Fixing our broken treaties PAGE 10

$6.50 Vol. 23, No. 9 November 2015

John Richards Social ALSO IN THIS ISSUE spending Frances Lankin tightrope Yellow tape memoirs How early intervention helps people find their footing and saves money Erin Rily-Oettl Digging trenches in Africa

Margaret Atwood et al. Gendered reviewing

PLUS: non-fiction Catherine Murton Stoehr on aboriginal justice + Jeffrey Collins on Newfoundland’s political past + Naoko Asano on Canada at Hitler’s Olympics + Ian Weir on gun culture + Kenton Smith on the lost art of photobooths + Stephen Henighan on English’s

Publications Mail Agreement #40032362 global usage + Mark J. Freiman on Canada’s civil rights history Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to LRC, Circulation Dept. fiction Diane Guichon on Don Gillmor’s Long Change + Norman Snider on Nino Ricci’s Sleep PO Box 8, Station K , ON M4P 2G1 poetry Ashley-Elizabeth Best + Len Gasparini + George Elliott Clarke + Richard Kelly Kemick Literary Review of Canada 170 Bloor Street West, Suite 706 Toronto ON M5S 1T9 email: [email protected] reviewcanada.ca T: 416-531-1483 • F: 416-531-1612 Charitable number: 848431490RR0001 To donate, visit reviewcanada.ca/support Vol. 23, No. 9 • November 2015 INTERIM EDITOR Mark Lovewell [email protected] MANAGING EDITOR 3 Never to Forget 13 Tales from the Beat 20 Raising Hell Michael Stevens A review of Lions or Jellyfish: A review of Crime Seen: From A review of Acting for CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Newfoundland-Ottawa Patrol Cop to Profiler, My Freedom: Fifty Years of Civil Mohamed Huque, Molly Peacock, Robin Relations Since 1957, by Stories from Behind the Yellow Liberties in Canada, by Marian Roger, Anthony Westell Raymond D. Blake Tape, by Kate Lines, and Botsford Fraser, with Sukanya ASSOCIATE EDITOR Jeffrey Collins Damage Done: A Mountie’s Pillay and Kent Roach Judy Stoffman Memoir, by Deanna Lennox Mark J. Freiman POETRY EDITOR 4 “Not a Lawless People” Moira MacDougall Frances Lankin A review of Nationhood 22 A Question of Bias COPY EDITOR Interrupted: Revitalizing nêhi- 16 Student Posters at the An essay Madeline Koch yaw Legal Systems, by Sylvia University of Timbuktu et al. ONLINE EDITORS McAdam (Saysewahum) A poem Diana Kuprel, Jack Mitchell, 25 Language Wars Donald Rickerd, C.M. Catherine Murton Stoehr George Elliott Clarke A review of Language Policy PROOFREADERS 6 Spending Power 16 Beaumont-Hamel and Political Economy: English Robert Simone, Jeannie Weese A review of Early Intervention: Newfoundland in a Global Context, edited by RESEARCH How Canada’s Social Programs Memorial Thomas Ricento Rob Tilley Can Work Better, Save Lives Stephen Henighan A poem DESIGN and Often Save Money, by James Harbeck Richard Kelly Kemick 26 Canada the Good James Hughes ADVERTISING/SALES A review of Colonial John Richards 17 Living in the Wait Michael Wile Extractions: Race and Canadian A poem [email protected] 9 Firearm Follies Mining in Contemporary Africa, Ashley-Elizabeth Best DIRECTOR, SPECIAL PROJECTS A review of Arms: The Culture by Paula Butler Michael Booth and Credo of the Gun, by A.J. 17 Knowing I Cannot Erin Riley-Oettl PRODUCER Somerset Hold You Whole Read well at any size. Harrison Lowman Ian Weir Forever 29 Letters and Responses MARKETING COORDINATOR Samantha Dewaele 10 Attawapiskat versus A poem Myrna Kostash, Janice ADMINISTRATOR Len Gasparini Kulyk Keefer, Erna Paris, Ottawa Tavia Fedoruk Ian Brodie, Norman Doidge A review of Children of the 18 Victims of Geology PUBLISHER Broken Treaty: Canada’s Lost A review of Long Change, by Helen Walsh Promise and One Girl’s Dream, Don Gillmor [email protected] by Charlie Angus Diane Guichon BOARD OF DIRECTORS Christopher Moore Tom Kierans, O.C., Don McCutchan, 19 Decline and Fall of a Jack Mintz, C.M., Trina McQueen, O.C. 11 Dip ’n’ Dunk Tough Guy ADVISORY COUNCIL A review of Photobooth: A A review of Sleep, by Nino Michael Adams, Ronald G. Atkey, P.C., Biography, by Meags Fitzgerald Ricci Q.C., Alan Broadbent, C.M., Chris Ellis, Kenton Smith James Gillies, C.M., Carol Hansell, Norman Snider Donald Macdonald, P.C., C.C., Susan 12 Adolf’s Games Reisler, Grant Reuber, O.C., Don Rickerd, A review of More than Just C.M., Rana Sarkar, Mark Sarner, Bernard Games: Canada and the 1936 Erratum Schiff, Reed Scowen Olympics, by Richard Menkis In the September 2015 issue, the publisher of Michel Hogue’s Metis and POETRY SUBMISSIONS For poetry submission guidelines, please see and Harold Troper the Medicine Line: Creating a Border and Dividing a People should have reviewcanada.ca. Naoko Asano been listed as the University of Regina Press. LRC design concept by Jackie Young/INK Founded in 1991 by P.A. Dutil In memoriam Eric Wright, 1929–2015 The LRC is published 10 times a year by the Literary Review of Canada Charitable Organization.

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November 2015 reviewcanada.ca 1 Never to Forget A new look at the lingering legacy of Newfoundland’s climb to prosperity. Jeffrey Collins

The public spats between Newfoundland and refers to as “a low, dishonest episode in the annals Lions or Jellyfish: Labrador premiers and Canadian prime ministers of Canadian federalism.” Between 1963 and 1968, Newfoundland-Ottawa Relations Since 1957 have produced some of the most vivid, passionate Prime Minister Lester Pearson, not wanting to antag- Raymond D. Blake moments in this country’s political history. From onize Quebec nationalists and risk Liberal seats, Press Joey Smallwood’s clash with John Diefenbaker over refused to invoke the federal constitutional power 322 pages, softcover financial assistance, or Brian Peckford’s showdown that would allow Labrador hydroelectricity to pass ISBN 9781442628304 with Pierre Trudeau on the control of offshore unhindered across Quebec’s borders and onto North oil, to Clyde Wells’s scuttling of Brian Mulroney’s American markets. Notably, Alberta had benefit- cherished Meech Lake Accord, Canada’s youngest ted from such an invocation when Saskatchewan ewfoundland came into Confeder­ province has affected Canadian federalism in ways opposed the transmission of gas across its borders ation with no familiarity of federalism. out of all proportion to its half-a-million souls. several years previously. In order to ensure the dam NThe new province had experienced And the pyrotechnics have not ended. Non- could be built, Newfoundland was left having to bankruptcy and a loss of responsible government Newfoundlanders might mistakenly think that enter into agreement with Hydro-Québec. In what in 1934, suffering the humiliation of being just one theatrics such as Danny Williams’s hauling down arguably remains one of the most unjust commer- of two British colonies to do so (the other being of the Canadian flag in 2005 were designed solely cial contracts of its kind anywhere, Newfoundland Malta in 1933). In lieu of Newfoundland governing for domestic consumption—as nothing more than agreed to a deal that saw it earn just $63 million in itself, its leaders opted for rule-by-committee in the a crass appeal to Newfoundlanders’ nationalist 2010 in comparison to $1.7 billion for Quebec. The form of a British-appointed commission. This state heartstrings in the face of low public approval contract is not set to expire until 2041—69 years after of affairs persisted until March 31, 1949, the day ratings. While one cannot completely discount it came into effect. To say that Newfoundland paid a Newfoundland became a province on the slimmest the possibility of such electoral calculations, it is price for Canadian unity would be perhaps the only of margins—a 52 to 48 split in the last of two bitterly important to note, as Raymond D. Blake does in generous interpretation of this calamity. contested referendums the previous year. his newest book, Lions or Jellyfish: Newfoundland- But this is only part of Newfoundland’s post- In socioeconomic terms, the new province Ottawa Relations Since 1957, that underneath it all Confederation story, and if there is one flaw in what was in a class of its own. Less than 50 percent of has been a continuous drive, for better or for worse, is otherwise a thoroughly researched and argued Newfoundland households (26 percent in rural com- by Newfoundland’s premiers to make the Canadian book it is in Blake’s lack of turning the lens inward. munities) had electricity, while comparable rates in federation work for a province that until recently Blake appears to saddle most of the blame for Nova Scotia and New Brunswick were 79 percent was one of its poorest members. Newfoundland’s state of affairs on federal officials and 74 percent. Similar discrepancies were found in In Blake’s view, the combination of population and perhaps that is because his intended audience household access to running water, indoor plumb- by representation and a lack of institutional reform is Canadians outside the province (he rightly takes ing and medical facilities. The mainstay of the in our parliament has given disproportionate numerous swipes at the national media’s failure provincial economy was still fishing, an occupation influence to the larger provinces in governing the to understand Newfoundland’s position). But yet that, on average, paid one sixth of what the average affairs of the country. Consequently, “the interests Ottawa cannot take the blame for the failings of worker made in Ontario. Compounding all that was of smaller and weaker provinces in the federation Newfoundland’s own democratic institutions. Its an uneven population distribution: hundreds of have been ignored.” In short, it illustrates how elected members sit far fewer days than any of their small communities, many with no more than a few embedded inequity is in Canadian federalism. provincial cousins, with the exception of Prince dozen residents, located along some 10,000 kilo- Blake, who is originally from Newfoundland Edward Island. Likewise, legislative committees, metres of coastline, making service delivery costly. and is now a historian at the University of Regina, which are meant to be a check on power, often The cumulative effect meant that the provincial makes the argument that we cannot understand exist only on paper, rarely meeting and only then government faced a major hurdle in providing Newfoundland-Ottawa relations without looking to ­rubber-stamp bills the governing party intends modern public services that could come even at how they have been shaped by a combination to pass anyway. Moreover, highly publicized fights close to matching those in the Maritimes, which of elites, political culture and history. In his view, with Ottawa, such as those between Joey Smallwood themselves were low relative to the national scholarship on Canadian federalism, especially that and John Diefenbaker in 1959, or between Danny average. Governments from the time of Louis St. on the provinces outside of Quebec, fails to incor- Williams and Paul Martin in 2005, and again with Laurent incessantly compared Newfoundland with porate these elements into its analyses. And Blake Stephen Harper in 2007–08, have revealed a darker Maritimes standards, making the stark differences would know. His 1992 book, Canadians at Last: side to the province’s political culture: the brow- all that more obvious. So it is no surprise that all Canada Integrates Newfoundland as a Province, beating of those who dare to disagree with the gov- Newfoundland premiers, from Joey Smallwood examined the role individuals and policies played ernment’s stance and a questioning of their loyalty. onward, have fought for recognition that the prov- in overcoming the challenges of transforming Still, for all of the criticisms by Lions or Jellyfish ince required some form of transitory allowance— Newfoundland from a colony, in 1949, into a full of official Ottawa’s handling of Newfoundland be it monetary, constitutional or political—to allow member of the Canadian federation by 1957. relations, Blake admits that there is no doubt that it to build the institutional and financial capacity In Lions or Jellyfish the past is always present. “union with Canada was beneficial financially and necessary to provide for its residents. Blake contends that understanding Newfoundland’s economically for Newfoundland.” Nor does he pre-Confederation history helps one to concep- suggest this often troubled state of affairs will be Jeffrey F. Collins is a doctoral student in political tualize the province’s political culture and the permanent. Federalism, as Blake reminds us, is a science at Carleton University. A former policy arguments its premiers have taken on intergovern- “framework for managing conflict and differen- advisor at the federal cabinet level, he is now a mental matters. The perennial hope of many a ces”—it is not an end in and of itself. With political public policy research assistant with the Atlantic premier has been ending the “legacy of colonialism will, the Canadian model can be reformed to bet- Institute for Market Studies. His is originally from and prosper[ing] with the federal framework.” ter accommodate the aspirations of citizens in all Placentia, Newfoundland, and now resides in The most egregious example of this has to be the its many constituent parts, Newfoundlanders and Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. Churchill Falls hydroelectric project—what Blake Labradorians included.

November 2015 reviewcanada.ca 3 “Not a Lawless People” Re-implementing the silenced legal tradition of the Cree Nation. Catherine Murton Stoehr

Francis McAdam, McAdam’s grandfather, who she 2012 she and three other women who would later Nationhood Interrupted: remembers saying: “We are not a lawless people.” become her Idle No More associates discovered that Revitalizing nêhiyaw Legal Systems nêhiyaw law governed matters such as rela- hidden within the 450 pages of the Conservative Sylvia McAdam (Saysewahum) tionships toward other beings and other nations. government’s 2012 omnibus budget bill were Purich Publishing Ltd. Southern Blackfoot visitors to a nêhiyaw commun- legislative changes that would enable the govern- 120 pages, softcover ity, for example, would announce their desire to ment to privatize every reserve in Canada. Working ISBN 9781895830804 enter the territory by placing a stake with a tobacco with these other women she planned a teach-in offering on the border. The nêhiyaw leaders sig- in Saskatoon and a petition. The Treaty 6 elders nalled a welcome by removing the bundle and instructed her to invoke the law of nâtamâwa- ylvia McAdam is one of the four lawyers accepting the tobacco, or a rejection by leaving the sowin, which calls people to “defend … all human who began the Idle No More Movement in offering untouched. After the treaty, the nêhiyawak children in the world as well as future generations” S2012. In Nationhood Interrupted: Revitalizing had their own patrols who would send away any also “the children of all animals, plants, water, and nêhiyaw Legal Systems, she offers an unpreced- settler person who camped on reserve land. the winged ones—every thing in creation that has a ented look at nêhiyaw (Cree) law and, in doing so, Having described some of the mechanisms and spirit.” McAdam and the rest led a movement that lays plain why she was destined to start a move- content of nêhiyaw law, McAdam turns to consider included hundreds of teach-ins and round dances ment that could change a country. She and created an international focus on explains in clear English what every news indigenous rights in Canada. story on the topic has failed to communi- Treaty 6 was not a real estate deal, The knowledge in this book is part cate—that before colonial reconciliation of the nêhiyaw oral traditions. Whereas can happen in Canada, worlds must be wherein settlers took ownership archives corroborate western histories, rebuilt. Songs, political arrangements, local communities are the arbiters of oral legal systems and the thousand other of a piece of land; it was an tradition. In this work more information edifices that once upheld each of the agreement for two groups to act as about the specific communities of the First Nations must be recovered and contributing elders would be instructive. restored. And we have barely begun. kin, or “cousins” for all time. Are there disputes about these teach- Putting her shoulder to one specific ings? Are these teachings that are held reconstruction project, the nêhiyaw in common by all the nêhiyaw commun- legal system, McAdam demands: “in the spirit how it was employed in the negotiation of Treaty 6 ities in Canada or are they more local? McAdam and intent of Indigenous sovereignty and treaty with the British government. On that occasion the mentions the tradition of knowledge keepers, … non-Indigenous­ people must begin supporting nêhiyaw legal women met to consider the proposed identified while still children and given specialized and encouraging Indigenous laws and teachings, treaty. Two major points emerge from McAdam’s training to enable them to memorize great volumes in every aspect, and by whatever means possible.” analysis, which she bases on oral history, the notes of information with precision. Are her informants According to McAdam, based on interviews she of the British Treaty commissioner Alexander recognized by their own communities as such conducted with a variety of elders, the nêhiyaw Morris and the work of James (Sa’ke’j) Youngblood knowledge keepers or is their knowledge of a dif- received laws given specifically for this land at Henderson. First, “in nêhiyaw law, the treaties were ferent order? Alberta’s Cypress Hills, with the instruction that adoptions of one nation by another.” Treaty 6 was Still, McAdam’s words are those of a determined women would be the law keepers. The women law not a real estate deal, wherein settlers took owner- leader. In the recent past, she has been shouted keepers formed a society who met together in soli- ship of a piece of land; it was an agreement for down for speaking reason to a hostile audience. tude for ceremonies but also arbitrated disputes, two groups to act as kin, or “cousins” for all time. This time many will hear her charge, that caring decided community strategy and led ceremonies. Should one of the parties fail to perform their role only for our own laws, settler Canadians have not Only they had the authority to “speak about the as kin, the treaty would end. Second, both sides tried to understand the treaties in the context of our land and the water.” In the 19th and 20th centur- were operating from the shared agreement that the treaty partners’ legal systems, or even considered ies the Canadian government outlawed most First treaty was intended to add prosperity to the nêhiy- consulting their legal experts on how to interpret Peoples’ spiritual societies. Groups such as these awak who made the treaty and all of their ensuing them. Indeed, it will be hard for many Canadians law keepers were forced to meet in secrecy and generations. In treaty commissioner Morris’s words to accept that our treaty partners had legal systems many, including the nêhiyaw women law keepers, “what I offered does not take away your living, you in the past and continue to have them today. To stopped meeting entirely. will have it then as you have now, and what I offer do so is to acknowledge that Canada attempted Knowledge of nêhiyaw law was preserved by now is put on top of it.” to wipe out truly complex societies, making the children whose parents carried them away into the Almost immediately after Treaty 6 was signed cherished idea of Canada the Good difficult to bush to protect them from Indian agents intent on government legislation and the policies of the hang on to. But many Canadians now seem ready forcing them into residential schools. This includes Indian Department grew up like vines and choked to live in the hard truth rather than the comforting members of McAdam’s own family. In the safety it. In quick succession the Gradual Enfranchisement lie. There is time in the future for more unsettling and secrecy of the land, McAdam’s great grand- Act of 1869 ended all indigenous political systems, thoughts, such as how to fit nine nêhiyaw women parents and grandparents taught their children, residential schools swallowed generations whole, law keepers on the bench with the Supreme Court including McAdam’s mother Juliette, who gave Indian Department agents turned the reserves into Justices when Treaty 6 matters come before the McAdam permission to share her knowledge, and prisons, and the government banned spiritual cere- court; or whether non-indigenous Canadians, if monies. Together these actions obliterated Morris’s we wish to be considered immigrants rather than Catherine Murton Stoehr is an activist and his- promise that nothing would be taken away. This invaders, might ourselves be bound by the laws of torian who writes about Anishinabe culture and hard story is the context for McAdam’s questioning our adopted home. For today let us simply accept politics during the first two generations of set- of Canada’s current reconciliation project. McAdam’s invitation to settle into a longer story of tler colonialism in Upper Canada. She lives on The book ends where McAdam’s national Canadian history than that to which we have been Nipissing First Nation traditional territory. renown began, with Idle No More. In the fall of accustomed.

4 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Spending Power Can compassion and efficiency be combined in the use of public funds? John Richards

is the appropriate strategy Early Intervention: to pursue for the homeless. How Canada’s Social The homeless typically have Programs Can Work many problems over and Better, Save Lives and above a lack of income to Often Save Money obtain housing. Frequently James Hughes they suffer mental illness and Lorimer addiction, and have many 232 pages, softcover minor criminal convictions ISBN 9781459408777 and few acquaintances to provide emotional support. Before attempting to treat n pre-industrial soci- the multiple problems the ety, the family was the homeless often present, the Iprimary source of social housing-first strategy is to support. It still is in much of provide housing, with no—or the world. However, voters in very few—questions asked. wealthy industrial countries This, too, is an expensive have been willing over the undertaking, but may be cost last century to mitigate the effective in the sense that extremes of a market econ- the outcomes are at least omy via the welfare state. as good as most alternative Not that this willingness interventions, and the high is boundless. At a time of cost of providing the hous- severe fiscal crisis in Sweden ing is offset by avoiding costs in the 1990s, for example, such as hospital emergency the government appointed visits, criminal behaviour, Assar Lindbeck, a respected and so on. economist, to review the country’s social programs. schools, healthcare improvements (particularly At some point in reading this book, the reader He prepared a lengthy report, which he later in treatment of mental illness), design of income may feel a certain misgiving. The proposed innova- summed up with the quip that the welfare state is support programs targeting the poor and housing tions have a common feature: spend more now, in a wonderful innovation of the 20th century—pro- the homeless. The concluding chapter develops his expectation of better outcomes and cost-of-service vided the workers are all Lutherans and the admin- overarching theme: intervene early. savings later. Hughes does not have Lindbeck’s istrators are all Prussians. Hughes is at his most convincing when discuss- affection for tough rules and fiscal discipline as The opening sentence of James Hughes’s new ing concrete examples. A near-universal phenom- essential to successful welfare states. Perhaps book, Early Intervention: How Canada’s Social enon in “settler societies” is a high incidence of because Lindbeck and I are both economists, I Programs Can Work Better, Save Lives and Often child neglect among indigenous families faced with share his perspective. If our safety net is aging and Save Money, might be interpreted in a similar light: the cultural difficulties of integrating into an indus- in need of renewal, surely there are some program “Canada’s social safety net is showing its age.” trial society. Hughes has praise for the New Zealand areas where the optimum innovation is spend less Lindbeck and Hughes agree on the need to early childhood intervention protocols, in the case now, in expectation of better outcomes and no cost- undertake, from time to time, fundamental reviews of Maori. They engage the entire family and have a of-service increase at a later date. of social policy. But, as I discuss later, the two tackle better record than most child protection agencies The classic example of a Canadian social policy the problem in decidedly different ways. in avoiding the trauma of child apprehension. Early innovation where less turned out to be more is the Hughes has spent his career as a social worker intervention via the extended family not only yields decision reached by most provincial social service in the trenches, running a mission for the home- better outcomes, Hughes reports. It saves money. ministries in the mid 1990s to tighten dramatically less in Montreal, and as a deputy minister of social Another example Hughes discusses at length is the regulations governing access to social assist- services in New Brunswick. He has a career that the Lovaas theory of intensive behavioural inter- ance among those deemed employable. The result permits him to write an overview worth reading. vention with young autistic children. Treatment was a near halving of the poverty rate over the next In nine chapters he surveys the history of social may readily cost over $75,000 annually per child. decade, as measured using Statistics Canada’s low policy in Canada, strategies to manage child pro- Expensive, but nonetheless a good investment he income cut-off. tection, early treatment for autism, bullying in concludes. The benefits are the higher quality of The percentage of Canadian households falling adult life for the autistic child and lower costs of below the after-tax LICO thresholds is the most John Richards teaches in the School of Public Policy treatment when the autistic child is an adult. There frequently cited index of poverty in Canada. The at Simon Fraser University and holds the Roger is much debate surrounding the benefits of Lovaas LICO thresholds adjust for family size and com- Phillips chair in social policy at the C.D. Howe treatment, but, again, Hughes may be right. munity size, and they are also adjusted for inflation. Institute. Hughes may also be right that “housing first” Because the real value of what can be bought at the

6 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada thresholds has not been benchmarked since 1992, LICO is increasingly becoming an absolute poverty measure: the value of what can be purchased at threshold incomes remains constant from year to year. The LICO poverty rate rose in the early 1980s recession, fell in the subsequent boom, and peaked above 15 percent in the early 1990s recession. Since the mid 1990s, the LICO poverty rate has fallen nearly in half. It rose slightly in the post-2008 reces- sion, but in the most recently reported year (2011) it is under nine percent. Not surprisingly, reliance on social assistance is linked to the state of the economy. The share of Canadians receiving social assistance was about five percent in the late 1970s, rose to seven percent in the early 1980s recession and remained constant over the decade. In the wake of the early 1990s recession, reliance on social assistance peaked above ten percent of the population. At that point most provinces abandoned what had been the tradition in Canada of providing generous access to welfare benefits. Some provincial governments (for example, the Tories in Ontario) resorted to Sturm und Drang in making the change; others (for example, the NDP in British Columbia) relied on stealth in order not to alienate core supporters. At the time there was alarm among social policy advo- cates as to the implication on poverty rates. Overall, the employment rate rose and the poverty rate fell. The lowering of post-1995 LICO poverty rates is most evident among female-headed single-parent families. From 1995 to 2011, their LICO poverty rate declined from over 50 percent to below 25 percent. They substituted higher market earnings for lost social assistance. At 23 percent in 2011 (the latest available statis- tic), the single-parent LICO poverty rate is still more than twice the national average, and the explana- tion for the decline is more complex than the above implies. In the late 1990s, the federal government introduced the National Child Benefit System, a modest negative income tax for low-income fam- ilies with children. Most provinces lowered welfare benefits dollar for dollar with NCBS payments. Families received no benefit from the NCBS while on welfare, but the NCBS has allowed families to exit welfare at lower earning levels. Having exited, these families face lower clawback rates on incre- Source: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development mental earnings than they faced when on welfare. I agree with Hughes that, in seeking areas of lion.) The primary reason will be the high cost of Ottawa accused the provinces of violating the spirit social policy in need of reform, mental illness providing health care to the old, and the shift in the of shared-cost social programs by overspending deserves a high priority. Mental health reform is age distribution as the boomer generation popu- on them. In neither arena did politicians address hard to do well. First, evaluating success is open to lates the over-65 age cohorts. This brings us to a the inefficiencies in their respective program more ambiguities than in most other health pro- brute fact about social spending in a democracy. It portfolios. By the mid 1990s, Canada’s net debt gramming. It is relatively easy to measure under- depends ultimately on the willingness of citizens to exceeded 100 percent of GDP; we were the third five mortality rates. More difficult to measure but pay the required taxes. most indebted country in the entire Organisation still relatively straightforward are reading and Hughes goes easy on the Harper administra- for Economic Co-operation and Development, mathematics outcomes among children from dis- tion: “the Harper Conservatives … have been dis- behind Italy and Belgium. We had no choice but advantaged families. It is far more difficult to evalu- inclined to repeat the slash-and-burn practices of to lower debt. Given the large gap between taxing ate programs intended to tackle, say, depressive the governing Liberals in the 1990s.” This is too kind effort in Canada and the United States (about ten disorders. Second, mental health covers a diverse to the Harper government, too dismissive of the percentage points of GDP), it was inevitable that range of services, from special needs programming Chrétien Liberals and ignores context. The reason the emphasis would be on expenditure reductions in schools to homeless services and care for the old Canadian governments, both in Ottawa and the as opposed to tax increases. suffering dementia. provinces, underwent budget cuts in the 1990s was If we are to make sense of present-day taxa- It is hard to disagree with Hughes that early not a heartless desire to slash and burn; it was the tion levels and spending priorities, we need to intervention is usually preferable to late in almost fiscal irresponsibility of Canadian politicians over pay attention to where Canada sits relative to our all areas of health, education and social program- the previous two decades and widespread popular OECD partners. Let’s focus on the period from 1992 ming. However, early does not usually imply lower resistance to solving the national public debt prob- to today. Has Canada been relatively generous in budgets. To undertake the mental health reforms lem via higher taxes. Not once since 1975 had the social spending and aggressive in taxing, or rela- that Hughes wants means probably spending con- politicians, summing up Ottawa and the ten provin- tively conservative? siderably more. Even with no reforms, continuing cial budgets, balanced their accounts. Instead, they In answering these questions it is useful to with the status quo will probably entail an increase engaged in mutual recriminations. rank OECD countries into quarters, grouped from of two percentage points in gross domestic product Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, the the highest to the lowest government spend- in the cost of social programs over the next three provinces blamed Ottawa for arbitrarily cutting ers (Figure 1) and the highest to lowest taxers decades. (One percent of GDP is about $20 bil- the federal contribution to shared cost programs; (Figure 2).

November 2015 reviewcanada.ca 7 Let’s look first at government spending. As shown in Figure 1, the top quartile is the min- The UN in the imum spending rate among the top quarter of 21st Century OECD countries with the most generous benefits. Douglas Roche In 1992 it was 56 percentage points as a share of $14.95 paper GDP. At that time, Canada’s own rate of govern- Peace and disarmament ment spending was close to 54 percent, which expert Douglas Roche describes the UN’s role meant we were close to joining this top quarter today on militarism, of high-spending countries. Our spending sub- human rights, refugees sequently declined so that by the second half of and the environment the 1990s we were close to the typical, or median, OECD country. Then, after 2000, our spending continued to drift down—so much so that during the past five years we have come close to joining the quarter of countries with the lowest spending as a share of GDP. The maximum spending rate THOUGHTFUL among the bottom quarter (the bottom quartile) has hovered around 40 percent of GDP over How We Changed the last two decades, with the exception of the Toronto aftermath of the 2008 recession when spending John Sewell in nearly all OECD countries, including Canada, $29.95, cloth rose. At the same time, the spending gap with the How activist citizens United States has tumbled considerably, so that and reforming we now spend only about two percentage points politicians transformed Toronto in the 1970s of GDP more than the Americans do. What can we conclude from all this? Based on what other OECD countries are doing, Canada has gone from being a generous to a conservative spender on social programs. Now let’s look at taxation. As shown in Figure 2, as Ottawa and the provinces eliminated ENGAGING their respective deficits during the late 1990s, Canada’s taxing effort fell. So in the first half of the

2000s Ottawa (under Chrétien) and the provinces Matters. the Public Because Sold Down the were able to lower their combined taxing effort by Yangtze about four percentage points of GDP. This placed Gus Van Harten Canada’s taxing effort close to the median OECD $19.95 paper country. There was no widespread public demand Osgoode Hall trade at the time for further tax cuts. By 2006, when the law expert Gus Van Conservatives entered office, the tax gap with the Th e Graphite Club e Graphite Th Harten’s exposé of the U.S. had been cut nearly in half relative to a dec- recent Canada-China ade earlier. Given their ideological preferences, trade deal Harper’s Conservatives, in their years in office, pushed our taxing effort down by an additional two percentage points. Canada is now close to joining the bottom quarter of the lowest taxing Join the Graphite Club, OECD countries—in other words Canada has become a “low tax” country. devoted to the long-term ILLUMINATING In conclusion, when compared with our OECD sustainability of the LRC peers, we are now relatively conservative in terms of government spending and have relatively low and its elemental place in Final Report of taxes. So there is validity to Hughes’s claim that the Truth and Canadian life. there is room to spend more on social programs— Reconciliation as long as Canadians can be persuaded to pay the Commission of required taxes. For many economists (including Canada $22.95, paper me), the preferred tax option is a new nation-wide Membership bene ts carbon tax that rapidly ramps up to become a The full text of the and details available at Commission’s major incentive to curtail activities that generate Summary report greenhouse gases. If the next government agrees to some tax increases—which is far from certain—there reviewcanada.ca/ remains the complex and controversial matter graphite of determining priorities. My own personal top priority for a spending increase is early childhood INFORMATIVE education targeting children in low-income or otherwise marginalized families. In particular, To join the Graphite Club, that means targeting aboriginal children, whether please contact: First Nations living on or off reserves, Inuit or Métis. But I agree with Hughes that better mental Helen Walsh, President www.lorimer.ca health programming should be high on the list. Literary Review of Canada Independent. Canadian. Since 1970. Some of his other priorities—such as those related [email protected] to housing—would likely receive considerable 416-944-1101 sxt. 227 attention as well. All that we can say for certain, Made possible with the support of the Ontario Media Development Corporation however, is that the competition over specific pri- orities will be fierce.

8 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Firearm Follies A lover of guns offers an honest appraisal of their less savoury aspects. Ian Weir

(Bug-Out Bag) and your EDC (Every-Day Carry), Rutledge’s decision to take a loaded pistol on a Arms: The Culture and Credo of the Gun knowing that you may have to leap at any moment family outing can, in fact, be straightforwardly A.J. Somerset into your GOOD vehicle (Get Out of Dodge) when explained: she came from a family and a com- Biblioasis the SHTF (Shit Hits The Fan) and we are all left munity with a tradition of gun ownership, in which 341 pages, softcover WROL (Without Rule of Law). carrying firearms was normal. A valuable insight, ISBN 9781771960281 Somerset skewers the adolescent fantasizing this ties into his larger point that gun ownership has that informs so much of this, and he is excellent much to do with personal identity and tribal loyalty: as well on the evolution of the bizarre logic that Veronica Rutledge was proclaiming herself one of y friend Paul tells a story about underpins even mainstream U.S. gun culture, by the Gun People. riding his motorcycle through rural which vigilantes stand their ground and the Second While Somerset condemns the anti-gun moral- MOregon, where he stopped one after- Amendment comes to guarantee the sacred right ists (and internet trolls) who jeered at the tragedy, noon at a craft sale. While perusing the wares, he of the individual to carry an AK-47. Along the way he also scorns the gun lobbyists who viewed it as discovered that he was being hawk-watched by one he makes an intriguing argument for consumerism simply a tragic accident, with no culpability attach- of the proprietors: a young woman with a pistol itself as one of the feeder-streams of the wellspring ing to anyone. On the contrary, he argues, such on her hip. Being Canadian—i.e., red-blooded if of crazy. (Loving guns means buying gun gadgetry; tragedies could and should be prevented if gun necessary, though not necessarily red-blooded— and once you own all that cool stuff, you cannot just owners observed basic rules of firearms safety; a Paul blurted the obvious question: “Um, is that a leave it locked away.) gun poses no threat to anyone so long as it is—like real gun?” A.J. Somerset’s gun—securely stored and It was. properly handled. “Um … is it loaded?” It is a Canadian reflex to exclaim Beyond the debatable premise that As A.J. Somerset observes, it is a accidents do not happen to sufficiently Canadian reflex to exclaim incredulously incredulously at the excesses of responsible people, this comes down to at the excesses of American gun culture. American gun culture. deciding where on the spectrum “safe” He utters a good many such exclama- slides into “not safe,” and such a decision tions himself in Arms: The Culture and is inevitably arbitrary and subjective. Credo of the Gun, while rejecting the consoling Somerset insists that Canada has an equivalent Someone who does not share Somerset’s fondness assumption that we are immune to gun nuttery gun culture, although here he is less persuasive. for firearms—me, for instance—might assert that here at home. The book sets out to document the To populate a gallery of domestic crazies he finds “safe” begins and ends with a gun that is hanging in rise of gun culture on both sides of the border, and himself pointing to the likes of Marc Lepine. But it a museum with its barrel plugged. ultimately to track down what he calls the well- is hard to see mass murderers as the equivalents of, But Somerset’s passion comes through loud and spring of crazy: the root cause(s) of the obsession say, the Open Carry Texas adherents, who go to the clear, as does his distress at the level of invective with firearms. And Somerset—a Canadian novelist, mall with assault rifles slung over their shoulders that poisons the debate—although he is no slouch journalist, former army reservist and passionate in order to acclimatize nervous suburbanites to the at invective flinging himself. More than a jeremiad, hunter—approaches the whole roiling issue from notion that this is sane and normal. It is also hard Arms is a cri de coeur at the manner by which guns the perspective of a gun lover who deplores gun to know what to make of Somerset’s assertion that have become totems in an increasingly fraught and nuts. The result is part history lesson, part socio- “the notion that Canada has no gun culture died polarized culture war. We all end in choosing one logical study and part jeremiad; it is timely, import- shortly after seven o’clock on the evening of June 5, side or the other, Somerset laments, and none of us ant, audacious and intermittently maddening. 2014, when a twenty-four-year-old man [Justin can be objective: “I say, ‘I like guns’; you hear your Somerset is not above cherry-picking his facts, Bourque] dressed in army-surplus camouflage and own assumptions.” And of course he’s right. I’m or indulging a fondness for the sweeping general- carrying a Norinco M305 rifle and a Mossberg 500 guilty as charged, alongside all the rest of the “soy- ization. But the book’s strengths are considerable. tactical shotgun went for a walk in Moncton, New latte-drinking, yoga-loving, man-purse-­wearing Somerset takes us on a riveting tour through the Brunswick, with no plan of ever returning home.” … nanny goofs,” just as much as the “mouth- lunatic fringes of contemporary gun culture: those This is a powerful sentence and a chilling image: breathers and nutjobs” across the chasm. We have swamplands of paranoia where survivalists prepare the Canadian Grendel emerging out of the fens. But made up our minds, and nothing is likely to budge for TEOTWAWKI (The End of The World As We what does it actually mean? us—including Arms. Somerset knows it too, which Know It) according to the precepts of such gurus Incensed by liberals who lump all gun owners in explains the despairing note that creeps into the as John Wesley Rawles, who founded the American with the lunatics, Somerset casts himself as a lonely final pages, where his pain at being stereotyped and Redoubt movement and blogs from a secret ranch voice calling for “compromise” in an increasingly dismissed is surprisingly moving. somewhere in the Rocky Mountain West—or bitter battle between two cultural camps. But given In the end, it would seem that there is no single possibly, as Somerset observes, from a suburban that he is a Canadian living in Canada, it is unclear wellspring of crazy—and it would be churlish of me basement in New Jersey—and whose disciples what compromise he is actually seeking. Far from to seek it in a corrupted extension of Somerset’s understand the vital imperative to prep your BOB opposing Canadian gun control laws, Somerset own belief that guns are “cool” and shooting is would in some ways make them more rigorous, sug- “fun,” or his conclusion (after some wavering) that Ian Weir is a West Coast novelist, playwright and gesting more extensive and intrusive background the right to take a handgun to a shooting range in screenwriter. His most recent novel, Will Starling, checks to keep firearms out of irresponsible hands. downtown Toronto boils down to a citizen’s inviol- has been shortlisted for the Sunburst Award. He has This informs his reaction to the tragic death of able freedom to express himself or herself by living not fired a gun since 1969, when his grade seven Veronica Rutledge, the young mother who was acci- the lifestyle that person enjoys. But by golly the man class was inexplicably taken on a field trip to a rifle dently shot in the parking lot of an Idaho Walmart can write, and this book comes at you like a cavalry range; someone evidently thought this was a good by her two-year-old son, who tugged her loaded at the charge, banners streaming and sabres glint- idea. pistol out of a purse holder. Somerset argues that ing in the sun.

November 2015 reviewcanada.ca 9 Attawapiskat versus Ottawa How a students’ campaign on an isolated reserve overcame years of official neglect. Christopher Moore

the classroom, they too became unhealthy. Since library, a music room, and a home economics Children of the Broken Treaty: Ottawa funded the whole system at 20 percent to department,” even a gymnasium, built, he writes, Canada’s Lost Promise and One Girl’s Dream 50 percent less than what Canadian public schools by “the outraged energy of young people across Charlie Angus receive, basic needs went unmet. Attendance and Canada.” Shannen Koostachin, however, did not University of Regina Press success rates for the local students fell. Teachers attend. In 2010, making one of those long drives 324 pages, softcover and parents alike grew demoralized. that are central to life in the near north, she was ISBN 9780889774018 The Attawapiskat youth were Charlie Angus’s killed in a highway traffic accident, not quite 16. constituents, and he describes doing what an oppo- What survived was “Shannen’s dream,” both an sition MP does: posing questions in the House of ongoing youth campaign in support of aboriginal e are all treaty people, the Cree Commons, lobbying departments and ministers, education and a resolution of principle that Angus remind us. We debate what Canada is organizing press releases and media events. But the shepherded through to a unanimous parliamentary Wbound to by those treaties with First government pushed back hard. The commitment vote in 2012. Nations that gave us Canada, but the educational to a new school had never existed, the minister Charlie Angus’s account of his part in that cam- promise at least seems plain: “to pay such salaries declared, the MP was just “in full campaign mode,” paign is a case study in what an individual MP tries of teachers to instruct the children to do in the Ottawa labyrinth. His of said Indians, and also to provide If schools in reserve communities must tribute to Shannen Koostachin such school buildings and edu- offers glimpses of the remarkable cational equipment as may seem be controlled by Ottawa, should not the talent and dedication that keeps advisable.” welling up among aboriginal Charlie Angus, member of government at least meet standards taken youth, despite all the opportuni- Parliament for Timmins-James Bay ties still being denied them. for a decade and a school trustee for granted in the rest of the country? But is Shannen’s dream a fix for before that, focuses Children of the the “broken treaty”? Angus evokes Broken Treaty: Canada’s Lost Promise and One Girl’s community leaders were wasteful if not corrupt. the hopeless futility of a system in which a federal Dream on that specific treaty promise. Everywhere Angus found he could achieve nothing and he uses cabinet with a thousand other priorities also acts in Canada, he observes, students go to schools this memoir to exact some retribution, targeting as local school board for every reserve in Canada. where accountable local school trustees ensure particularly Chuck Strahl, Stephen Harper’s minis- Shannen’s dream generated enough leverage to get they are decently funded and equipped. If schools ter of Indian affairs from 2007 to 2010. one school built. But more than isolated successes in reserve communities such as Attawapiskat on Enter Shannen Koostachin, the heroine of at opening the federal purse, indigenous commu- Ontario’s James Bay shore must be controlled by Angus’s story. She was 13 in 2007 and had spent her nities across Canada need tools to run their own Ottawa, he asks, should not the government at least whole school life in the cold, squalid Attawapiskat affairs, spending their own money. In a ground- meet standards taken for granted in the rest of the portables. When their new school was cancelled, breaking book that Angus cites but hardly explores, country? Shannen and her classmates were in grade eight; the historian John S. Long, himself a former school There was an elementary school in Attawapiskat, they wanted to stand up for the younger students teacher at Moose Factory and Moosonee, has and it had some notable successes in sending behind them. Through letter writing, then YouTube shown that the northern Ontario treaties were local youth on to further education. But the school and Facebook, they reached out to contemporaries negotiated as land-sharing agreements, not sur- closed in 2000, condemned as a class-one threat to rather than bureaucrats. Where the adults had renders.1 Let it be accepted that the James Bay Cree human health and a chronic source of skin rashes, been consistently stifled, the kids’ social media own at least a share of the vast resource wealth of nosebleeds, and the threat of liver and central ner- campaign went at least semi-viral. Attawapiskat their homeland, and suddenly they would be not vous system damage for the students who attended. kids just wanted “a comfy school,” Shannen said, the poorest of Canadians but among the prosper- Eventually a commitment for a new school was and it registered with privileged kids in Brampton, ous, well provided to fund their own schools and secured. Then in 2007 Ottawa withdrew the com- Waterloo, Toronto and Ottawa. They actually identi- municipalities, not forever struggling to manipulate mitment. fied with aboriginal kids in remote Attawapiskat as a distant government into acting as a conscientious Meanwhile Attawapiskat students went to their peers. local council would. Surely it is on title to land and class in a cluster of portables laid out on stan- With support from adult leaders, Shannen and resources, not just the inevitable mismanaging of dard Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern her Attawapiskat friends began to be heard at pro- the schooling promise, that the treaties are truly Development planning principles—looking like tests and podiums on Parliament Hill, in schools broken. “an internment camp,” as one Japanese-Canadian and union halls, and even in Geneva, where the As a working MP, Charlie Angus is no doubt expert put it. The play space was a snowbank in United Nations was assessing Canadian compli- right to accept victories where he can find them. winter and swept with toxic dust in spring and fall. ance with the International Convention on the Probably no government in Canada today could The portables could not withstand winter cold or Rights of Children. Before Idle No More or David accept aboriginal title across the treaty lands and summer heat, and they warped and cracked and Kawapit’s Journey of Nishiyuu, a few bright young survive, and any sweeping Supreme Court of grew mouldy. Hopelessly ill equipped and embar- people on the shore of James Bay had seized the Canada declaration on the meaning of treaties is rassing, with the toilet just a partition away from emerging power of social media. probably years away. Meanwhile, kids do go to Like most Canadians, probably, I missed the school in Attawapiskat. Christopher Moore (christophermoore.ca) is a Attawapiskat children’s campaign, but it worked. writer and historian in Toronto. His CBC Radio In September 2014, 14 years after the old school Note 1 See John S. Long’s Treaty No. 9: Making the Agreement to Ideas documentary “George MacMartin’s Big Canoe closed, Charlie Angus saw a real elementary Share the Land in Far Northern Ontario (McGill-Queen’s Trip” explored the making of the James Bay treaties. school open there: “brightly lit classrooms, a Press, 2010).

10 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Dip ’n’ Dunk An award-winning graphic novel celebrates chemical photobooths and their legacy. Kenton Smith

The device he developed was a bona fide cul- survived this long, and as those who operate Photobooth: A Biography tural phenomenon. In its first years, crowds lined them have discovered, they generate comparable Meags Fitzgerald up around the block to sit before its lens. It was also revenue to their digital replacements. The latter Conundrum Press ubiquitous: in major metropolises such as New nonetheless require less maintenance and thus cre- 280 pages, softcover York, the average person was likely to pass several ate lower overhead. As with everything else in our ISBN 9781894994828 booths daily. present corporatocracy, maximizing profit trumps For many users, Josephewitz’s device became a all, which is why the historic photobooth compan- tool of self-creation. “Photobooths allowed people ies have transitioned. The positive counterpoint is mong the most maddening contempor- to document themselves as they wanted to be seen that the chemical booth has entered the hands of ary conceits is the near-slavish acceptance and as they saw themselves,” Fitzgerald writes. She the kind of small, independent entrepreneurs who Aof technological “progress.” This despite juxtaposes this point with drawn historic images often creatively obtained a piece of the photobooth the many comparative shortcomings of electronic of African-Americans gussied up and posing with craze in its heyday, and who found it can still be a books, MP3s’ clear sonic inferiority to LPs, and, as radiant pride. The semi-privacy of booths, too, viable income generator. Canadian artist and writer Meags Fitzgerald points allowed for spontaneous action and personal However, all this ends soon, for the extinction out in her debut graphic novel, Photobooth: A experimentation. Thanks to the pranks of exhib- of chemical booths is almost inevitable. This is Biography, the fact that digital photobooths lack the itionist couples, the booths developed a “naughty” because the existing stockpile of paper for colour most appealing features of “dip ’n’ dunk” chemical reputation. More discreet users, such as gay lovers, booths is set to run out this very summer, and development booths that they have almost entirely took advantage of the privacy of curtained booths because of safety concerns (not least, worries about replaced. to capture expressions of love in dangerous times. potential carcinogenic effects) are unlikely to be Winner of the Canadian comics industry’s 2015 It was these dimensions that fascinated art- augmented. And it is precisely because they are Doug Wright Spotlight Award, Photobooth is a ists, including the Surrealists and Dadaists. Just as doomed creatures, Fitzgerald concedes, that she so conspicuously handsome volume. Fitzgerald mixes YouTube aficionados today recreate their favourite loves old photobooths. While she never quite says a history of chemical photobooths with her own footage with imaginative recutting and remixing, it, her love is also clearly about self-preservation: personal journey in using them as she deftly blends users of the early photobooths creatively employed her journey of self in the book is not merely explora- graphic novel conventions with more traditional its technology in ways unintended by the booths’ tion of her identity—it is about saving from oblivion arrangements of text and pictures. developers. As revealed in Fitzgerald’s own artistic tangible physical markers of this identity. For her as In chemical photobooth technology, acids work, booths can simply be tools that, by their auto- for so many others, photobooths are safe spaces for operate on light-sensitive paper in total darkness mated nature, ease the art-making process; Andy the rehearsal of self, without judgement. She even to produce photostrips still damp when they reach Warhol saw photobooths as producing “instant art,” describes them as a womb. sitters’ hands. This process provides distinct advan- his own screenprints of photostrips featured on the Photobooth possesses striking creativity in tages over digital techniques, argues Fitzgerald. cover of Time. conception, design and presentation, but it is not Whereas digital photos fade easily from sunlight Fitzgerald admits that the basic experience of perfect. Fitzgerald’s draftsmanship is at times styl- and are shunned by archivists, those printed on using a photobooth remains the same with today’s istically wanting and curiously, for a book about chemical paper have proved to have great longevity. digital booths. However, her nostalgia for chemical a technology that records the self at inimitable And while digital photobooths are being constantly booths is based on more than emotion. There is, moments, many of Fitzgerald’s drawn faces have upgraded and replaced, some of their chemical for one, the inimitable quality of the old-fashioned a bland sameness to them. In addition, she has counterparts have endured so long they have pro- experience, in which you cannot pre-approve shots made an error in judgement by substituting drawn duced strips numbering in the millions. as you sometimes can using a digital machine—the for actual reproductions of photostrips, completely Pleading the continuing viability of a specific resulting photos thus reflecting perhaps greater negating the very qualities of photobooth images device is not Fitzgerald’s larger purpose, however. spontaneity and truth. The photographs produced for which she has presented such a heartfelt case. She is most concerned to provide a personal his- by chemical booths are also unquestionably yours We are denied encountering the faces we are shown tory that reveals the chemical photobooth’s role insofar as there is no negative, whereas companies as only photographs can capture them, the very ele- as both a talisman and artifact of a shared mass own the files saved by digital booths. ment of photography that so captivated the public cultural experience. The “automatic photographic For Fitzgerald there is more to it than that. to start with. machine,” as it was originally called, had several “Personally,” she says, “I feel like collecting is Yet the nostalgia for chemical booths that unsuccessful predecessors. Fitzgerald credits about making a commitment to the material enthusiasts like Fitzgerald feel is easy to sympa- inventor Anatol Josephewitz’s 1925 Photomaton world.” But we are slowly losing the material signi- thize with. One need merely consider the loving as being the first true modern photobooth. As she fiers of our own history. Some who have rescued craftsmanship of some models, such as the 1934 explains, Josephewitz himself represented the vintage booths have struck a compromise, main- Photomatic, which boasts an Art Deco exterior quintessential American immigrant success story. taining the aged physical structure but converting and detailing. A device such as this eloquently A Jew from Siberia, he endured hardships includ- to digital machinery. A problem still remains, reflects a bygone era, especially for those of us ing detention in a Bolshevik prison camp before though, in digitization’s paradoxical distancing of living in an age when, with the ascendance of reaching the United States and making his long- people from the technological process; the result, corporate ugliness embodied in the Walmart conceived invention a reality. Fitzgerald declares, is that “almost no one cares or shopping experience, even the simplest aes- thinks about how photographs are made.” What is thetic considerations are denied ordinary people. Kenton Smith is a freelance arts and culture enabled is high-functioning idiocy, in which we Fitzgerald has done a service in capturing an critic and writer from Winnipeg whose work has know what buttons to push but not exactly what important episode in the history of popular pho- appeared in The Globe and Mail, Canadian Art, happens next. tography just as it is finally passing, ensuring that This Magazine and Quill & Quire, among other All this notwithstanding, it reflects something its glories are neither forgotten nor uncelebrated. publications. about public taste that chemical booths have

November 2015 reviewcanada.ca 11 Adolf’s Games A new look at Canada’s participation in the 1936 Olympics. Naoko Asano

Menkis and Troper also turn their attention to young, enthusiastic, and came from Canada to More than Just Games: the officials of sport—members of the International compete in the Olympic Games, not probe German Canada and the 1936 Olympics Olympic Committee and the Canadian Olympic social conditions.” There were those who declined Richard Menkis and Harold Troper Committee—in order to demonstrate their influ- to participate, such as high jumper Eva Dawes University of Toronto Press ence and the verve with which they pursued their and boxer Sammy Luftspring. One especially cap- 320 pages, softcover overriding goal of sending athletes to the Games. tivating story involves the lone Jewish-Canadian ISBN 9781442626904 For the COC’s Old Boys, as they were often called, Olympian at the Summer Games, Irving “Toots” participation in the Olympics was a nation-building Meretsky, a basketball player who was tasked with exercise that would not be thwarted. leaving the athletes’ village to deliver letters from hen the Canadian athletes entered Menkis and Troper lay out the journalistic Jews in Windsor to their family members in Berlin. the stadium for the opening cere- record, illustrating how the Canadian press cov- The recipients were reportedly too frightened to Wmonies of the 1936 Winter Olympics ered Nazi Germany’s treatment of Jewish people. open the door more than a crack. in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, they did The evidence, when seen from the perspective of The COC, in a post-mortem of Canada’s showing something that elicited both applause and contro- Canada’s decision to participate in the Nazi-led at the Olympics, viewed the games as “harbingers versy. As they passed Adolf Hitler, they extended Olympics, is damning. More than two years before of international goodwill and harmony between their right arms sideways and nations.” They could not have upwards. It was meant as a ges- The COC, in a post-mortem of Canada’s been more wrong, of course. In ture in the spirit of the Games— hindsight, it is difficult to deny an Olympic salute, as it was showing at the 1936 Olympics, viewed that participating was a mis- known—although it looked an take—although, as the authors awful lot like the Canadians were the games as “harbingers of international point out, “it is impossible to offering the Führer a hearty Nazi know whether, had the narrative greeting. goodwill and harmony between nations.” been different, had Canada and As Richard Menkis and other nations boycotted the 1936 Harold Troper note when recounting this moment the enactment of the Nuremberg Laws, for example, Olympics, the march to war in Europe might have in More Than Just Games: Canada and the 1936 the Toronto Daily Star’s Matthew Halton travelled played out differently.” We can say, though, that Olympics, the Canadians were not the only ones to Germany, and his work depicted the horror that there was a refusal to see any connection between to commit this gaffe (although, oddly, Canada was was already taking place. As Menkis and Troper the celebratory spectacle that is the Olympics and the lone nation to repeat the gesture at the Summer explain: the horror unfolding in Germany. Games in Berlin). The misunderstanding, then, is The media, for one, shares some of the blame. likely a moment of ignorance or naiveté. But the In March, he sent back reports on how the A few sports writers working for major newspapers photograph of the Canadians’ salute, reprinted in Nazis were teaching hatred, including a supported the boycott: the Montreal Herald’s Elmer the book, is cringe inducing and, even more so in chilling description of “a parade of hundreds Ferguson and the Vancouver Sun’s Hal Straight hindsight, chilling. The same might be said about of children, between the ages of seven and were two of them. But most, including prominent many of the stories of Canada’s involvement in sixteen, carrying the swastika and shouting at figures such as the Toronto Daily Star’s sports editor the Nazi Games. That involvement is the focus of intervals, ‘The Jews must be destroyed’.” Lou Marsh, refused. As the authors point out, “per- Menkis and Troper’s work, a thorough and fascin- secuting Jews was one thing—the Olympic Games ating look at the officials who ensured that Canada There were journalists who insisted that Halton’s was another.” would send a cohort to both Olympics, the athletes work was overblown. But it is clear that news of But what exactly is the connection between the who competed and the citizens who tried—and Germany’s abuse of Jews had begun to reach a Olympics and human rights—and by extension, failed—to ignite a nationwide boycott. sizeable population, in Canada and elsewhere, sports and human rights? Are the Olympics neces- Menkis and Troper examine the period leading who were moved to enact a boycott. The move- sarily apolitical, and therefore in some way beyond up to the Olympics in order to understand the eco- ment began with a suggested rejection of German morality? We need only look at recent events to see nomic and political climate in Germany—show- goods and services, and both Jewish and leftist that this question is as relevant as ever. Ahead of the ing how Hitler came to power, and how his brutal communities eventually sought a Canadian boycott Sochi Olympics in 2014, there were calls for a boy- regime began to strip Jewish people of their rights. of the Olympics, although they would not work in cott over concerns about Russia’s newly instituted The discrimination extended to sports: Jews were unison. The Games “afforded Germany and the anti-gay laws. Those calls were largely ignored. But “expelled both from membership in sports clubs Nazi Party a potential propaganda bonanza,” and Russia, facing claims of further human rights viola- and from participating in athletic competition Canada’s refusal to participate, it was hoped, would tions, will again draw the world’s attention when it against non-Jews.” Daniel Prenn, for example, was send a message that Germany’s racism would not hosts the FIFA World Cup in 2018. The World Cup, Germany’s best tennis player; he was barred from stand unopposed. But the story of the attempted too, faces other controversies, with reports that the country’s Davis Cup Team because he was boycott is one of frustration—and it is a lament for the labourers tasked with constructing the tourna- Jewish. The authors focus on this point because the what might have been. As the authors note, one ment’s venues in Qatar, in preparation for the 2022 Nazis would later downplay their militant racism prominent figure in the movement, Rabbi Maurice World Cup, are modern-day slaves—and that many during the Games. “Under the Nazis, all sports Eisendrath, “was convinced the undoing of Hitler of them are dying on the job. We care about big federations, organizations, and clubs were declared might well begin if the world would but deny him sporting spectacles because they offer us a glimpse agents for the betterment of the Aryan race.” his Olympic triumph.” at the best of humanity—to see the fastest runner Hitler would not be denied that triumph, but win gold, or watch the most gifted striker score a Naoko Asano is a Vancouver-based writer and a Menkis and Troper do not condemn the athletes’ goal so effortless it seems like some kind of black copy editor at Sportsnet magazine. participation in the games. “They were mostly magic. But at what cost?

12 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Tales from the Beat Two memoirs give a glimpse into the lives of women police officers. Frances Lankin

may or may not be theirs. Crime Seen: From Patrol Cop to Given the individual nature of Profiler, My Stories from Behind the two books, they deserve separate the Yellow Tape treatment. Kate Lines The author of Crime Seen, Kate Random House Canada Lines, grew up in rural Ontario. 247 pages, hardcover A brief description of her early ISBN 9780307363152 years leaves me picturing an idyllic farm community with a relatively Damage Done: uncomplicated and richly textured A Mountie’s Memoir family life for Kate, her siblings and Deanna Lennox parents. After her graduation from the Harper Collins University of Toronto Mississauga, she 304 pages, hardcover used her studies of psychology and IBSN 9781443424615 criminology to pursue entry into the profession of policing. At the age of 21, she applied for and was recruited wo women, two careers into the Ontario Provincial Police. in law enforcement, two After 33 years in the OPP, marked by Tautobiographies chronicling numerous prestigious awards and their experiences, two life stories that could not be what she describes as a “hostile sexualized environ- honours for her contributions to Canadian law more different. ment.” Her findings detail behaviour that includes enforcement, Lines is now a private investigator I must admit that when I was approached to everything from swearing and sexual innuendo and expert consultant to such well-known TV pro- review these two books, I made an assumption to “dubious relationships” between low-ranking ductions as Flashpoint and Rookie Blue. that both authors would explore the experiences women and high-ranking men. It also includes Her book chronicles her policing life from uni- of women breaking ground in a traditional male rape. “At the most extreme, these reports of sexual form patrol to undercover narc, then to the fraud profession. I hoped to read about their challen- violence highlighted the use of sex to enforce power and major crimes squad. She gained expertise ges, their resolve, their victories and their lessons relationships,” says Deschamps, “and to punish and in criminal profiling, going on to develop and learned. I now feel a bit chastened. My assumption ostracize a member of a unit.” head up the OPP’s Behavioural Sciences Section, was an example of the type of stereotyping that So I began reading, sure that I would find then becoming the first female director of the I have fought against for years. echoes of my own work experiences and a detail- Intelligence Bureau and later the chief super- In my own defence, let me say that the editor ing of poisoned workplace environments similar to intendent of the Investigation and Support Bureau. who approached me for this assignment suggested Deschamps’s description of the Canadian military. Along the way she experienced adrenalin rushes, that I might be a good choice to do this because of Not so. burnout, revival, relationship breakdown, accol- my own background as one of the first three women While both authors make passing reference to ades and promotions. Her humble and matter- in the province of Ontario to work as a correctional incidents that stem from co-worker sexism, they tell of-fact account of her rapid advancement goes by officer (jail guard) in the male correctional system. their stories from their own perspectives, and focus as fast as a thrown stone skips across the surface A couple of years ago, for the same reason, I had on the things that are important to them. They tell of a pond. been asked to do a review in these pages of an us about the good and the bad of what they saw, The most in-depth treatment Lines provides is of autobiography of a woman carpenter and journey­ experienced and sometimes struggled to deal with. her journey through the world of violent crimes and woman in the construction industry in British One story is of a career of accomplishments that has criminal profiling. She was the second Canadian Columbia. left a profound legacy in the infrastructure of law to complete the FBI’s criminal profiling program, Crime Seen: From Patrol Cop to Profiler, My enforcement and criminal profiling across Canada graduating from the National Academy in Quantico, Stories from Behind the Yellow Tape by Kate Lines and beyond. The other is the story of a journey Virginia (the first was a member of the RCMP who and Damage Done: A Mountie’s Memoir by Deanna through the debilitating effects of work­experience– graduated a few months before her). Her descrip- Lennox were both published soon after the release induced post-traumatic stress disorder and the tion of her descent into the sub-basement­ of the of Supreme Court Justice Marie Deschamps’s return to health of the author and the countless National Academy where its Behavioral Sciences explosive report on the treatment of women in the other first responders she has helped through her Unit was housed parallels her descent into the Canadian military. Deschamps has documented legacy contribution in founding the War Horse world of horrendous violent crimes. Foundation. Over the years Lines was central to investigations Frances Lankin is a former member of Ontario’s Let me be among the first to celebrate these and support for prosecutions in notorious cases legislature and served as a cabinet minister. She women and their accomplishments and to con- involving missing and murdered victims such as spent more than a decade as CEO of the United gratulate them on their books and on telling their Marie-France Comeau, Tori Stafford, Christopher Way of Toronto. She was recently commissioned by own story in their own way. Although I still read and Stephenson, Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffey. the Ontario government to co-lead a review of the interpreted their life narratives as a gender analysis, Her profiling looked into the dark psyches of such province’s social assistance program. my own experiences provided context. This context cold-blooded murderers as Paul Bernardo, Russell

November 2015 reviewcanada.ca 13 Williams and the previously convicted pedophile however, when she speaks of the expanding role organized crime. She saw violence, experienced and psychopath Joseph Fredericks. Lines gives us of women in the force that one gets the sense that alienation in the workplace, grew hard edged and some sense of the investigations of these and other although always humble, she does understand her cynical. She began to lose herself. well-known cases that she was involved in over the contribution to the progress of women in policing. On a dark night near midnight, on a single lane years, but I found myself wanting more from her. To Describing the 1,200 women officers working bridge, Lennox came across a vehicle appearing to be fair, each of these cases has been the subject of alongside their 6,100 uniformed brethren at the be abandoned or in need of a tow. She was alone in whole books and perhaps her oaths of office, con- time of her retirement, Lines details the variety of her patrol car but did not sense anything of concern cerns over the security of intelligence, operational specialized roles and command positions held by that would cause her to call for backup. She left tradecraft and issues of privacy constrained Lines women. She pays tribute to other women leaders in her car only to encounter two felons appearing out in her writing. However, her lack of depth in explor- the force and observes, “women in the OPP knew from behind their truck and coming for her. Time ing these cases as well as her somewhat light treat- there were limitless opportunities for them to pur- slowed. She knew she was alone and in trouble. ment of her various career advancements, personal sue their dream jobs and promotions to the high- She did not respond. She did not pull her weapon. challenges, moments of pride, sadness, indeed est rank, including commissioner. When the next But for the chance arrival of another cruiser that any really intense feelings, left me curious to know woman fills that position, she will follow in the just happened to come around the curve, causing much more about this remarkable woman. footsteps of who in 1998 became the two men to run off, she was a few seconds away My interest in Lines’s experi- from probable death. ence as a woman in this male- Two women, two careers in law She responded with anger, and dominated work culture meant I was then ruled by this anger and found myself paying special atten- enforcement, two autobiographies by hatred. She was angry at herself tion to a few almost throw-away for not responding, not radioing lines. For example, she asked an chronicling their experiences, two life for help, not drawing her gun and OPP officer who interviewed her angry at the two men. She began to as part of her initial recruitment stories that could not be more different. hold all those around her, and her- what he thought of women being self, in contempt. It was the start of police officers. He responded, “I don’t think you the OPP’s twelfth commissioner, and first woman trauma taking hold of her and her life. have any place being an officer in the OPP. I don’t to achieve that rank.” On another occasion while on the job, she think any women do.” There is also a passing refer- Deanna Lennox, author of Damage Done, was was exposed to gunshot blasts without hearing ence to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover’s disdain for young, athletic and anti-authoritarian when she protection. She suffered the onset of tinnitus and female agents. I think that for Lines, who early on was accepted into the RCMP. Perhaps it was that the beginning of progressive hearing loss. It also adapted to the culture, and describes herself as streak of independence that would set the context marked the beginning of the end of her policing becoming part of a family, the issues related to for the challenges she experienced in dealing with career. gender and sexism may not have been central to the the RCMP’s power-centric, paramilitary culture of These two events, combined with hostile work way she experienced her OPP career. command and control. experiences as well as an uncaring and hostile However, I suspect that for her, and for many What we all know now from the reports pro- response from her command structure, led Lennox other women who were early entrants in their duced by numerous studies and investigations to experience multiple medical leaves, workplace chosen careers, she simply coped and always into the RCMP’s administrative hierarchy and grievances, punishing work assignments and the wanted to be defined by the quality of her work policy breaches, including many issues related development of post-traumatic depression and and not her gender. I glean this sense from the last to the treatment of women in the force, Lennox post-traumatic stress disorder. handful of pages in the book where Lines gives experienced firsthand. She spent years searching The other half of Lennox’s story is one of the long a summary of her career posting and her “leave for, finding and sharing healing strategies for first road to recovery and her quest to help others who behinds.” We have much to thank Lines for in the responders from police, military personnel, fire have faced similar issues. development of policing in Ontario, Canada and fighters and corrections officers to social workers Horses were her salvation—horses and helping abroad. She established the OPP’s Behavioural and others, suffering from trauma. others. She began therapeutic interventions with Sciences Section and developed the Violent Lennox’s first years in policing were in small to horses, caring for, grooming and training them. But Crime Linkage Analysis System (ViCLAS), a major medium-sized detachments in southern Alberta it was the horses who were providing the therapy. cross-force investigative technological tool. She and Prince George. Several chapters of her book are First Lennox experienced a calming sensation, a was a leader in the launch of the Missing Persons devoted to vignettes from her policing experience. lowering of blood pressure and a release of stress. and Unidentified Bodies website, the Ontario Sex Some are funny, some exciting, some banal, one She then describes the gradual decompression, the Offender Registry, the Threat Assessment Unit, the at least life threatening. She started as a patrol cop, management of her anger, the regaining of the abil- Research Unit and the Criminal Profiling Unit. It is, then worked undercover investigating drugs and ity to connect with others and the slow rebuilding of her family relationships. Perhaps more importantly, she discovered the need and desire to help others. From organizing her first conference for stress injured first respond- Coming up in the LRC ers, she has gone on to establish the War Horse Foundation and, with others, build a broad network of support for those front line workers suffering with PTSD, addiction, anger management and Memorable mayors depression. Honest man Although once again the issues of workplace Ivor Tossell Jen Gerson sexism are not absolutely central to her story, Lennox refers to a number of overt sexist incidents Austin’s ’Membering Television transformed and the overall culture of the RCMP that is so often Lisa Tomlinson hostile to women. But like Kate Lines she does not Ramona Pringle want her experience to be defined by her gender. She comments that most women in policing dislike Toronto’s moment Pink Viagra being referred to as women officers. After all, she Joe Berridge Wendy McElroy quips, how many times do you see a headline read- ing “Male Officer Makes Arrest”? Legal devices Atwood’s The It is also painfully clear that PTSD and other Alan Hutchinson stress injuries know no gender. It is a wide and Heart Goes Last diverse community of recovering sufferers who Lennox and those survivors who have joined her in Shelley Boyd the War Horse Foundation have chosen to dedicate themselves to.

14 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Student Posters at Beaumont-Hamel the University of Newfoundland Memorial

And how to uncover what descends into a deeper state Timbuktu1 when mud so easily remembers the contours of a body Is crumpled-up papyrus, Poetry? Really? Fuck! and effortlessly envelops its form? On the field of the Somme, We’re weary of old books! frayed bodies of Newfoundlanders buried in a day of snowing. But now it’s autumn and the caribou statue burns We want words we can uncork and sip: with the tired lustre of wet metal, as trench-lines of rain Strong words! vein across its forehead into an open mouth, shadowed by what it cannot speak. The disquiet of a death mask. Let’s croon in sweat-perfumed cathouses, It’s easy to forget its body was once fluid, glowing molten Not congregate at lectures as if crooks in jail. shades of orange and poured into layers of ceramic shells. In the field hospitals of the chest, there are things A fire is nothing if it does not burn! remembered, rotting forgotten, that lie bed-ridden, staring at the dark spaces between stars that aren’t dark at all Biology precedes Theology: but only a product of the human eye’s insensitivity. Don’t let Morality impede Life! Richard Kelly Kemick Love scorns vows; divides the monogamous. Love is always confession — or grunting.

Dying is like Pregnancy: Emphatic.

Truth is as unchallengeable as Death, But more intelligible than the dead.

The dead are as unhelpful as statuary.

Truth must be as audible as a wife; Not as inaudible as a mistress.

Dreams are born with Responsibilities.

Mountains are ruins to tunnelling worms.

A fool is a cockroach, scurrying mid dirty feasts, shitting turgid, pointed turds, for false philosophers to dine upon.

A fool’s as dead to Reality as a corpse. George Elliott Clarke, an Africadian Métis, has published 13 verse works, four plays, three opera A king is living gold with a viper’s backbone. libretti, two essay collections and one novel. Three His murders are solicitous; his crimes fastidious. of his poetry books are available, respectively, in Chinese, Italian and Romanian. His poetry, fiction A king is puritanical as fire. and scholarship have won acclaim and brought him appointments to the Order of Canada and A king’s errors are tenacious as stains. the Order of Nova Scotia and to Duke, McGill and Harvard universities. The inaugural E.J. Pratt A spear should stab superbly, sting cruelly. Professor of Canadian Literature at the University A spear is useless if delicate, or too meek. of Toronto, Clarke served as Poet Laureate of Toronto, 2012–15. Books read recently include The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Allen Ginsberg’s What was ancient is now unique, that’s all. Howl and Other Poems.

Not the king, but poets, must sit neath palms, And have much wine. To hear a poet sing, Richard Kelly Kemick’s poetry and prose have Is to hear Scripture being written live. been published in magazines and journals across Canada and the United States, most recently in PRISM, The Fiddlehead and Tin House. His debut collection of poetry, Caribou Run, is set for pub- [Cambridge (Massachusetts) 8-9 janvier mmxiv] lication in spring 2016 by Goose Lane Editions. He is currently reading Ian Brown’s Boy in the 1 Cf. Quartier Latin, Paris, France, May 1968. Moon: A Father’s Search for His Disabled Son and Charlotte Gill’s Eating Dirt: Deep Forests, Big George Elliott Clarke Timber and Life with the Tree-Planting Tribe.

16 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Ashley-Elizabeth Best is from Cobourg, Ontario, and lives and writes in Kingston. Her work has been published in Fjords, CV2, Berfrois, Grist and Ambit Magazine, among other publications. She was recently shortlisted for the Award for Innovative Poetry. Her first collection of poems, Slow States of Collapse, is forthcoming from ECW Press. She is currently reading All My Puny Sorrows by and Malarky by Anakana Schofield.

Len Gasparini is the author of 16 books and chap- books of poetry, five short story collections, two children’s books, a work of non-fiction and a one- act play. He was awarded the F.G. Bressani Literary Prize for poetry in 1990. This poem is from his most recent book, Collected Poems, published with per- mission by Guernica Editions in 2015. He is currently reading a biography of Franz Schubert, by Maurice J.E. Brown, Impromptus, by Gottfried Benn and There Is Simply Too Much to Think About, by Saul Bellow. Living in the Wait

We lay deep, expecting the worst to happen.

During the wait I planted a staghorn sumac, imagined its woolly branches, the way they resembled velvet-covered deer antlers. I knew a black ink could be made from the bark, its autumn leaves once rolled and smoked, the fruit eaten raw or made into jelly. I blessed my sumac, begged it to give me something I didn’t know I wanted. The soft wood became a limb-loosener, rubbing off my marled genes in a downward shed. He said it wouldn’t survive the winter, but I knew the inner bark was woven tight, rooted in my warmth.

I wish I’d known then that I was some spoiled infant green, fruitless from the start. We’re too young, he says. We’ve become

terrified of each other. Ashley-Elizabeth Best Knowing I Cannot Hold You Whole Forever

Knowing I cannot hold you whole forever, let me perpetuate part of you; not the senses chained to the flesh, like roots veining the soil, but the brilliant gene within you that bejewels eternity, and bears what I would be, and am — a man who believes a rainbow is the sky’s umbilical cord. Knowing I cannot hold you whole forever, I imagine your past as a tree immemorial and self-contained because that part of you branches all of me.

Len Gasparini

November 2015 reviewcanada.ca 17 Victims of Geology Don Gillmor’s unhappy fictional hero rides the boom and bust cycles of the oil patch. Diane Guichon

of Mackenzie Oil, he neglects other aspects of his relationships and politics are also destined to end. Long Change life including family and friendships. This relationship between death and geologic Don Gillmor Gillmor’s presentation of the Canadian oil and time resonates in Devlin’s life. The novel’s three Random House gas industry’s current state is a pessimistic one of sections tracing the arc of his life are named for geo- 353 pages, hardcover international market instability, corporate greed, logical epochs: the Paleocene, the Eocene and the ISBN 9780345814142 overseas corruption and environmental degrada- Pleistocene. Think beginning, middle and end of a tion. The only affirmation in the novel, other than story structure—only in geologic time humans do Devlin’s own personal growth and self-awareness not show up until the last period, when we are busy he oil patch is full of colourful at the end, is the observation that geological spreading across the planet as various other species ­characters. Calgary recently lost one structures supporting our planet are always on the are becoming extinct. We are the chicken running Tof them: James Carl (J.C.) Anderson, a move; change is just around the corner, in the next around with its head cut off. We are “Larry, Curly founding baron of the industry. Born in Nebraska geologic epoch. and Moe poking each other in the eye.” The author and schooled in Texas, J.C. packed all the appears to suggest that the Three Stooges clichés along with him when he arrived are running the oil and gas industry. in Alberta in the 1960s—the big heart, Gillmor has mastered the While Devlin’s story could be written the big boots and the big dreams. He in terms of a Shakespearean tragedy, his started Anderson Exploration with only industry’s language and representation of the oil and gas industry $400,000 in cash and sold it for a whop- technology; he seamlessly evokes is not all negative. There is nostalgia for ping US$4.6 billion in 2001. men of vision and ambition. Devlin’s Don Gillmor in his latest novel, Long drill-rig reality with breakout desire to drill beneath the Beaufort Sea Change, could have modelled his protag- represents a pure love of geology, his- onist, Ritt Devlin, on J.C. Anderson, but tongs, dog houses, drilling mud tory and adventure akin to the Franklin Devlin’s story is instead the poor cousin’s Expedition (it too was doomed). Gillmor tale. J.C. enjoyed a devoted family, a long and blow-out preventers. The title shows considerable empathy for the rig career of successful business enterprises workers and the thankless work they and numerous philanthropic endeav- Long Change refers to a time shift perform: “Ritt could see the disappoint- ours. No, Gillmor’s Devlin rides the ment, the thought of three hours of boom and bust patterns of the oil and gas in work schedule. backbreaking work, frozen through,” industry in his personal life as well as in Gillmor writes, “working in the dark in his business life, with the bust times outnumbering Gillmor endows geology and time with multiple the middle of nowhere. Work that was as forlorn as the boom. In a year when Alberta is experiencing a layers of meaning and utilizes them as a narrative you could ask.” However, there is little sympathy for bust year of suspended projects and massive lay- frame. He describes humans as coming very late the boardroom antics, the negotiating of tax credits offs, the book is timely. to Earth’s geologic party. We are “the species that with the Canadian government, the bribery and After leaving an unhappy childhood behind always needed another drink,” he writes. Earth corruption involved in working in Africa or Russia. in Texas, marred by an overbearing and abusive might be a better place if we all died away like the Crimes are committed worldwide in the pursuit of Pentacostal father, Devlin drifts north to work dinosaurs; the last sentence of the novel is “It’s time oil production and wealth. Environmental groups on Alberta’s drill rigs. Gillmor has mastered the to go.” or competitors may be behind the bombing of industry’s language and technology; he seamlessly Gillmor is the Toronto-based author of six previ- downtown offices or oil and gas facilities. Not even evokes drill-rig reality with breakout tongs, dog ous works of fiction. He is an accomplished writer children can escape the negative fallout from “frac- houses, drilling mud and blow-out preventers. who has published across genres from novels such king coal seams” that “may or may not” leak an The title Long Change refers to a time shift in work as Mount Pleasant and the award-winning non- “unregulated cocktail of liquids” that affect neigh- schedule: “They got one Saturday night every three fiction seriesCanada: A People’s History, as well bouring aquifers. weeks shifting from graveyards to afternoons.” Long as nine children’s books. He has worked as both While Devlin’s personal narrative is tied up in Change itself then links various story elements a journalist and an editor. His writing experience, rocks, drill pipe, offshore supertankers, the busy together; we are reminded our time on Earth is lim- his professionalism and his research skills are evi- action of drilling and producing oil, the next whis- ited and nothing is permanent. So what then is dent in Long Change. He makes the complications key, the next wife, his character seems strangely important? What are the rig workers doing in their of the oil and gas industry understandable to the adrift as if the forces of the world are acting upon moments of leisure? Getting drunk, getting girls, layperson, and turns geology into an art form and him, and he drifts along with the continents. He is getting religion. Most of Devlin’s time is spent in a religion. It is, he writes, “both history and phil- slowly being crushed by the burden of our contem- pursuit of his company, Mackenzie Oil, discovering osophy, it is the bedrock of science, pun intended. porary society, our overconsumption. He comes to and producing a big play in the Arctic. For the sake Our only reliable record. Every civilization is buried believe that there are just a few redeeming features eventually. Every love is fleeting. Every book forgot- of our human presence on this planet such as Diane Guichon is a poet and instructor at the ten, every king buried. Brought down by hubris or books, and first love, and even they will eventually University of Lethbridge. Her first book of poetry, vanity, but a victim, always, to geologic time.” turn to dust. Maybe that is why the true-life story Birch Split Bark (Nightwood Editions, 2007), won Geology and its rocks, the continents, even the of Calgary’s J.C. Anderson is more appealing than Calgary’s W.O. Mitchell book prize. She also spent oil that oozes from the Earth, stand as metaphors for Ritt Devlin’s fictional life. At least J.C. Anderson’s ten years working for Imperial Oil in contract how nothing is static, neither the land, the oceans, story involved family and community, which is how administration for exploration and development nor our time here on Earth. It does not take much many of us in Alberta like to view the oil patch— services. of a leap to realize that business ventures, social with hope for a better future.

18 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Decline and Fall of a Tough Guy Virility and violence are at the centre of Nino Ricci’s new novel. Norman Snider

on her; this costs him his job. He gives up his tenure Nonetheless, Ricci’s portrait of life on campus Sleep track position and lives on a line of credit and ses- seems far too dark. His protagonist’s rage seems Nino Ricci sional appointments. Ill tempered, friendless, he excessive, even if he cannot get a good night’s Doubleday seems like a small, mean, driven type even before rest. The novelist never gives David Pace a fighting 238 pages, hardcover narcolepsy hits, a self-described “insufferable nar- chance against his illness; in every situation the ISBN 9780385681612 cissist prick.” dice seem loaded against him. His wife is a bitch on When Pace finds his late father’s Beretta pis- wheels and the aboriginal lecturer is a sexy airhead tol, he develops a nasty little gun fetish complete hired solely for her ethnicity; his best friend’s wife ost writers of fiction find it with sexual overtones and sets off doggedly for the is a twitchy neurotic. Pace seems never to have met impossible to make a respectable liv- shooting range. As he falls further into his passion a sweet charming woman on the flying trapeze. Ming entirely from their book sales. For for firearms he starts to resemble Valery Fabrikant, Doctors, lawyers—the whole world seems to be in many years now, teaching college has been their the Concordia engineering prof who took out three league against him. preferred way of staying afloat. As a result, the colleagues because he did not receive sufficient Almost everybody knows at least one unfortu- campus novel, from Herzog to Blue Angel, in this credit on a minor academic publication. Packing nate soul who falls dramatically from a middle class time of mandatory accreditation, existence to one of soup kitchens has developed one of the more or jail or worse. Not to argue for important themes of the age: Professor Pace develops a rare sleep a Pollyanna optimism, but not namely, the ever-widening gap every fall is a straight line descent. between existence in the academy disorder, a form of narcolepsy that drives There are plateaus, momentary and real life. Nino Ricci’s new reversals of ill fortune. Ricci sends novel, Sleep, explores a phenom- him to a cocktail of pills and street drugs his hero down the chute with the enon decisively banned from the brakes gone. There is little drama campus: male violence. and results in blackouts where he starts in a parachute that fails to open. David Pace (pronounced “Pah- David Pace is so angry and hostile, cheh”—like Ricci, he is of Italian throwing punches. it is difficult to sympathize with descent) is a historian in a city his plight. He is not a hero with a very like Toronto, teaching at a tragic flaw; he owns an entire cata- university very like York. Pace is an expert in Roman heat restores the virility that life on campus has logue of them. antiquity and the author of one well-regarded book, stolen, makes him feel as if he has “swallowed a box In the last third of Ricci’s novel, Pace’s sleep ill- Masculine History. Sadly, he has been unable to of Viagra.” Pace falls completely into the gun nut ness recedes into the background. It is clear that his follow up his early publishing success with suc- subculture, hoping that his concealed weapon will entire life has been at odds with a feminized society. ceeding volumes, possibly because he had cribbed give him back his life, make him a hero, a warrior, After a course of self-defence simulations, in order the idea from his best friend Greg, when they were will arouse him from sleep. to finish the book that is going to put him back on grad students. In other words, David Pace is an incorrigible top, he goes to an unnamed third-world desert As the story begins, Pace has a bad marriage, loser, a chain-smoker who could pass as a badass country similar to Iraq, as though he were a sex a worse divorce, a lousy relationship with his son only on campus, the kind of dude who would screw tourist visiting Bangkok. There, violence abounds. and awful dealings with poisonous, back-biting col- the wife of the last friend he has on Earth. The There, a man can do what a man’s gotta do. leagues among his faculty. good professor is not even a charming rogue, just a After being banged for a bottle of gin by an It is downhill all the way from there. dull, malicious pedant, as sociopathic as any petty alcoholic woman reporter, much much tougher Professor Pace develops a rare sleep disorder, strong-arm collecting juice loans in a strip mall. than the good professor will ever be, he falls into a form of narcolepsy that drives him to a cocktail There is no line he will not cross. Lacking a single the hands of feral, jihadi children. Untrained as a of pills and street drugs and results in blackouts loyalty, Pace is not Byronic or satanic, even though combat correspondent, he is a complete amateur. where he starts throwing punches. The sleep dis- you can almost see him twirling his mustachios. He With no idea of how to operate in a war zone, he is order erases his identity, sending him swirling into is just a rat fink. As his friend Greg tells him, after exploited at every turn by blatantly untrustworthy madness. discovering the affair with his wife, “everything you “guides.” You would not be surprised if Pace ended It must be said that David Pace, despite his taste touch turns to shit.” up wearing an orange jumpsuit and getting his in rare books and fine wine, even making allowan- But, unsurprisingly, all the unpleasantness head sawed off in the name of Allah, but Ricci sends ces for his narcolepsy, is one of the most unlovable described by Ricci bears the stink of reality. Sleep him to the all-too-predictable death he has been protagonists in recent memory. Hard-punching is one long rant against the “enforced mediocrity” planning for his character from the beginning. Jake LaMotta of Raging Bull fame is a sweetheart in of academia. Ricci has clearly paid his dues on Underlying Ricci’s book there’s a yearning for comparison. Jake slapped only his wife and brother campus; his novel makes the suffocating, airless a freer, more masculine, more traditional life than around. After dosing a young aboriginal woman—a world of “the prevailing orthodoxies” of political the one found in strictly controlled universities. junior lecturer in his department—with the date correctness, the petty faculty politics and control- But the fall of David Pace seems more like a case rape drug sodium oxybate, Pace proceeds to prey ling, manipulative department heads all too vivid. history than a tragedy, the idiosyncratic decline of The groves of academe are definitely no country for one isolated man. But, all the same: the latest bul- Norman Snider is a Toronto-based screenwriter. a man’s man. letin from our schools of higher learning.

November 2015 reviewcanada.ca 19 Raising Hell A new look at the history of civil rights advocacy in Canada. Mark J. Freiman

War Measures Act during the October Crisis to abu- civil liberties and other human rights. Acting for Acting for Freedom: sive police raids on bath houses and other venues. Freedom does not always differentiate among civil Fifty Years of Civil Liberties in Canada Vigorous and noisy advocacy has continued to liberties, fundamental freedoms and human rights. Marian Botsford Fraser, with Sukanya Pillay and occupy CCLA right up to the present, but the advent This suggests CCLA’s mandate may extend beyond Kent Roach of the Charter fundamentally changed the land- civil liberties in the traditional sense of protections Second Story Press scape. CCLA had appeared in court cases before the against arbitrary state interference in our personal 424 pages, softcover Charter’s introduction, but the Charter turned the liberty, in what we believe, in what we say and ISBN 9781927583494 courtroom into a main stage for its activities. Not what we may choose to have said to us, to include only did the Charter open up civil liberties issues broader social justice claims such as equality, such as pornography, hate literature and detainee which is a claim to protection by government rather he Canadian Civil Liberties Association rights to a new standard of judicial scrutiny, but than protection from government. marked its 50th anniversary last year. the courts also began to be freer in granting inter- This issue comes up in the interviews with TActing for Freedom: Fifty Years of Civil vener status to public interest groups, including, Borovoy and Des Rosiers. Des Rosiers takes the Liberties in Canada, with Marian Botsford Fraser as prominently, CCLA. The book’s title Acting for wider view. For her, an essential part of CCLA’s primary author, commemorates that anniversary Freedom is itself a bit of a pun, since acting for can future mandate ought to be addressing equality by describing the controversies, court cases and not only mean “taking action in support of” but issues such as disparity in income and socio- campaigns in which the organization was involved also “appearing in court on behalf of.” Represented economic rights. Borovoy is equally clear in the over the first half century of its existence. by an eager cast of lawyers participating pro bono, opposite direction. Issues of social justice are A 50th anniversary can be an arbitrary demarca- CCLA has intervened effectively in a wide range of important but not as part of CCLA’s mandate. There tion point. In this case however, the fact that last civil liberties cases. The details of these efforts fill is a bright line and “it’s an error to see an organiza- May saw the death of Alan Borovoy, who, as general the bulk of Acting for Freedom’s pages. tion like this as having as its concern with the whole counsel, led CCLA for 40 of its first 50 years and The issue in Charter litigation usually comes panoply of social issues.” continued to put his stamp on the organization down to whether an infringement can be justified, Does Borovoy’s view still command allegiance even after retirement as general counsel emeri- with the state bearing the burden of proof. Alleged or does his passing symbolize its eclipse? One sus- tus means the time frame make sense. Acting for infringements of fundamental freedoms are judged pects the latter. Freedom is about CCLA, not about Borovoy, but in in light of their specific impact and not in the One final word about the future and the dur- many ways his passing marks the end of a discrete abstract. ability of Borovoy’s view of principles. As he makes chapter in the history of CCLA and of civil liberties CCLA interventions have been especially effect- clear in his interview, despite whatever success in Canada. ive at this granular level. CCLA may have had leveraging the Charter in Acting for Freedom is neither a history of the Charter litigation seldom results in sweeping support of civil liberties, as a matter of principle internal workings of CCLA nor a philosophic generalized vindications of civil liberties principles. he was never fully reconciled with what he saw treatise about civil liberties. It is a narrative rather Keeping a scorecard of wins and losses can be mis- as the undemocratic notion of an unaccountable than an extended argument, so the lessons to be leading, but it seems pretty clear that the result of judiciary prevailing over the judgement of elected learned are to a large extent inferences from the all this has been to extend the protected scope of politicians. Once widespread among progressive events described, with added insights coming from civil liberties. thinkers who recalled the role of the U.S. Supreme the inclusion of separate 2014 “conversations” with As a matter of principle, neither CCLA nor Alan Court in thwarting and stalling New Deal legisla- Borovoy and with his immediate successor as gen- Borovoy could be expected to be satisfied with tion on the basis of “due process,” this view is heard eral counsel, Nathalie Des Rosiers. these sorts of results. As the discussion in Acting for these days primarily on the right, while progressive In the era before the Charter of Rights and Freedom candidly admits, however, civil liberties voices, such as Kent Roach, who contributes a stan- Freedoms, CCLA’s focus was largely on opposing advocates, including CCLA, have not uniformly had dalone chapter on the Charter, attempt to debunk initiatives and behaviour that were believed to the field of human rights all to themselves. It is trite the notion of the courts exceeding their proper role. the lineaments of a police state. CCLA itself was to observe that the defence of expressive freedom Conservative opponents of alleged “judicial brought into being on the heels of the public furor makes strange bedfellows, with civil libertarians activism” have lately raised the spectre of redressing over Bill 99, a 1964 Ontario government initiative on the same side of the legal argument as odious the balance by screening judicial appointments on intended to fight organized crime by giving police polemicists and merchants of sleaze. More poign- the basis of political creed. Depending on electoral special powers of detention and interrogation. antly, that defence can engage unlikely opponents, developments, it is possible that the courtroom may Throughout this period CCLA pursued Borovoy’s including feminists and advocates for minority in the future not be as comfortable a forum for the favourite tactic of raising hell whenever the police rights who in areas such as pornography and hate defence of civil liberties as it has been up to now. In were given extraordinary powers to sidestep the speech counter the arguments based on Charter his interview, Borovoy says that to him, the notion ordinary protections of due process or took those guarantees of civil liberties with arguments based of gains having been made in the courtroom always powers upon themselves, from the invocation of the on the Charter value of equality and the protection seemed exaggerated. He always preferred “acting of the vulnerable. for freedom” in the sense of agitation and “raising Mark J. Freiman practises law at Lerners LLP in This scrambling of friends and opponents hell.” That is precisely the prescription for the focus Toronto. He is a former deputy attorney general for contains hints of future challenges and potential of CCLA’s future activities with which he ends his Ontario. In his private practice he has appeared on debates, as well as some possible ironies. interview. a wide variety of human rights matters, including The friendly fire exchanged between erstwhile CCLA may or may not take the advice, but sadly acting on behalf of the Canadian Civil Liberties allies over extreme pornography and hate propa- we will not see Alan Borovoy on the battlements Association. ganda raises the issue of the relationship between again.

20 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada ESSAY A Question of Bias An early attempt to put Canada’s book review culture under a critical lens. Margaret Atwood et al.

or how long have the reviewer was a man or observers been con- a woman; in every case the Fcerned about the question of the ‘female sens- possibility of sexual bias in ibility’ of the poet was at Canadian book reviewing? A the centre of the reviewer’s good case could be made that response. The maleness of the initial analysis of the issue male poets, on the other dates back to 1971 in a York hand, hardly ever seemed to University seminar room. matter.” Margaret Atwood was teach- Before this quotation had ing a course entitled Canadian appeared, we had decided it Women Writers, and as part would be relevant to conduct of the coursework she and our own investigation of the her students undertook an existence or non-existence innovative project attempt- of sexual bias on the part of ing to identify and measure reviewers in this country. the extent of sexual bias in We planned to approach Canadian book reviewing. this investigation from two This project culminated in angles. First, we would com- a preliminary report, “Sexual pose a form letter to be sent Bias in Canadian Reviewing,” to a number of female writ- which we are happy to publish ers asking them whether or here for the first time 44 years not they believed sexual bias later. A fascinating cultural existed, and if it did whether artifact in its own right, the they could recollect any per- document provides valuable sonal experience with it. As a insight into an era of Canadian book reviewing now he following study was conducted by control, we would send the same letter to the same long past. Although some issues described in the a group of first-year students, both male number of Canadian male writers. Then, to con- report may seem archaic by today’s standards, other Tand female, at , enrolled in sider the matter from a more objective standpoint, issues that are discussed appear far less alien. a seminar course titled “Canadian Women Writers.” we would scrutinize reviews of works of Canadian To accomplish their task, Atwood and her stu- According to the course outline, the course writers of both sexes in Canadian publications, in dents sought to answer four key questions. First, are was to be “an investigation of writing, both poetry an attempt to discover any example of bias. women writers as a group more likely to perceive and fiction, done in Canada by women, 1900 We supposedly approached the project without they have been the subject of a reviewer’s sexual bias to the present, with emphasis divided between preconceptions, but since the course was titled than are men writers? Second, is there any way to ‘Canadian’ and ‘female’ concerns, whatever these “Canadian Women Writers” and the course director confirm apparent perceptual differences between may be.” The outline assured prospective students: was herself a Canadian woman writer, there may be women and men writers by examining a sample of “we will be conducting an investigation, not propa- some question as to whether we were in fact able to reviews themselves? Third, do more books by men gating a doctrine.” carry it out with complete detachment. tend to get reviewed than books by women? And, In class discussions on the literature—which At any rate, the following is the result of our fourth, are reviews more commonly assigned to male included works by , Ethel investigation. reviewers than female reviewers? Wilson, Sheila Watson, , Marian Perhaps the most enduring feature of this work Engel, Gwendolyn MacEwan, Miriam Waddington I. The Survey Conducted by Letter is the fact that the report so closely presages the sorts and P.K. Page—the “feminine question” constantly We sent the following letter to 22 Canadian writers, of gender-based concerns that are very much a liv- arose, both with and without reference to the lit- of whom twelve were women and ten were men. ing issue for any book review journal today. These erature itself. We covered the role of the female in The slight balance in favour of women reflects concerns also receive close attention by Canadian society, that society’s physical, mental and emo- both our primary interest in women’s attitudes and Women in the Literary Arts in their annual count, tional stereotyping of the female, and its reaction our suspicion that some of the women would not which, in CWILA’s words, “tracks the representation to female writers, who by the mere act of writing answer (which proved to be the case). This is the of women in Canadian book reviews.” professionally are presumably deviants from the letter: —Mark Lovewell stereotype. Cynthia Ozick, in the American magazine Ms., In connection with a course I am taking at Margaret Atwood’s latest novel is The Heart Goes says, “for many years, I had noticed that no book of York University I am helping to conduct a Last (McClelland and Stewart, 2015). The students poetry by a woman was ever reviewed without ref- study of sexual bias in reviewing. involved in the project and were Gerald Rolin, Lori erence to the poet’s sex. The curious thing was that We are asking twenty writers, of both prose Tabachnick, Randy Paisley, Diane Dobbie, Rita in the two decades of my scrutiny, there were no and poetry, both male and female, whether Hoppe, Helen Roman, Barry Steele and Don Heald. exceptions whatsoever. It did not matter whether they can tell us if any reviews of their work

22 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada have been unduly slanted, either favour- more vulnerable position in this society than being that there was sexual bias in reviewing. Whether ably or unfavourably, because of the sex of an aging man (none of the men mentioned age). that feeling was justified could only be determined the reviewer in relation to their own. The Another said she could not be sure, though she felt by an examination of some actual reviews. We reviewer-writer combinations are four: men there must have been some bias as human beings decided to look at the ten most recent issues of reviewing men, women reviewing women, are not objective. The third wrote a very good letter 13 periodicals and newspaper book review sections.­ men reviewing women, women reviewing that questioned the assumptions in our own letter, The periodical examined were Books in Canada, men. pointing out that we had included only four cat- Canadian Dimension, Canadian Literature, If you feel such a slanting has occurred, egories of reviewer-reviewer relationships, ignoring Canadian Forum, Fiddlehead, Globe and Mail could you tell us the date and place of the altogether the possibilities of “homosexuals” of Magazine, Journal of Canadian Studies, The Last review and the name of the reviewer. A copy both sexes being reviewed by “straights” of either Post, Quarry, Queen’s Quarterly, Saturday Night, would be received with thanks but is not sex; or reviewing them. She felt there indeed had Tamarack Review and the Toronto Star weekend necessary. been bias in reviews of her work, and it was sexual book review section. At the moment we are making no assump- bias, but it was bias directed by straights against We ran into the following snags: tions and have no preconceptions. We hope something they found sexually “abnormal.” (We 1) Missing issues of magazines (they seem to to write a report based on the information we stand corrected.) have been stolen). collect, with a view to eventual publication. Of the four women writers who answered yes, 2) Anonymous reviews. In any case we would very much like to all were quite specific, naming dates and places. 3) Some confusion on our part as to what we hear from you before January 15, as we would One said she had noticed this phenomenon in meant by “sexual bias.” It had to be established, for like to have time to process the information. connection with only one of her books; she felt the instance, that we did not mean just an unfavourable Should you wish a copy of the report we content of this book was such that it threatened review; we meant points being assigned or sub- would be pleased to send you one. male reviewers, who gave it much worse reviews tracted by the reviewer on the basis of the ­reviewee’s than any woman reviewer had, and reacted not sex and associated characteristics rather than on The results were as follows. A total of 22 letters to its technique or craftsmanship or faithfulness to the basis of the work itself. We were also faced with were sent and we received 18 answers. Of those its own axioms but to their dislike for what the some of our own unexamined assumptions.­ who did not answer three were women and one a central female figure represented: the figure stood 4) Difficulty in achieving a statistical breakdown. man. We divided the replies according to whether for something they did not want to know about or What this part of our survey taught us was how to the writer felt he or she had never received a think about. The second noted a male habit of con- go about this properly, were we to do it again with review containing sexual bias, whether he or she centrating on domestic themes in the work of the the help of a statistician and a computer. We would was uncertain, or whether he or she could answer female writer, ignoring any other topic she might have had to total the number of books reviewed in emphatically yes. The breakdown is as follows: deal with, and then patronizing her for an excessive each issue of a given periodical, for ten issues. Then interest in these very themes. She also felt bias was we would have had to break that total down into Women Men displayed not only within reviews but in the rela- a) number of books by men, b) number of books Yes Maybe No Yes Maybe No tive infrequency with which books by women were by women, c) number of books reviewed by men, 4 3 2 0 2 6 reviewed at all; seldom, she said, are they featured and d) number of books reviewed by women. Only in a way that a book by a man is. The third concen- then would any “instance of bias” count have been One male respondent was completely uncom- trated on “feminine sensibility” adjectives such as interpretable. This became apparent only after we mitted (i.e., he refused to take the question ser- “enclosed,” “subjective,” narcissistic,” “neurotic” were well into the reading of reviews. We leave a iously at all, replying only that writers should pay and “solipsistic,” which she felt the reviewers were fuller survey to those with more resources at their no attention to reviews). connecting with or assuming from the fact of her disposal. What our evidence, admittedly taken from too being female. However, although we cannot offer a periodical- small a sample, suggests is that although male writ- The fourth letter deserves a space to itself. It was by-periodical rundown of percentages of biased ers are slightly more likely to answer their mail than an excellent, honest, thorough and serious treat- reviews to totals, we were able to isolate and iden- female ones, they are much less likely to feel that ment of the whole subject, containing much more tify certain types of bias. they have been victims of sexually biased reviewing material than we had any right to expect. To begin Assignment of reviews, etc. Most books in this than are women. None of the men questioned at the end, the writer wondered whether male book society are written by men. So are most reviews. replied in the affirmative. Of the two who were editors assigned books for review on a sexist basis. Disproportionately often, books by women were uncertain, one said he was sure there was such a She herself had done a lot of reviewing, and found assigned to women reviewers, indicating that books thing as sexual bias on both sides, but that it was that she tended to get sent books by women. She by women fell in the minds of those dishing out undetectable, that any reviewer indulging in it found women reviewers “gushier” than male ones the reviews into some kind of “special” category. would either not know or be unwilling to admit (either pro or con), male ones “more objective,” but Likewise, woman reviewers tended to be reviewing he or she was doing it, that we were “naive” and with important exceptions. She discussed in detail books by women rather than by men (although “silly” for trying to think about it at all, and that he her own biases, including a tendency to dislike because of the preponderance of male reviewers, found our request flabbergasting. In other words, it certain kinds of “female” writing, her competitive- there were quite a few male-written reviews of is there but mysterious (or sacred?). The other gave ness with women writers is different from her com- books by women). two minor instances of something he was not sure petitiveness with men, although she is harder on The sexual compliment–put-down. A trivial mat- were examples. None of the letters from the male male “coyness” than female “coyness” and hard on ter perhaps, but what does the attractiveness of a respondents was more than a page long, and most “woman as object” humour. More than anything, woman’s picture on a dust jacket have to do with were only a few lines. Two were insulting, leading her letter emphasized the convolutions and com- the literary merits of whatever is inside the cover? us to some speculations about the relationship of plexities of the problem. What emerged was her Comments on pretty ladies on dust jackets were the sex of the respondent to that of the sender of absolute seriousness as a writer—which included made exclusively by men and tended to imply dis- the letter. her refusal to evade or simplify the question. missal of the woman as a writer. The letters from women were another story Despite the deficiencies of our study (the small- The “housewife” comment. Identification of the altogether. Of the two who said no, one said that ness of the sample, the omissions in our letter author as a “housewife” and consequent dismissal sexual bias probably exists but that she was too itself), the results we got indicated quite definitely of anything she has produced (since, in our society, busy writing to think about it. The other felt that that women writers are much more concerned a housewife is viewed as a relatively brainless and bias had been caused more by her age than by her with the possibilities of sexual bias in reviewing, talentless creature). We even found one instance in sex. Of the three we somewhat arbitrarily put in much more willing to give the subject some time which the author was called a housewife and put the maybe column, one said that she had certainly and thought, and much more likely to feel that they down for writing like one when in fact she was no felt she had received biased reviews (ones based themselves have been the recipients of it. They also such thing. on assumptions about factors external to her work were much more likely to wish us good luck. Emily Dickenson. When a male reviewer falls itself) but that she was not sure of the source of the back on Emily Dickenson as the only person he can bias: whether it was sex or age, or perhaps occupa- II. The Survey of Magazines and think of to compare the woman writer with (even tion or marital status. Newspaper Reviews though the similarity may be scant or non-existent), The two comments showing concern about Through our letter survey we established that it usually indicates either that he has read no other age may indicate that being an aging woman is a women writers were more likely than men to feel woman writer or poet or that he thinks of all women

November 2015 reviewcanada.ca 23 writers as introverted recluses or aberrations (i.e., here more often than men, with usually an attempt open admissions and examination of one’s bias (as not happily married wives and mothers). made by the reviewer or interviewer to assign them in the letter from our fourth yes correspondent) and “She writes like a man.” This is usually used by a housewife role (see above) so that the presumed concealed bias posing as objective truth. The latter a male reviewer who is impressed in some way readership can “identify” with them. Needless is surely much more destructive. (We did find, inci- by a female writer he is reviewing; it is meant as to say, the women’s page is not thought of as a dentally, two cases of sexual bias displayed toward a compliment. See also “she thinks like a man,” place where serious critical attention is given to an men by women, although none of our male letter- which means the author thinks clearly, unlike most author’s work. writers seemed aware of any of this). women, who are held to be incapable of objective Grab-bag of individual slurs and slights. We thought or thought of any kind (their province is collected a number of interesting phrases and Conclusion “feeling”). Adjectives that often have similar con- examples: a woman critic put down for being Both our letter survey and our reading of reviews notations are ones such as indicated that sexual bias, “tough,” “gutsy,” “hard,” “mean,” largely directed toward women etc. The assumption is that Women writers are much more concerned writers (although by both male women are by nature soft, weak with the possibilities of sexual bias in and female reviewers) is felt by and not very good, and that if women to exist and does exist a woman writer happens to be reviewing, much more willing to give the in fact. good she should be deprived of These results simply reflect her label or identity as an (infer- subject some time and thought, and much such bias in society itself. If ior) female and provided with women are held to be inferior, higher status by being made an more likely to feel that they themselves women writers cannot avoid honorary male. Thus the woman sharing the stigma, and women writer has, in the minds of such have been the recipients of it. reviewers may have internalized reviewers, two choices. She can the judgements of their society be bad but female, a housewife or a carrier of the too “subjective,” i.e., female; “the author is too to such an extent that they display some of the “feminine sensibility” virus; or she can be “good” in ­intelligent to follow the orthodox women’s libera- same kinds of bias that men do. But surely the most male-adjective terms but sexless, a freak. Badness tion line” (i.e., women’s lib is stupid); “besides she’s literate part of society—the readers as represented seems to be ascribed then to a surplus of female a woman, even though very intelligent,” implying for us by book reviewers—have the responsibility of hormones, whereas badness in a male writer is usu- in this case the impossibility of communication re-examining stereotypes as opposed to reinforcing ally ascribed to nothing but badness (although a between reviewer and reviewee. And so on. them. “bad” male writer is sometimes held, by adjectives Of course, the conductors and compilers of this implying sterility or impotence, to be deficient in Summary of Magazine Survey survey must question their own disengagement maleness). “Maleness” is exemplified by the “good” In all honesty, we did not find quite as much sex- or lack of it. Have we been objective? In a sexually male writer; “femaleness,” since it is seen by such ual bias displayed toward women as, given their biased society, can we be objective? We would tend reviewers as a handicap or deficiency, is held to be inferior position in society and, in view of the Ozick to agree with one of our male correspondents, who transcended or discarded by the “good” female one. quotation, we might have expected. But there is still argued that sexual bias, here and now at any rate, is Assignment to the women’s page. A form of cul- some, and we feel more work needs to be done on always with us. Unlike him, we do not find it silly or tural segregation. Woman writers tend to be put this. We feel also that there is a difference between naive to try to examine it. 25 for 25 Fuelling Canadian letters

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24 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Language Wars Is English bound to remain the dominant global tongue? Stephen Henighan

expand its range. Rising powers, whether global, A number of contributors point out that the belief in Language Policy and Political Economy: such as China, or regional, such as Turkey, Brazil English as a panacea leads to governmental neglect English in a Global Context or Indonesia, have little success in parlaying their of basic problems such as failing agriculture, a lack Thomas Ricento, editor economic prowess into wider adoption of their of housing and clean water, and malnutrition. Oxford University Press tongues. For many of the contributors to this The most destructive case of Anglomania docu- 313 pages, hardcover thoughtful volume, Language Policy and Political mented here, and the chapter that makes for the ISBN 9780199363391 Economy: English in a Global Context, English has most gripping reading, is the account by Australian become the language not of a particular nation or scholars Ingrid Piller and Jinhyun Cho of the impos- history, but of the ideology of neoliberalism. ition of English on Korean universities at the behest rior to 1990, intercultural inter- The book opens with tightly argued chapters by of the International Monetary Fund in the after- actions took place in a variety of languages. the book’s editor, Thomas Ricento, who holds the math of the 1997–98 Asian financial crisis, as part of PDiplomats might hold a meeting in the Canada Research Chair in English as an Additional a series of measures Koreans refer to as “National Middle East in French, a British tourist and a Language at the University of Calgary, and Peter Humiliation Day.” The destruction of public institu- Polish hotel manager would negotiate the price of Ives of the University of Winnipeg. Ricento and Ives tions and the hewing-out of a large gap between a room in broken German, an American working apply political theory to contemporary language rich and poor were consolidated by reserving in the Philippines might resort to his high school dynamics, employing Antonio Gramsci’s concept Korea’s formerly competitive but equitable top uni- Spanish to make himself understood by people of hegemony to dismantle the notion that an versities for the children of the rich, in part through whose native language contained many Spanish ideologically neutral “invisible hand” has spread the implementation of English as the sole language loan-words. Today all of these conversations would English across the globe. Some theoretical chapters of classroom instruction in many universities. The take place in English. Accelerated globalization has are excessively abstract; those that focus on case adoption of English coincided with the implemen- levelled linguistic diversity. Half the world’s 6,000 studies make the stakes clearer. One of the most tation of gag clauses that impose severe financial to 7,000 languages are forecast to disappear within subtle chapters is Selma K. Sonntag’s discussion of penalties on the parents of students who criticize the next generation as country people migrate to the failed attempt by the government of the Indian or protest. Readers who wonder whether a similar the cities; prestigious languages, such as French state of Karnataka, whose capital is the high-tech debasement of national sovereignty awaits other and German, have lost their former cross-cultural mecca of Bangalore, to enforce the local language, countries will find a resounding affirmative in the clout. English has become the working language of Kannada, as a medium of instruction in middle contribution of Belgian scholar Philippe Van Parijs, the European Union, the language of travel in Asia, schools at a time when upwardly mobile parents who believes that every country in the world will the most popular language on the internet, the were sending their children to private English- soon become English speaking, and that countries language of business and the default lingua franca language academies. Not only did the government that already use English should pay reparations to of young people who meet almost anywhere on fail to quash the English-language schools; it was all the rest as the world undergoes a transition he Earth. Latin America, where visitors are expected pressured by less prosperous parents, who wanted sees as unavoidable. to muster sufficient Spanish or Portuguese to make their children to compete, to introduce English- Van Parijs claims that governments face a stark themselves understood, and the countries carved instruction schools in the public sector. Sonntag’s choice: either abandon national languages and cul- out of the former Soviet Union, where the Cold War study illustrates the apparent inexorability of the tures, or enforce a deeply unequal social order to belief in Russian as the global tongue enjoys a mys- English juggernaut. Yet she also underlines the dissuade ambitious professionals fluent in English terious persistence, are the only dams holding back mitigating impact public policy can have, pointing from moving to the United States or the United this tidal wave. From numerous vantage points, the out that as a result of India’s federal system and the Kingdom. English language and the consolidation of post- size of the internal state market, Kannada remains He not only fails to consider that not everyone 1990 globalization appear inseparable. a widely used language in spheres from public wants to live in America or Britain, but suppresses In earlier eras English gained importance by administration to cellphone texting, and is in no cases such as Sweden and Finland, which, contrary being the language that the British Empire carried danger of disappearing. to his assertions, combine widespread knowledge of to its colonies, just as the French and Belgians, Sonntag also voices an insight that recurs English with strong cultures and social justice with- Spaniards and Portuguese brought their lan- throughout this volume: teaching in English to out fomenting substantial emigration. Exemplifying guages to the lands they controlled; after 1945, children who have not mastered their own lan- the outlook his colleagues argue against, Van Parijs the emergence of the United States as the world’s guage is pedagogically disastrous. While national writes that he became convinced that English most powerful country gave English an identifi- elites, particularly in South Asia and sub-Saharan would become the world language in a Beijing able global anchor. Yet today, as U.S. power wanes Africa, rush to impose English-only instruction on market when he “heard a Chinese and a Lithuanian in a multipolar world, its language continues to impoverished rural populations in order to impress trader bargain ... not in Russian or Chinese ... but international lenders (and sometimes under the ... in broken English.” This summer, in Russia, I saw Stephen Henighan’s Sandino’s Nation: Ernesto sincere illusion that this will create instant develop- something different: crowds of Chinese tourists Cardenal and Sergio Ramírez Writing Nicaragua, ment), the results are massively counterproduct- entering shops and restaurants, typing their orders 1940–2012 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014) ive. In Pakistan, Rwanda, Zambia and Cameroon, into their iPhones in Mandarin, then pressing a but- was a finalist for the 2015 Canada Prize in the among other countries, literacy rates declined ton to translate them into Russian and holding up Humanities. His English translation of the Angolan and drop-out rates went through the ceiling when their screens for Russian clerks and waiters to read. writer Ondjaki’s novel Granma Nineteen and the primary school instruction in the students’ mother Plenty of trading took place, yet no one uttered a Soviet’s Secret (Biblioasis, 2014) was longlisted tongue was replaced by English-only classrooms. word of English. Translation technology that dis- for the U.S. Best Translated Book Award. His own As anyone who has taught language knows, stu- penses with the burden of cross-cultural verbal fourth novel, The Path of the Jaguar, will be pub- dents who do not have an educated grasp of their communication at a basic level may yet rein in our lished by Thistledown Press in October 2016. own language struggle to learn a second language. language’s global ambitions.

November 2015 reviewcanada.ca 25 Canada the Good Myth and reality in Canadians’ involvement in African mining. Erin Riley-Oettl

try’s place in the world. In Butler’s Colonial Extractions: words: Race and Canadian Mining in Contemporary Africa Many Canadians are taught to Paula Butler think of Canada as a country University of Toronto Press characterized by innocence and 394 pages, hardcover fairness, meritocracy, exemplary ISBN 9781442649323 ethical standards, inclusivity, and humanitarianism … This false his- tory as a “non-colonizing state”— n 2010, a bill to increase in tandem with false depictions corporate responsibility in of Canada as a land where slavery Ithe mining sector went before and other forms of racial violence the Canadian House of Commons. did not exist—is then deployed Entitled the Responsible Mining Act, it with powerful simplicity to pro- gave hope for a new level of account- duce an idea of Canadians as ability in a sector rife with problems. It moral giants: Canadians are not would have given the minister respon- people who colonize or enslave sible for international development others; Canadians are not racist; the ability to set environmental and Canadians are good. international human rights standards for Canadian companies engaged in Her interviewees, again reflect- mining, oil or gas activities in devel- ing a typical view among many oping countries. After intense debate, Canadians, also tend to find noth- Bill C-300 was defeated. The vote was ing wrong with companies profiting 140 to 134. from low wages, either globally or It leaves in its place a voluntary cor- in our own economy. The idea is porate social responsibility system. A at the core of a free market system damning report commissioned by the where individuals willing to get paid Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada argues that Canada is actively creating and par- low wages are fair game, especially if low wages that was leaked in 2009 found that Canadian min- ticipating in a global system of laws and economic serve as a source of a country’s competitiveness. ing companies were implicated in four times as persuasion that enshrine and legitimize the power The market-oriented economy has been credited many international mining violations of corporate of our country’s elites. “Canada” for Butler’s pur- with drawing nations—not simply former colonial social responsibility as mining companies from poses, while not always clear, includes individuals powers but also newly developed countries—out other countries. The report went on to state mining from government, diplomatic offices and the min- of poverty. For example, the World Bank estimates companies from Canada were “more likely to be ing industry. She argues that the global system in that China lifted more than 600 million people engaged in community conflict, environmental and place ensures a systematic imbalance of power to out of poverty between 1981 and 2004 due to the unethical behaviour.”1 Why would we as a country enable mining elites in countries such as Canada opening of the country’s markets. Butler’s text lacks not want to address this serious discrepancy in cor- to get rich through low-wage resource extraction. competing theories and perspectives on develop- porate conduct? Butler’s writing is heavily academic, befitting ment, and thus misses an opportunity to define the According to Canadian studies scholar Paula the book’s origin as a doctoral thesis. Using post- distinction between colonialism and opportunistic Butler, who teaches at Trent University, the min- colonial and critical race theories, she identifies capitalism, which by its very nature is blurry. ing sector’s power means it can successfully lobby similarities between the mindset of colonialists But while her conclusion is likely to cause dis- domestic and international governments for its extracting resources in Canada during coloniza- agreement, she presents a compelling narrative own benefit. In Colonial Extractions: Race and tion to those of Canadians currently involved in of land acquisition and wealth by affluent (white) Canadian Mining in Contemporary Africa, she mining in Africa. Much of her evidence came from Canadian mining executives enabled by the dis- theoretical frameworks applied to 18 interviews placement of indigenous people who have been Erin Riley-Oettl is a lawyer from Nova Scotia living with Canadian mining professionals, correspond- excluded from the benefits of the mining, except in Toronto who focuses on community and inter- ence from Canadian embassies, court cases and for a relatively few low-paying jobs. From this national development. She has worked in human World Bank policies. Butler uses these sources to foundation, Butler argues that because Canada’s rights law in Tanzania, regulation drafting in Nova examine the motivations and actions of members business community has been the primary bene- Scotia, housing policy in Toronto and in Malawi, of Canada’s mining community involved in mineral ficiary of Canada’s mining operations in Africa they and program development research in Toronto. extractions in Africa. are intrinsically linked to growing international She currently volunteers as a research committee One thing that becomes clear in her interviews inequality. member for the Tanzania Centre for Research and is the extent to which these key players exhibit what Butler makes a legitimate case that, regardless of Information on Pastoralism. she sees as the typical Canadian view of our coun- the potential for the Canadian economy to benefit

26 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada from the foreign operations of the country’s min- survival—to secure a reliable, decent income after the defeat of Bill C-300 raises an eyebrow. ing companies, important questions need to be in the absence of viable alternatives. There is certainly evidence that government answered. Are Canadians benefiting to the detri- policy in Canada has disappointed human rights ment of others? Are we creating systematic imbal- This sympathetic view of artisanal miners now advocates. The Canadian government has recently ances of power that prevent a state from profiting informs much professional commentary within the been found to lag behind its peers in “helping the from its own resources? While not all of the con- world of international development, yet is still rela- world’s poor” (the “poor” include countries where clusions she draws have clear lines from evidence, tively unfamiliar to non-specialists. It is a view that Canadian mining companies operate). According there are some noteworthy examples of inequality many readers of Butler’s book will find revealing— to a recently published report by the Washington- and interference. one of the many ways in which Colonial Extractions based Center for Global Development, Canada is International Canadian mining projects fre- has the potential to shift our perspective on the ranked 13 out of 27 wealthy countries in regards to quently operate in African countries where life Canadian mining industry’s involvement in Africa. their commitment to seven areas that have a signifi- expectancies are low and child mortality rates are One of the challenges Colonial Extractions cant impact on the world’s poor and the only one high. The exports of mineral resources from African makes to our preconceptions is Butler’s attribu- in the group who did worse than last year. When countries with Canadian mining operations are tion of specific actions of human rights violations looking just at the environmental category, Canada estimated to be in the billions of dollars but host to Canadian mining companies themselves. Her was dead last. government revenues from those activities were interviews with the Canadian mining corporation We may accept Butler’s arguments that Canada less than five percent of those has a bad track record in min- amounts. Butler also describes ing, but this should be only the involvement by Canadian actors A damning report found that Canadian start of a full analysis. In Colonial in drafting the legislation in those mining companies were implicated Extractions there is no indication of countries that governs royalty rates why Canada’s record is worse than and created private and exclusive in four times as many international other countries. Is the Canadian mining licences. She concludes that government interfering in a way that the local miners can no longer com- mining violations of corporate social is particularly colonial or do other pete and are therefore locked out of countries have Bill C-300 type regu- the process, leading to protest and responsibility as mining companies lations to prevent this behaviour? physical violence. Is the Canadian government lever- For most Canadians, the impli- from other countries. aging our international reputation cations of these regimes are so far for legislative drafting to manipulate removed they barely register on public conscious- representatives allow the reader to gain an under- other legal systems? It cannot be that other coun- ness. For me, they are much more present. In 2012, standing of “why” these actions are occurring. tries are not using diplomatic pressures to pay low I was in Tanzania working for a local organization While it is not indicated what percentage these wages for profit. While the World Bank is quoted when one of these violent episodes took place at 18 individuals may represent in the industry or as a major player throughout the book, Butler’s a mine owned by a Canadian-owned subsidiary. their positions in the organization, their comments limited focus on Canada means there is an absence The community had long mined that area until the on local mining give us insight into the real paradox of comparisons with other countries. In addition, foreign company acquired exclusive rights to the of the thoughts and actions of Canadian mining is it the government actors or business community area and the local miners’ livelihoods were made representatives. that need the reform? Only by understanding the illegal. Some were still permitted to mine through For many of the professionals she interviewed, answers to these questions can we know if national informal arrangements with staff. When the com- artisanal miners were a particularly problem- regulation could make a difference. panies decided to crack down, three local miners atic group. “When questions were posed about Without knowing how Canada is unique, we were shot dead. artisanal miners,” she notes, “the interviewees have no map on how to improve. What we are In her interviews, Butler asks her interviewees showed considerable discomfort. It was hard for given is a chance to reflect on a Canada we would what they think drives the mining professional to them to successfully represent these subjects as like to have and to ask the question posed by the explore Africa. Their responses suggest that they supporting the Canadian presence and the entitle- African philosopher and political scientist Achille are motivated by the opportunity that these sites ment of Canadian companies to African minerals.” Mbembe, quoted in Butler’s book: “To whom do a present to make high profits for shareholders, made Questioned about the lack of support or partnering country’s riches belong?” possible by paying very low wages to local workers. with local mining operations, the mining company Their justifications for excluding locals from all but representatives made it clear they believed they had Note the lowest paid jobs are not surprising: no one was the expertise essential to create wealth with safer 1 See “Suppressed Report Confirms International Violations mining the land when they arrived; low-paying jobs and healthier outcomes. This justification for why by Canadian Mining Companies,” Mining Watch, October 28, 2010. http://www.miningwatch.ca/news/ are more stable than small-scale mining; the local Canada is needed has little weight when Canadian suppressed-report-confirms-international-violations- mining operations were dangerous and disorgan- mining companies in Africa have such a poor canadian-mining-companies. ized; or the ever frequent “we are helping.” record. Butler argues the mentality that Canadian One of the most interesting features of Butler’s individuals can “do better” than a country can do book is the attention she pays to the locals whose for itself is a major reason why human rights abuses Read well at any size. livelihoods as artisanal miners are at risk when are happening. (Another reason is the previouslyFor great reading at any size western mining firms arrive. Traditionally Africa’s mentioned economic gain, which can lead to con- small-scale miners have been portrayed in pejora- flict and various forms of repression.) tive terms with the emphasis on smuggling, their While her use of the interviews helps show us possible use of child labour, and their likely neglect the why; the exploration of the Canadian govern- of environmental and safety concerns. Butler mus- ment’s role would be the how. But Butler blurs ters considerable evidence to show that this picture the distinct roles of political actions, bureaucratic is reductive. And to the extent that the picture policy making and diplomatic conversations. So makes it possible to deny these miners what many when she cites a general overall favouritism by would argue are their legitimate rights to at least government officials to the economic interests of part of Africa’s mineral wealth, it is harmful as well. Canadian firms rather than to legitimate domes- According to Butler: tic interests, the actors have to be inferred by the reader. Butler comes short in specifying whether These miners are not inherently criminals. It individual agents acted in their own self-interest is possible that a small percentage of them or whether they were part of a nationally sup- are simply looking for a quick buck (which ported agenda regarding mining in Africa to could have been said of Canada’s early gold maximize benefits for Canadian business. Perhaps rush prospectors, as well as many of today’s there is no one answer. The conclusion drawn is international investors), but most of them that the government allows space for the mining take up artisanal mining for basic economic companies to act in their current capacity, which November 2015 reviewcanada.ca visit the new reviewcanada.ca27 Letters and Responses

RE: “Fault Lines,” by Antanas Sileika y parents were Eastern European immi- liament Hill, has met with so much controversy, (October 2015) Mgrants, arriving in Canada, in my mother’s when a project to construct a Holocaust memorial he names of the victims of communism are case, just before World War Two. Members of nearby has met with greater support. One reason, Tlegion, many of them “known only to God.” my mother’s family who remained in the part of he suggests, is that the narrative of the Holocaust After decades, even generations, of suppression, it Poland that was to become Soviet Ukraine suffered has been more easily adopted by Canadians. He is understandable and salutary that their descend- atrocities at the hands, not of the communists, but also cites the widespread belief that the Conserva- ants and surviving confederates wish them to be of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA): one of tive government was attempting to curry favour remembered publicly. my mother’s cousins, who’d identified himself as with particular ethnic voters and the disdain In West Germany, recovery of the knowledge of a Pole rather than a Ukrainian, was tortured, then of Canadian progressives for whatever Stephen the Holocaust came to a head with the challenge beaten to death by members of UPA. One of my Harper does. from the post-war generation of 1968 to their com- mother’s uncles, however, was deported to a gulag Surprisingly, he dismisses these latter reasons plicit parents’ generation: they all stood accused. and never heard from again. for controversy as disingenuous. Surely, given the But recovery of knowledge of the crimes of Soviet This family history may help illustrate the penchant of the Harper government for wedge pol- communism on the lands where they occurred painful complexity of what we mean by historical itics, it is hardly misleading to suggest that a Holo- was violently aborted by the state when it sen- memory: my opposition to the proposed “Victims caust memorial to please Canadian Jews and a tenced its dissidents to the Gulag. It was up to the of Communism” monument in Ottawa, and the monument to the victims of Communism to please militant 1968 generation in the West to begin the “Tribute to Liberty” group that proposed it has to Eastern European Canadians would be perfectly recovery project: after the publication in transla- do with what Milan Kundera called “the gnawing congruous instrumental acts. tion of Aleksander Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipel- beetle of reduction.” Although I have experienced Choosing which victims to honour is a divisive, ago in 1973, we could not say we didn’t know. some extraordinary memorials—notably Berlin’s not to say dangerous, abuse of power in multicul- To this point I am in sympathy with Sileika’s Denkmal to the murdered Jews of Europe—I have tural Canada. The outcome is to incite competition defence of an “officially sanctioned monument” found that most monuments to those killed by war, among once-abused immigrants and their des- to the victims of communism, and I share with or by acts of terrorism like the Air India bombing, cendants. And to create hurts. Sadly, Sileika’s essay him the experience of the “sneers” of the leftish act to freeze memory: although meaningful and is a pertinent example of both of these. “harpies of Canada” when I have written in sym- poignant to the generation that erects them, these Privately funded memorials are the business of pathy with the Orange and Maidan revolutions structures become part of the urban decor to most whomever wishes to erect them, but government- in Ukraine. But I have also come under attack members of succeeding generations. sponsored monuments should create unity, not by Ukrainian-Canadian “nationalists” when in To sustain living forms of memory, we need division. They are important, even necessary, the pages of this journal I wrote that I relied on works of art which complicate and extend, not when designed to express remorse for shameful historians, not ideologues, for truth about the simplify and reduce human experience. In terms acts that were once the policies of the country in Holodomor.­ of “the nightmare of history,” a novel such as question. In Germany and France, for example, But I am a third-generation Ukrainian Can- Three Day Road, Obasan or Fugitive Pieces is an where the Holocaust was perpetrated and abet- adian, whose Galician forebears came to Alberta incomparably greater and more effective catalyst ted, memorials to the victims are integral to the in the early 1900s, and there was no immediacy for memory than a concrete wall with names on it, national story. They mark the transition to a differ- to the events of the post-war period in western however many educative apps that wall accommo- ent world view and stand as a reminder of domes- Ukraine. Indeed, how could there have been, with dates. Would that the Harper government directed tic history. no communication, as I recall, with the Soviet rela- millions of taxpayer dollars to the dissemination An official monument to the generations of tives until the early 1960s. The stories that the post- of works of the imagination that could convey to abused children of Indian residential schools war survivors brought with them to Edmonton in succeeding generations something of the trauma would be properly integral to Canada’s past— the 1950s had no resonance; and I plead guilty to of having been a First Nations soldier in World War and present. It would speak to our now-shared Sileika’s charge that their experience in the post- Two, an interned Japanese-Canadian, a murder- acknowledgement of the harm inflicted by succes- war anti-Soviet resistance known as the Ukrainian ously persecuted Jew: all victims of history in both sive Canadian governments, and bring solace to Insurgent Army (or UPA in Ukrainian) did not Canadian and international terms. the surviving victims. seem to me the real trauma of World War Two (for And in the context of those who suffered atro- Unity matters. Monuments to particular vic- that was Auschwitz and Hiroshima). Besides, these ciously at the hands of Soviet communism, putting tims, be they of the Holocaust, or of communism, survivors tended to the ideological right while abundant copies of Canadian novels such as Rhea do not belong in the symbolic spaces surrounding I was tending left. Tregebov’s The Knife-Sharpener’s Bell or memoirs Canada’s Parliament. Imagine, then, my shock when a few years ago such as Modris Ekstein’s Walking Since Daybreak Erna Paris I learned of relatives with my name from my pater- onto library shelves and school curricula, and Toronto, Ontario nal grandfather’s village in western Ukraine who making compelling film versions of such works had been members of the UPA. The shock is inten- for those who fail to “[read] history [or any kind Antanas Sileika responds: sified by knowledge of historians’ (controversial) of literary text] after high school,” would, for this welcome these responses on fraught subject work on the activities of this “resistance move- taxpayer’s money, help us far better to understand Imatter. ment”—that it participated in the ethnic cleansing our capacities for good and evil than the frozen Myrna Kostash rightly points out the complex- of Poles and Jews as well as, later, fighting heroic- memorials authored as “Tributes to Liberty.” ity of narratives that inevitably end up in collisions ally if hopelessly against the Soviet occupiers after that can be avoided only by careful reading of 1945. (My relatives died in 1951.) Double shock Toronto, Ontario history.­ when I learned that, on my maternal side, Baba’s Janice Kulyk Keefer echoes Tony Judt’s com- brother had been “disappeared” by a soldier of ntanas Sileika raises important questions at plaint that memorials cannot replace history, but the UPA for “collaborating” with the new Soviet Athe top of his essay: the vexed politics behind since we live in an ahistorical society, monuments authority (he was a socialist sympathizer). Ottawa’s monument to victims of communism. He are at least some kind of nod toward an under- History has victims on all sides. To whom asks what it means to memorialize the past in a standing that there was a world before “now” and to raise the memorial? The UPA soldier has complex cultural mosaic like Canada. He asks why the way we live in the present has been affected been reburied in the village cemetery. Baba’s we commemorate some events and not others, by the past. brother simply vanished into oblivion, a victim of and how we should go about deciding which are I think Erna Paris misreads my comparison anti‑communism. most deserving. with Holocaust memorials. My point is that Holo- Myrna Kostash Sileika wonders why the planned monument caust memorials worldwide are being emulated Edmonton, Alberta to the victims of communism, to be built near Par- because of their successes. Why is an Ottawa

November 2015 reviewcanada.ca 29 ­Holocaust memorial less “controversial” in the mythic golden age of diplomacy comes when he Harper did, is just blowing smoke. On Syria, the press? Probably because there is a tradition of rails against the Harper government for, suppos- government resorts to “truthiness.” fine Holocaust memorials and this one is an addi- edly, treating “foreign affairs often as a means to Under Harper, foreign policy became foreign tion to a rightly respected category. As to wedge cultivate diaspora communities and constituen- posturing. We are falling far short of our potential. politics, politicians are always trying to curry cies at home.” The Harper government “has taken My aspiration for Canada is that we achieve the favour, right from the creation of the Canadian pandering far beyond what any of its predeces- next Golden Age of Canadian diplomacy, not the concept of multiculturalism in the Trudeau (père) sors have done.” Harper did not listen to the great last. But we will never do so as long as prime min- era. We can deplore this tendency all we want, minds of foreign policy. Instead, he spent too isters like Harper think foreign policy is essen- but canny lobbyists will exploit politicians just as much time listening to diaspora communities— tially about political talking points. canny politicians will try to exploit them back. code words for “ethnics.” It may be more appropriate for monuments to Harper pays attention to Canadians who have Re: “Heal Thyself,” by Marc Lewis be built by governments that wish to apologize for overseas roots. And this means he pays attention (October 2015) their crimes, but if no communist or previously to international issues that are of interest to lots of thank Marc Lewis for his thoughtful and gra- communist government is willing to apologize Canadian voters. Many Canadians have personal Icious review of The Brain’s Way of Healing: to the victims of communism, those who wish to connections to Ukraine and Sri Lanka. They have Remarkable Discoveries and Recoveries from the remember these crimes have to do so somewhere just as much right to influence our foreign policy Frontiers of Neuroplasticity. else. I cannot imagine the Putin government in as Heinbecker does. We differ a bit about how to define neuroplas- Russia building a gulag monument, nor should Harper’s not a glad hander and he’s not will- ticity, and therefore how broad the neuroplastic anyone be forced to wait until it does. ing to have his fellow Canadians shoulder a healing process is. Neuroplasticity, as I define greater burden than others on global issues just it, is that property of the brain that allows it to Re: “Foreign Posturing,” by Paul Hein- to feel better about his moral superiority. Hein- change its structure and function in response becker (October 2015) becker pooh-poohs genuine advances such as to mental experience. Others, including Lewis, aul Heinbecker sets himself the task of the ­Canada-European Union Comprehensive define it more narrowly as the changes that occur Pcomparing Stephen Harper’s foreign policy Economic and Trade Agreement and the Canada- where neurons meet one another, at the synapses. record to those of previous governments, par- Korea trade deal. Despite enormous challenges, This is because we have experiments showing ticularly Brian Mulroney’s. And no matter what Harper got us to the table for the Trans-Pacific that learning changes synaptic connections. It is Harper accomplished, Heinbecker sees it falling Partnership talks and kept us there. He played these changes that are increasingly called “rewir- short. Harper came to office as a bumpkin who a disproportionate role in shaping the G20 and ing” the brain. But I think we have evidence that had never travelled much, appointed a series of other multilateral economic institutions follow- neuroplastic change also involves change at many bumpkins as foreign minister, and leaves Canada ing the global financial crisis. These are major levels. as isolated as it has been in 75 years. achievements, but they are small beer to Hein- We do not yet know that thought and mental Heinbecker’s indictment begins with Canada–­ becker. Nostalgia steeped in myth, as Derek Bur- experience work directly or solely by changing United States relations, where he sees only mis- ney likes to say, is not a substitute for a foreign synaptic connections. Although I have met many steps and blames these exclusively on Harper’s policy. Or, as P.J. O’Rourke once wrote, everybody neuroscientists who assert “our thoughts are in aversion to Mulroney-style personal diplomacy. wants to save the earth; nobody wants to help the connections between neurons,” I have not Barack Obama once overlooked Harper when mom do the dishes. met one who can explain precisely how thoughts asked to list his closest international contacts in a Ian Brodie are encoded there. To see brain areas change with media interview. The reader might ask if this lat- Calgary, Alberta learning does not mean that we have cracked the ter oversight was worse than George W. Bush fail- neural code. ing to mention Canada in his speech to Congress Paul Heinbecker responds: Indeed, we don’t yet know whether thoughts following the September 11 attacks during the he laughter that the audience at the Munk are encoded between neurons, within neurons, Chrétien government. TDebate could not suppress when Prime at the intracellular level, and even at the genetic But let’s look closer. In 2008, Obama cam- Minister Stephen Harper claimed a good relation- level, in the activities of neurons, in the glial cells, paigned on an explicit hostility to the North ship with President Barack Obama illustrates the in some combination of these factors, or perhaps American Free Trade Agreement. Since then, he fallacy at the core of Harper’s foreign policy—that in other ways. Each of these “levels” changes with and Harper have cooperated on many continental saying something makes it so. Communication mental experience, and I think we now have evi- initiatives. The auto bailout. Expediting customs trumps reality. dence that each, in its own way, provides a poten- and security at the border. Starting the difficult Harper damaged relations with our three most tial avenue for brain healing. work of harmonizing product regulations. Does important partners—the United States, Mexico I agree wholeheartedly that the developmental Harper’s focus on the nitty gritty of policy get any and China. Harper’s contempt for the United psychologists were, among psychologists, the credit for this turnaround? Nations is well known, albeit not widely shared. most “plastic” in describing how the mind chan- Heinbecker goes on to reiterate many of the In September, the UN hosted the largest diplo- ges over time, but my reading is that develop- commonplace complaints about Harper’s record. matic gathering in history, 163 leaders, to discuss ment psychology’s mainstream approach rarely He snubs the United Nations. The Mexicans are the major issues of our times—cooperation on spoke in terms of brain change. Now that we upset. The Chinese are upset. The Palestinians are sustainable economic development, terrorism, can see the brain is neuroplastic it is tempting to upset. The Americans are upset that Harper took refugees, peacekeeping and climate change. No project that knowledge onto the past. Freud, Wil- a stand on the invasion of Ukraine. And on and U.S. president has missed a UN General Debate liam James and Pavlov all speculated the brain on. in decades. Harper attended three times in ten was plastic. Still, the reigning behaviourist John True, Harper took tough positions internation- years. Watson mocked the idea of brain plasticity, and ally. Some of these positions upset foreign lead- Canada is the only one of 192 signatories to for decades cognitive and artificial intelligence ers, just as Mulroney upset Margaret Thatcher renounce its ratification of the Kyoto Accord, psychologists spoke of the brain mechanistically. over South Africa. Who was in the right? Harper’s the only one of 196 signatories to walk away On Lewis’s main point, however, I agree: given position on Crimea will be celebrated too when from the Convention to Combat Desertification what we now know, the developmental psycholo- international law is vindicated and that territory and the only one of 28 members of the North gists’ discoveries of various stages of development is restored to Ukraine. Atlantic Treaty Organization not to sign the Arms fit beautifully with the new discoveries of brain Heinbecker claims the Harper record on Trade Treaty, which covers international trade in development. Both approaches can learn from development cooperation was “chequered.” But conventional arms. Meanwhile, Harper sold vast each other. he took on the toughest Millennium Develop- amounts of military equipment to serial human Norman Doidge ment Goals, the ones on child and maternal rights abuser Saudi Arabia, while proclaiming his Toronto, Ontario health, and did so without getting tied up in a “principled” foreign policy. debate about abortion. Canada’s aid spending Harper’s claims to international leadership The LRC welcomes letters — and more are avail- rose quickly in the wake of the global financial on Ukraine are delusional, where they are not able on our website at . crisis with a new emphasis on effectiveness and actually dangerous. Portraying Canada as “a We reserve the right to publish such letters and results. staunch ally” of Ukraine and telling Ukrainians edit them for length, clarity and accuracy. E-mail The “tell” in Heinbecker’s hankering for a they can count on us against the Russians, as ­.

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