyrinth-like trenches of the Street explores how women saw themselves serving Only a few of the essays engage directly with Western Front loom large in our collective the wartime economy by engaging in clerical work Joan Sangster’s influential thesis that women’s Tmemory of Canada’s Great War. Those or replacing men in banks, even though they were paid labour and wartime work offered few tangible underground cities, teeming with citizen soldiers never paid equally and expected to be temporary benefits for the advancement of women’s rights or living in mud and filth, were relentlessly pounded workers until the soldiers came home. She also the search for more equality in society. However, by high explosive shells, raked by machine-gun fire examines women in the dangerous munitions with several of the authors focusing on patriotic and corrupted by lung-searing chemical clouds. factories, where workers were often poisoned from unpaid labour, it is clear that women had a The wartime poetry and prose, along with post-war the chemicals they handled. Nonetheless, one tremendous impact on the war effort. The historical cultural products such as novels, television series newspaper reporter who visited a factory found that elephant in the room is a brilliant 1994 National and films, have focused heavily on that ribbon of every woman on staff “felt that they were helping Film Board documentary, And We Knew How to death, the 700-kilometre long trench system that win the war.” Dance: Women in World War I, which presented wound snake-like from Switzerland to the North Three essays explore the mobilization of women a dozen or so women at the end of their long lives Sea, and that barely moved throughout the course in various forms, such as the support of the women (most in their early nineties) reflecting on the war of the four years of battle. of Six Nations of the Grand River in Newfoundland, and what it meant for them. Many of the women in Yet the Great War is also widely accepted as raising funds for overseas soldiers, and the pressure that film speak openly of how the war transformed a total war where societies were engaged in and on students at the University of Toronto to conform their lives, with their wartime roles—be it nursing, directed toward the pursuit of victory, at any to patriotic expectations. Alison Norman explores munitions work or professional driving—providing cost. For Canada, then a British Dominion of the seemingly intriguing contradiction of Six confidence or new skills. Quite a few of the feisty only eight million, the war ushered in enormous Nations women supporting the war effort, even as ladies also commented on how they refused to political changes, such as the introduction of they were ill treated by white Canadians. But just as return to the domestic sphere at war’s end. These income tax, the enfranchisement of women, thousands of Native men enlisted in the Canadian eyewitnesses to history make it clear that the war the disenfranchisement of recent immigrants Expeditionary Force, women, too, renewed a sense had a long-term effect on their lives, if perhaps not from Germany and Austria, the suspension of of allegiance to the British king, while others hoped on all women as a whole or a class. This, surely, habeas corpus, the internment of more than that service and sacrifice would affect long-term is a critical question in understanding women 8,000 Canadians and, by late 1917, the forcing changes for good. They rarely did, although we and the war. Moreover, while all essay collections of young men to fight against their will through are introduced to Edith Monture, a Mohawk who are, by their nature, episodic, no author confronts conscription for military service. There were also served as a nursing sister, and who, through her the question of women and enfranchisement profound changes to the social fabric of Canadian overseas service, received the right to vote in the in the 1917 election, and that too would have shed society, from food consumption to popular culture. 1917 election, 43 years ahead of other First Nations light on the question of whether the war was a And all of this was set against the mounting women. transformative event in the lives of women. Pulling butcher’s bill that would eventually reach more Kristine Alexander explores the multiple apart the factors that led to enfranchisement than 60,000 dead Canadians. ways that girls experienced the war, be it through deserves some greater commentary in a book In A Sisterhood of Suffering and Service: Women school, books, sheet music or performing patriotic devoted to women and war. and Girls of Canada and Newfoundland During war work. Across the country, girls missed their While A Sisterhood of Suffering and Service: the First World War, academic historians Sarah brothers and worried about their fathers, while at Women and Girls of Canada and Newfoundland Glassford and Amy Shaw have mobilized scholars the same time being heroicized by society for their During the First World War may win the award in academia and outside to reappraise the impact plucky reserve and personal sacrifice. Thousands for the most awkward title of the year, the stories of the war on women and children, who made up of children were issued buttons emblazoned with and analysis contained within offer much new most of the seven and a half million or so Canadians the words, “My Dad is at the Front,” and they were insight into the Great War’s impact on women. and Newfoundlanders left at home. Through twelve worn with pride. As we march steadily toward and then through articles, drawn together through a number of key One of the most original articles is Suzanne the centenary of the Great War from 2014 to 2018, themes, the authors offer deeper insight into the Evans’s examination of material culture artifacts I suspect that much of the focus—perhaps nearly impact of total war on the Canadian home front. related to grief. With tens of thousands of wartime exclusively—will be on the overseas soldiers in the With the country mobilized for war, Canadians dead, Evans explores the wearing of mourning trenches of memory that haunt us still, but this book were encouraged to support the conflict in clothes, the issuing of official medals to mark the reminds us of the importance of casting our gaze death of a loved one and the adornment of service widely and remembering those who, in the words Tim Cook is the author of six books, including flags outside houses that revealed how many family of Nellie McClung, “wait and wonder,” and whose Warlords: Borden, Mackenzie King and Canada’s members were serving overseas (through a number stories of sacrifice and support have largely been World Wars (Allen Lane, 2012). of small blue maple leaves), and if any had given silenced or untold over the last hundred years.
26 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Resuscitating the Working Class Can a 1930s movement show the way ahead for labour today? Sam Gindin
detailing key struggles and mining Raising the Workers’ Flag: archival material from the Communist The Workers’ Unity League Party of Canada, the Department of of Canada, 1930–1936 Labour, the Royal Canadian Mounted Stephen L. Endicott Police and the files recently made University of Toronto Press available from the Comintern—sets 442 pages, softcover out to demonstrate that from today’s ISBN 9781442612266 perspective, “many of the traditions fostered by the Workers’ Unity League will be seen to have their relevance.” hen it comes to To make his case, Endicott must inspiring Canadian first convince the reader that the WUL Wtrade unionists, the was not a mere appendage of a foreign 1930s stand apart. Few narratives power. Although the Communist Party match the era’s dramatic sit-down of Canada, directed by the Comintern, strikes, the on-to-Ottawa trek and ultimately determined the political the triumph of modern unionism. line of the WUL, Endicott argues Moreover, the 1930s are not just an persuasively that their dictates could inspirational marker. It was then only have been implemented and that capitalism last faced a degree of sustained if they also had resonance economic uncertainty comparable in Canada. Communist activists with to the present and it was also at the a vision beyond capitalism and years beginning of that decade that labour of experience in struggles behind last experienced an identity crisis them—who had built an independent akin to what unions now face. (A social base among fellow workers third parallel is the extent of class and were working with trusted inequality; measured by various non-communist allies, whose past indices, the end of the 1920s was the success had depended on an ability last time inequality was as grotesque to think for themselves, and who as today.) workers (the “riffraff” as one craft official referred were rooted in ethnic communities with a degree of Might we hope for a current replay of the 1930s to the semi-skilled and unskilled) moved to a form independence (60 percent of the Communist Party regeneration of the labour movement? If ways of organization that united workers across skills, was composed of Finns, 25 percent Ukrainians could be found then to surmount fear and unionize gender and—especially significant in the United and 10 percent were Jewish)—were not about to in the face of 25 percent unemployment and in the States—race. But no less important, this did not just act as a mere transmission belt for decisions made absence of the slightest legal protections, and if happen; the union rebirth cannot be understood elsewhere. workers could build solidarity when they were so apart from its intimate link to the role of the radical But even if the WUL had some autonomy, the divided by ethnicity and language and confronted left, communists in particular. criticism remains that in isolating itself from a level of corporate and state aggressiveness even This poses two daunting questions for the the existing unions and the workers in them, greater than today—surely the working class present impasse in labour. Has the once magical the WUL was essentially acting like a sect. The can once again discover internal reservoirs of industrial unionism that replaced craft unionism point, however, is that to suggest that any move comparable commitment and creativity. eight decades ago (and was also subsequently to establish a new institution is inherently wrong As persuasive as that rhetorical question is, emulated in the public sector) now likewise run is as rigid and ahistorical as the Comintern’s call there was much more to that earlier response of its course? And given the virtual absence of an for a universal response independent of local the Canadian working class than desperation and a organized radical left today, where might the circumstances. Endicott poses the dilemma well. renewed will to fight. The challenge was not just to catalyst for developing new forms of working class “When, if ever, is it in the wider class interests try harder but differently, and this pushed workers organization come from? It is this fateful context of workers to split away from a long-established to a radical transformation in the existing form of that makes Stephen L. Endicott’s new book, Raising labour movement to form a splinter group? … Was working class organization. Craft unionism, which the Workers’ Flag: The Workers’ Unity League of it sometimes justified to divide first around some was almost exclusively concerned with skilled Canada, 1930–1936, so timely. principle, the better to make future gains?” His workers, had exhausted its role and the mass of Although Endicott takes a wide international answer is “rarely, but sometimes and in certain and economic sweep, his focus is on the Workers’ circumstances, yes.” Even for those not convinced Sam Gindin is a former research director of Unity League, the alternative labour centre of the need to form the WUL, there is a compelling the Canadian Auto Workers (now retired) and created by the Canadian Communist Party at case that this was at least a credible direction. coauthor with Leo Panitch of The Making of Global the directive of the Comintern (the organization The WUL activists did not see themselves as Capitalism: The Political Economy of American established by Moscow in 1919 to coordinate splitting, but as building a more effective “united Empire (Verso, 2012). international communist activity). Endicott— front from below.”1 The labour movement had been
May 2013 reviewcanada.ca 27 in retreat through the 1920s. The craft unions had examples of “unintelligible demands that … had (the American labour movement even more so).5 no response to the disparity between rapidly rising nothing in common with the daily struggle as Alhough the Communist Party was fundamental to productivity and profits on the one hand and, on workers see it,” strikes that were unwisely rushed making the exemplary achievements of the WUL the other, the deteriorating working conditions into and institutional decisions that were especially possible it was, paradoxically, also the source of its and lagging wages. The craft unions were not only wrong-headed. A striking example of the latter limits. hostile to organizing the unskilled and semi-skilled was the folding of the Women’s Labour Leagues And what of the present? Endicott admirably sets workers in the dynamic new sectors, but were also into the WUL. This had little rationale since this out specific WUL policies and practices that current increasingly collaborative in their relations with organization was making good progress and the activists might emulate, yet he does not push the business and the state. Communists inside these concern to organize women as workers could difficult questions, raised earlier, that his own work unions had seen some gains but were frustrated readily have been addressed within the WUL. The underscores. Has the current labour movement, by the bureaucratic hold of the union leaderships, liquidation of Women’s Labour Leagues is perhaps like the craft union of the 1930s, come to the end of which often expelled communists and generally best understood as reflecting the fact that, as its possibilities? If it is also unlikely (again like the blocked internal democratization. Flirtation Joan Sangster has suggested, “the organization of earlier craft unions) that today’s unions can change with the All-Canadian Congress of Labour (an women remained secondary to important Party through a dynamic solely internal to themselves, alternative, nationalist labour centre) went tasks.” does this imply the necessity of some kind of left nowhere as it too moved closer to employers and All this warrants criticism. But it should intervention? But if such a left has itself suffered a began expelling communists. And the Trade Union be tempered by the reality that any attempt defeat as significant as that of labour, where does Educational League, set up by the Communist Party to transform working class politics inevitably that leave us? to support radical work within existing unions, had includes very serious points of division. Even The most promising road seems to be the formation only minor successes. A much greater intervention with the best of practices, the WUL’s emphasis on of locally based intermediary organizations that seemed essential. class struggle unionism could not have avoided stand between mass organizations such as unions As it turned out, the blanket condemnation of conflicts with social democrats and reformist and social movements and any future political splitting seemed to have been put to bed with the trade union officials.3 Similarly, particular strikes party that purports to represent and lead those emergence of the industrially based Congress of can be questioned, but even the best strategizing movements. Such intermediate structures, with Industrial Organizations as an institution “outside cannot avoid the reality that it is often impossible feet planted both inside and outside unions, the orbit” of the craft-based American Federation to know what is achievable until limits have actually would set themselves three tasks. The first would of Labour. Like the WUL earlier, the CIO was at been tested. What was ultimately so admirable be to add a class sensibility to union deliberations the time accused by other unions and the AFL of about the workers in the WUL was—in contrast to so they can become more effective, if still reformist, divisiveness, yet generally and enthusiastically the conservative craft unions of the time and the organizations. The second would be to mobilize the welcomed by the left. overly cautious unions of today—the willingness class across workplaces, unions and the community The other controversy was over the WUL’s self- of ordinary workers to test limits and so act in dimensions of workers’ lives. The third would be to identification as a “revolutionary” union central, extraordinary ways. The legacy of these workers and make socialists and develop a socialist culture: build dubbed “ultra-leftism” for allegedly ignoring the WUL was that, for all their excesses and errors, the individual understandings and confidence Lenin’s crucial insight that unions were at their core they not only anticipated the principles of the CIO, as well as the individual and collective capacities basically defensive and reformist organizations. but they also helped materialize them. that would begin to challenge capitalism itself and It is certainly true that the WUL articulated an In 1936, following another Comintern reversal contribute to the eventual formation of a socialist alternative beyond capitalism. And it believed that in 1935, the WUL was disbanded. Endicott party. These structures would be permanent, not building a working class base through the WUL, in asks if this was “a tacit admission of strategic transitional organizations; they would remain even conjunction with the contradictions of capitalism, error by the militants, [or] the result of outside after the introduction of a socialist party in part would make unions into schools of socialism, pressure,” and suggests instead that it reflected “a as a check on that party. The necessity of such a recruit new communist cadre and eventually willingness to consider a new approach under new safeguard is counselled by the historical tendencies make revolution possible. This connection to a circumstances.” Those circumstances ranged from of working class parties toward bureaucracy or revolutionary international communist movement the cresting of the WUL to the rise of fascism with the sacrifice of longer-term goals for immediate was fundamental to keeping communists going in its implications for inner and cross-class unity— electoral success. (More generally, the constellation the face of intense pressures and great personal something that was not just a concern for the Soviet of mass movements, intermediate organizations hardships. But that animating spirit should not be Union but also for Canada.4 But the international and party would represent a mutual system of both confused with its actual practice. On a daily basis, fact that mattered most was not a diktat from support for, and checks on, each other.) the WUL focused on its “lesser tasks,” acting like Moscow but on-the-ground realities in the United It is tempting to look to history for solutions good and practical trade unionists rather than States. The explosion of the CIO south of the to current dilemmas. But history has no ready insurrectionists. border decisively changed the terrain of struggle. answers for new circumstances. At best it provides What “practical” meant in the context of The home for radicals was now clearly inside this only clues. The noteworthy contribution ofRaising the 1930s was a class-struggle trade unionism vigorous new institution of the mass of workers. the Workers’ Flag is that it takes the Workers’ Unity that placed industrial unionism on the agenda, Yet if there was good reason to return to the League, with all its ambiguities, seriously—and so prioritized mobilizing the unemployed and broke mainstream movement, the question remains opens the door to a room of new and hopefully with the reluctance on the part of existing unions of how the refugees from the WUL subsequently fruitful clues. to strike (with less than 10 percent of unionized functioned. J.B. McLachlin, WUL president at workers, the WUL led one half to three quarters of all the time, expressed deep anxiety over the turn to Notes strikes in 1933–34).2 The WUL developed its social “unity at any cost” and “the move to the right,” 1 As Endicott further notes, for all this, the move to form the and cultural links to language groups (especially subsequently leaving the party because of his Workers’ Unity League was still internally contested by in terms of strike support), set up neighbourhood disenchantment. His concerns were, it seems, activists based on the realities of their particular sectors, delayed for a year and a half after the Comintern directive, councils to fight for municipal welfare and against justified. Although Endicott ends his story with and incompletely implemented. evictions, and—as with the on-to-Ottawa trek— the official demise of the WUL, and although 2 A little over 280,000 Canadian workers were in unions was explicitly political in the sense of mobilizing communists in the CIO unions played a role in 1933–34 and the WUL had some 26,000 unionized against the state, not just employers. Through all beyond their numerical weight, the zeal with members. The larger estimates of WUL members included a large number of unemployed workers. this, a commitment to democratic practices was which the party subsequently pushed anti-fascist 3 In this regard, note that the WUL’s first formal convention indispensable. It was not only fundamental to unity tended to undermine the importance of occurred the same week as the founding of the CCF. legitimating the WUL as distinct from the craft industrial mobilizing and led to a weakening of the 4 At the 1933 National Congress of the WUL, acting national unions. Given the extreme risks of striking at the Communist Party’s critical workplace committees secretary Charles Sims described the WUL’s work as “simply drops in the bucket—the bottom of the bucket is time, support could only be mobilized if workers (and neighbourhood committees as well). Well hardly wet.” saw the union and its strategies as truly theirs. before the pressures of the Cold War, the party was 5 In his history of the period, Tim Buck (the leader of the In evaluating the WUL, a degree of humility constraining activists from trying to bring a class Communist Party of Canada from the end of the 1920s into the 1960s) cannot hide his haste to skip over the WUL and generosity is in order. Social agents make and socialist sensibility into the mainstream labour years. See his Thirty Years: The Story of the Communist history in the face of uncertainty and through movement and betraying what was distinctive Movement in Canada, 1922–1952 (Progress Books, 1975). trial and error. There were, as Endicott notes, about the WUL, with negative effects on the future many instances of sectarian rhetoric and actions, development of the Canadian labour movement
28 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Den of Religiosity A visiting cartoonist views Jerusalem with curious eyes. Kenton Smith
action—even if by choice. By contrast, in Footnotes 2010 address to the American Israel Public Affairs Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City Sacco personally braves Israeli tracer bullet fire in Committee declared, in reference to East Jerusalem, Guy Delisle Gaza in 2003. that Jews “were building Jerusalem 3,000 years Drawn and Quarterly With Jerusalem, there is nonetheless a gravitas ago and … are building Jerusalem today.” East 338 pages, softcover previously missing from Delisle’s work, although Jerusalem is, under international law, occupied ISBN 9781770460713 both Pyongyang and Burma Chronicles had their territory and settlements there are indeed illegal illuminating, even cutting moments. The artist’s under the Fourth Geneva Convention—affirmed hand has also become more sophisticated and by the International Court of Justice at the Hague o we’re in Israel, right?” asks Canadian fine, the overall presentation snazzier. Thus both in in 2004. But never mind: Netanyahu says East “ cartoonist Guy Delisle in Jerusalem: content and in the newfound subtleties of Delisle’s Jerusalem is Israel, so it is Israel. SChronicles from the Holy City, in reference deceptively simple style, Jerusalem displays his It is such unilateral declarations that underlie to the East Jerusalem neighbourhood in which he powers at a whole new level of maturity. the festering ethnic and political tensions Delisle and his wife—an administrator with Médecins Sans The artist’s introduction to Israel begins on observes, exemplified by Israeli buses that go Frontières—stayed for twelve months beginning in his flight, when he notices the tattoo on a camp everywhere except the Arab quarters. The author 2008. survivor’s forearm. It is an implicit reminder of also visits a Bedouin community that has been “Well, it depends,” replies an MSF staffer. how Israel, recognized in 1948 in the Holocaust’s harassed by both settlers and the Israeli army. Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1967, but the immediate wake, is seen by many Jews—that And then there is the ongoing, 45-year occupation international community recognizes it as part of is, as a safe haven. Then he lands and meets his of Gaza and the West Bank, otherwise known as the West Bank. Oh well, Delisle muses, he has “a Arab cab driver. Depending on where one goes in the Palestinian territories. The malevolence whole year to figure it out.” While he is only passing the country, it is in fact quite possible to get the of the notorious—and illegal, also according to through, however, it is an open question in his latest impression that there are as many Arabs as Jews in the ICJ—West Bank separation wall’s monolithic graphic memoir whether Israel will figure itself out. the self-proclaimed Jewish state. design is well conveyed by Delisle’s spare style A former animator, the Quebec City–born Delisle That dichotomy and its implications are a (so too, in rather perverse contrast, is the beauty is most famous for his accounts of his former career recurring theme throughout the book. In between, and solidity of the Western Wall in Jerusalem). For travels, namely to China and North Korea, in the Delisle catalogues the more immediately apparent that matter, his travelogue approach emphasizes comics travelogues Shenzhen and Pyongyang. His cultural differences, such as Jerusalem’s dead the everydayness of the separation wall. It is just … experience as a stay-at-home ex-pat dad and self- streets on Shabbat (“It reminds me of Sundays in there, part of the landscape. motivated cartoonist in 2008’s Burma Chronicles, Pyongyang”), yeast products covered by plastic Delisle’s overarching subject, is in fact the larger, in which it was he who tagged along for his wife’s sheets in the supermarkets during Passover and ominous problems facing Israel. “Greater Israel work, earned him the designation of “master of the Muslim women covered head to toe in black in the is finished,” Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert graphic novel” by The Telegraph UK in 2009; the stifling heat. The idiosyncrasies of religious Jews are declares at one point. “We must share with those book was also cited as one of ten “masterpieces of a particularly rich source of humour: Delisle has we live with.” Strong words, but the author shows graphic nonfiction” in The Atlantic in 2011. special affection for the varying dress of different how incongruent they are with continuing reality— Delisle reprises the same role in Jerusalem, groups, especially the white stockings. Also as when he visits Hebron in the West Bank, with named the year’s best comic in its original French amusing is how the lights displayed for Ramadan its settlers and various “no Arabs” streets guarded edition at the 2012 Angoulême International seem borrowed from other holidays, such as by Israeli soldiers. A West Bank tour given by Comics Festival in France, one of the world’s most Christmas. former Israeli soldiers from a non-governmental prestigious. In contrast to dogged journalist Joe In the larger picture, we see the so-called organization called Breaking the Silence explains Sacco’s Palestine and Footnotes in Gaza, Delisle’s Holy City as really a world unto itself, with that the settlements are all illegal; a parallel tour perspective is still that of an ex-pat making neighbourhoods like the ultra-Orthodox Mea given by settlers provides a near-comic contrast. bemused observations in travelogue form; his face Shearim as worlds within worlds. Within this Yes, Delisle concedes, the national newspapers is often presented without expression, save for two den of religiosity, Delisle skewers the absurdities are openly critical. “Israel is a democracy for Jews, black dots to serve as curious eyes. His cartoonish, of religion with often-dry understatement and but not for the Arabs who live within its borders,” highly minimal style is also in marked contrast to whimsicality, as when he visits the vast Jewish he quotes from one. Nonetheless, the country is Sacco’s laborious pen, which moves more in the cemetery on the Mount of Olives. If the Messiah now rapidly approaching a one-state solution— direction of realism (while still maintaining a flair appears over there, he explains, then this row over authored by Israeli policy itself. for stylization). here will be the first to be judged. “I hope it works What, then, will happen to Israel as a state Delisle’s approach is fitting, however, rendering out for you, Schlomo,” Delisle says drolly, reading that wants to be both democratic and Jewish? specific, precisely seen moments in comparison the closest tombstone. Throughout the book, there are any number of to Sacco’s wider historic, cultural and political Not that Jerusalem itself equals greater Israel. ominous portents, especially the ubiquitous tapestry. Yet the limitations of his perspective A colleague of Delisle’s in Tel Aviv, for instance, military presence: there is always a plane overhead are made apparent when, for example, Israel’s declares: “I can’t stand all those religious nuts!” (one appears headed for an airstrike in Gaza, as Operation Cast Lead offensive against Gaza unfolds For that matter, Tel Aviv itself occupies its own Delisle lollygags on a Tel Aviv beach), another in late 2008, and Delisle is left well outside the parallel realm. “No kippas, no veiled women, no checkpoint and guns, guns, guns. And that last fundamentalists,” Delisle sighs on the beach. Even visual detail does not merely pertain to Israeli Kenton Smith is a freelance writer and arts and secular Jewish Jerusalemites are not always patient soldiers, settlers or Palestinian militants: at one culture critic whose writing on comics has appeared with their (ultra-)religious fellow citizens. point Delisle sees Arab kids with toy guns received in The Globe and Mail, Quill and Quire, the And yet the entire country is itself still a kind of as end-of-Ramadan gifts. Winnipeg Free Press and Canadian Art. He has also alternate universe, thanks to its government. Take It is fitting that Delisle’s Jerusalem ends with written for Broken Pencil magazine and CBC.ca. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who in a sombre bewilderment.
May 2013 reviewcanada.ca 29 A Much Less Secret Service Everything you wanted to know about Canadian spying but were afraid to ask. Jez Littlewood
Repeatedly documented is the use of Secret Service: illegal means and in many cases highly Political Policing in Canada from the dubious methods (which, if not quite Fenians to Fortress America illegal, skate very close to the lines of legal- Reg Whitaker, Gregory S. Kealey and ity) by the security agencies. Examples Andrew Parnaby would include deliberate leaking of infor- University of Toronto Press mation and dissemination of rumours 687 pages, softcover publicly and among key intelligence allies ISBN 9780802078018 in a mole hunt that cleared Leslie James Bennett in the early 1970s but still resulted in his “medical discharge”; accessing per- Images of the “invisible government” or sonal records held by various government the “secret state”—particularly promin- agencies rather than availing themselves of ent in depictions in popular culture and the procedures for lawful access; and cer- sensationalist journalism on the intel- tain activities of the RCMP in relation to the ligence services of the Cold War super- rise of nationalism in Quebec, the incendi- powers (the KGB, the CIA, the FBI, the ary nature of which most Canadians of a NSA)—have stoked fears of sinister, certain age will remember. shadowy, ruthless, all-powerful organ- Of equal note, and at the heart of the izations with global reach, stunning book, is the response, or often lack of technological armory, and absolutely sustained attention, and sometimes the no scruples. Oddly enough, this image pretence of ignorance, of official Ottawa competes with another, contradictory to the national security threats under image of intelligence services, one that investigation. This is illustrated wonder- rises to the surface each time a major fully by the example of “The Paper That intelligence failure is witnessed. In this Never Was”: as the authors note, the illegal- alternative universe, the intelligence services of sources that is inherent to good history while ity of some methods used against separatists in are bumbling incompetents who never saw simultaneously bringing that history with all its Quebec during the 1960s and ’70s raised the ques- the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor until the contradictions and continuities to a wider audi- tion of whether the RCMP Security Service was bombs struck; who failed to catch even a ence. The book is not popular history, but it could out of political control or, alternatively, “directed glimpse of the Al-Qaeda terrorists who com- be and deserves to be widely read. by its political masters to overstep the lines of mandeered the planes that brought down The authors, as they promise, document, exam- legality in order to defeat separatism.” The answer the Twin Towers; who were too busy chasing ine, analyze and synthesize the policing of political (inasmuch as the security service was neither out phantom Reds under beds to notice the FLQ behaviour that crosses over the limits of “ideas of control nor given specific direction to conduct terrorists who precipitated the October Crisis; acceptable in the public sphere.” Where those limits illegal activity) revolves around protecting senior who sleepwalked through the planting of are is, time and again, demonstrated to be a blurry, officials. As noted, “for a paper that never existed, the bombs on the Air India flights that killed fuzzy, subjective zone, always evolving in form it makes interesting reading.” It leads the authors to 331 innocent people, and were too busy stum- and substance and pitted against resilient under- conclude that “what we have here is evidence not of bling over each other to bring the perpetrators currents that favour the status quo in power and any political direction to the security service to use to justice. politics. Thus, chronologically we work through the illegal methods, but instead evidence that minis- intelligence efforts against the Fenians, the threats ters and deputy ministers had been made aware of So begins the final two-page section Secret to (British) empire, subversion and suspected illegal activity but preferred not to know any details, Service: Political Policing in Canada from the espionage during World War One, communists, and did not wish to leave any record that they had Fenians to Fortress America, an excellent history by unions, volunteers for the International Brigades in such knowledge. In short: plausible deniability.” Reg Whitaker, Gregory Kealey and Andrew Parnaby. the Spanish Civil War, Fascists, Nazis, communists In covering such large terrain—1837 to 2011 As the blurbs on the back cover note with justifica- (again) and various nationalists during World War temporally, global in spatial terms and what seem tion, the book is “a definitive account” and “will Two, communists (yet again) during the Cold War, to be completely different worlds from a contem- stand as a reference source of inestimable value “New Left” movements that defied easy categor- porary political vantage point—the authors do not for years to come.” Deeply scholarly, yet refresh- ization, separatists in Quebec (both violent and shy away from minor or major cases. Many of these ingly unacademic in its tone and temper, the text non-violent), secretive sections of legitimate polit- two- to three-page vignettes are worth the price of bridges with considerable skill the requirements ical parties (e.g., the Waffle movement in the New the book itself. A case in point is “The Professor with of rigorous, measured analysis of a wide variety Democratic Party), terrorists and violent extremists a Double Life,” which relates the tale of Professor (of all stripes and ideologies pre-2001), Russian Hugh Hambleton who provided the KGB with Jez Littlewood is a professor at the Norman spies, Chinese spies after technology and business NATO documents between 1956 and 1961; he was Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton secrets, and, finally, the rise of violent extremists uncovered in the late 1970s, but not prosecuted University. and terrorists influenced by the al Qaeda narrative. in Canada under a deal whereby he would be
30 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada provided with immunity in Canada (but not else- the union was presumed to be a communist front missed in the detail of cases and events spanning where) in exchange for detailing what information and thus needed to be subjected to surveillance. nearly 175 years. Canadian political policing has had been passed to the Soviets. Upon later entering Nevertheless, there are plenty of cases where there always been globalized. The point is made in the the United Kingdom (against the advice of a UK were legitimate and real threats to national security introduction: “from its inception in the 1860s, Special Branch officer aware that his immunity for brought to light in the areas of espionage, terrorism the Canadian security service has always operated spilling NATO’s secrets related only to Canada, not and, in the early history of Canada, subversion. in a transnational context. Not only has it often other NATO members), Hambleton was arrested In that sense, given to my vantage point, the relied on the British and Americans for institutional and sentenced to ten years, but was soon returned nuance and balance is welcomed. Others might support, but it has defined what is, or what is not, to Canada on compassionate grounds. be less forgiving because, if we are honest, there a security risk with more than made-in-Canada All of this is historical. Yet the book, as the are likely to be two kinds of readers. Those who prejudices and political realities in mind; global as subtitle notes, covers the period from the Fenians believe the Canadian intelligence community is a well as local factors have always played a critical to Fortress America. It is, therefore, inevitable maligned, misunderstood and underappreciated role in this respect.” When that is combined with that the last section, “After the Twin Towers,” is a section of the public service, essential to the secur- David Bercuson and Jack Granatstein’s observation different kind of history from the preceding four ity and safety of Canada, will probably consider that the central factor of expeditionary operations sections—inevitable in the sense that the docu- the book an example of what the former director by the Canadian military over the last 120 years is mentary archives are inaccessible because the of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Jim that the deployment is “always as part of a larger official documentation has not yet been released. Judd, identified as “paroxysms of moral outrage, a coalition,” as they recently wrote, we get a fuller Even with judicious use of access-to-information Canadian specialty” (he was referring to the Omar sense of the indivisibility of the security of Canada requests, court documents, other primary sources Khadr case in a leaked U.S. cable from 2008). These from that of other states. In essence, the national and a good weeding of the secondary sources—all supporters of the intelligence community may take security of Canada is a public good crafted and of which is in evidence here—and even though the umbrage at the catalogue of mismanagement and maintained not simply by the federal government general and specific details of a case are (reason- mistakes documented in the book. Others, who in isolation or in a vacuum, but often under- ably) well known, the archives of official docu- are inclined to view the intelligence community taken in concert with, in fact nearly always with, ments often put issues in a different light. In that as a collection of nefarious agents ever eager to others: most notably our closest neighbour and regard, the final section remains—through no fault suppress and harass legitimate political activity, or our historical allies. Whitaker, Kealey and Parnaby of the authors—incomplete. Some might quibble always searching to create the next enemy of the bring together the Canadian dimensions and cases whether or not the last decade in the book is really state based on a knee-jerk reaction to what is rad- of that broader (western) notion of security, but history; it is certainly an excellent first draft. ical in form or substance, will find plenty to confirm underlying the discrete tales and historical synthe- What then, to complain about, or warn the their view. If both types read carefully, they will also sis is the security of North American and Western reader of? From my vantage point: very little. But find much that blunts and rejects the dichotomous European democratic states. that—my vantage point—is arguably the key to stereotype of intelligence officers. The mutually Even in the 19th century, Canadian national understanding how the book might be received dif- exclusive framings of the intelligence community as security had global connections and was influ- ferently in other quarters. The measured approach a powerful secret state populated by incompetent enced by events in faraway lands, and the gov- inherent to the text provides me as a scholar with nitwits are both incorrect. ernment responded to threats with national and detail, informed and nuanced analysis, and an From such a book it is impossible to identify international considerations at the forefront of its assessment that is balanced and fair. Where criti- one issue or craft a single take-away message. Of mind. The 20th century was the same; the 21st is cism is due of the means and methods of the intelli- note, however, is perhaps something that might be unlikely to be different. gence community it is offered; when official Ottawa is duplicitous, negligent, overbearing or sometimes paranoid, it is identified. This is not, however, a hatchet job where the intelligence community and the individuals within it—masters or servants—are Subscribe! reviled or ridiculed. Throughout, the analysis is underpinned by 1 year (10 issues) *Rates including GST/HST by province recognition of the necessity of some form of intel- (individuals) (libraries and Individuals Libraries ligence community and an acknowledgement of institutions) ($56 + tax) ($68 + tax) the difficulties that community faces at any given Canadian addresses* $56 + tax $68 + tax BC, MB (12%) $62.72 $76.16 time. 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In 1939 an assess- Name Suite/Apt. ment of the RCMP’s Intelligence Bulletin notes “a number of serious deficiencies … [including] … an Street City inability to distinguish between ‘facts’ and ‘hearsay’ Province or State Country … [and] … no discrimination between legitimate social and political criticism and subversive doc- Postal/Zip Code E-mail trine” and that “the police are attending and report- ing on often completely harmless meetings, and Telephone Fax spying on the daily activities of peaceful and law- NH1305 abiding citizens.” Later on, the use of reports from Please bill me! My cheque (payable to the Literary Review of Canada) is enclosed. the Security Intelligence Review Committee, court Charge my Visa or MasterCard. documents and the records from official inquir- Card number Expiry ies pepper the text to both explain and serve as counterpoints to official interpretations and claims. Signature Despite, in hindsight, the ridiculousness of some activities, Whitaker, Kealey and Parnaby seek to Fax or mail completed form to Literary Review of Canada, PO Box 8, Station K understand why such groups were targets and what Toronto on m4p 2g1 • fax: 416-932-1620 • tel: 416-932-5081 was really happening on and below the surface. email: [email protected] Surveillance of the Ladies Auxiliary, Sudbury Local, To subscribe online, visit
May 2013 reviewcanada.ca 31 Letters and Responses
Re: “Dancing with the Dragon,” by Paul and hard on these issues. If a culture is homogen- Such work may not serve the needs of a royal Evans (April 2013) ous and lives in isolation from the rest of the commission. However, given the declining influ- aul Evans suggests that in Canada “debate world, it probably does not matter to anyone out- ence of official research on government policy, it is Phas been obsessed with a distinction between side that culture what the practices are. But when perhaps time to think critically about what type of pursuing commercial and diplomatic opportun- a culture enters the world community, the world research supports policy, and what type of writing ities with China versus promoting human rights … community can expect that new player to, at least is authoritative. our domestic debate still rotates around whether to some extent, play by the international rules. Mariana Valverde we should be having economic relations with a The other side of this issue is that the West Toronto, Ontario country run by a communist party.” He further wants to deal with various countries, China being hypothesizes that Canada has adopted a policy just one, because these countries have things we Re: “Northwest Passage Hold ’Em,” by stance of “cool politics, warm economics” toward want. And because of that we let them break our Terry Fenge (April 2013) the People’s Republic of China. rules. erry Fenge argues that a full and proper But his assertions do not stand up to scru- Bernie Koenig Timplementation of the 1993 Nunavut Land tiny. Over the years Canada has adopted a highly London, Ontario Claims Agreement would provide the federal consistent approach to relations with China. It government with an important trump card “in the is the same one articulated by our 1995 foreign Re: “Does Good Policy Make Good geopolitical poker game already underway in the policy statement, “Canada and the World,” based Neighbours?,” by Michael Valpy (April region,” and he is completely right. A fully mobil- on “three pillars of diplomacy”: the promotion of 2013) ized and effective Nunavut would significantly prosperity and employment; the protection of our hese days, we academics are more over- strengthen Canada’s sovereignty in the region security, within a stable global framework; and the Tworked than in the past: but unlike journal- by empowering Nunavut residents to exercise projection of Canadian values and culture. ists, or public servants, we are still able to choose their stewardship fully over territorial lands and As to the first pillar, Canada wants fair and our questions, and to then report on our findings resources. reciprocal trading agreements with China. We wel- as we see fit. I and others often choose strictly Fenge’s analysis of the status and role of come Chinese investment, but as Prime Minister scholarly formats and venues; but sometimes Nunavut, however, is only half complete. Equally Stephen Harper made clear in his 2012 press scholars use systematic research to speak to a important is devolution, which is the transfer of conference announcing government approval of broader audience—in my case, the harassed muni- administrative authority over territorial lands CNOOC’s acquisition of Nexen, Canada will not cipal employees, housing activists, street vendors, and resources from the government of Canada to allow the Chinese state to gain control of Canadian urban planners and architects I met in the course the Nunavut government. Currently, only Yukon economic resources through full acquisition of of the research. has achieved devolution; although the Northwest Canadian resource companies by Chinese state Michael Valpy states that my book on urban Territories recently signed a final agreement earlier firms. But we do welcome Chinese state firms to governance and municipal law in Toronto, this year, it must now ratify it before it can come invest in them as minority shareholders. Everyday Law on the Street: City Governance in an into effect. As to the security aspect, Canada will continue Age of Diversity, is “spotty,” “thin” and “short of Nunavut, on the other hand, does not have to investigate Chinese state espionage in its eco- examples.” I find this reaction puzzling, since the a devolution agreement nor have negotiations nomic, political and military aspects including book has received very good academic reviews, as even begun. Why? In a recent paper in the journal cyber-espionage in Canada and to work in multi- well as enthusiastic reactions from non-academics. Polar Record, I argue that three factors matter for lateral forums to encourage the Chinese regime to But Valpy’s call for a royal commission on multi- generating devolution agreements. First, a final follow the norms of responsible global citizenship. culturalism may indicate that he believes profes- devolution agreement must reflect the economic Finally, with regard to the third pillar as the sors ought to produce nothing but the studies that interests of the federal government. Second, it 1995 statement puts it: “Canada is not an island: such inquiries generate. I have great respect for must be supported by a critical mass of aboriginal if the rights of people abroad are not protected, number-crunching work on urban issues: indeed, groups in the region. Finally, negotiations will only Canadians will ultimately feel the effects at that work has shaped my research questions and commence if the federal government believes that home. They understand that our economic and the material chosen for publication. But for this a territorial government is fully capable of taking security interests are served by the widest pos- book I chose different tools. on the responsibilities that flow from devolution. sible respect for the environment, human rights, In regard to research methods, my book draws For Nunavut, the key obstacle has been the third participatory government, free markets and the heavily on the “everyday life of law” literature, factor, which it continues to struggle with today. rule of law. Where these are observed, there is a which leaves high-level legal texts aside in order Yet devolution is a crucial component of greater prospect of stability and prosperity … Their to study how ordinary citizens and low-level Canada’s ability to defend its interests in the north. observance, therefore, is both an end in itself and a officials use or don’t use law in their daily rounds. If Fenge is right that what matters is empower- means to achieving other priority objectives.” Documenting how such folks create a legality that ing local residents and governments to engage There is a strong cross-partisan consensus on is separate from and not predicted by official law is in the active stewardship of northern lands and how Canada should manage relations with the important, especially if we are keen to know about resources, then devolution is just as important as PRC. After all, even the Dalai Lama’s honorary governance processes, not just outcomes. While land claims implementation. The trick, then, is Canadian citizenship was achieved through a racial and other inequalities do feature in the for federal and territorial officials to find a way to unanimous resolution of Parliament. book, its key aim was to document how council- break from the negotiation models established by Evans’s attempts to politicize Canada’s China lors, bureaucrats and ordinary people interact to the Yukon and NWT rounds to quickly negotiate a policy just doesn’t conform with the facts. govern the city. Hence chapter titles such as “the devolution agreement for Nunavut. Charles Burton dysfunctional dance of local governance”; hence Christopher Alcantara St. Catharines, Ontario the finding that councillors see themselves as “vil- Waterloo, Ontario lage elders” of their wards, not legislators. aul Evans raises some interesting points about And in regard to the often folksy writing style The LRC welcomes letters — and more are avail- Pdealing with countries that are very different chosen, if Everyday Law on the Street is being able on our website at
32 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY PRESS
• NEW AND FORTHCOMING FROM UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY PRESS •
Wilderness and Waterpower: How Banff National Park Became a Hydroelectric Storage Reservoir
CHRISTOPHER ARMSTRONG AND H. V. NELLES
9781552386347, 286 pp, $34.95, illustrations
“We do not often think of the iconic Banff National Park being made to serve mundane corporate functions, like storing water for hydro-electric stations. But it does. By the same token, we do not think of electricity as being a major force in the development of parks policy. But it was.” This engaging book explores how Alberta’s need for electricity at the turn of the twentieth century affected and shaped Banff National Park.
Shipwreck at Cape Flora: From Realism to Abstraction: The Expeditions of Benjamin The Art of J. B. Taylor Leigh Smith, England’s ADRIANA A. DAVIES Forgotten Arctic Explorer 240 pp, $49.95, illustrations, 9781552387092, November 2013 P. J. CAPELOTTI Highly respected as an Alberta artist and teacher, Taylor 300 pp, $39.95, illustrations, is best known for his representational, semi-abstract, and 9781552387054 abstract paintings of the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Benjamin Leigh Smith discovered and named dozens of islands in the Arctic but published no account of his Marion Nicoll: Silence and Alchemy pioneering explorations. ANN DAVIS, ELIZABETH HERBERT, COPUBLISHED WITH THE ARCTIC INSTITUTE OF NORTH AMERICA JENNIFER SALAHUB, AND CHRISTINE SOWIAK The Fast-Changing Arctic: 150 pp, $39.95, illustrations, 9781552387078, December 2013 Rethinking Arctic Security Marion Nicoll is a widely acknowledged and important for a Warmer World founder of Alberta art and certainly one of a dedicated few EDITED BY that brought abstraction into practice in the province. BARRY SCOTT ZELLEN 410 pp, $34.95, maps, 9781552386460 Greening the Maple: International scholars and military Canadian Ecocriticism in Context professionals explore the strategic EDITED BY ELLA SOPER consequences of the thawing of the Arctic. AND NICHOLAS BRADLEY 500 pp, $44.95, 9781552385463, July 2013 Historical GIS Research in This book explores the development of ecocriticism in the context of Canadian literary studies. Selections include Canada work by Margaret Atwood, Northrop Frye, Sherrill Grace, EDITED BY and Rosemary Sullivan. JENNIFER BONNELL L’Alberta Autophage: Identités, mythes et AND MARCEL FORTIN discours du pétrole dans l’Ouest canadien 300 pp, $39.95, illustrations, 9781552387085, November 2013 DOMINIQUE PERRON Fundamentally concerned with place, and 450 pp, $39.95, 9781552385760, July 2013 our ability to understand human relation- Cet ouvrage présente une analyse discursive des récits ships with environment over time, His- identitaires albertains développés par rapport aux Published in partnership torical Geographic Information Systems with NiCHE: Network in ressources pétrolières de l’Alberta, au fil de l’histoire Canadian History (HGIS) has direct bearing on the study of moderne de la province. and Environment environmental issues and realities.
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ChIld TO SOldIER IPPERWaSh NEgOTIaTINg ThE dEal Stories from Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance The Tragic Failure of Canada’s Aboriginal Policy Comprehensive Land Claims Agreements in Army by Edward J. Hedican Canada by Christopher Alcantara by Opiyo Oloya ‘The events that led up to the death of Dudley What happens when children are forced George and the history of the Ipperwash ‘Christopher Alcantara has written a path- to become child soldiers? How are they Inquiry are stories that must be told and breaking book on Canada’s modern process transformed from children to combatants? taught… Ipperwash will succeed in drawing of treaty-making with Aboriginal peoples. His In Child to Soldier, Opiyo Oloya addresses attention to the systemic change required ingenious use of the comparative method these timely, troubling questions by exploring to improve conditions and quality of life in helps us understand why some First Nations how Acholi children in Uganda, abducted by Aboriginal communities.’ successfully complete the comprehensive land infamous warlord Joseph Kony and his Lord’s claims process and others don’t. ‘ L. Jane McMillan, St Francis Xavier University Resistance Army (LRA), become soldiers. Peter H. Russell, University of Toronto 9781442610132 | $32.95 9781442614178 | $24.95 9781442612846 | $24.95
SECRET SERVICE PROdUCINg aNd NEgOTIaTINg WRITINg UNEMPlOYMENT Political Policing in Canada, from the Fenians NON-CITIzENShIP Worklessness, Mobility, and Citizenship in to Fortress America Precarious Legal Status in Canada Twentieth-Century Canadian Literatures by Reg Whitaker, Gregory S. Kealey, and edited by Luin Goldring and Patricia Landolt by Jody Mason Andrew Parnaby Migrant workers, students, refugee claimants, This landmark study presents the cultural Winner of Canada Prize in the Social Sciences, and people with expired permits have limited and literary history of unemployment in awarded by the Federation for the Humanities formal rights to employment, housing, Canada from the 1920s to the 1970s and and Social Sciences. education, and health services in Canada. explores how writers with diverse political This comprehensive history of political policing Producing and Negotiating Non-Citizenship affiliations participated in and protested in Canada reveals the extent, focus, and politics presents everyday experiences of people whose against the framing of unemployment. Writing of government-sponsored surveillance and pathway to citizenship is uncertain or non- Unemployment offers new ideas on work by intelligence-gathering operations. existent. many of Canada’s most important writers. 9780802078018 | $36.95 9781442614086 | $34.95 9781442644335 | $55.00
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