Paul Wells on what Harper did PAGE 7

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Sarah Liss Rape memoirs: our other true-crime obsession

David Frum & What the U.S. election means for

PLUS: Andrea Warner on MuchMusic’s checkered past + Carleigh Baker on the mythical Indigenous protagonist + John Fraser on art and artifice at the Bolshoi + David Malone on multilateralism in the age of Brexit

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Private Profits versus Public Policy The Pharmaceutical Industry and the Canadian State A Mile Of Make-Believe by Joel Lexchin A History of the Eaton’s Santa Claus In Private Profits versus Public Policy, Joel Parade Lexchin examines how public policy with by Steve Penfold respect to the pharmaceutical industry has evolved in Canada over the past half This unique history of the Eaton’s Santa century. Claus parades in Toronto, , , Calgary, and Edmonton reveals how Eaton’s pressed its image onto public life and influenced parade traditions.

New in paperback O.D. Skelton A Portrait of Canadian Ambition Redesigning Work by Norman Hillmer A Blueprint for Canada’s Future Well- Being and Prosperity ‘From these fascinating pages, Skelton by Graham Lowe and Frank Graves emerges as a clever, even brilliant civil servant who shaped Canada more than In Redesigning Work the authors any cabinet minister in the interwar provide a blueprint for the future of years and, at times, more than the work in Canada by identifying practical prime ministers he served.’ ways to make work more motivating, rewarding and productive. John English, University of Toronto

Water Policy Reform in Southern An Advocacy Coalition Approach Jews and Ukrainians by B. Timothy Heinmiller A Millennium of Co-Existence Water Policy Reform in Southern by Paul Robert Magocsi and Yohanan Alberta offers important insights on Petrovsky-Shtern the management of natural resources and the factors influencing meaningful Jews and Ukrainians provides a wealth policy change. of information for anyone interested in learning more about the fascinating land of and two of its most historically significant peoples.

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Vol. 24, No. 9 • November 2016 EDITOR IN CHIEF Sarmishta Subramanian [email protected] MANAGING EDITOR 3 Plunder, Pipelines and Porous 22 The Limits of Resilience Michael Stevens The politics of land, “heroic” aboriginal women, Borders ASSOCIATE EDITORS David Frum in conversation with Gary Doer and how we read indigenous fiction: Katherena Judy Stoffman, Beth Haddon Vermette’s The Break 4 Vanishing Point ASSISTANT EDITOR Carleigh Baker Bardia Sinaee A tanka sequence Debbie Strange 24 Iron Curtains POETRY EDITOR Ballet’s transcendent form has long been pit- Moira MacDougall 7 Remains of His Day ted against political intrigue in . Simon COPY EDITOR Madeline Koch Does it even matter that was Morrison’s Bolshoi Confidential tells all prime minister? Jennifer Ditchburn and Graham John Fraser CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Fox’s The Harper Factor, and our last PM’s Mohamed Huque, Molly Peacock, policy legacy 26 The Open Road Robin Roger, Anthony Westell Paul Wells Canada seems poised to rejoin the world. But ONLINE EDITORS how does multilateralism work in the era of Diana Kuprel, Jack Mitchell, Donald Rickerd, C.M. 9 Survivors Guild Trumpism and Brexit? Considering Robert What does the profusion of rape memoirs ask of Murray’s Seeking Order in Anarchy and Hugh PROOFREADERS Al Carter, Robert Simone sexual assault laws, and of readers? Segal’s Two Freedoms RESEARCH Sarah Liss David M. Malone Rob Tilley 10 Late March 29 In Praise of Older Genres DESIGN A haibun André Alexis’s kidlit for grown-ups James Harbeck Jen Currin Caroline Adderson ADVERTISING/SALES Michael Wile 13 The Truth about 30 The Shadow of the Shoah [email protected] The fictional roots, and legacy, of a defining Two memoirs of the Nazi era are a needed DIRECTOR, SPECIAL PROJECTS Canadian moment reminder for our own times Michael Booth Kenneth Whyte Michiel Horn DEVELOPMENT OFFICER Erica May 14 The Flat on Mackay 32 Letters & Responses PRODUCER A renga Alan Broadbent, Leilei Chen, Iain T. Benson Yoko’s Dogs Michael Mooney ADMINISTRATOR 18 Trapped in Shenzhen Christian Sharpe Folktales from a hyper-modern 21st-century city PUBLISHER Judy Fong Bates Helen Walsh [email protected] 19 A Mic of One’s Own BOARD OF DIRECTORS Searching for women in a revolution that was George Bass, Q.C., Tom Kierans, O.C., televised: Christopher Ward’s MuchMusic Don McCutchan, Trina McQueen, O.C., history Is This Live? and Denise Donlon’s As Jack Mintz, C.M., Jaime Watt Fearless As Possible ADVISORY COUNCIL Andrea Warner Michael Adams, Ronald G. Atkey, P.C., Q.C., Alan Broadbent, C.M., Chris Ellis, 20 Four haiku Carol Hansell, Donald Macdonald, P.C., Janice Colbert, Kateri Lanthier, Terry Ann In memoriam C.C., Grant Reuber, O.C., Don Rickerd, Carter, Marianne Paul Ken Wiwa C.M., Rana Sarkar, Mark Sarner, Bernard 1968–2016 Schiff, Reed Scowen POETRY SUBMISSIONS The LRC mourns the loss of one its contribu- For guidelines, please see reviewcanada.ca. tors, who will be missed. LRC design concept by Jackie Young/INK Founded in 1991 by P.A. Dutil The LRC is published 10 times a year by the Literary Cover art and pictures throughout the issue, unless otherwise indicated, by Kyle Metcalf. Review of Canada Charitable Organization. Kyle Metcalf is an illustrator residing in Calgary, Alberta. He is influenced by New Yorker cartoons and European ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION RATES Individuals in Canada $56/year plus GST/HST. illustrators from the 1950s and ’60s. He graduated from the Alberta College of Art & Design in 2011. He has worked (Libraries and institutions in Canada $68/year plus for a handful of clients including , GQ and The Walrus. GST/HST.) Outside Canada, please pay $86/year for individuals, or $98 for libraries and institutions.

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Look Who’s Watching Laid Low The Dragon’s Footprints Surveillance, Treachery and Trust Online Inside the Crisis that Overwhelmed in the Global Economic Governance Europe and the IMF System under the G20 Framework Fen Osler Hampson and Eric Jardine Alex He Edward Snowden’s revelations that the US National Paul Blustein Under the shadow of the global financial crisis, Security Agency and other government agencies are An absorbing account of the world’s financial China’s participation in the Washington G20 Summit spying on Internet users and on other governments firefighters and their misadventures in the euro in 2008 marked the country’s first substantial confirmed that the Internet is increasingly zone.The latest book by journalist and author Paul involvement in global economic governance. China being used to gather intelligence and personal Blustein to go behind the scenes at the highest played a significant role in the global effort to information. The proliferation of cybercrime, the levels of global economic policy making, Laid Low address the financial crisis, emerging onto the world sale of users’ data without their knowledge and the chronicles the International Monetary Fund’s role stage of international governance and contributing surveillance of citizens through connected devices in the euro-zone crisis. Based on interviews with a to global macroeconomic policy coordination in the are all rapidly eroding the confidence users have in wide range of participants and scrutiny of thousands G20 ever since. the Internet. of documents, the book tells how the IMF joined in To meet the Internet’s full potential, its users need bailouts that all too often piled debt atop debt and The Dragon’s Footprints: China in the Global to trust that the Internet works reliably while also imposed excessively harsh conditions on crisis- Economic Governance System under the G20 being secure, private and safe. When trust in the stricken countries. Framework examines China’s participation in the G20; its efforts to increase its prestige in Internet wanes, users begin to alter their online Reviewers have lauded Blustein’s previous books the international monetary system through the behaviour. A combination of illustrative anecdotal on financial crises as “gripping,” “riveting,” internationalization of its currency, the renminbi; its evidence and analysis of new survey data, Look “authoritative” and “superbly reported.” The role in the multilateral development banks; and its Who’s Watching clearly demonstrates why trust Economist said his first book“ should be read by involvement in global trade governance. matters, how it is being eroded and how, with care anyone wanting to understand, from the inside, and deliberate policy action, the essential glue of how the international financial system really the Internet — trust — can be restored. works.” This is all true in Laid Low, where Blustein September 2016 October 2016 again applies journalistic skills and methods to 978-1-928096-23-8 | paperback recount the biggest and most risk-laden crisis the 978-1-928096-24-5 | ebook 978-1-928096-19-1 | hardcover IMF has ever faced. 978-1-928096-20-7 | ebook October 2016 978-1-928096-25-2 | paperback 978-1-928096-26-9 | ebook

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2 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Q&A Plunder, Pipelines and Porous Borders David Frum in conversation with Gary Doer

any writers, even superla- “ tive wordsmiths, must be having Mdifficulty capturing exactly the phenomenon that we’ve been witnessing these past days, weeks and months in the United States presidential campaign.” With this observation, host of CBC News Now Heather Hiscox set the stage for an engrossing and wide-ranging discussion of what the outcome of the U.S. election means for Canada. The conversation, between David Frum and Gary Doer, and moderated by Hiscox, took place on the occasion of the LRC’s 25th anniversary gala in Toronto. David Frum has been among North America’s leading conservative political thinkers for more than a decade. A speechwriter for President George W. Bush, he is a senior editor at The Atlantic, chair of the British think tank Policy Exchange and the author of eight books. After a ten-year stint as NDP premier of , Gary Doer served as Canada’s ambas- sador to the United States from 2009 until January 2016. He recently joined the global law firm Dentons as a senior business advisor, building on a distinguished public service career marked by pragmatism and bipartisanship. Frum and Doer spoke before an audience of more than 200 LRC supporters, including a number is never surprised no matter how wrong the pundit a nationalist-populist vote in the Brexit vote. It is a of Canada’s policy and business leaders. This is an was or how violently the pundit has changed their very interesting question whether to think of Brexit edited transcript of their conversation. views since 24 hours ago. But yes I am. as a right-wing or left-wing phenomenon: it was To use terminology that would be recognizable Labour votes—Conservative voices, but Labour Heather Hiscox: Mr. Doer, what are your to Donald Trump, what you’ve had here is a kind of votes—that made Brexit a reality. impressions as you’ve watched the presidential leveraged buyout of a troubled corporation by an Canada is the only major democratic advanced campaign over these past weeks and months? asset stripper who’s admitted a lot of junk bonds country not to have a nationalist-populist move- Gary Doer: Well, it’s interesting to look at the and with that has been able to take a minority ment. I urge my friends in the United States and Canadian election a year ago when it was really a position and seize control of a majority institution, Europe to study the Canadian example. There’s a battle between a message of “steady hands on the and has then attempted to plunder it. He is, I think, flu going around and ten houses on the block have wheel” versus “time for a change.” In the United the only candidate in American history—certainly got it but one doesn’t. There’s something to study in States, normally after a two-term government it recent history—to have enriched himself during that one house. is a time for change. I would say the fundamental the course of the campaign because he’s been dir- HH: But the other point is leaders and elites [in macro message for Donald Trump has been “throw ecting a lot of the campaign contributions into his this country] ignore what’s happening in the world all the bums out of Washington”—if I can use that own pocket. at their peril. Now, Mr. Doer, [you were] telling me language—and with Hillary Clinton “steady hands But I want to take a step back, because Canada as we began the evening that as ambassador, and on the nuclear button.” Now it gets complicated is an important vantage point for what’s going on particularly since 9/11, everything is seen through everyday with the coverage of “character”—he says in the United States, which is that a normal centre- the prism of security, so it’s security abroad and diplomatically—but I think that is basically what’s right party has become a nationalist-populist party. security at home. happening, besides demographics, maps and the That is a global phenomenon. The 2017 French Let’s begin with the area of military spend- electoral college. election will almost certainly see the National ing, particularly NATO [the North Atlantic Treaty HH: David Frum, [you were] one of the first Front facing off against the very unpopular social Organization]. The commitment is supposed to be Republicans to disavow Trump and Trumpism—as democratic government of François Hollande. In two percent of GDP [gross domestic product] on of July 2015, if I’m not mistaken—so from that you have a new nationalist-populist party, defence spending. And Canada seems very com- perspective, what do you think as you watch this the Alternative for Germany, which has been win- fortable: 0.98 percent, not even one percent—no unfold? ning second place in a series of state elections as indication of wanting to boost that, and happy with David Frum: One of the questions I get asked a the grand coalition of Christian Democrats and the role Canada’s playing in NATO. Do you think lot in my pundit life is “Are you surprised?” And, of Social Democrats collapses under the unpopular- there will be increased pressure on Canada for mil- course, the answer is always no, because a pundit ity of Merkel’s refugee decisions. In Britain you saw itary spending?

November 2016 reviewcanada.ca 3 GD: Yes, there will be. And that’s been building HH: There is still a belief among U.S. lawmakers in Washington for a number of years. You could that Canada’s is a porous border. We saw that after get some of the investments in keeping the world TANKA SEQUENCE Ahmed Ressam. We even heard that from Hillary safer included in that definition of two percent, but Clinton— there’s no question that being as low as we are, it’s GD: We did hear that. The debate in Canada is going to be a big Canada-U.S. issue. Vanishing kind of interesting. I was involved in the debate HH: Will Canada push back, do you anticipate? about handing over the passenger lists for airplanes GD: Well, the argument in Canada has always Point flying over the United States maybe to been, and I had to carry this argument, that we’re or Cuba. A lot of policy people were arguing why always there when you need us. But I think that this the last should we do this. And my argument was it’s not is not going to carry the day with the next president. grain elevator a human right to go into another country. Some of If I was the Canadian government, I would look at demolished this stuff is common sense, but there is resistance options about how they’re going to get there—it’s our little town sinks in Canada. always better to announce it yourself, rather than But I think [the U.S. president’s] focus will be further into dust being forced by another country to do it. I would on Turkey—those direct flights from Turkey to take some of the investments that Canada makes Canada and the United States—the perceived and around the world to make the world safer—to para- we leave real problems of the Turkish and Syrian border. In phrase , I’m going to deal with the causes wild blanketflowers Washington that is the big, big issue—the so-called of crime. If we can deal with the causes of insecur- on your grave elephant in the room. ity in our investments, that may be available. But hoping deer will come HH: Trade is another huge area in the relation- it’s better for us to anticipate and propose rather to keep you warm ship between Canada and the United States. It’s the than oppose and be forced to do it. largest trading relationship in the world, with more HH: We certainly saw a shift in defence strategy trees stand than $2 billion a day in goods and services going away from, for example, flying combat missions, against the horizon across that border. And for the United States it rep- toward humanitarian aid, toward training in the so far resents 20 percent of its exports, but for Canada it’s case of the war in and . There’s light and few between a much more important 70 to 80 percent. We have between the two countries in that area—do you heard tough anti-trade stances, and the protection- but, oh, this prairie sky think that’s going to widen further, David? ist rhetoric has been high. How concerned are you? DF: I think it will. The essential Canadian GD: One of the areas that I hear about all the ­strategic fact is that Canada faces two kinds of Debbie Strange time from both Democrats and Republicans is security challenges: security challenges from the something the Americans are very concerned United States—and there’s nothing that can be Debbie Strange is a Canadian short- about, though it isn’t an issue in the media a lot. done about those—and security challenges from form poet, haiga artist and pho- They perceive that countries manipulate their anywhere else, and have always said, tographer. She is a member of the currencies for trade advantages. You can’t just say “And that’s for the Americans to worry about.” The Writers’ Collective of Manitoba and we may have negative interest rates as an option defence of Canada is profoundly non-optional, cer- the Manitoba Writers’ Guild. Her first in Canada so that we can sell more goods to the tainly for Britain and of course for the United States. full-length poetry collection, Warp and United States and not think that the senator from It’s not a surprise that Canada’s at 0.98 percent. It Weft: Tanka Threads, was released by Ohio can read, and listen, and follow what you’re puts in the minimum necessary to get its phone Keibooks in 2015, and her chapbook of saying. calls returned, and beyond that it rides for free. haiku, A Year Unfolding, is forthcom- That was one of the big criticisms of the Trans­ But we have entered a much more dangerous ing from Folded Word in 2016. pacific Partnership, which has improved wording period than even the post-9/11 period. I want to from the left on labour and the environment, but point to three areas of security threat that really do nothing on foreign investment protection, as they touch Canada. The first is, and probably in the long would see it, and nothing on currency manipula- run the most important, the deteriorating situa- too is talking about careful screening. And here you tion, which was a huge issue to get the authoriza- tion in the Pacific. The is dropping out have the country to the north—31,000 refugees and tion from the president during the votes on the Hill. of the western-led alliance, and historic partners of counting—and I’m wondering if the ­immigration/ I think we should always say that we’re the the United States and Canada, such as Korea and refugee policy divide could be widening further. United States’ biggest customer. We shouldn’t use Japan, are deciding that they hate each other more GD: First of all, on the Syrian refugee decisions, “eight million jobs, $2 billion a day” and all these than they like us or fear China. we consulted with the Americans on everyone to numbers that mean nothing. Our line should con- Russia, meanwhile, is, for reasons that don’t make sure there was not somebody identified as a sistently be “Canada buys more goods and services make a lot of logical sense, behaving in an increas- security risk— from the United States than the European Union ingly aggressive way. Canadian troops are taking HH: I think that’s a very interesting point. It’s to [countries] put together.” up positions in Latvia early in 2017—not that many, the U.S. standard, is it not? Third, the biggest problem we had on trade was but as Henry V said, “enough to do our country loss.” GD: That’s right. We had an agreement with with the House controlled by Nancy Pelosi, who The area of security that is hardest for all of us Homeland Security and the United States, and brought in the U.S. Recovery Act that had “Buy to wrap our minds around is terrorism. Since 2005, a protocol of what we were going through. They America” right throughout it. We actually had to we’ve moved into a security situation where, in the would alert us too if there were any security prob- get waivers in nine of the key areas in Canada- words of the old horror movie, the telephone call is lems that they became aware of—somebody we U.S. trade so that we wouldn’t be subject to Buy coming from inside the house. And in Europe, with didn’t know as part of that refugee group that was America. It took us a year to do it. In my view, Paul Angela Merkel’s decision to admit a million Syrian embedded as a potential terrorist in either one Ryan on trade is easier for Canada to deal with than refugees, that internal threat is going to accelerate. of our countries. There was a procedure in place Nancy Pelosi—that may be heresy for a former New North America has experienced less of this for a lot before the election in Canada and after the election Democrat to say. When I was premier, I thought of reasons, including luck, but this is going to be a took place in Canada, and it remains between our the Democrats were better on multilateralism, on growing problem. We have this great pressure of two countries. international affairs, and the Republicans were bet- migration from the Middle East. The first genera- We have worked very hard to get a beyond-the- ter for Manitoba and Canada on trade and energy. tion settles uneasily but more or less quietly in their border plan in place that requires legislation on And nothing that I did in Washington in six years host countries, and in the second generation you Capitol Hill in the United States. It has support from has changed my mind on that. get this wave of security threats. people like Chuck Schumer; it has support in the DF: Here’s where you’re right on the trade front: HH: So we heard from Donald Trump about House of Representatives. We have an agreement something is happening. When we talk about the what he’d do in the face of that pressure of migrants now on air, land, sea and rail, and I would recom- American trade deficit with China, we tell a moral- arriving—keep all Muslims out of the country, mend strongly that we continue to articulate the ity tale: that Americans consume too much and although he backed away from that somewhat. need to get that agreement passed in the House sell too little, and therefore the Chinese accumu- Hillary Clinton would increase the number of refu- in the United States. And in Canada, of course, it late American assets, and this accumulation of gees coming in as a result of the war in Syria, but she requires legislation in Parliament. American assets (stocks and bonds) in Chinese

4 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada hands is the penalty Americans pay for not working agreement and the NAFTA agreement. And, for tiation, with Canada as part of it, being foreseeable, hard enough and consuming too much. And I think example, Mexico didn’t want energy in the NAFTA David? what we’ve figured out over the past decade is that agreement—it’s in the Canada-U.S. agreement. Of DF: Look, the climate issue is really about China that’s an exact inverse of what is happening. What course, you look at Pennsylvania, which is selling and , right? What are they going to do? All of is really happening is China is making a deliberate gas to Canada, and that’s protected in the Canada- the developed countries have been on the path for policy of accumulating American assets and not U.S. trade agreement. I did not hear Donald Trump a long time to reducing energy intensity. Canada spending them in order to hold its currency down, talk about the Canada-U.S. agreement, but there’s has a lot of hydroelectric resources that have never in order to create employment in China, in order to also no question that the NAFTA trade agreement been worth anybody’s while to develop, but there avert a revolution. in northern, Democratic states, is not popular. are a lot of them, as you know well, and Manitoba’s HH: That’s certainly been much of the fodder of HH: We’ll get to clean energy in a second, and the sort of of this potentiality. But it what we’ve heard from the Republicans— that leads into climate change, but energy itself, the just hasn’t been cost effective—small market chan- DF: —and Democrats too, by the way— pipeline issues … will Keystone ever take place? ges and technological improvements can make GD: Democrats are the same. Actually, in the DF: Keystone is a very interesting prism through it happen. Meanwhile, the idea that you’re going Senate and the House, you hear it more from which to predict what a Clinton presidency is going to sit down with a Mexican government that is an the Democrats than the Republicans. to be like. She is very likely going to win a very especially dysfunctional one, wracked by terrible HH: So in concrete big victory, and she’s scandals, run by an unusually—even for Mexico— terms, then, [is] the TPP going to look for 16 corrupt president … Has anyone ever seen pictures done? Canada is the only or 17 hours like a very of his plane? Just go look at the pictures of the GD: Not necessar- powerful president, but new 787 Dreamliner delivered to the president ily. Again, I know that major democratic she’s not going to be. of Mexico, and then look at the plane of Angela Hillary Clinton said it Unlike , Merkel… would be the gold stan- advanced country not who was the clear leader GD: I have seen her plane! dard, and then when of the largest faction DF: Oh, you’ve seen her plane. Right? It’s, it’s… Bernie Sanders came to have a nationalist- of his party, who never HH: Modest? out, it wasn’t the gold faced any significant GD: It’s your basic… standard anymore. I do populist movement. internal challenge and, DF: Yeah, it’s your basic head-of-state, we- think President Obama of course, who faced need-a-lot-of-security-equipment-to-get-you- will try to get a vote, no primary challenge from-place-to-place plane and you have to share because he’s already got the trade promotion when he ran for re-election in 2012—he commands it with the president of the state. The president of authority. He will try to get a vote in the lame duck a Reagan-like authority within the Democratic Mexico has a plane upholstered in white leather, session [between the election and the inauguration party—Hillary Clinton is not that person. Whereas with a working fireplace. It’s as big as Air Force of the new president]. Obama fought and won a hard-fought primary One. I mean, it’s wacky! And then you look at his HH: If that doesn’t happen, though, that’s against the most famous brand name among liv- house. Okay, and GDP per worker in Mexico is 40 percent of the world’s economies in the world’s ing democrats, Hillary Clinton fought and barely still lower today than it was in 1980. It is a highly largest trade pact—what would Canada lose out won a primary contest against Larry David without dysfunctional country. And the idea that anybody on? the jokes. It’s absurd that you would almost lose to there is going to be interested in these things, and DF: Well, on trade and on defence, Canada has a Bernie Sanders. negotiating them in a functional way—I just don’t very particular competing set of incentives. Canada So she will be governing, always, with one eye think it’s real. always has to think about two things: one is what over her left shoulder, and she’ll be worried about GD: [Laughter] I do believe there’s a lot of room system does Canada want for the world, multilat- a primary challenge in 2020, and with good rea- for agreements on clean energy, energy efficiency, erally, but if you can’t get that, how does Canada son. And on foreign policy, she is far to the right between Canada and the United States. It takes protect its own interests. of where her party is. So on domestic issues, and five years to get a transmission line approved from The U.S.-Canada trade agreement in 1988 on things like the pipeline, she will try to appease one state to another state in the U.S., and I used to originated in this way. Canadians had originally an unappeasable democratic left, and whatever joke (and I got in trouble in the media) that it was always opposed the idea of continental free trade she does it will never be good enough. And one one lawyer per megawatt to get a transmission line because they always wanted to be in a multilateral of the places she will pay her party’s left is on approved from Canada to the United States. And framework. The Mulroney government had said energy issues, pipeline issues, fossil that’s becoming obsolete—you have to protect fuels. And that’s especially easy to do yourself in the face of an environment that is gener- because we are in a global energy glut, ally becoming more adverse. especially in fossil fuels. I think your story about Buy America—I mean GD: On energy, it’s an interesting obviously it would have been better if the Recovery debate. When George W. Bush started, Act had had no such provisions at all. But the he had 1.2 million barrels of oil a day Canadian view is, “well, gee, we’re not going from Canada, and 1.9 million when to invest Ambassador Doer’s time exempting he left office—and Barack Obama Germany—he’s paid by the Canadian taxpayer, he’s is at 3.4 million. So he’s actually there to make sure that Canada is exempted, and doubled the amount of oil from Are You congratulations, good job.” But it is going to be a Canada in less time. But he’s not per- different world. ceived to have done that because the Our Next HH: They’ve also begun to raise—and again became such a big we heard this back in 2008 and it never happened, symbolic issue and was opposed by a so perhaps again it’s just rhetoric for the cam- lot of his people. And when Nebraska Writer-in- paign—NAFTA [the North American Free Trade said no to it after Hillary Clinton said Agreement]. yes to it, that’s when it became just an Residence? GD: Yeah, I don’t think there’s been a candidate absolute mess, and it still is. I don’t Convince us by December 31, 2016 that that hasn’t said they’re going to reassess NAFTA. see Hillary Clinton having the ability you are the best choice for this paid HH: Well, are they not now so baked in, inte- to change course, going from yes to ten-month residency for emerging grated—would it even be possible? no to yes. But I think there’s a popu- Canadian writers. GD: We’ve had the same situation in Canada lism to getting your oil from Canada, where candidates say they’re going to renegotiate a reliable neighbour, rather than ucalgary.ca/cdwp/apply getting from a country in the Middle NAFTA, and then they write a letter on environ- Calgary Distinguished Writers Program ment and labour policy, and then exchange letters East, if you want to get out and sell it and say that’s a renegotiation—not to be cynical that way. about it! [Laughter] HH: On the clean energy point, do There are two agreements: the Canada-U.S. you see that sort of continental nego-

November 2016 reviewcanada.ca 5 that actually hasn’t changed. We need a big vision, Second, Canada has had an unusually strong pro-equality influence. They are driving wages at or a big plan to approve all these projects, because growth in middle class incomes. That is a tremen- the top down, and ­purchasing power at the bottom right now it’s a battle of one-trick ponies. dous inoculator. What drives populism is a sense up. In almost every other country, the opposite is HH: You talked at the beginning about Canada of unfairness, the world not being ordered. But the case. so far [avoiding] that populist tide that has been so the last thing I would stress is that the Canadian But none of these things are guaranteed and a detrimental in so much of the world. lot of them owe themselves to luck as The extent to which politics has much to sound policy. been debased in this U.S. election In my view, Paul Ryan on trade is GD: Yeah, I think on immigration campaign, the level of political dis- it’s good policy. One of the things course—do you ever see that happen- easier for Canada to deal with than that I really found in the United States ing in a Canadian campaign?­ from my time as ambassador was a DF: I don’t think Canada is inher- Nancy Pelosi—that may be heresy for fourth factor: we did not go through ently immune to what has happened the housing crisis like the United in other countries. Canada has had a former New Democrat to say. States did. A lot of Americans had a populist movements in the past. It 40 percent decrease in the value of just doesn’t have them right now. their home at the same time they had I think the reason Canada is different [today] experience with ­immigration has been different rising unemployment. And then all their taxes, they from the United States and France and Germany from others. Canada has an immigration policy perceived, were going to Wall Street to bail them and Great Britain and all the countries of central that is not overly reliant on any one source. And out. So when you have your own home going down Europe comes down to three things. First, Canada immigrants to Canada are better educated than in value, and your own taxes perceived to be going has had the strongest employment recovery from native-born Canadians, so they tend to enter at the to Wall Street—that’s why you get a lot more anger the great recession of any developed country. top of the labour market and they therefore exert a in the United States, some of it very legitimate.

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6 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Remains of His Day Does it make a difference that Stephen Harper was ever prime minister? Paul Wells

chalked up to chronic voter fraud, combined with unlikely allies: Progressive Conservatives, The Harper Factor: the bottomless gullibility of the uneducated. nationalists, Tories on Bay Street and in Atlantic Assessing a Prime Minister’s Policy Legacy My own claim is that Harper represented wide- Canada. For his last two years in power he lived in Jennifer Ditchburn and Graham Fox, editors spread, long-standing and legitimate currents an echo chamber. McGill-Queen’s University Press in Canadian politics; that millions of Canadians I could go on about all the big events of the 305 pages, hardcover were pleased to see him become prime minis- 2015 election, but here is a little thing that pre- ISBN 9780773548701 ter and happy to help him stay as long as they ceded it and is, I think, illustrative. It is Harper’s could; and that although millions of others were practice of federalism, in its late decadent phase. less sure about him, he was skilled at politics and, Never mind that he refused to meet the premiers fter Stephen Harper’s Conservatives often, able to win enough of them over. as a group: that was an interesting experiment in finally won a in And then it all fell apart. Here I am not sure how rejecting the stacked premises of executive federal- A2011, I used to enjoy terrifying readers by to avoid the cliché about the dog that chases cars ism in this country. But he refused for as long as he reminding them that by the time his term ended until it finally catches one. Winning that majority, could to meet Kathleen Wynne, the Liberal premier in 2015, Harper would still be three years younger like so much else Harper did, was a hell of a stunt, of Ontario, in what he clearly intended as cretinous than Jean Chrétien was when punishment of Ontarians for hav- Chrétien became prime minister ing elected the wrong government. for the first time. Since Chrétien Harper divides Canadians in his absence A million Ontarians had had lasted a decade, I was imply- as he so diligently sought to do in office. voted, in turn, for the Harper ing, Harper could turn out to be Conservatives in 2011 and the damned near eternal. Readers Many will not want to entertain the Wynne Liberals in 2014. A mil- would protest that they could not lion of them. They believed both stand the man. So how could he notion that he left anything tangible. of their votes were legitimate, and keep winning elections? But by they expected both leaders to act 2011, I had a ready answer: You like adults. The Harper who won never could stand him in the first place, and yet he and it took him four elections to pull it off. But then in 2006 would have told the Harper who pouted in has won three in a row. Why would he stop now? he was not sure what to do. 2014 to suck it up and meet the lady. The Harper The truth—obvious to me only in hindsight—is For most of 2011 he tried to offer a Holiday Inn who lost in 2015 appeared, twice in the campaign’s that very soon after the 2011 election, Harper’s elec- government: “No surprises.” He reintroduced the final week, with Rob Ford instead. His detractors toral goose was already pretty thoroughly cooked. budget his government fell on before the elec- need to contemplate all the reasons for his victor- He had always run an insurgency. He could not tion. He had the governor general read a throne ies. His supporters should ponder all the reasons figure out how to run an incumbency. speech that said close to nothing. His goal was to for his defeat. We are left with three questions. Why did he lose prove that a majority Harper government need not What does he leave behind? So soon after his in 2015? How did he win three consecutive elec- be a scary thing. But his base grew restless because defeat, so early in the gaudy reign of his successor, tions before that? And does it make any difference he was proving it could be an insipid thing. Then, it is brave even to ask the question. Harper divides that he was ever prime minister? in November 2011, Barack Obama delayed a deci- Canadians in his absence as he so diligently sought The second question—how Harper won, while sion on the Keystone XL pipeline for at least a to do in office. Many who were on the losing side he was still winning—was so hard to understand year, giving Harper a chance to transform into of his decade will not want to entertain the notion for so many readers that I needed to write two a resource export crusader. Harper was friendly that he left anything tangible, or anything good at books to answer it properly. To some extent my to the Chinese, which won him no favours from any rate. effort was wasted. Many Canadians never wanted China and upset longtime Conservative voters; he Fortunately, the Institute for Research on Public to know how Harper won elections. Many do not was theatrically furious at Obama, which failed to Policy has a long history of barging into the country’s really believe he did. When pressed to acknowledge hurry the president along, and belligerent toward nastiest debates. That the Montreal think tank was that Harper did indeed reside at environmentalists, indigenous opponents of pipe- founded at ’s initiative, during his from 2006 to 2015, many will finally admit that it lines and just about everyone else. government’s first mandate in the early 1970s and may be so, but that the unfortunate mishap can be Eventually he probably would have decided with a generous federal endowment, does not mat- anyway that none of this was helping him. Before ter much anymore. The IRPP is now, for all intents Paul Wells is a national affairs columnist at the he could get around to that epiphany, Robert Fife and purposes, eternal. Its publications, including . He has written two books on Stephen of CTV News started reporting on Nigel Wright’s its flagship periodical Policy Options, are cheerfully Harper: Right Side Up: The Fall of and secret deal to pay off Senator ’s living non-partisan and aimed at an informed general the Rise of Stephen Harper’s New Conservatism expenses. Perhaps there was some clever way to audience, rather than at academics. When I was an (McClelland and Stewart, 2006) and The Longer handle this revelation that Harper did not try. What undergraduate in the 1980s, IRPP-commissioned I’m Prime Minister: Stephen Harper and Canada, he did do was collapse into a defensive crouch essay collections on the Meech Lake constitutional 2006– (Random House, 2013). The New Yorker from which he never recovered. A decade earlier he amendments and on Canada-U.S. free trade offered called him “Canada’s foremost Harperologist.” had won power by reaching out to a succession of one-stop shopping for my ­term-paper research.

November 2016 reviewcanada.ca 7 Written by academics, journalists and practitioners western Conservatives who would once have con- not Brewster’s fault: Harper extended Canada’s of the political arts, the books left a reader plenty of sorted with the old Reform party. mission in before cutting it short. He room to draw his own conclusions about the issues One honourable exception is Paul Wilson, a led a surge in equipment procurement before prov- under discussion. former policy director in Harper’s Prime Minister’s ing, in his last years, incapable of buying almost And so it is with The Harper Factor: Assessing a Office, who mounts a spirited defence against wide- any piece of military kit. He announced a massive Prime Minister’s Policy Legacy. Edited by the IRPP’s spread claims that Harper used the rules of parlia- multi-year military expansion before scaling it back current president, Graham Fox, who served 15 years mentary procedure to crush his opponents when considerably. “It is safe to say that those who are ago as Joe Clark’s chief of staff, and by Jennifer he was not simply ignoring the rules altogether. left coming out of Stephen Harper’s wars,” Brewster Ditchburn, the former CBC reporter who now edits Wilson uses data on closure, time allocation, length writes, “have yet to fully appreciate or reflect upon Policy Options, The Harper Factor the experience.” offers 15 essays on Harper’s record The same could be said of any in as many policy areas. Ditchburn Deeper understanding of what he was up veteran, participant or observer, covers Harper’s fraught relations of Harper’s many combats. with the parliamentary press gal- to proves elusive. He is a complex man, The sector-by-sector­ approach lery. Reporter Susan Delacourt, Ditchburn and Fox favour permits whose most recent book was on plainly given to conflicting impulses. more detail on individual files political marketing, writes about than, say, the more impressionis- Harper’s strategies for goosing tic take I offered in my own books voter support for the Conservatives. Michael of debate and the bulk of budget implementation on Harper. But to a surprising extent, deeper under- Decter, long a first-call expert on Canada’s health- bills to significantly nuance these claims. At times standing of what he was up to proves elusive. He is a care system, sums up Harper’s record on health Wilson’s tone is defensive, and at other times he complex man, plainly given to conflicting impulses (“A Curious Mix of Continuity, Unilateralism and does concede that Harper departed significantly and not at all fond of explaining himself. (I am told, Opportunity Lost”). from his predecessors’ practice. But even where reliably, he has no plan to write his own memoir. This impressive cast was conscripted long before his portrait softens the caricature of Harper as an He would be the first long-lasting prime minister the 2015 election, Ditchburn and Fox take care authoritarian, it is not gratuitous: Wilson offers since Louis St. Laurent to so deprive us. Harper’s to note, with a mandate to deliver copy no mat- information that most readers will not have con- continued turtle act is a serious loss to our under- ter who won that battle. The authors were told to sidered before. standing of executive government in Canada.) bring their passions to the table, but not to ignore “Harper’s record,” the editors state at the outset, Does he leave a legacy? is trying the facts. “While there was a lot of instant analysis “is decidedly more nuanced than both his admir- to ensure it is as minimal as possible. Still, there of the Harper government in the form of punditry ers and his detractors will concede.” Less coherent are traces. On transfers to the provinces for health and editorials, much of it—too much, perhaps— than either would try to argue, too. Reporter Murray care, on the response to Russia’s aggression against focused on the personality of the man,” the editors Brewster, now at the CBC and for a long time the Ukraine, and on levels of taxation, Trudeau is closer write. The goal here is to take a longer, cooler view. military specialist at , tries to to Harper than either might like to admit. In most To the extent their partisan stripe can be known, make sense of Harper’s record on war, military pro- ways they were as different as chalk and cheese. most of the contributors are Liberals or, well, Tories, curement and veterans affairs. Brewster’s account Canada is a big enough country to accommodate as distinct from the sort of populist and mostly is meticulous and nearly incomprehensible. It is both.

8 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada ESSAY Survivors Guild What does the profusion of rape memoirs ask of sexual assault laws, and of readers? Sarah Liss

You hardly know him but now he thinks he knows you: he has taken down your worst moment on a machine and filed it in a file. He knows, or thinks he knows, how much you imagined; he knows, or thinks he knows, what you secretly wanted. —Adrienne Rich, “Rape”

n mid October, a Los Angeles–based screen- writer named Kathryn Borel, widely known Ias the former CBC employee who charged disgraced Q host Jian Ghomeshi with workplace harassment, published a post on her Facebook page. “I want to join the chorus of women sharing their experiences with sexual assault,” she wrote, more than a million anecdotes, representing a gro- In June, Buzzfeed published a victim-impact proceeding to note, with harrowing matter-of- tesquely wide spectrum of personal violation. statement written by “Emily Doe,” the woman factness, that she had been “raped and sodomized” It has been two years since the high-profile who was raped by a Stanford athlete named Brock by a stranger four years earlier. Borel had alluded allegations against Jian Ghomeshi sparked a Turner (who attributed his actions to “drunken to the incident in an interview with Maclean’s national conversation about sexual assault, a year promiscuity”). Honest, unflinching and profoundly magazine after Ghomeshi publicly apologized to and a half since New York magazine ran a cover insightful, the statement went viral. First-person her as part of his court-ordered peace bond. But story featuring the accounts of 35 women who accounts of sexual assault have since appeared in in the post, which referenced a speech she had described having been assaulted by Bill Cosby. The publications including Self, Cosmopolitan and The given at a recent fundraising brunch for the UCLA treatment, inside and outside the courtroom, of Daily Beast, some of those prompted by the recent Rape Treatment Center, she gave details of the the women who made these allegations was a neat allegations about Donald Trump and by his reac- attack, and thanked the series of women who had illustration of that “institutional conspiracy” (in tion to them. In the past several weeks, a wealth helped her—from the petite early-morning jogger Borel’s words) to solicit silence. In response, surviv- of firsthand responses could be found everywhere who scared off her assailant to the counsellor who ors of sexual assault raised their voices. In the past from People (where a reporter recounted her own helped her find words to articulate what had hap- year, a torrent of unflinching first-person narratives Trump allegations) to Business Insider (where a pened to her. has swept through social media, news publications male survivor recounted his assault) to the college- “This is not my ‘story’…” Borel wrote. “These and popular culture. journalism outlet Tab (where a woman recounted are facts, and what happened to me was a crime.” In Jane Doe January: My Twenty-Year Search for having been raped in her teens by two male Later, acknowledging the people who helped her Truth and Justice and I Will Find You: A Reporter friends). find clarity in the fragmented aftermath, she wrote: Investigates the Life of the Man Who Raped Her, All these stories—or rather, as Borel aptly notes, “speaking about rape is a collaboration.” both published earlier this year, two writers (crime each factual report of a crime—are heartbreaking Borel’s post was published nearly a week after novelist Emily Winslow and journalist Joanna and repellent. And yet, this time around, not one a tape surfaced featuring Donald Trump’s boasts Connors, respectively) desperately seek justice feels like something you have never read before. All about grabbing female acquaintances’ genitals. As for their rapes, which happened two decades fit into a form that has started to feel unsettlingly the scope of the presidential candidate’s sexual prior. This past spring saw the release of Mexican familiar. impropriety was revealed, essayist Kelly Oxford Hooker #1: And My Other Roles Since the Revolution, There have been earlier personal reflections encouraged survivors to come forward. “Women,” in which Vancouver playwright Carmen Aguirre of sexual assault: Alice Sebold’s memoir, Lucky, she wrote on October 8, 2016, “tweet me your first confronts the gruesome assault she endured in or Nancy Venable Raine’s After Silence: Rape and assaults. They aren’t just stats.” Over the course of her teens. Public figures—Amy Schumer, Gretchen My Journey Back, both published in 1999. But the a single evening, she later reported, she received Carlson, Lena Dunham—have used their own recent accounts are distinguished in part by their memoirs to ruminate on past rapes and instances number, which marks the emergence of a literary Sarah Liss is a writer and editor in Toronto who of harassment. This past summer, Toronto jour- genre that seems very much in demand. has contributed to The Walrus, Maclean’s, Toronto nalist Lauren McKeon wrote an essay for Toronto For survivors, the echoes in the stories can be Life, , Hazlitt, the Hairpin and Life about why she never reported any of the three comforting: here is solidarity; here is proof that CBC.ca. Her book, Army of Lovers: A Community rapes she suffered; bestselling novelist Jessica Knoll someone else has been through this unfathom- History of Will Munro, was published by Coach recounted being raped in her teens for Dunham’s able experience. For the wider community, the House books in 2013. Lenny Letter. articles mark a certain kind of progress: the shroud

November 2016 reviewcanada.ca 9 of stigma has lifted enough to encourage victims to come forward with their stories. And yet, two years after that watershed moment, many of the HAIBUN women—it is still mostly women—are delivering their testimonies in magazines, rather than in the courts. Late March Even as sexual assault memoirs proliferate, the system that fails survivors remains broken. Judges I will check to see if my house still has lots of salt — pink salt, and matches for (like Robin Camp, who infamously asked the vic- candles. “You never start fires, you never travel,” my neighbour complains. She tim of a violent assault why she did not “keep [her] wants the street to herself, with its cherry blossoms, its stellar jays, bay views, knees together” to prevent her rape) continue to and kisses on benches. Occasionally a skinny coyote saunters out of the park, perpetuate myths about rape. Attackers (like Brock making dog walkers tug at their leashes. Turner) walk away with a slap on the wrist. By now, Rainy spring again these institutional failings are well known and I will soon sign a mortgage widely publicized. According to statistics published with my beloved by YWCA Canada in 2015, of every 1,000 sexual assaults that occur annually, twelve have charges laid, nine are prosecuted and only three lead to Jen Currin conviction. An Ipsos Reid poll commissioned by Global TV in 2015 revealed that, of women who Jen Currin has published four books of poetry, including The Inquisition Yours, which won report their assaults to police, 72 percent describe the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry in 2011, and School, which was a finalist for three that experience as “negative,” and nearly 40 percent prizes. She has recently finished her first collection of stories. of respondents come away “devastated.” In her Toronto Life essay, McKeon points to this emotional horror show as a reason for why she declined to go to the police: “The legal system requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt. I’d behaved in ways meaning of the word “survivor” in the New York of her house, as Pinochet’s soldiers pointed guns at that didn’t make sense … Facing the antagonism of Times Magazine in May, Parul Sehgal homes in her and her little sister). It took hold even though an interrogation hardly seemed worth it.” on this impulse: “In Japanese, the word ‘trauma’ she promptly told family members and law enforce- In this context, memoir can be a formidable, even is expressed with a combination of two characters: ment officials who believed and supported her; it necessary, recourse. The legal system may reject any- ‘outside’ and ‘injury.’ Trauma is a visible wound— took hold even though the serial rapist who terror- thing outside of black-and-white certitudes, but per- suffering we can see—but it is also suffering made ized her and other girls and women in Vancouver sonal narrative allows a writer to revel in these grey public, calcified into identity and, inevitably, for eight years was brought to justice within a half areas, to explore the things that do not “make sense.” simplified.”­ decade. In a paper published by the Journal of Feminist Memoir bears both the risk of entrenching that Mexican Hooker #1 is not exclusively—or even Scholarship last fall, Tara Roeder, a professor at St. calcified identity and, as for writers like Carmen predominantly—about rape. Intended as a comple- John’s University in Queens, New York, examined Aguirre, the promise of liberation. In 1981, while ment to her first memoir, Something Fierce, an “rape and the politics of storytelling.” As she writes, walking with her twelve-year-old cousin, Macarena, incisive account of her time in the Chilean radical “memoirs of sexual assault become a different kind near the University of campus, left, the book takes stock of Aguirre’s “other roles of evidence than courtroom testimony. They allow Aguirre was raped at gunpoint. She was 13; she was since the revolution”—roles that include theatre victims to … explore the complex truths of rape wearing a brand-new wraparound skirt; she was artist, self-described “basketball wife” (to a flashy without altering their narratives to fit seamlessly eager to watch the soccer game that had started in player on a team in Argentina), displaced Latina into culturally sanctioned scripts.” That demand a field not far from the trails. Her attacker threat- in lily-white Vancouver and, yes, survivor. But the for the “perfect” ened to kill both girls shadow of sexual assault is long and insidious, and story was one of the if Aguirre refused to Aguirre deftly illuminates the ways in which it per- things the Ghomeshi Social lift may have acquiesce to the rape; meates every part she plays. The kinetic energy of trial laid bare: one she told him to shoot. her efforts to repress—and then contend with—the by one, his accus- drawn attention to rape As time passed—as attack (and her attacker) drives her fierce, funny ers were discredited his threats became narrative. by inconsistencies culture, but it is an increasingly graphic Although Aguirre spent years trying to actively in their accounts— arbitrary, and fleeting, and gruesome—Maca­ live in the portion of her psyche that remained inconsistencies that rena, terrified, begged untainted by her attacker—it was, she believed, were wholly consistent phenomenon. her for mercy. At that the only way to resist letting him take over—she with the undermin- point, Aguirre recalls, never managed to extricate herself fully from the ing effects of trauma “my surrender was story of what had happened to her. “He was always on the brain—and subjected to a kind of public absolute.” Training his gun on her temple, the present in my bedrooms of love and sex, in the humiliation. rapist demanded that she cover her eyes with her four chambers of my heart, my guts, my womb, First-person narratives have created a counter- blouse. “Don’t move. Don’t speak. Don’t breathe,” in the childhood forest I hadn’t returned to since vailing effect, a virtual community for survivors. he instructed. “And then,” Aguirre writes, “he sliced the rape, present in the booming recital hall of my Hashtags such as #beenrapednevereported have me clean in two.” skull,” she writes. Her life is, effectively, a kind of turned Twitter into a de facto support network. She is speaking literally here, describing the palimpsest—until a flashback during acting class in “When I realized that … he did this to many, many physical violation of that 13-year-old body, an her early twenties becomes a catalyst for therapy, women,” Cosby victim Linda Brown told New York experience that felt like a hot knife slicing her vis- self-searching and emotional collapse. Eventually, Magazine, “I felt the need to come forward and help cera, again and again. But that line, which comes more than a decade later, that narrative coalesced report them because there is strength in numbers.” nearly two thirds of the way through Mexican into a powerful work of autobiography. But often, that impulse toward comradeship is Hooker #1, carries the weight of metaphor: there For Emily Winslow, now based in England and tinged with ambivalence. In a Buzzfeed essay about is a cleaving between the person she was prior to separated from her rape by an ocean, two decades, her own decision to talk about a rape that occurred the attack, and the compartmentalized self she a marriage and two kids, returning to an attack that years earlier, Lena Dunham writes: “Survivors are became in its aftermath. When she reflects back on occurred in her final year of university amounts so often re-victimized by a system that demands that spring day, she evokes an out-of-body experi- to excavating a dormant self. And yet returning to they prove their purity and innocence … They are ence, a soul soaring overhead, communing with an that time, revisiting the minutiae, playing the cur- isolated and betrayed by people close to them who eagle. That division took hold even though Aguirre, rent court case over in detail, becomes essential doubt their reality or are frustrated by their inability the daughter of Chilean revolutionaries, was when, thanks to an absurd legal loophole, the to move on. Their most intimate experiences are already inured to trauma (as a very young child, for Supreme Court rules that the statute of limitations made public property.” Writing on the evolving instance, she stood, trembling, in the yard in front has indeed run out, and her rapist—whose DNA is

10 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada an unequivocal match to the traces found in her when it comes to fixing a broken system. “After rape kit—walks free. Jane Doe January becomes being sexually assaulted last year, I wrote a letter a vehicle for her rage, and an effort to find some to my attacker that made headlines,” wrote Ione form of justness when true justice proves elusive. Wells in The Independent last June. “I was glad ILLUMINATING If memoir is therapeutic, allowing individual that my voice was being heard, but there was also The Trans-Pacific writers to grapple with their own trauma, it is not something fundamentally depressing about it Partnership and an effective universal solution, or an enduring being ‘news.’ Why does society still wait for victims Canada: A Citizen’s one. For one thing, it is available mostly to the to be attacked and then speak out before its inter- Guide sorts of people who can write engaging personal est in rape and sexual assault is captured? Why Edited by Scott Sinclair accounts and have them published in media out- should the onus lie with them?” and Stuart Trew lets: educated, middle class and, more often than Then there are the consumers of these $22.95 paperback Independent experts in a not, white writers, academics, actors and others accounts—the readers who are not themselves dozen policy areas including in the creative class. But a myriad women are survivors. What does reading five, or ten, or 15 of health care, environmental protection, and foreign affected by sexual assault whose lives unfold far these memoirs illuminate for them? Is a commit- investment explain the beyond those circles. The form of justice access- ment to taking in the horrific details sometimes underreported costs of the ible to most is the deeply flawed one offered by tinged by a prurient curiosity? And is bearing wit- latest high-profi le Canadian trade deal. the court system. ness enough? Even for authors, writing about it remains Sharing stories—but especially these stories, an imperfect answer. Social lift may have drawn as Borel suggested—involves an intimate relation- attention to rape culture, but it is an arbitrary, ship between speaker and listener. Readers and THOUGHTFUL and fleeting, phenomenon. Becoming a product publishers have a responsibility to the person tell- means being tied to the rules of the market, which ing the story, although it is not always clear what Canada Since makes sexual assault stories subject to the kind those obligations entail. Protest marches are not 1960: A People’s of evaluations that accompany any story: Is it for everyone. Roeder argues that “such texts shed History fresh? What’s the angle? For those in the business light on the backdrop of sexual violence against Edited by of publishing sexual assault memoirs, the goal is which women live their lives, serving as invita- $27.95 paperback rarely the empowerment of the writer. The first- tions to their audiences to begin to rethink rape Cy Gonick and contributors person economy, Laura Bennett wrote in a 2015 and its effects simply by the act of listening.” But to Canadian Dimension magazine offer a fresh article for Slate, “incentivizes knee-jerk, ideally that view (optimistically) assumes an audience perspective on the last topical self-exposure, the hot take’s more intimate that is eager to be enlightened. fi ve decades, focusing on sibling.” “It’s harder than ever to weigh the eth- For Aguirre, memoir provided one of several politics, the economy and culture. ics of publishing these pieces against the market opportunities to address her assault publicly; she forces that demand them,” she wrote. (She was also tackled the subject in a play, which provided not talking about first-person accounts of rape, a different (and possibly more direct) form of but she could have been.) There is a hunger for audience engagement. Mexican Hooker #1 con- these stories right now. But at some point, that cludes on a high note: years after reconnecting ENGAGING unsettling sense of familiarity will start to feel with her trauma, Aguirre, now a bestselling author more rehashed than resonant; the clicks will ebb and playwright who has transformed the horror Too Young to Die: and the gatekeepers will lose interest. Sadly, that of her attack into a stirring play, The Trigger, goes Canada’s Boy Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen in point is likely to come long before the legal system face to face with her rapist—long imprisoned and the Second World War is fixed. repeatedly denied parole—in a restorative justice John Boileau and In the meantime, there may be a danger in process. As she confronts her assailant, she feels Dan Black providing an informal forum that embraces com- her heart expand in her chest; “I want to thank $34.95 hardcover plexities and shades of grey even while we have a you,” she says, “for teaching me compassion.” It Extensively researched legal system that penalizes nuances. As the com- is a beautiful depiction of a kind of liberation that and illustrated with photos, maps, and letters, this plainants in the Ghomeshi trial learned, the well- so many survivors seek, and that most are denied. volume tells the story of spring of support that bolsters survivors—Twitter Lest it leave the impression that a more profound the Second World War through the experiences hashtags, virtual bathroom walls where names justice does indeed prevail, Aguirre follows up the of underage soldiers. are named—can be turned against women in the scene with the revelation that her rape kit, pre- courtroom if they do choose to report. There is also served decades earlier, was never tested. another side to lionizing those who come forward. Kathryn Borel may have been thinking similar For McKeon, the chatter that swelled during the things as she stood on the steps of the courthouse Ghomeshi trial itself was a double-edged sword: in downtown Toronto, facing the blank eyes of a INFORMATIVE “I couldn’t help thinking that the conversation cabal of cameras on May 11, 2016. Her workplace Negotiating So I was hearing tended to erase the flesh-and-blood harassment suit against Ghomeshi was slated to go Everyone Wins women who’d been raped. It transformed my per- forward; bolstered by the rueful savvy of a woman Secrets you can use from Canada’s top who has seen her rapist get put behind bars, she sonal experiences into a political rallying cry.” She business, sports, struggled with the sense that, as a feminist, she was prepared for trial. Until she decided not to labour and political needed to speak out. “The thought of admitting it, proceed. It was Ghomeshi’s team that offered her negotiators even in a hashtag, was suffocating.” the option of a peace bond—a chance to avoid David C. Dingwall It is a Catch-22, as University of Guelph pro- an inevitable courtroom evisceration—but it was $29.95 hardcover fessor Karyn Freedman explains in an interview Borel who demanded a full apology. And she did Practical and proven insight from Canada’s leading about her 2014 book, One Hour in Paris: A True so with the aim of sharing her own masterful, sports executives, cabinet Story of Rape and Recovery, which combines beautifully articulated account of his transgres- ministers, bank presidents reflections on her own rape years earlier with sions on the steps outside the courtroom. “When and labour leaders on how to negotiate successfully. illuminating philosophical theory on the nature of it was presented to me that the defence would be trauma. On the one hand, she affirms that women offering us an apology,” she said, “I was prepared should not be pressured into coming forward, and to forego the trial. It seemed like the clearest path addresses her own professional and personal priv- to the truth. A trial would have maintained his lie, ilege. But on the other hand, she insists, “I have a the lie that he was not guilty and it would have www.lorimer.ca certain responsibility. When women don’t come further subjected me to the very same pattern forward, we end up seeing rape as a series of of abuse that I am currently trying to stop.” Her Independent. Canadian. Since 1970. isolated events as opposed to a systemic problem words resonated with survivors around the world. Made possible with the support of the that faces women and children worldwide.” It was the purest example of narrative justice Ontario Media Development Corporation As it stands, survivors bear an unfair burden standing in for criminal justice served.

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12 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada The Truth about Trudeaumania The fictional roots, and legacy, of a defining Canadian moment Kenneth Whyte

Trudeaumania: The Rise to Power of Pierre Elliott Trudeau Robert Wright HarperCollins 384 pages, hardcover ISBN 9781443445009

Trudeaumania Paul Litt UBC Press 424 pages, hardcover ISBN 9780774834049

rudeaumania, by common understand- ing, refers to a state of mind that prevailed Tin 1968 when a swinging intellectual bachelor from Montreal rose to the leadership of the governing Liberal Party and swept Canada off its feet on his way to a majority victory in a national election campaign. It never happened, at least not in any quantifi- able way. Pierre Trudeau in 1968 was a politician. Elections are how we keep score in politics. Careers are made, governments change, history is shaped by electoral results. The 1968 election gave Pierre popular vote sits at the low end for a majority vic- istorians have long debated the importance Trudeau his first majority government and revealed tory by either party. It is reminiscent of Mackenzie Hof Trudeaumania. Was it or was it not a to the world his peculiarly Canadian charisma, King’s finishes of 1935 and 1945 when he managed watershed in the country’s political history? Was but no matter how many women (and journalists) to control Parliament with 41 percent and 44 per- all the hype as impactful as legend would have swooned in the course of his campaigns, there is cent of the popular vote. King had the excuse of a it? Robert Wright’s Tru­deau­mania: The Rise to nothing in the data to suggest anything resembling more competitive field, with Social Credit making it Power of Pierre Trudeau positions itself as a work a mania. a four-horse race on both occasions. of revisionism. Wright believes a watershed was Voter turnout in 1968 was 76 percent, less than The notion of a mania looks even more dubious crossed but that ideas, not hype, pushed us over. one point above the previous election, and well through a regional lens. Atlantic Canada shunned He wants to explode the Camelot-like myth of below the average of the previous four. Trudeau and Trudeau, leaving him just seven of 32 seats, perhaps “the hipster Montrealer who drove up to the Liberals eked out a slim majority over Robert out of loyalty to Nova Scotia Bob. The West, too, was in his Mercedes in 1965, wowed the country with Stanfield, an unusually weak Conservative leader resistant, returning just 27 Liberals in 68 ridings. his dictum that ‘there’s no place for the state in the (or so we thought until Joe Clark and Kim Campbell Across both regions, Trudeau took 38 percent of bedrooms of the nation,’ rocked the new medium came along). Stanfield’s campaign is best remem- the available vote. Even in Ontario, where Trudeau of television like no one since JFK, and in scant bered for a photograph of him eating a banana. The took 64 of 88 seats, his share of the popular vote was months rode the crest of Canadians’ centennial-era sole reason the image has endured—Stanfield was no different from what Pearson had managed in euphoria into power.” perfectly competent with the banana—is that noth- 1963. Quebec was more generous, giving Trudeau Wright takes Trudeau’s intellect and ideas very ing else happened in his campaign. 54 percent of the vote, which is impressive but seriously. His insistence that Trudeau’s winning The Liberals took 45.5 percent of the popular well below the 60 percent that St. Laurent, the last personal style, his made-for-TV poses and quips, vote in 1968, compared to 31 percent for Stanfield Francophone to lead the Liberals, had averaged had little to do with his success drains much of and 17 percent for NDP leader . in his three national elections. Trudeau underper- the fun from the saga, but Wright lands his funda- This was a middling result for the Liberals. Trudeau formed as a native son. mental argument that there was substance at the improved on his predecessor, Lester Pearson, If you are looking for a mania in the Canadian core of whatever kind of phenomenon Trudeau whose popular vote peaked at 42 percent, and who political record, Diefenbaker’s triumph (54 percent represented (oddly, the author makes no attempt to never managed a majority. He fell short of Louis St. in 1958) stands alone, at least since the two-party define Trudeaumania). Laurent, who took 50 percent of the vote in 1949 system broke down in 1921. Yet here we are, nearly Wright does a thorough, if unoriginal job, of and again in 1953. In historical terms, Trudeau’s 50 years after the election of 1968, with a new prime positioning Trudeau in the intellectual ferment minister giving fresh meaning to the term—and two of Quebec in the 1960s. Trudeau had been a sup- Kenneth Whyte is an author and journalist. He can books, each by a reputable historian, on the subject porter of the , the process by be found at kwhyte.com. of the original Trudeaumania. which the province, long dominated by the Catholic

November 2016 reviewcanada.ca 13 church and an Anglo business elite, was ous performances, catalogued by Litt, that secularized and modernized under the created an endless supply of news hits: leadership of Premier Jean Lesage’s inter- RENGA Trudeau dancing to rock ’n’ roll beside his ventionist Liberal government. He was campaign bus, Trudeau using a hanging a critic of the various species of Quebec microphone as a punching bag, Trudeau nationalism that were unleashed in the The Flat on Mackay jumping over railings to get at his worship- process of yanking the province out of its pers, Trudeau wearing ascots and sandals past. mother’s whistle and saluting supporters with Buddhist Trudeau hated nationalism. He con- two fingers under her tongue bows, Trudeau posing shirtless and in yoga sidered it backward, “corrosive,” a threat come home! come home now! positions (yes, him too), Trudeau sliding to the individual’s fundamental rights and down bannisters and performing somer- liberties. Nationalism was prone to intoler- that flat on Mackay where we lived saults off the diving board at a hotel pool, ance, discrimination and totalitarian ten- is now a parking lot and, of course, Trudeau kissing, on the lips, dencies. would trap random 16-year-olds on the street. the province within its own borders, cut- These were the moments that estab- my new glasses ting it off from the larger future available to lished Trudeau as a new kind of political it in a united Canada. Trudeau reminded show me the ragged asters hero, charismatic, liberated and “authen- Quebecers that it was “the Nation-State at the edge of concrete tic” in that preening, self-aware manner image” that had spurred Canadians of that works so well on screen. These were British descent through history to stomp sweeping the sidewalk the moments that inspired the posters, on the rights of French Canadians who had scraping up the bubblegum songs, cartoons, slogans and fashion state- “had the bad grace to decline assimilation.”­ ments catalogued by Litt. We are reminded, The most popular expression of Quebec Yoko’s Dogs for instance, that “Go-Go Trudeau” was at nationalism in the mid 1960s took the once a cheer, a pop song and a t-shirt. form of “Deux Nations,” the mushy idea of Trudeau was uniquely positioned to tap Canada as a binational union of French and Yoko’s Dogs is a collaborative group of four poets— into many of the obsessions of the times. English Canadians sharing one land mass Jane Munro, Susan Gillis, Mary di Michele and Jan Single and relatively young, he seemed and common institutions. The rising threat Conn—dedicated to writing in Japanese forms. Whisk to bridge the generation gap. While his was the secessionist expression of Quebec was published by Pedlar Press (2013) and Rhinoceros politics were mostly within the bounds of nationalism, a bid to make the province by Gaspereau (2016). Visit yokosdogs.com. conventional Canadian discourse, he had “progressive, free and strong,” in the words toured China and the Soviet Union and of its eventual champion, René Lévesque. demonstrated an openness to more radical Trudeau considered the latter a “ridiculous ideologies (he had famously attempted and reactionary idea.” Separatism had nonetheless t is salutary to be reminded of Trudeau’s sub- to paddle to Cuba, a theatre of his fellow 1960s gained a frightening momentum by the time of Istance given that Paul Litt’s Trudeaumania icon, Che Guevara). He was a symbol of the sexual Trudeau’s emergence as a force in Ottawa, turn- comes at its subject from quite the other direction. revolution, a hero to those “progressive men [who] ing violent in the hands of the Front de Libération Litt opens in the spring of 1968 with Canada in found the conflation of their sexual pleasure with du Québec, Parti Pris, Rassemblement pour “the throes of passion” and Trudeau looking “like righteous politics profoundly seductive.” l’indépendence nationale, Armée Révolutionnaire a pop star on a concert tour.” The candidate is beset That last point helps to explain why Peter C. du Québec, the Popular Liberation Movement by “shocking-stockinged micro-boppers” begging Newman and Pierre Berton, two liberated alpha- and the Taxi Liberation Front, among other actors for a snog. Girls who fail to reach his lips try to rip journalists of this period, were as agog at Trudeau attempting to force Quebec sovereignty through the flower from his lapel or kiss the hub caps of his as the women they chauvinistically claimed were argument, protest, threats, riots, bombings and the convertible. losing their minds and throwing themselves at the killing of innocents. Litt and Wright have combed the same news- candidate’s feet. “Trudeau is the guy who really Wright dwells on the mob scenes and explod- paper and television archives, providing, between excites me,” wrote Berton. “He is the swinging ing mail boxes as an antidote to cheerier accounts them, a neat case study of how historians tend to young man I think the country needs.” Explains Litt: of this era, notably Pierre Berton’s 1967: The Last find what they want in the record. The weight of “A strange passion swept the media ranks, precipi- Good Year, which fondly recalls Montreal as the evidence is on Litt’s side. The front-page photos and tating an idolization of Trudeau akin to that of an happening, cosmopolitan seat of Expo 67—the evening news footage of Mod Trudeau—the “single, ancient religious sect worshipping a fertility god.” highly successful world’s fair that There was an unhealthy co-­ served as centrepiece to Canada’s dependence between the media centennial celebrations. Wright The notion of a mania looks even more and Trudeau. He claimed to find also draws out the confusion them a nuisance yet somehow and desperation of the Canadian dubious through a regional lens. was always in the picture, tossing political elites faced with an exis- a grape in the air and catching it tential threat in their second largest province. He youthful, athletic, and fashionable [candidate] in his mouth. Newsmen (they were almost all men) maintains that Trudeau’s appeal to the federal with a liberated-lifestyle”—are more plentiful and hosted talk shows and conferences on the troubling Liberal Party and Canadian voters was his clear and impactful than editorials on Intellectual Trudeau, question of whether they were creating or covering unyielding response to Quebec’s turmoil. editor of Cité Libre, circulation 500. Litt finds reason Trudeau, all the while running photos of him pos- There is an important truth here. In the course for the best-selling status of Trudeau’s book of con- ing with bunnies from Montreal’s Playboy Club. of his rise to 24 Sussex, Trudeau consistently stitutional essays on its dust jacket: As for the centennial effect, Litt finds direct lines preached that Quebec’s aspirations were best between the exuberance of Expo 67 and Trudeau’s pursued within a strong federal Canada, as one of Pierre Elliott Trudeau is almost incredible: A candidacy. One of them is Bobby Gimby, writer of ten provinces in a “truly pluralistic and polyethnic Prime Minister who swings, who is described the centennial anthem, “Ca-Na-Da,” who a year society,” with a bill of rights guaranteeing French- by Maclean’s magazine as “an authorita- later performed the song at the head of Trudeau’s language rights across the country. One might tive judge of wine and women,” who drives tickertape parade through Toronto’s financial argue that Wright overestimates the familiarity of a Mercedes, throws snowballs at statues of corridor.­ the Canadian public with Trudeau’s constitutional Laurier and Stalin, wears turtleneck sweaters Litt does try to define Trudeaumania, and in the ideas (Trudeau’s book of essays, Federalism and and says things like “the state has no business process leaves one wondering if Wright was not the French Canadians, did hit the bestseller lists in in the bedrooms of the nation.” wise to leave the matter aside. He acknowledges 1968, but more as a campaign souvenir than a cat- that the phrase was invented by the forgotten Cold echism). There is no doubt, however, that his ideas, Media imagery was critical to Trudeau’s emer- Warrior and newspaper columnist Lubor Zink, who boldly held and forcefully articulated, were a part gence. Wright is correct in that Trudeau could used it to describe what he considered a clinical of his success. be underwhelming in televised debates, formal pathology infecting a segment of the Canadian speeches and long interviews. It was his spontane- public enthralled by a man with totalitarian sym-

14 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada pathies. Litt also admits that Trudeaumania was Far-fetched? Trudeau, enjoying an extended honeymoon as “not a mania in the sense of a contagion that swept Trudeau, when asked if he would give up his Canada’s 23rd prime minister. through most of the populace.” He reduces it to a Mercedes if elected: “Do you mean the girl or the Litt sees the younger Trudeau’s famous “sunny measure of “the strength of the engagement that car?” ways” permeating “the torpid substrata of the col- Trudeau inspired among his supporters. Those who Trudeau, when asked why he has never been lective consciousness” and warming Trudeaumania liked Trudeau liked him a lot.” married: “There are so many pretty girls, it’s so hard out of hibernation. “Canada is back!” This takes him As for its significance, Litt argues that Trudeau­ to decide.” dangerously close to Myers territory. The Powers mania was “a formative episode in Canadian nation- Trudeau, speaking to a reporter about his hike of saga opened with the hero, cryogenically frozen in alism that had an enduring influence on national the previous weekend: “There was a blonde along.” the 1960s to make himself available for the salva- identity.” He cites as evidence tion of future generations, thawing Trudeau’s success in keeping the back to life. country united, his official lan- Mike Myers’s desperately modish, Wright would have it the other guages legislation, his multicultur- way: he presents Justin Trudeau alism policy, his Charter of Rights sex‑mad 1960s hero (with a Trudeauvian sui generis, loyal to his father’s and Freedoms, and his generally memory but very much his own liberal political orientation that overbite) does battle with a bald, man. Justin does not possess kept Canada to the left of centre his father’s keen intellect, or his long after the United States and out‑of‑touch, Stanfieldian Dr. Evil. ­ostentatious individualism; he is the United Kingdom had shifted warmer, with more humility and rightward. These, however, were consequences of Trudeau, stopped on the streets of Ottawa by “a better personal skills. Trudeau’s 15 years in power, not those fleeting, blonde” and asked for a kiss: “Why not? It’s spring.” It makes for entertaining debate: Is he or isn’t delirious months in 1968 when the regular cohort of Trudeau asked whether or not he would have he his father’s son? On the one hand, he is taller voters who could be counted on to support a Liberal a hostess at 24 Sussex: “Could I change hostesses and better looking—a “Smoking-Hot Syrupy Fox,” supported him emphatically. from time to time?” according to Twitter—and thus less comical in the Trudeau surrounded at the Liberal convention role of sex symbol. He has none of his progenitor’s ierre Trudeau’s political legacy is long, mixed, by “the Pierrettes,” a group of young women in sexism, and he is (so far) a better and more popular Psubstantive and deserving of serious consider- “persimmon-orange coloured shifts and match- politician. On the other hand, he too inspires the ation. Trudeaumania was a fad. If it lives on it all, ing berets.” Surrounded in London, Ontario, old man’s “strength of engagement” among his sup- it is only in the imagination of the Canadian actor by “Trudeau’s True Pets,” a group of young porters, and works diligently at his media profile and comedian Mike Myers, who came of age amid women who follow his car and scream for kisses. and seems to enjoy it immensely. You decide. it and, consciously or not, brought it back to life in Surrounded in Burnaby, British Columbia, by the At the end of the day, the comparisons do not his popular Austin Power franchise. Myers’s self- “Action Girls”… much matter. Many Canadian voters were not born admiring, desperately modish, sex-mad 1960s hero Yeah, baby. Yeaaaaaahhhhh! when the first Trudeaumania happened. Justin (with a slight Trudeauvian overbite) does battle Trudeau has the opportunity to create his own with a bald, hopelessly out of touch, Stanfieldian oth books in their final pages note that the legacy and when he does so it will be based, as is Dr. Evil and gets off lines like, “I put the ‘grrr’ in Bphrase “Trudeaumania” has regained some of always the case, on his performance in office, not swinger, baby!” its currency in 2016 with the original’s son, Justin his Instagram account.

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November 2016 reviewcanada.ca 15 We Are What We Read Important Books for All Our Communities November 14–19, 2016

University of British Columbia Press Press

Trudeaumania The Iconic North Conversations in Sounding Thunder Paul Litt Cultural Constructions Food Studies The Stories of 9780774834049 • $39.95 cloth of Aboriginal Life in Edited by Colin R. Anderson, Francis Pegahmagabow Postwar Canada Jennifer Brady, and Charles Z. Levkoe Brian D. McInnes Sexual sizzle, media hype, and the Joan Sangster 9780887557873 • $31.95 paperback 9780887558245 • $24.95 paperback madness of crowds – Trudeaumania 9780774831840 • $34.95 paperback was more than a crazy sixties’ Conversations in Food Studies brings to In Sounding Thunder, Brian McInnes moment, it was a passionate quest The Iconic North explores how the table thirteen original contribu- provides new perspective on Pegah- for a new Canada. This is an evocative the “modern” South crafted tions organized around the themes of magabow and his experience through look at the time. cultural images of a “primitive” representation, governance, discipli- a unique synthesis of oral North that reflected its own nary boundaries, and, finally, learning history, historical record, and social, political, and economic through food. Pegahmagabow family stories. interests.

University of Alberta Press Wilfrid Laurier University Press

Imagining the Unsustainable Oil Growing Up in Armyville Governing Cities Supernatural North Facts, Counterfacts, Canada’s Military Families through Regions Edited by and Fictions during the Afghanistan Mission Canadian and European Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough, Jon Gordon Deborah Harrison and Perspectives Danielle Marie Cudmore, and 9781772120363 • $45.00 paperback Patrizia Albanese Edited by Roger Keil, Pierre Hamel, Stefan Donecker 9781771122344 • $38.99 paperback Julie-Anne Boudreau, and Stefan Kipfer 9781772122671 • $29.95 paperback Gordon reinvigorates our under- 9781771122771 • $39.99 paperback standing of the culture and the A compelling portrait of youth from Sixteen scholars explore the idea of the ethics of energy production in Canadian Forces families as they coped Deepens our understanding of metro- North as a realm of the supernatural; Canada, and challenges us to with the stresses of Canada’s deploy- politan governance through an innova- a wide-ranging look at mysterious and embrace the future after oil. ments to Afghanistan. tive comparative project on the subject misunderstood aspects of northern of regional governance in Canada regions from antiquity to present day. and Europe.

University of Ottawa Press McGill-Queen’s University Press

Alice Munro’s Miraculous Art Shakespeare in Canada The Harper Factor Writers’ Rights Critical Essays Remembrance of Ourselves Assessing a Prime Minister’s Freelance Journalism in a Edited by Janice Fiamengo and Edited by Irena R. Makaryk and Policy Legacy Digital Age Gerald Lynch Kathryn Prince Edited by Jennifer Ditchburn and Nicole S. Cohen 9780776624334 • $39.95 paperback 9780776624419 • $39.95 paperback Graham Fox 9780773547964 • $34.95 cloth January 2017 December 2016 9780773548701 • $34.95 cloth A timely study of freelance journal- Sixteen original essays on Alice Munro’s Shakespeare in Canada examines the One year after the last federal election ists’ working conditions and what is writings. Covering Munro’s entire role that Shakespeare has played in comes a clear-eyed, balanced analysis at stake for the future of journalism career, from her first stories to her Canada over the past two hundred of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s in precarious times. final books, it will enhance the reading, years and the way Canada’s culture legacy and impact on Canadian public teaching, and appreciation of her re- has influenced our interpretation policy and institutions. markable – indeed miraculous – work. of his literary career and heritage.

16 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada We Are What We Read Important Books for All Our Communities November 14–19, 2016

University of British Columbia Press University of Manitoba Press

Trudeaumania The Iconic North Conversations in Sounding Thunder Paul Litt Cultural Constructions Food Studies The Stories of 9780774834049 • $39.95 cloth of Aboriginal Life in Edited by Colin R. Anderson, Francis Pegahmagabow Postwar Canada Jennifer Brady, and Charles Z. Levkoe Brian D. McInnes Sexual sizzle, media hype, and the Joan Sangster 9780887557873 • $31.95 paperback 9780887558245 • $24.95 paperback madness of crowds – Trudeaumania 9780774831840 • $34.95 paperback was more than a crazy sixties’ Conversations in Food Studies brings to In Sounding Thunder, Brian McInnes moment, it was a passionate quest The Iconic North explores how the table thirteen original contribu- provides new perspective on Pegah- for a new Canada. This is an evocative the “modern” South crafted tions organized around the themes of magabow and his experience through look at the time. cultural images of a “primitive” representation, governance, discipli- a unique synthesis of Ojibwe oral North that reflected its own nary boundaries, and, finally, learning history, historical record, and social, political, and economic through food. Pegahmagabow family stories. interests.

University of Alberta Press Wilfrid Laurier University Press

Imagining the Unsustainable Oil Growing Up in Armyville Governing Cities Supernatural North Facts, Counterfacts, Canada’s Military Families through Regions Edited by and Fictions during the Afghanistan Mission Canadian and European Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough, Jon Gordon Deborah Harrison and Perspectives Danielle Marie Cudmore, and 9781772120363 • $45.00 paperback Patrizia Albanese Edited by Roger Keil, Pierre Hamel, Stefan Donecker 9781771122344 • $38.99 paperback Julie-Anne Boudreau, and Stefan Kipfer 9781772122671 • $29.95 paperback Gordon reinvigorates our under- 9781771122771 • $39.99 paperback standing of the culture and the A compelling portrait of youth from Sixteen scholars explore the idea of the ethics of energy production in Canadian Forces families as they coped Deepens our understanding of metro- North as a realm of the supernatural; Canada, and challenges us to with the stresses of Canada’s deploy- politan governance through an innova- a wide-ranging look at mysterious and embrace the future after oil. ments to Afghanistan. tive comparative project on the subject misunderstood aspects of northern of regional governance in Canada regions from antiquity to present day. and Europe.

University of Ottawa Press McGill-Queen’s University Press

Alice Munro’s Miraculous Art Shakespeare in Canada The Harper Factor Writers’ Rights Critical Essays Remembrance of Ourselves Assessing a Prime Minister’s Freelance Journalism in a Edited by Janice Fiamengo and Edited by Irena R. Makaryk and Policy Legacy Digital Age Gerald Lynch Kathryn Prince Edited by Jennifer Ditchburn and Nicole S. Cohen 9780776624334 • $39.95 paperback 9780776624419 • $39.95 paperback Graham Fox 9780773547964 • $34.95 cloth January 2017 December 2016 9780773548701 • $34.95 cloth A timely study of freelance journal- Sixteen original essays on Alice Munro’s Shakespeare in Canada examines the One year after the last federal election ists’ working conditions and what is writings. Covering Munro’s entire role that Shakespeare has played in comes a clear-eyed, balanced analysis at stake for the future of journalism career, from her first stories to her Canada over the past two hundred of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s in precarious times. final books, it will enhance the reading, years and the way Canada’s culture legacy and impact on Canadian public teaching, and appreciation of her re- has influenced our interpretation policy and institutions. markable – indeed miraculous – work. of his literary career and heritage.

November 2016 reviewcanada.ca 17 Trapped in Shenzhen Folktales from a hyper-modern 21st-century city Judy Fong Bates

In each story, Xue Yiwei focuses on a specific ated with his father since has unknowingly suffered Shenzheners event in the lives of his characters and how it from the ripple effect of that trauma. At the end of Xue Yiwei, translated from Mandarin by Darryl irrevocably changes and often damages their lives. this story the reader is given the faintest glimmer Sterk In the first story, “A Country Girl,” a Canadian of hope when the child places a hand on his father’s Linda Leith Publishing woman floats through life, until one day she boards knee. 176 pages, softcover a train in Montreal and sits beside a Chinese Shenzheners has been compared to James ISBN 9781988130033 man from Shenzhen, who is reading the same Joyce’s Dubliners. I see little similarity. Shenzheners Paul Auster book in Chinese translation that she is a powerful book in its own right, without a need is reading in English. During the five-hour ride, for comparison. In Dubliners, Joyce’s intimate, first saw Shenzhen in 2006, gazing through she experiences a profound connection that will lyrical prose brings to life with great detail and the window of a bus, driving past miles of haunt her for the rest of her life. In another story, compassion the lives of the inhabitants of early Imedium-rise apartments shrouded in a smog a student is fascinated by a street peddler, but after 20th century Dublin. Joyce takes the reader into of pollution with nary a piece of greenery in sight. witnessing the peddler’s mistreatment and beating homes and down streets and allows us to eaves- It was a place I could not wait drop on conversation between his to leave. Until 1980, when the characters. By contrast, the prose Chinese government declared These are not stories of solitude, but in Shenzheners is unadorned. For Shenzhen a Special Economic the most part, the translation by Zone, it was a quiet fishing vil- of gut-wrenching loneliness and the Darryl Sterk, an Edmonton-born lage on the border of mainland Mandarin Chinese translator liv- China, abutting Hong Kong’s New devastation that ensues when one human ing in Taiwan, serves these stories Territories. Since the designation being is unable to connect with another. well. However, I did wonder about Shenzhen has become China’s the occurrence of “capacious pros- fastest growing city with a popu- pects” five times in the first story. lation of more than ten million. It is now a major by a group of fellow students, he becomes con- And since it was never clear to me whether this was metropolitan centre, a commercial and industrial temptuous of the peddler and of himself, and ends an attempt at irony, it just stuck out. magnet where everyone is from somewhere else. up seeking refuge in the abstract world of physics. By being so spare, these nine stories in fact “Just like here in Canada,” says a character in When a teacher shares a love of poetry with a stu- have a strange folktale quality. The characters Shenzheners by Xue Yiwei. dent, events take a dark turn. The contents of a mys- have no names, are only known as the teacher, Xue Yiwei is an award-winning Chinese writer terious package ruin a man’s marriage even before the pedlar, big sister, mother, father, by a pronoun. of 16 books. He has lived in Montreal since 2002, it begins. After marrying a man she perceives to be And with the exception Father and Mother in “The when he moved there from China to study at the perfect for her, a woman is devastated by his infidel- Father,” the characters do not even have the benefit Université de Montréal. Shenzheners, a collection of ity and destroys herself in the course of her revenge. of a capital letter in their monikers. The stories have short stories, translated by Darryl Sterk, is the first to A musical prodigy, whose future is destroyed by his little sense of place, and it is only when reading the appear in English. This collection offers the reader teacher’s depravity, remains silent and decides to last one and its descriptions of traffic and crowd- a bleak vision of contemporary industrialized retreat into a life of mediocrity rather than face the ing did I feel that I was in a bustling modern city. China. Although a character in the first story com- demands of his brilliance. A mother’s obsession Instead, we are told about a park, a river, a row of pares Shenzhen to Canada, the comparison does with a stranger ruins her marriage and prevents her trees, a room, but not much more. By being min- not hold. When my parents came to Canada they from connecting with her own child. At the end of a imal in his descriptions and leaving places and were, like many immigrants, filled with hope and work shift, a taxi driver enters a pizzeria and relives especially characters without names, Xue Yiwei cre- believed that their sacrifice would result in a better the death of his wife and daughter. ates anonymity and reinforces the theme of aliena- life for their children. The people inShenzheners do In each of these stories the life of the main char- tion. Indeed, these stories are not folktales: they are not share that hope, or, if they ever did, it has been acter is altered by a single act or decision. Often the not allegories or parables; the characters are not destroyed. In fact, they feel trapped. These are not event is a tragic one, and one from which there is no archetypes whose actions might provide a moral stories of solitude, but of gut-wrenching loneliness escape or resolution, leaving the character in a state guide to living. The reader does not close the book and the devastation that ensues when one human of hopeless limbo. with a sigh of satisfaction. The writer goes straight to being is unable to connect with another. And in the Of these nine stories I found The Father to be the the bone; everything else is superfluous. last story, The Taxi Driver, the protagonist decides most powerful. This story begins with the death of This is not an easy collection and Xue Yiwei’s to leave the city and return to his remaining family a child’s mother. During the process of his father’s pessimistic vision of life is often hard to swallow. in another part of China. grief, the child discovers that the father whom he What he does, though, is shine an unflinching light has always seen as aloof and reserved was not on the lives of people in contemporary China, and, Judy Fong Bates is the author of The Year of Finding always so. He learns that a single act of cowardice in doing so, questions the price that China is paying Memory (Vintage, 2011), a memoir of returning to and indecision (which also involved his mother) for this “modern” society—a question that China China and uncovering her parents’ past. had changed his father forever. Everyone associ- (and perhaps all of us) ignores at its peril.

18 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada A Mic of One’s Own Searching for women in a revolution that was televised Andrea Warner

relied. Like many of today’s media Is This Live? Inside the Wild disruptors, they showcased young Early Years of MuchMusic The people, and they evinced an inter- Nation’s Music Station est in cultural diversity. Znaimer Christopher Ward insisted that he wanted a range of Random House Canada voices on air. Not looking for perfec- 336 pages, softcover tion in his hosts, he prioritized “per- ISBN 9780345810342 sonality, preferring memorability to smooth,” he tells Ward in the book. Fearless As Possible (Under the Fat and thin, male and female and Circumstances): A Memoir “anything in between,” as Znaimer Denise Donlon put it, anyone “who lived the life of House of Anansi music” had a chance. Not only was 352 pages, hardcover this not what television looked like ISBN 9781487000028 in the early 1980s, but it was also not Is This Live? documents a moment in the coun- remotely what the music industry looked like. try’s cultural history that can never be recreated. In Is This Live?, Stephen Stohn, an entertain- n 1984, a Montrealer named Corey Hart This was not merely a platform for a new art form ment lawyer and producer, notes that Znaimer’s went from relative anonymity to rock stardom, but a new way of making live television, one that “crowning achievement really is hiring young, ener- Icomplete with screaming mobs of fans. Hart’s was defiantly imperfect. This is the spirit of Ward’s getic, creative people and giving them vastly more debut album had been released in Canada the book, too, whose format mirrors the pastiche responsibility and freedom than they ever should year before, to tepid results. A warmer response aesthetic of Much itself. In it, Ward’s own remin- have, and paying them almost nothing.” According from the American market surely helped. But there iscences of on-air and off-camera conversations to Ward, it was the late John Martin, Much’s was another factor: 1984 was the year MuchMusic with the likes of George Harrison, Kate Bush and co-founder and the original director of program- launched, beaming Hart’s pouty lips and spiked Maestro Fresh Wes sit alongside interviews with his ming, who was perhaps the real visionary: Martin hair into Canadian homes, making Hart this coun- erstwhile colleagues and MuchMusic executives, “hired people who were comfortable with disarray, try’s first music video star. I was five years old at the including the network’s founder, Moses Znaimer, inspired by anarchy,” Ward writes. His standard time, and Hart’s First Offense and Michael Jackson’s and a trove of trivia from the Much archives, a fas- rule was, “You can do anything you want … as long Thriller were the only two LPs I considered mine. cinating record for amateur pop music historians. as it doesn’t cost anything.” I knew all the words to the songs, perhaps because, Ward’s jump-cut–style text evades a linear narra- But whosever idea it was, paying young people like many music aficionados a decade older than tive, but a clear picture does emerge of Much’s role “almost nothing” and giving them more respon- me, I had gone from never having seen a music in shaping some major Canadian music industry sibility than they should ever have is not anarchy; video to being able to recreate every twitchy, fright- careers. At one point, Corey Hart talks about the it is exploitation. And it is important to reframe, night move of the creeper zombie dance, and character that he and the director Rob Quartly cre- or at least offer an alternative interpretation of, spending my evenings running through the back ated for his initial videos. “The lone wolf persona this MuchMusic mythology. There is tremendous alley of an East Vancouver living room, pretending is true to my actual personality, so it was easy for unchecked privilege in having a “cool job” that my already-thick spectacles were sleek, dark me to play this solitary character,” Hart tells Ward, requires long hours and pays very little (and no sunglasses.­ in one wonderfully self-mythologizing moment. overtime), particularly when that cool job prom- This was Canada—or at least its youth cohort— At another point, Blue Rodeo’s Jim Cuddy recalls ises visibility, representation of your voice and in the first years of MuchMusic. In Is This Live?: how the group had already been playing for seven ideas, and a chance at shaping a country’s pop Inside the Wild Early Years of MuchMusic The or eight years without a major breakthrough and culture landscape. It is, generally speaking, a kind Nation’s Music Station, former Much VJ Christopher Warner Music suggested they take a job as k.d. of opportunity that only a select few with resources Ward presents a quasi oral history of the channel’s lang’s backing band for six months. “We had no and support can afford to take. And one wonders first decade. A scrappy affair held together by hair- fucking interest in that,” Cuddy recalls. Shortly if Znaimer or Martin themselves would agree to spray and safety pins, MuchMusic was the perfect, thereafter, in 1989, “Try” became the band’s first hit, be grossly underpaid for the relative and nebulous careless wild child to convey the bloated excess, largely thanks to the video making it into significant privilege of enjoying “freedom” on the job. ambition and artistry of the record industry in the rotation on Much. Indeed, Znaimer’s vision is equally often rather 1980s and ’90s—and the wide-eyed awe of the next Znaimer, co-founder of MuchMusic as well as regressive. “I considered you part of my intellectual generation of music fans. CityTV, emerges as an unusual figure—a visionary arsenal as opposed to the big-knocker part of my and, sometimes, a progressive one. His TV stations arsenal,” he tells Ward, not in the 1980s, when it Andrea Warner is a writer (CBC Music, Exclaim! were disruptors before disruption became a busi- would have been bad enough, but in a present-day Pitchfork), critic and author of We Oughta Know: ness buzzword and the subject of Harvard Business interview for this book. This kind of rock-and-roll, How Four Women Ruled the ’90s and Changed Review stories and New Yorker deconstructions. boys’ club nonsense is part of the foundation of Canadian Music (Eternal Cavalier Press, 2015). She They were television channels that looked like little Much, and Is This Live? is rife with both subtle co-hosts the weekly feminist pop culture podcast else in the television universe, and not only because and explicit examples. Sometimes Ward calls it “Pop This!” of the flashy camera techniques on which they out, but occasionally he is complicit in it, as when

November 2016 reviewcanada.ca 19 ­introducing the heavy metal singer-songwriter Lee lessly, to Whitesnake’s tour manager. Taking it off Aaron: was not an option—she was working as a publicist HAIKU for bands signed to famed music manager Sam In a genre of music where most of the guys Feldman. Instead, she tore off the backing and wore looked like women, where were the heavy it inside her jacket to hide the image. Ice Pond metal femmes fatales? The ones who actually That ends up being a good metaphor. Donlon Picks and autographs, looked good in lipstick and platform shoes? writes compellingly about other showdowns with The women—who are they? The Runaways? the industry’s sexism—in one interview she chal- ice pond scarred by hockey stops. Lita Ford, maybe, but Joan Jett was always a lenges Professor Griff, of the critically acclaimed Past survives in bits. punk, no? Vixen—c’mon, Richard Marx wrote Public Enemy, on his sexist views, only to have him their hit, “Edge of a Broken Heart.” That’s double down, adding homophobic slurs. And she Janice Colbert problematic. talks about some of the socially progressive content she presided over at Much, such as The Big Tease, Ward seems to be raising a question about a special on The NewMusic, which she co-hosted the lack of representation of women in a male-­ with Jana Lynne White, focusing on female exploit- Sext dominated genre, but he is glib and trades in ation and power in the music business. But Donlon gender clichés, which undermines any sincere never explicitly identifies any of her own experi- What are you wearing? interest in the subject. Is This Live? zeroes in on ences of sexism. At one point she writes, rather Something that breathes: a dress the first decade of Much’s existence, so the com- vaguely, “As a woman, I’m sorry to say, you do need made of living doves. ing domination by Canadian women in the music to run faster, work harder, jump higher, and learn to industry—the confluence of Céline Dion, Shania thrive sleep-deprived. Remember what was said of Kateri Lanthier Twain, Alanis Morissette and Sarah McLachlan— Ginger Rogers: ‘She did everything Fred Astaire did, is not covered here. But, of course, that was an backwards and in high heels.’” But about 30 pages authorial decision, and a writer more genuinely later, she contradicts this statement, expressing book maker: interested in the gender narrative might have fol- frustration with constantly being asked to com- lowed that thread a year or two on. ment on being a woman in the business. “The truth first I fold the mountain Throughout Is This Live? female employees do was, I wasn’t aware of ever being treated differently, then, the valley recall their own experiences with sexism, and that and I wouldn’t have whined about it if I was.” can be edifying. Catherine McClenahan, the first There is so much internalized sexism in that one Terry Ann Carter woman VJ at Much, provides some insight (“Except line it is heartbreaking: if women complain about for Moses, I loved working there,” she tells Ward), as gender bias, it’s “whining.” It also speaks to a well- do Laurie Brown, Denise Donlon, Monika Deol and established coping mechanism, the legacy, it seems, gravel laneway Erica Ehm. It is particularly striking to read how dif- of growing up with a father she loved, but whose out of sync with the footsteps ferently Ehm, Much’s second-ever female VJ, and temper she describes as a “kind of rolling wrath,” behind me Anthony were treated. Anthony’s disruptor/­agitator something that could not be contained once it got identity—he had no TV experience, although he the best of him. He would call her a “slovenly bitch” had been a radio DJ—ushered in a new era of or a “clumsy clod” in the heat of his fury, although Marianne Paul the VJs as stars, and his antics were not just toler- he never hit her. She admits in the book that he ated, but celebrated. “At [Toronto radio station] prepared her for a lifetime of dealing with people Janice Colbert, a writer and painter Q107 they let me do whatever I wanted, and that’s just like him. “I don’t see rage as something to be divides her time between Toronto and what attracted MuchMusic, and that’s what they scared of,” she writes. “I see it as a sign of weakness.” Key West, Florida. She holds an MFA encouraged,” he tells Ward. Ehm, meanwhile, was Donlon writes regularly with this kind of gor- in creative writing from the University critiqued constantly, both inside Much and by fans. geous, raw clarity, and often in a witty and self- of British Columbia. Her poems have Ward recalls that she would spend hours preparing deprecating manner. That, too, is perhaps a coping been published in the LRC and Prairie for her interviews, but her inexperience on camera mechanism, a way to control tempers and tempos Fire. In late fall 2016 her chapbook is was evident, and she tells Ward the speculation in situations of volatility involving highly driven forthcoming with Frog Hollow Press. was endless that she had slept with the boss. “I was creative people, many with sizable egos. Donlon … repeatedly reminded … that I was easily replace- writes about her interactions and friendships with Kateri Lanthier’s second book, Siren, able,” she says. “I was paid less because I was a girl.” an array of iconic musicians, sharing stories about is forthcoming in Spring 2017 from Neil Young and Annie Lennox, Céline Dion and Signal Editions at Véhicule Press. “ ecause I was a girl” is a loose thread through- Joni Mitchell. (“Evenings around Joni require some Bout Denise Donlon’s memoir, Fearless As stamina.”) A fight she has with Leonard Cohen Terry Ann Carter has published five Possible (Under the Circumstances), which charts about including his classic “So Long, Marianne” collections of poetry and five chap- the former Much host and executive’s life and on a greatest hits compilation is a highlight. Sony books of haiku. She has been awarded career in the music industry. Donlon spent 14 years wanted to include the song and Cohen did not. a community fellowship to study the with Much and its parent company, CHUM. She Donlon did her best to convince him, but he would influence of Buddhism on contem- was host and producer of The NewMusic, then not budge. Finally, she told him, “Leonard, you porary haiku at the University of director of music programming, and eventually know we can put it out without your blessing.” The Victoria’s Centre of Study for Religion vice-president and general manager. She subse- poet was furious, Donlon writes. They continued and Society. She is the president of quently became the first female president of Sony to argue on the phone, and Cohen warned that if Haiku Canada. For more information, Music Canada, followed by a brief stint at CBC in she insisted on this course of action, she would visit www.terryanncarter.com. the executive suite. “forever hold a much smaller place in my heart.” A self-assured, confident writer, Donlon talks Understandably, Donlon is crushed. Later, Cohen Marianne Paul is a Kitchener novelist candidly about her feminism and its evolution. After sends a fence-mending note, written with the same and poet who has recently transi- finding out about periods from a friend, she recalls effortless eloquence as anything by Leonard Cohen, tioned to Japanese short-form poetry, asking, “What happens to the boys, then?” “Nothing,” which Donlon reprints verbatim. And “Marianne” primarily haiku, haiga, senryu and her friend told her. “‘Nothing?’ It was my first inkling did make it onto that album. haibun. Marianne won the Canada that the world might just be unfair to girls,” Donlon The music industry has changed substantially in category of the 2016 Vancouver Cherry writes. It is a funny moment, but also a poignant one. the last 35 years and Donlon’s book, like Ward’s, cap- Blossom Festival Haiku Invitational. In a chapter titled “The Feminist Compromise,” she tures the business at a more profitable, and greedy, Her books are published by Bookland recalls being handed a backstage pass at a stop on time. It offers a unique and fascinating vantage point Press. Whitesnake’s Slide It In tour. The picture on the pass into that history, and Donlon proves an inspiring showed a woman’s bright red lips, lightly parted, a figure, if an occasionally complicated one, who has banana or snake or some other visual euphemism genuinely worked hard at being as fearless as pos- halfway in. “I’m not wearing that!” she said, fruit- sible—under the circumstances, of course.

20 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada A big anniversary requires a big thank you.

On October 13, the Literary Review of Canada celebrated its 25th year of publishing award-winning coverage of Canadian culture and public affairs, by hosting an Anniversary Gala in Toronto. The LRC would not be celebrating this milestone anniversary without the generous support of you, some of Canada’s most passionate readers.

We cannot thank enough the group of visionary anniversary supporters who have each helped us hold our 25th Anniversary Gala and who have ensured the LRC will achieve even more in its next 25 years:

“On behalf of the entire LRC family, thank you: to you for buying tables and tickets; to our government, foundation, Tom Kierans Isabel Bassett Helen Walsh Michael Decter Trina McQueen corporate and individual Jack Rabinovitch and Salah Bachir Noreen Taylor and Sabi Marwah funders for your support and our individual ticket buyers throughout the year; to all those who contributed to Maclean’s; Don McCutchan; Simone Lehmann; AbeBooks.com; House of Anansi Press; Penguin Random House; HarperCollins Canada Ltd.; Little, Brown; University of Regina the wonderful silent auction; Press; Roméo Dallaire; David Foot; Richard Gwyn; John English; Thomas King; Michael and thank all of you you for Adams; Norman Doidge; Charlotte Gray; Linda McQuaig; Steven Pinker; Rectory Café; celebrating with us.” Paddle Toronto; Joseph Boyden; Margaret MacMillan; Oliver and Bonacini; Lawrence Hill; Honourable Hugh Segal and Donna Armstrong Segal; Roch Carrier; Alain Trudel; Toronto —Helen Walsh, Publisher Symphony Orchestra; Eleanor Wachtel; Chris Doda; Via Rail; Albino Silva and Chiado; Anthony DeSa; Charlotte Mickie; Bronwyn Drainie; Hot Docs; Elias “The Spartan” Theodorou; Lachlan Chang; New Farm; Creemore Springs; MamaEarth Organics; Andrew Heintzman; Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library; Loryl MacDonald; Chris Thomaidis; Shaw Festival; Henry of Pelham; Woodbourne Inn; Stratford Festival; Bruce Hotel; McMichael Canadian Art Collection; Cashew & Clive; Aga Khan Museum; McEwan Group; Cameron Bailey; Terry Fallis; Soulpepper; Tafelmusik; National Ballet of Canada.

November 2016 reviewcanada.ca 21 The Limits of Resilience Katherena Vermette’s new novel, and how we read indigenous fiction Carleigh Baker

The Break Katherena Vermette House of Anansi 352 pages, softcover ISBN 9781487001117

oving is the only hope,” a media “ presence who really should remain Mnameless recently said of a troubled Northern Ontario community. A predictable settler solution, to which the author and playwright Drew Hayden Taylor provides the best response: “Social malaise doesn’t come with a street address,” he says. “It comes with history.” How did we come to accept the street-address view, which has an undeniable pedigree in this country? Historically, settler literature, from James Fenimore Cooper to John Richardson, has portrayed pre-contact land as empty, treacherous and hostile toward those who seek to conquer and civilize it. As the scholar and author Margery Fee points out, this narrative of an unforgiving “no Métis Mountie, from David Garneau’s series “Cowboys and Indians (and Métis?).” 2002. Oil on canvas. man’s land” contributed to and even heroized the (Image courtesy of the artist) settlement of Canada. Stories are powerful and pervasive, and this narrative persists today. The Break, we are told by an unseen narrator, learns that the victim was a family member, the It is not confined to the realm of historical writ- is a section of undeveloped territory “just west of effectsof severing ties with her family become clear. ing. As readers, we are missing the point on a grand McPhillips Street.” “Hydro land” is the designation A support structure built away from her com- scale if we do not take into account the politics of given to this space, as the narrator says: “likely set munity, dependent on a new life with her non-­ land in indigenous fiction. In the work of Métis poet aside in the days before anything was out there. indigenous husband and their kids, turns out to and author Katherena Vermette, this manifests as When all that low land on the west side of the have its drawbacks. Stella appears as a passive, an exploration of indigenous characters in urban Red River was only tall grasses and rabbits.” The even selfish character at times, but make no mis- neighbourhoods. Break is defined in settler terms—land as empty take, every woman in this book is actively working Vermette’s view of urban life was powerfully and valueless until validated by electricity. In an to survive. articulated in North End Love Songs, a collection equally poignant and pithy history lesson, we learn Whether or not a broken bone heals harder, as of poetry that acknowledges her complicated rela- how distribution of land in the North End of the the adage goes, the women in The Break constantly tionship with Winnipeg’s North End. Vermette grew city shaped the rights of its residents: “That was seek to harden themselves against the challenges up in this neighbourhood in the late 1980s and when you had to own a certain amount of land they face, with varying degrees of success. This early ’90s and still considers it her home—warts to vote, and all those lots were made just inches reality is exhausting, and makes it difficult for them and all. Winnipeg activist and co-founder of Red smaller,” the narrator says of the property around to do anything other than survive. Cheryl, Stella’s Rising Magazine Lenard Monkman speaks of his the Break. aunty, drinks more than she would like to, and experience growing up in the North End: “During For Stella, a Métis woman who gave the Break smokes like a chimney, “loving the dirty smoke in my teenage years and for a good majority of my its name, “if only in her head,” this land parallels an her throat.” Her friend Rita often defaults to hos- 20s ... you’d always leave the house on alert, always internal fracture. Grief over the unresolved loss of tility as a means of self-protection. Stella’s cousin watching out in case. I think that’s just part of the her mother has slowly colonized Stella, causing her Louisa, a social worker, struggles to keep it together way it is growing up in the inner city.” to retreat from her family. She feels the loss most for both family and clients after her partner aban- The land we grow up on is home, and home, as acutely in the break from her Kookom, who raised dons her. anyone who grew up on the proverbial wrong side her while her mother battled addiction. of the tracks knows, is more than a collection of hos- Although hoping to escape her pain by moving I look at my files, all the poor, young children tile statistics and news stories. It is your community. to the “better side of McPhillips,” as an optimis- already with epic stories, their mothers mean In The Break, her stunning debut novel, Vermette tic real estate agent says, and through her daily or sad. The empty space where their fathers revisits the North End, still choosing her words with responsibilities of marriage and motherhood, are supposed to be … I can’t seem to be a a poet’s precision. She takes on the unruly task of Stella instead finds herself in a frozen state. The social worker right now, I think. I can only be weaving ten narrative voices, most of them female. story begins when she witnesses a violent sexual a left woman. A family tree at the book’s beginning proves useful. assault unfold in the Break through her window I am trying to feel it. Like if I can just feel But before we meet any of them, we meet the land. one evening and does little more than call the it then I can describe it, give it a name and a police. She chooses to attend to her crying children, label and then deal with it … I am trying to Carleigh Baker is a writer who lives in Vancouver. leaving the victim to fend for herself. When she fight back the tears because I don’t want

22 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada to cry here, not at work where I am supposed count on her mother, who is consumed by her own This experience, as well as the death of Fontaine, to be hard and unemotional, but I can’t. I look suffering. Like Louisa, Phoenix is also hardening prompted Vermette’s affiliation with Drag the Red, up to the pictures pinned to my corkboard— herself to face the world, but without role models a group of Winnipeg volunteers who dredge the my two boys, my family, my man—they all the results are destructive. She is left in the hands river in search of lost family members. Many of blur too.” of the state, incarcerated. those they are looking for are the victims of cases This brings up another issue with the critical the police consider closed. In 2016, working with In both The Break and North End Love Songs, treatment of The Break. It has already been con- an all-women crew, Vermette co-wrote and co- families gather strength from each other, but their sidered by reviewers as a whodunit mystery and directed a short film about Drag the Red, called connection to the land is never out of the picture. a police procedural, which unfortunately takes This River. In a scene from the film, she expresses In her poetry, Vermette makes this link through the work completely out of context. It is, in fact, a her frustration with police apathy: “[They] won’t metaphor, comparing aunties and uncles to trees, powerful indictment of the real-life police inves- look unless they’re certain someone has gone in. and invoking the currents of the Red River: tigation of crimes involving indigenous victims in They say it’s futile.” For the members of Drag the Winnipeg, both female and male. Red, pulling a dredge from the muddy waters with those ones she can After the assault witnessed by Stella, the investi- no idea what they will find, taking action is the only climb into gators are seen by her family as a further threat to solution. lean against their safety, rather than its saviours. And it is easy A generous storyteller, Ver­mette does not take the strong dark bark it for granted that all readers will rest her small body inherently understand how dam- within their round arms There is much media talk of indigenous aged the relationship between indigenous people and Canadian their sharp leaves resilience as if it is an otherworldly society has become. As readers, reach out over the river cultural gift. we can honour this generosity by not allowing ourselves to be lulled she watches how into a satisfying sense of camarad- the waves fold to understand why. Officer Scott, who is Métis, is erie, having suffered alongside fictional characters. into each other eager to help but admits to himself at one point We can honour it by not repeating over and over like family that all the women in the family he is trying to how strong the women in this book are. It is true, help look the same to him: “same long dark hair, they are strong. But let us not nod our heads in grim While the older generation is imbued with the straight and shiny, same almond eyes, almost.” His recognition of this strength, as if acknowledgement hardiness of an elm, the youth, delicate and resil- partner, Officer Christie, is a TV cop stereotype: equals solidarity. Let us not pull our lips into thin ient, possess bird-like attributes “poised for flight / gruff, doughnut loving and utterly racist. He openly lines and furrow our brows and express amazement one small foot / on the curb.” acknowledges having no interest in serving and at their resilience, as if its origin is a mystery. This In The Break, this seems truest for the female protecting these women, whom he calls “dime a makes it too easy to dismiss. characters. The support structures built by these dozen.” Even his expression is a cliché, but it is one Let us look instead at the history behind the women to maintain each other can sometimes drawn from reality. social malaise. Let us look at these characters as exclude men, even “good men,” from the picture. In 2015, Maclean’s magazine placed Winnipeg survivors and leaders within a damaged support Since she cannot reconcile her fierce independ- at the heart of “Canada’s racism problem.” The structure, but not defined by it. And let us look at ence with her vulnerability, Louisa finds herself story came out following the death of Tina Fontaine, what is working: family, community, neighbour- with a kind and loving partner whom she cannot whose body was discovered by police divers while hood. People. As Stella’s Kookom says: “it means fully trust. She knows this is one of the reasons searching for the body of Faron Hall, a Dakota man. so much to have people. It is everything.” In The for his departure: “maybe he’s gone forever, like Fontaine’s family expressed hope that her death Break, we see the complex and occasionally perni- I always thought he would be. Sick of me and all my might ignite greater interest in the thousands of cious nature of relationships, but we also see their bullshit. Sick of my never giving him what he wants. unsolved cases of missing and murdered indigen- undeniable beauty. I don’t blame him. I’m pretty sick of me too.” ous women and men. Vermette has placed most of her protagonists This is a subject Katherena Vermette has direct at the nucleus of their familial support structures experience with. When she was 14, her brother because this is indeed a role women play. And one Donovan disappeared after a night out with friends. Coming up of the critical responses to the book has been to In North End Love Songs, Vermette addresses the marvel at the strength and resilience of its women. attitudes held by the police who investigated in the LRC While accurate, this response is problematic in its the incident: superficiality. Although there is much media talk of indigenous resilience as if it is an otherworldly cul- indians go missing A neuroscience boom tural gift, it in fact takes significant daily mainten- they tell the family Ian Gold and ance. It is precisely this effort that Vermette focuses indians go missing on—countless moments marked by a blinking back everyday Suparna Choudhury of tears and a hardening of the jaw. The persistent blue suits shrug anxiety about speaking out at times when simply no sense looking Philosophizing novels having a voice may be dangerous. To leave these they said moments unacknowledged is to relegate indigen- he’ll turn up when Andrew Forbes ous women to the mythical realm—the noble and he gets bored long-suffering Pocahontas. It ignores the socio- or broke Indigenous London political underpinnings that create the need for Ronald Wright such strength. “They [the police] didn’t understand, or for what- And what happens when strength reaches ever reason, it wasn’t relayed that he was a kid. My its limits? When sisters cannot be there for each parents felt that my brother’s disappearance wasn’t Sexualities and the city other, or mothers are not there for their children? taken seriously,” Vermette said, in a 2014 interview. Amy Lavender Harris The Break explores the idea in a novelistic context. Six months after his disappearance, Donovan’s Nowhere in this book are the limits of resilience body was recovered in . “We were stretched more thin than with the character of broken,” Vermette said. “We never repaired from Paikin on Bill Davis Phoenix. She possesses a brutality that shocks the that fracture that happened. We had started the Michael Taube women of the older generation. Besides devastat- journey of my brother’s disappearance with a lot ing violence, her actions signify a direct threat to of energy and a lot of anger and a lot of frustration. Sandra Martin the protective, female-focused support network That really drove us for a long time, trying to find they have counted on for generations. But Phoenix answers. And then they never came. He was a good on Emma Donoghue is a product of her environment—she cannot kid. And he should have been treated like one.”

November 2016 reviewcanada.ca 23 Iron Curtains Ballet’s transcendent form has long been pitted against political intrigue in Russia John Fraser

recent tour de force, the opera and ballet house in grotesque rivalries and political intrigue. This is at Bolshoi Confidential: Secrets of the Russian Toronto (ineptly named the Four Seasons Centre the heart of what intrigues so many outsiders who Ballet from the Rule of the Tsars to Today for the Performing Arts), had been coming in for get involved with studying the history and culture Simon Morrison massive praise. Gergiev was more than curious and of the ballet world. It is what informs all the dark Knopf Canada made a lightning visit to see the building, professed tales of brutal artistic directors (Darren Aronofsky’s 506 pages, hardcover himself “delighted,” and almost as quickly decided 2010 film Dark Swan, for example, or last year’s ISBN 9780871402967 Diamond was his man, provided he could design a television series Flesh and Bone). On this front, the house on the already “available” foundations. Bolshoi trumps them all. This is the opening para- Diamond, a South African émigré who fled the graph of the book: hen Jack Diamond, the Canadian old apartheid regime as a young man, is a commit- architect esteemed internationally for ted egalitarian. As an architect, unusually, he puts On the night of January 17, 2013, Sergey Filin, Whis concert halls and opera houses, performance and audience concerns—sight lines, artistic director of the Bolshoi Theater Ballet, was chosen to design a new opera house in St. acoustics, storage space and rehearsal rooms— returned to his apartment near the central Petersburg in 2009, he did not make too many ahead of grand architectural conceits. By his own ring road of Moscow. He parked his black assumptions about the project. This was wise. His admission, he made only one assumption. Despite Mercedes outside the building and trudged patron for the project was the notoriously aggres- the elitist nature of opera and ballet, he thought through the wet falling snow toward the main sive and fickle Valery Gergiev, the entrance. His two boys were legendary head of everything art- asleep inside, but he expected istic in St. Petersburg: opera com- Czar, dictator or “persuasive” president: that his wife, Mariya, herself a pany, symphony orchestra, ballet dancer, would be waiting up company, even urban arts plan- at the Bolshoi Theatre, they all have had for him. Before he could tap in ning and, who knows, probably their showpiece box seats in the first tier. the security code to open the the time of day as well. Gergiev metal gate, however, a thickset was also a close ally of Russian man strode up behind him and leader Vladimir Putin, which was both useful and he was setting out to create a “palace of art for the shouted a baleful hello. When Filin turned problematic, as the post-modernist French archi- people” and, having surveyed the czarist echoes around, the hooded assailant flung a jar of tect Dominique Perrault would very soon find out. of the old Mariinsky next door, he was sure of one distilled battery acid into his face, and then Perrault had already been commissioned for thing: there would be no need for a “czar’s box”— sped off in a waiting car. Filin dropped to the this project, a new opera house that was to stand the old-fashioned royal perch at the symbolic cen- ground and cried for help, rubbing snow into juxtaposed with the historic Mariinsky Theatre tre of the first tier. his face and eyes to stop the burning. (Mariinsky I) and was envisioned as a magnificent As Vladimir Putin’s best American friend, new monument to the glory of Russian culture. Donald Trump, would say: “Wrong!” Morrison’s account hardly lets up once from Poor Perrault had even overseen the laying of the The “Putin Box” that Diamond was obliged to this point on. The unfortunate Filin—caught out foundations for Mariisnky II when Gergiev (and create is even grander than the old czar’s box and by intense rivalries within the Bolshoi and partially more importantly Putin) took an intense dislike to has become the updated symbol of what anyone blinded for life—and the acid attack itself became the design. Officially, the reason given was insuffi- peering into the realm of Russian performing arts symbols for the screwed-up side of Bolshoi his- cient accommodation to severe northern weather has to learn, first and foremost: politics and hier- tory, a dark leitmotif nestled ominously beside conditions. Unlikely, but whatever the reasons archy trump everything. Well, almost everything. the art form’s high points through more than two (probably they included soaring cost projections), That lesson is at the heart of Bolshoi Confidential: centuries: the extraordinary artistry of two of the even as the great hole was being dug and the foun- Secrets of the Russian Ballet from the Rule of greatest ballerinas the world has ever seen (Maya dational concrete poured, the Russians were look- the Tsars to Today by the Princeton University Plisetskaya and Galina Ulanova), Pyotr Ilyich ing around for another architect altogether. scholar and New York Times commentator Simon Tchaikovsky’s plaintive and soaring ballet scores, Welcome to the often indistinguishable worlds Morrison, an engrossing and comprehensive his- the transformation of male dancing from “the of Russian politics and Russian ballet. Politics tory of the Moscow theatre and ballet company that effete” to the “virile,” and the greatest ballet ever rules in Russia, right down to the business of who share as their name the Russian word for BIG. Big in created (Swan Lake). We travel mostly on the polit- sits where, as Jack Diamond was to discover to his everything: big in storied history and accomplish- ical caboose of this transcontinental journey, from chagrin. As luck would have it, Diamond’s most ment, big in scandal, big in courage, and just as big czarist court dramas throughout much of the 19th in moral turpitude and betrayal. The story of the century to the cruel grotesqueries of the commun- John Fraser is president and CEO of the new Bolshoi, inevitably, is also the story of Russia. ist czar, Joseph Stalin, right down to the “people’s National NewsMedia Council of Canada and the Right from the start, Morrison, a Canadian-born choice”—President Vladimir Putin. Czar, dictator master emeritus of Massey College. He is a past and -educated academic (University of Toronto or “persuasive” president: at the Bolshoi Theatre, dance reviewer for The Globe and Mailand the and McGill, before he headed off to Princeton) has as with St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky, they all have had author of two books on ballet: Kain and Augustyn to grapple with an art form that demands of the their showpiece box seats in the first tier and they (MacMillan, 1977) and Private View: Inside human body the extremities of physical endurance all have their representatives running the show. Baryshnikov’s American Ballet Theatre (Bantam and the soaring demands of artistic creativity—and Following that explosive introduction, Morrison Books, 1988). which, in Russia, has long been pitted against mercifully follows a more or less orthodox chrono-

24 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada O’Keefe Centre in Toronto into an amazing career in the West, where he got to embrace the destiny his talent had intended for him. Some of the fellow dancers and administrators at the Kirov and the Bolshoi—the sorts that got into such crazed anger and paranoid plots that they could conceive of that appalling acid attack—were what he fled and what stain the history and reality in Russia and remain a thread throughout Morrison’s tale. What Morrison also makes clear is that the Bolshoi is, first and foremost, the symbol of Russia—its sense of itself, its pride and, sadly from time to time, its shame. That clears the air for some wonderful small biographies of leading dancers and choreographers and bizarre adminis- trators. This strategy mostly works well. Is it unfair to afflict the author with his occasional descent into “vacuum-cleanerism” where no detail is left unattended, no intrigue unexplored? It is a small enough complaint, as is the fact that there will be those who might, occasionally, feel that they have been thrust into War and Peace minus the handy dramatis personae guide provided in some editions of the Tolstoy masterpiece. Bolshoi Confidential, however, has an excellent index and even those of us who fancy we know a thing or two about the “Die Maskerade im Theater, grosses Divertissement von Henry (Letzte Scene).” Johann Christian Schoeller. 1833. company and ballet itself will be (are!) grateful for (Image courtesy of the New York Public Library Digital Collections) it. The Bolshoi journey is as wild as Russian his- logical order, from the Bolshoi’s murky beginnings he set an example to administrators of all Soviet tory. Out of the strictures and occasional chaos of in the 18th century, when Catherine the Great enterprises, ballet companies no less than state late czarist rule we get Swan Lake. Out of the com- enfranchised one of her princelings to organize factories. Morrison reinforces this “example from munist revolution we get extraordinary dancers: court entertainments, including a ballet com- the top,” I think, by carefully delineating the appal- propagandistic ballets with crappy choreography, pany. That, in turn, eventually brought into theat- ling and often cruel managerial machinations of for sure, but also those dancers who set world rical and ballet history a dangerously intriguing successive general managers and artistic directors, standards for athleticism and grace. Out of post- English rogue named Michael Maddox, who took none more pig-stupid than Elena Konstantinovna communist Russia we get … well, an amazing con- everyone—empress, princeling, dancers, audi- Malinovskaya (1875–1942): “Stern, stout, and flush- clusion by the author: ences, even orphans—along for a very merry ride, faced from nicotine, she knew nothing of culture.” indebting everyone and everything for hundreds of Like Stalin, she believed in regular purges and an Ballet is the cruelest and most wondrous of thousands of rubles, exploiting performers without atmosphere of imminent denunciation and ran- the arts, a discipline and a dream that asks remorse, and concluding his sojourn at the Bolshoi dom terror. people to aspire to the angelic in a demonic in a cataclysmic fire at its first performing theatre The Bolshoi story also includes the competi- competitive process. The results of that pro- (the Petrovsky) on October 8, 1805 that looked for a tion between the Bolshoi and its great rival, the cess at the Bolshoi, time and time again, have while to be the end of the entire endeavour: tutus, Mariinsky, in St. Petersburg (known for decades proven artistically stupendous but personally, the tour-en-l’air and transmogrified swans yet to under the communists as the Kirov in Leningrad). physically catastrophic. Yet the dancers keep come! The czars favoured the former, the communists dancing, hoping to escape the constraints of Ballet, however, is—if nothing else—an art that the latter. Critical opinion over the years tended to the here and now and grasp instead at some- defies and transcends logic, earthly damnation, credit the Mariisnky/Kirov with purity of line and thing everlasting. There is no other choice. To bankruptcy, philistinism, cruelty, misplaced ideal- elegance of production, set against the Bolshoi’s dance, after all, is to condition the body, and ism, ineptitude and ordinary sordid corruption. It staple of brutalism and over-the-top heroics (The with it the mind, to let go. defies it with intangibles: through sheer beauty, for Red Poppy or Spartacus, for example, or The Bright example, or through fleeting moments of choreo- Stream or The Bolt and a whole procession of other So far as I know, there is no better popular study graphic sublimity, through solitary or collabora- doctrinally approved offerings). But Morrison does of the company, its history and its principal stars tive acts of pure genius, through heroic eroticism not delve too much into this rivalry, quite correctly, through the centuries. It is written with grace and or metaphysical dreaming. Is this in fact the very because a lot of it was arbitrary or outright false. All a formal intimacy that effortlessly draws you in to definition of bipolar art? To have all of this, and the dancers in both companies were subject to the the tale yet makes sure you do not settle for easy so much more, coupled with Russian emotional vagaries of the times. They all danced in various answers—even when someone is throwing battery extravagance is, quite simply, incredible. What productions of Swan Lake or The Sleeping Beauty acid around. Simon Morrison has done, therefore, and wonder- or The Nutcracker, regardless of which company fully so, is put this extraordinary mélange of history performed them first. They all had to take on Soviet and high art and human cupidity into an account realism. When Mikhail Baryshnikov, the rising star that manages to contain incredulity even as it seeks of the Kirov, defected from the Soviet Union on tour Follow the tapestry to find an explanation. in Toronto in 1974, he was actually travelling with a of our times There are many highlights, especially for fan- smallish troupe that billed itself “The Bolshoi.” atical balletomanes, but for the general reader the The case of Baryshnikov is interesting because without missing a thread. Bolshoi under the communists is at the heart’s core he was not really a victim of unrelenting Soviet of the book. This is because Morrison has to explain demonics. His genius was recognized; he was LRC back issues how such a vicious regime came to identify its own under pressure to join the party and his continu- progress and fate with the company and the theatre. ing resistance had “come to the attention” of the and subscriptions Identify? Hell, Lenin himself took to the Bolshoi higher authorities. But what really irked him was stage in 1918 to proclaim his constitution, so he that the stratified Soviet ballet system, which are now available at clearly understood the significance of the connec- Morrison describes so vividly, meant that a short tion. All the Soviet leaders—Stalin more than any dancer like Baryshnikov would never be allowed to www.reviewcanada.ca of the others—loved that czar’s box. For Stalin it do certain roles. It was this artistic straitjacketing was an expression of power, and with that power that set him bolting from the stage door of the then

November 2016 reviewcanada.ca 25 The Open Road Canada under the Liberals seems poised to rejoin the world. But how does multilateralism work in the era of Trumpism and Brexit? David M. Malone

keen on military engagement in Afghanistan, a An excellent contribution from David R. Black Seeking Order in Anarchy: policy inherited from the previous Liberal govern- and David J. Hornsby telescopes the practice of Multilateralism as State Strategy ment, he realized more rapidly than other western Canadian multilateralism through its mostly admir- Robert W. Murray, editor leaders that the campaign of the North Atlantic able policy on South Africa. Many years of suc- University of Alberta Press Treaty Organization there was not working. To his cessive prime ministers, culminating under Brian 353 pages, softcover credit, having reckoned with the mounting death Mulroney, were strongly committed to defeating ISBN 9781772121391 toll among Canadian troops and civilians, he acted apartheid. Mulroney’s sharp disagreement on South decisively to cut short Canada’s over-ambitious Africa with fellow Conservative Margaret Thatcher Two Freedoms: Canada’s Global Future military role in the Kandahar region, the epicentre and his determination that apartheid should be Hugh Segal of much of the country’s violence. overcome remind us that he was an exceptionally Dundurn Press But, while the Afghanistan operation unfolded engaged and accomplished leader for Canada on 228 pages, softcover under a UNSC mandate—unlike the disastrous the international stage. Black’s pages also remind ISBN 9781459734456 U.S.-UK takeover of Iraq in 2003—Harper’s distaste us of the important role in Canadian IR scholarship for the UN was palpable virtually from the outset of Dalhousie University (particularly that of Denis of his parliamentary life. Instinctively inclined to Stairs, cited in the volume) and of other universities nder the recent Conservative dispen- band with anglosphere partners, he would have located outside our three biggest cities. sation in Ottawa, everything was pretty joined Tony Blair and George W. Bush in that Kim Richard Nossal, from his perch at Queen’s Usimple on foreign policy: speak loudly, calamitous action when in opposition, although his University, has contributed to this volume an often stridently, and carry not much of a stick. For view changed over time as the scale of the ensuing incisive analysis of Stephen Harper’s Conservative the new Liberal government, everything is more disaster in Iraq became clear. government’s track record (2006–15) on foreign and complicated. Its electorate and the party member- As to the UN, it warranted disdain if not con- defence policy. In it, he highlights the stark contrast ship expect something more. Early gestures—in tempt. His early stance toward Africa, perceived as between the ambitious rhetoric of the government keeping with the steady, optimistic tone Justin actively hostile by African leaders and their diplo- and the means deployed to underpin the stated Trudeau projected during the last election—have mats in Ottawa, resulted in the defeat in competi- goals. been met with plaudits internationally. The second tive elections for a 2001/02 UNSC seat for Canada. coming of Trudeaumania was on full display here During the campaign for this seat, the government In the early 2000s, critics … worried that in Japan during the prime minister’s May 2016 visit prided itself on the principle of “not going along Liberal foreign policy had “metastasized from and he thereafter also adopted a new approach to get along.” It would have required at least some a do-good to a feel-good foreign policy” … to China and at the United Nations General of Africa’s 53 votes to succeed in Canada’s bid. The It can be argued that the underlying behav- Assembly. Recent Canadian activism on Syria in humiliation of this defeat doubtless further soured iour that prompted such complaints did not the General Assembly, in the face of deadlock Harper on the UN, for which he found only one change much with the change of government in the UN Security Council, also displays Canadian positive use—as a forum for the promotion and, in 2006, which is why … [it] seemed so “old diplomatic creativity. Stephen Harper’s stern pro- in part, delivery of his international initiative on school”: the rhetorical flourishes that eman- nouncements on global dysfunction are not much maternal, newborn and child health, wisely carried ated from the Conservative government may missed. Even though some of them were insightful, forward by the new Trudeau government. have worked well to make those who heard nobody likes a scourge. For those engaged in re-engineering Canada’s them feel good about their country’s role in For the Liberal government, the easy part has foreign policy, Seeking Order in Anarchy: Multi­ the world, but the rhetoric was actually not been to eliminate the tone of superiority, which lateralism as State Strategy, a splendid volume intended to achieve anything of substance grated on allies and adversaries alike. Harder will edited by Robert W. Murray, offers helpful perspec- in global politics. On the contrary, under the be defining a distinctive policy Canadians can tive. This handsome book features an almost total Conservatives, foreign policy increasingly identify with that addresses today’s rapidly evolving Canadian cast of authors, across several genera- became about nothing more than winning at global challenges. The world seems a less generous tions, slicing and dicing multilateralism through a the ballot box. place than ten years ago, with Trumpism, Brexit and variety of lenses. The authors highlight a distinct- Angela Merkel more under attack than supported ive Canadian scholarship of international rela- Helpfully, Mount Royal University’s Duane Bratt in Germany for her refugee policy. Consequently, tions—literate, analytically acute and eschewing points out that Harper preferred some forums over for Canada, it will be more difficult than it was then the academic fads that have narrowed the focus of others (e.g., the G7, over the G20 in which Canada’s to reposition itself globally. political science in the United States. In an attempt voice was more diluted and within which Canada’s Curiously, Harper’s shrewder international deci- to compete with natural sciences, many American values were less fully shared). As well, Bratt high- sions have been underrated. Having started dead IR scholars have espoused quantification and other lights Harper’s enthusiasm for NATO—suggesting techniques that, in excess, have proved both reduc- that his multilateral policy displayed those nuances David M. Malone, a former Canadian ambassa- tive and frequently unconvincing. Often mentioned that were attuned to his world view and policy pref- dor to the United Nations and former high com- in the volume is the English School of international erences, invariably cast as muscular. missioner to India, is rector of the United Nations relations scholarship, a close cousin of the best of And the great Canadian scholar Tom Keating University in Tokyo and Under-Secretary-General of Canadian IR scholarship, drawing on history and contributes a fine set of conclusions seeking to rec- the United Nations. He is a student of multilateral- a multiplicity of methodologies with fine results, oncile and illuminate the idea and often imperfect ism, particularly of the Security Council. including high readability. practice of multilateralism.

26 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Does a more open, active and philosophically This was the backdrop for the summit on peace- ing our normative entrepreneurship, most evident more generous Liberal foreign policy necessarily keeping that U.S. president Barack Obama con- recently through the ambition for Canada of then need to be more expensive? Not necessarily. vened at the UN in September 2015. He was seeking foreign affairs minister in the late Hugh Segal’s tonic book, a much more personal to encourage a return of western militaries to an 1990s, which largely yielded the International and conversational affair, argues for a foreign policy activity that, while often risky, is also necessary to Criminal Court and the Anti-Personnel Landmines rooted in values, and provides some examples of prevent local difficulties in geo-strategically insig- Treaty, along with other initiatives such as the inter- how this can work well in practice. When he was nificant countries from degenerating into violence, national commission that proposed the principle involved, it often did. sexual predation, massacre and even genocide, and of responsibility to protect, and an enhanced focus In Sri Lanka, a murderous 20-year-long struggle to fight regional instability and terrorism. Obama within the Canadian government on economic fac- between the government and the brutal rebel group challenged those attending to recognize that stand- tors in civil wars. All of this cost very little, and was known as the Tamil Tigers ended in May 2009 in a ing back was hardly noble, particularly on the part widely noticed and mostly praised internationally. bloodbath that killed not only many of the rebels of those equipped with most of the world’s high- More needs to be done on the normative and their unlamented leader, but also tens of end military capacity. front, not least on the vexed issue of migration, a thousands of civilians. The increasingly thuggish, The new Canadian minister of defence, Harjit phenomenon with which humankind has been family-centred government of Mahinda Rajapaksa Sajjan, has been wrestling with the dilemma. There at grips since its emergence and that today has in Colombo proved unapologetic and worked hard are no easy answers. A recent essay in The Globe become neuralgic in parts of Europe. When on a to restrict political freedoms. Reprehensibly, the and Mail by J.L. Granatstein points to sensible large scale, it is also viewed with apprehension in Commonwealth, in part by rote, chose to convene benchmarks for Canadian participation in specific other parts of the world. Refugees benefit from a its 2013 heads of government meeting in Colombo, UN peacekeeping operations. However, none of the convention and a range of other laws. Migration and it was against this backdrop that Segal’s current UN deployments fully meets all of them. (within regions and countries more often than it tenure unfolded when he was a member of the Even the Golan Heights observer mission, which occurs intercontinentally) has been little addressed Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group in 2010 Canada anchored for many years, became a local normatively. On this issue, Canada’s credibility is and subsequently was charged with updating the theatre of war after Syria descended into interlock- strong, although we need to recognize more than Commonwealth’s role as Canada’s special envoy to ing civil conflicts in 2011. Should we hold back we generally do that our particular geographic situ- lobby for implementation of the EPG’s conclusions. indefinitely, while our NATO allies are returning ation has allowed us to regulate immigration more Because most Commonwealth governments to the UN front lines? Should we rather take on easily than has been the case for Europe or even take a dim view of insurgencies and because the some risks and work from within one or several of Australia. As well, given events in Syria, respect Tamil Tiger leadership had been so widely reviled, those peacekeeping missions to make them safer for international humanitarian law is eroding. This many Commonwealth capitals were indiffer- and more effective by deploying the high-tech trend urgently needs to be reversed. ent to Sri Lanka’s political drift away from robust capacities Canada possesses (that will fade into Whether the world needs more Canada is debat- parliamentary traditions and went along with the redundancy unless used), rather than thousands able, but it has a more familiar Canada back. Our plan. But the Queen, who serves as head of of infantry troops? This will be a tough call for the ideas, experience and potential action in a variety the Commonwealth, stayed away, as did the prime Cabinet, and an announcement seems imminent. of fields marked by human distress, drawing on our ministers of India, Canada and Mauritius. Segal, a The UN has long been the preferred negotiating civilians and uniformed capacities, are welcome Canadian senator at the time, had formed a con- forum of developing countries on economic and internationally, and they need not break the bank. vivial partnership with John Baird, then Canada’s trade issues. It is no secret why: they are in a major- Now the government needs to decide how to deploy foreign minister, and the book documents how ity and could outvote others on these issues in the them. well their mutually reinforcing advocacy worked to General Assembly. As well, given the UN’s central embarrass those providing comfort to Rajapaksa. role in decolonization, they experience the UN as Baird was at his best partnering with Segal, at his theirs. Does this pose a risk to Canada? Hardly— worst when his near pathological distrust of public the UN reaches most decisions by consensus and, servants and rhetorical bombast were on display. besides, no major decisions leading directly to large Segal’s lines, fluent, lively and drawing on price tags are negotiated at the UN. So we risk very deeply held convictions of a distinctly progressive little by re-engaging with the UN on such issues. conservative variety, provide a bird’s-eye view And should we ignore developing countries, many of foreign policy that accrued credit for Canada. of which emerged from colonial subjugation deeply He reminds us that ideas matter, as does well- wounded? I hope not. designed strategy. In providing both to the Harper The UN’s work in the development field has government, he proved a fine representative for all taken on a much more lucid tone in recent years. Canadians on the world stage. Its conference on financing for development in In the winter our street became as Where does this leave the Liberals on foreign Addis Ababa in 2015 recognized that the primary dreary as a Russian landscape. So one policy? As Trudeau did domestically, so he has financial vectors through which development December my parents took us to changed the tone internationally, from one of occurs are those of internal resource mobilization, Miami Beach. The hotel was bare-knuckle “realism” to one of optimism and investment, trade and remittances sent home from enormous, with vaulted ceilings and engagement. His government’s embrace of Syrian workers toiling abroad. International assistance huge tables covered in glass bowls refugees captured the international imagination. plays a more marginal role, albeit a critical one for brimming with exotic blooms. When We know that many consultative processes have the least-developed and conflict-affected countries. my brothers and I weren’t roaming the This took too long to be accepted, but now that it been launched in Canada and that the UN is corridors we were out on the private again in favour with the government. Meanwhile, has been, sensible, useful work to implement the beach of creamy sand, building Canada has ratified the Paris Agreement on Climate Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 is under complicated castles and moat systems. Change, and the government is seeking to have way. Poverty will always be with us, in each of our We took breaks only to swim, or rather it implemented country-wide, as is also happen- societies. But extreme poverty, illiteracy, the denial ing elsewhere. But how will Canada convince UN of education, the absence of basic health services, play, in the ocean, diving into the members it has changed its spots? water privation and much more can be vanquished. oncoming waves and feeling the tug of Away from the headlines in Canada, there has The catastrophists, populists and soap-box the undertow that wanted to keep us been a growing recognition in western capitals that artists will always find much about the UN to criti- down forever ... they have let the UN down by essentially resigning cize. Like many supporters of the UN, I certainly from UN peacekeeping after the serial disasters of do too. However, the key question is, how, in an Mogadishu, Rwanda and Srebrenica. They mostly era of renewed great power rivalry, but also an era left the task to the less well-equipped, sometimes of development progress, the UN could do better less-well-prepared troops from developing coun- and in more targeted ways. On this grand chal- tries, many of which are uncomfortable with the lenge, Canada can make a very positive difference espresso increasing adoption of mandates by the UNSC through ideas and targeted funding of development calling for the use of force when civilian lives are and peacebuilding programs. threatened. We should play to established strengths, includ-

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28LRC FIREWATER Bestseller ad U of R Press.indd 1 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review2016-10-12 of Canada 3:00 PM In Praise of Older Genres André Alexis’s kidlit for grown-ups Caroline Adderson

not only his fortune to his five adult children, but for the reader hidden within the text, “snippets The Hidden Keys also a memento mori of personal significance for of—or allusions to” 14 other works besides Treasure André Alexis each of them: a Japanese screen, an architectural Island, some very obscure. Coach House Books model of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, a Plot is what drives genre fiction, but it is also its 230 pages, softcover framed poem, a painting of the Emperor Nero weakness. Once the puzzle is solved or the criminal ISBN 9781552453254 beside a man with a raven on his shoulder and a caught, the reader generally reflects on the story for bottle of Aquavit. And the god unleashed upon about as long as it would take to stuff a crossword them? Robert, through his bequest? Or is he in the recycling. This is where The Hidden Keys mas- iterary fiction has a lot to learn Tancred Palmieri, a most moral thief who is Alexis’s terfully transcends its form. At the same time that from genre. I discovered this myself when protagonist? Alexis has indulged us with a humdinger plot and LI started moonlighting as a children’s Tancred befriends Robert Azarian’s youngest a ludicrously happy ending (I was astonished how author. Genre I define as a form of writing that fol- daughter Willow, a junkie in her fifties with but good it made me feel), he has also written a multi- lows certain unbreakable rules, and kidlit is one. $15 million left in her bank account, the rest having layered, nuanced, absorbing novel that touches on Like a lot of genre publishing, not themes that can be described only only is kidlit going strong, but it is as “great,” themes that are presented liberatingly versatile and form push- Plot is what drives genre fiction, not only in the moral decisions the ing despite its rules. It also bubbles characters are required to make, but over with something literary fiction but it is also its weakness. Once in their musings as well—musings often lacks: story. In The Hidden Keys, that left me musing whenever they another instalment of his ambitious the puzzle is solved or the criminal came up. What is the meaning of quincunx, André Alexis delights us caught, the reader rarely reflects on family? Does God exist? What is the with a literary novel playing dress-up nature of goodness? How relevant is with genre and offers the best of both. the story. place? This, for example, on the lat- Alexis explained his quincunx pro- ter: “[Tancred] had once wondered if ject in a 2015 blogpost for Quill and home were people or a place. It was, Quire. “I’m obsessed with storytelling, with all of its been shot up her arm. Willow believes that there is of course, both and neither. Each person who lived ins and outs, its rhythms, graces, failures, byways, more to their inheritance. When she was a child, in Toronto held a facet of the city. Naturally he did irreality and, of course, its traditions.” To explore his Robert used to organize elaborate treasure hunts as well and, to see himself clearly, to begin the new obsession, he has taken as his narrative template for her pleasure. She thinks the memento mori she life, he would have to be in that place that held the Pier Paolo Pasolini’s film Teorema in which “a god and her siblings received contain clues to some- old one, that held those who knew him.” Coming comes to earth and interacts with the members thing else he left them. She convinces Tancred to near the end of the novel, this passage, beautiful of a well-to-do family.” Alexis writes, “I wanted to steal the other four mementos so that they can and profound, resonated even more. By the time tell it as a pastoral (that is, a tale set in an idealized find the treasure Robert has challenged her from I finished The Hidden Keys, solving the mystery rural world), as an apologue (a moral tale involving beyond the grave to find. Tancred, being an hon- was the least of my interests. In fact, I found the animals), as a quest narrative (with Treasure Island est thief, will claim his reward only from Willow’s mystery distracted me from the true pleasure of in mind), as a ghost story (like Ugetsu Monogatari), share, give the siblings theirs and return to them the book—the reflective frame of mind it asked of and as a kind of Harlequin romance.” Of his five- their stolen memento mori. When Willow dies, he me—so much that I found myself agreeing with the sided project The Hidden Keys is the third, following honours her by keeping this promise. Each chapter character who tells Tancred, “I used to love a good upon Pastoral and the apologue Fifteen Dogs. in the novel is built around one of his thefts. puzzle. But I am old and I find this business only The Hidden Keys is the Treasure Island version, Outwardly, it is the treasure-seeking plot of mildly diverting.” although not a retelling of the story. There is no The Hidden Keys that keeps the reader turning the I would be remiss if I did not mention how island, just Toronto so lovingly described it emer- pages. What is the significance of these disparate frequently funny this novel is, from its charm- ges as a character in its own right. Standing in for objects? Is there really a treasure? On top of this, ingly ridiculous character names to how Tancred Long John Silver and Hands are a pusher, Alexis manages to up the page-turning power by manages to steal the unstealable. It is also why Errol “Nigger” Colby, a black man with albinism, throwing in another genre layer, for where there I could not help reading The Hidden Keys as kidlit and his psychopathic sidekick, Sigismund “Freud” is crime there must be a detective, in this case for intelligent grown-ups. It has everything the Luxemberg. The Azarians are the well-to-do family. Tancred’s best friend from their impoverished best of children’s writing offers: an engaging plot, The deceased business mogul Robert Azarian left childhood in the Alexandra Park neighbourhood an engagement with morality, goofy names and of Toronto, Daniel Mandelshtam. Also from the old laughs. Perhaps this is what Alexis was implying Caroline Adderson, in Vancouver, writes for read- ’hood are Willow’s dealer and his pal, the stand-in when he dropped this clue: he credits as his inspira- ers of all ages. Her latest novel for adults is Ellen pirates, who also know of Willow’s quest and find a tion not R.L. Stevenson, but Captain George North, in Pieces (Patrick Crean Books, 2014). Visit www. way to make Tancred cooperate with them. And as the pseudonymous children’s author of Treasure carolineadderson.com. a Mensa-bonus, Alexis has created a treasure hunt Island.

November 2016 reviewcanada.ca 29 The Shadow of the Shoah Two memoirs of the Nazi era are a needed reminder for our own times Michiel Horn

By Chance Alone: A Remarkable True Story of Courage and Survival at Auschwitz Max Eisen HarperCollins 284 pages, softcover ISBN 9781443448536

Otto and Daria: A Wartime Journey Through No Man’s Land Eric Koch University of Regina Press 275 pages, hardcover ISBN 9780889774438

ore than 70 years after the end of the Second World War, the shadow Mcast by the Shoah lingers. Monographs, memoirs and occasional diaries continue to appear, as some who lived and suffered through those years are speaking up at last as they approach the end of what are by now long lives. We may assume that not many more of these will be published—the survivors are now in their eighties and nineties—yet Montage: man with scrolls and synagogue ruins by Henryk Ross, c. 1940–1944. Half-tone positive on paper. their stories are needed more than ever. Not only (Image courtesy of the Art Gallery of Ontario) do they shed light on a sui generis tragedy in recent history, but they are also a cautionary tale for the family in . Owners of a fashionable jewel- relaxed its policy on enemy aliens, and those who present day, when anti-Semitism is on the rise and lery store run by an uncle after Koch’s father died in could find a sponsor could leave the camps. Koch’s hostility toward other minority groups is mounting. 1919, the Kochs belonged to the affluent bourgeoi- connection to the jewellery business did the trick: Two such memoirs by Canadians have appeared sie. That meant little after the Nazis entered office in his sponsors were Colonel Gerald Birks, one of the recently. The lives of both Max Eisen and Eric 1933, and four years later the family was preparing principals in Henry Birks and Sons, and his wife, Koch were greatly changed by the Nazi war to leave Germany. Eric, who was already studying Phyllis. He changed his name to Eric, studied law against the Jews, but their experiences were in England, entered St. John’s College, Cambridge. at the University of Toronto, briefly taught French at very different. Eisen’s book, By Chance Alone: A He was there when war broke out in 1939 and , and then, after meeting Saturday Remarkable True Story of Courage and Survival at had to register as an enemy alien. He was placed Night’s B.K. Sandwell, turned to journalism. Soon Auschwitz, although it deals at length with his life in category C, a group consisting mainly of Jews afterward, he joined the CBC International Service, in Czechoslovakia and Hungary in the 1930s and and political refugees who were deemed to be no in time becoming a fixture in CBC radio and ’40s, is essentially a concentration camp survival threat. That status ended one day after the govern- television.­ story. Koch’s account, Otto and Daria: A Wartime ment changed on May 11, 1940. Wishing to reas- Koch’s story is, on the whole, an upbeat one. Journey Through No Man’s Land, deals with the sure a frightened and largely ignorant public that The only near relative he lost in the Shoah was a experiences of a relatively privileged family who everything possible was being done to counter grandmother who died in Theresienstadt concen- managed to escape Nazi Germany, and its primary the German threat, the new government led by tration camp. Aided at times by family connections, focus is on the author’s life as a wartime “enemy Winston Churchill ordered the internment of all at other times by friends, he landed on his feet. The alien” internee in Canada. male enemy aliens whatever their category (the same cannot be said about the Daria in the book’s Of the two memoirs, Koch’s is the more engag- women were presumably not dangerous). title, whose letters to Koch form a sort of counter- ing. Not hung up on chronology, and often This was inappropriate action of the kind iden- point to his memoir. Koch met Daria Hambourg, ­digressing into fascinating, sometimes irrelevant tified by Sir Humphrey Appleby of Yes, Minister the daughter of a well-established London family, byways, it reads somewhat like an elegant and fame: “Something must be done. This is some- in Switzerland in 1938, and they corresponded for quirky novel. Eric Koch, known as Otto for the first thing. Therefore we must do it.” For Koch it had the five years. Their last contact was in November 1943; 23 years of his life, was born into a secular Jewish unexpected result that he, along with many other she died in 1992. internees, was soon sent to Canada for safekeeping, None of Koch’s letters to Hambourg survived, Michiel Horn is professor emeritus of history at York as it were. He appreciates the irony in this: the Jews and so the letters are a one-way conversation that University. He translated David Koker’s At the Edge among them would hardly have obtained admis- Koch does not quite manage to integrate success- of the Abyss: A Concentration Camp Diary, 1943– sion to Canada in any other way, for Canadian gov- fully with his own story. However, the slice of life 1944 (Northwestern University Press, 2012); he is ernment policy, as Irving Abella and Harold Troper that he serves up is enjoyable. He does seem a bit also the author of Becoming Canadian: Memoirs have shown, was hostile to Jewish refugees. too quick to drop names, even when it is inappro- of an Invisible Immigrant (University of Toronto Koch spent 18 months confined in internment priate. (Confiding the name of a woman with whom Press, 1997). camps in Quebec before the British government he enjoyed a one-night stand in 1940 adds nothing

30 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada to his story.) Nevertheless, his tale is well written, combination of circumstances. It is not for nothing quent events and by knowledge gained from other often playful, good humoured and worth reading. that Eisen titled his memoir By Chance Alone. He sources. The passage of time also has the effect A clearer counterpoint to Koch’s story is found lucked into the position of assistant to the Polish of highlighting some events and softening others. in Max Eisen’s, which is also well worth reading, camp doctor, which gave him a few privileges such Memoirs have value, but they do differ from diaries, even if his telling of it is not elegant. Eisen was as improved access to food. But that was not enough which are more immediate in what they record. born into an Orthodox Jewish family in a part of to keep him alive when the Germans abandoned Diaries are unfiltered and intense, not only Czechoslovakia annexed by Hungary after the 1938 Auschwitz in January 1945, and sent the inmates because of the subject matter but also because they Munich agreement. Hungary, allied with Germany, westward, on foot and sometimes by train. Eisen are typically not intended for publication. A few was led by Admiral Miklós Horthy, whose govern- must have been blessed with an iron constitution, years ago I was asked by the historian Robert Jan ment, although anti-Semitic, long resisted the for he survived this long ordeal, and was finally van Pelt to translate the diary that a young Dutch Nazis’ Final Solution. In 1944, the Germans forced liberated on May 6, 1945, by the U.S. 761st Tank Jew, David Koker, kept in Vught, the only con- Horthy to appoint a new prime minister, the fanati- Battalion near Melk in Austria. Eisen emigrated to centration camp the Germans established in the cally pro-German and anti-Semitic Döme Sztójay. Canada in 1949 and got married in Toronto three Netherlands—the better-known Westerbork was a The last remaining large group of European Jews years later. He established a successful business transit camp for Jews. Reading it, I was struck by the thereby came into mortal danger. horror of what he described. Against Eisen recalls that after the first Memoirs are by definition an my expectations, however, I realized Passover seder in 1944, a gen- that even people who were living tile neighbour came to warn them expression of memory, and memory is under the dire threat of deportation and help them escape, but Eisen’s managed to find something like joy in grandfather held it to be wrong to not history. Memory is highly prone their lives. That diary enabled me to travel during Passover. The following enter into the world of a concentra- morning, local police took them into to being reshaped by later events. tion camp in a way no memoir has custody, and three weeks later young been able to do. Max (then called Tibor), his grandparents, parents, and seems to have dwelt little on the past until he But narrative reminders of the Shoah, whatever aunt and uncle, and three younger siblings, were retired in 1988. Then he remembered his father’s their genre, are invaluable to us, and they are all the loaded into cattle cars and sent to Auschwitz. injunction when they last saw each other: “If you more necessary now. As I was writing this review, Most of the Eisens were selected for immediate survive, you must tell the world what happened I read Dow Marmur’s column in the Toronto Star extermination in Auschwitz II-Birkenau, while Max, here.” This prompted him to become a Holocaust about efforts in Poland to suppress “evidence of his father and uncle were assigned to Auschwitz I, speaker and to accompany tours to Auschwitz. Polish complicity in Nazi atrocities against the a labour camp. The three men were assigned to do Did his father say those very words, or did Eisen Jews.” Hungary’s right-wing Jobbik party, which agricultural work, hard physical labour on inad- conjure them up when, more than 40 years later, he in the 2014 parliamentary election got the sup- equate rations of food. In July, his father and uncle started thinking about his experiences? I doubt it port of one fifth of the voters, is widely regarded as were removed for no apparent reason; years later, matters. Memoirs are by definition an expression anti-Semitic. And Belgium and France have seen he learned that they had been earmarked for medi- of memory, and memory is not history. Memory anti-Jewish hate crimes committed. It is sobering to cal experiments. Not yet 16, he was left alone in the is highly prone to being reshaped by later events, realize that a half century of awareness of the grim world with slim odds of survival. so that memoirs dealing with concentration camp reality of the Shoah has not helped to eliminate That he did survive was due to an improbable life and death have been influenced by subse- anti-Semitism from the world.

LOWRY LOVERS REJOICE!

Swinging the Maelstrom In Ballast to the White Sea The 1940 Under the Volcano Malcolm Lowry’s By Malcolm Lowry By Malcolm Lowry By Malcolm Lowry Poetics of Space A Critical Edition A Scholarly Edition A Critical Edition Edited by Richard J. Lane Edited by Vik Doyen Edited by Patrick A. McCarthy Edited Miguel Mota and Paul Tiessen and Miguel Mota

A long overdue scholarly edition of the This is the first edition ofIn Ballast to the White The 1940 Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry Focusing on Lowry’s spatial dynamics, Malcolm Lowry novella, written in Canada Sea, the autobiographical novel by Malcolm has too often been regarded as little more than Malcolm Lowry’s Poetics of Space offers between 1942 and 1944, during Lowry’s Lowry, known to most only through the a blueprint— though a tentative one at best— a collection of exciting, new, and often happiest and most fruitful years, revealing highly romanticized story of its loss in a fire. for his 1947 masterwork, Under the Volcano. It is controversial readings which seek to the deep influence and healing experience In fact, the typescript had probably been finally being adequately considered in terms of readdress not only Lowry’s master work, an idyllic retreat in a waterfront cabin at read by at most a dozen people since Lowry Lowry’s work that preceded it, and fully critically Under the Volcano, but also many of his Dollarton had on Lowry. scholars learned that it was deposited at the edited on its own terms. other writings. New York Public Library. U ttawa www.Press.uOttawa.ca Facebook.com/uOttawaPress Twitter.com/uOttawaPress

an Ontario government agency un organisme du gouvernement de l’Ontario

November 2016 reviewcanada.ca 31 Letters & Responses

Re: “Tunnel Vision,” by Lev Bratishenko Re: “The Orient Express,” by Patrick Re: “Reasonable Doubts,” by Suanne (October 2016) Brown (September 2016) Kelman (September 2016) ev Bratishenko’s essay on Jane Jacobs takes the ’ve read Patrick Brown’s review of Alexandre ith respect, Suanne Kelman’s article is a Lsame tack as many such pieces in the decade ITrudeau’s Barbarian Lost: Travels in the New Wdog’s breakfast of concepts and arguments since she died, taking her to task for what she China with much interest. The review, with its only some of which touch upon the subject of the didn’t write on one hand and faulting her for tilting title “The Orient Express” and description of title: reasonable accommodation. Along with toler- against clear trends like sprawl on the other. Her “’s whirlwind, and sometimes ance, reasonable accommodation is an important failure to apply a race or gender lens to her writing, cliché-rich, tour of China,” accurately catches the principle that frames our goal of living together or to take a firm position on the role of capital, is overall impression the book leaves on its readers. with disagreement and it is actually an achieve- held against her. And not understanding people In the research for my book Re-Orienting China: ment to manage that as against the false justice of who bought into suburban living or to big condos Travel Writing and Cross-Cultural Understanding, homogeneity of treatment where such homogen- is also cited as a sign she missed the boat. I encountered many “barbarians” lost in the sea eity fails to respect the differences of belief and A writer can apply various analytical lenses of Chinese foreignness. The book’s rhetoric reson- association that are essential to freedom. such as race, gender or the role of capital. All of ates strongly with what David Spurr would call The author repeats the common error that “reli- them are important. Race, for example, is a defin- “the rhetoric of empire.” A Shanghai lady’s “odd gion” is in conflict with “equality.” Properly under- ing factor in any analysis of the United States, and and intriguing countenance” makes the writer stood, religion is one of the listed aspects that are in its current presidential election, and plays a imagine that she might be an opium smoker, protected from non-discrimination in section 15 of less obvious but vital role in Canada as well. The which he also admits is quite unlikely; the abortive the Charter of Rights and Freedoms—the equality problem with a broad application of these lenses visit to a brothel in Guangzhou is replaced with provision. The issue is not religion versus equality is that they can eventually occlude what you are the history of Chinese coolies building railroads but the more subtle question of religion as equal- looking at. I know from conversations with Jacobs and the chaos of Chinatown in San Francisco and ity versus other equality rights. What then to do that both race and gender were central to her own Vancouver that the readers at home know too well. when equality of one sort squares off with equality view of the world. So I sympathize with Brown’s increasing dis- of another sort? Religious equality versus sexual Jacobs admired entrepreneurs large and small, appointment as he reads, especially keeping in orientation equality, for example. Here, the limita- but not always their projects. She was observant mind the provocative lines on the book’s front flap: tion provision of section 1 of the Charter requires of their practical impact. She often objected to “each revelation [of Chinese people’s secrets] jolts a recognition of rights and freedoms “subject only developments that she thought made worse spaces us from many a preconceived notion and forces us to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can or disrupted neighbourhoods but recognized that to challenge our ideas about the country.” be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic development and redevelopment were how cities However, I find Brown’s judgements rather society.” evolved. harsh and his reading rather cursory. He blames The only analytical framework that makes sense Her approach to her writing about cities and Trudeau for not making an effort to learn Chinese. here is to do a more serious job of evaluating the urban regions was straightforward: observe closely One does not need to master Chinese to be a good contexts within which religious equality and sexual to see what works and then arrange to do more of travel writer about China. Canadian geophysi- orientation equality are in conflict. Understood it. That led her to some of her better known sug- cist Jock Wilson wrongly conceived the linguistic this way, some of the debates of the day can be gestions such as “eyes on the street” and mixed nature of Chinese, but this did not prevent him resolved through understanding accommoda- use. These have had a lasting influence on both from imagining “a broader humanism” at the end tion and tolerance in relation to the necessary public and private developers (not all of them) and of his travels and later initiating cultural exchanges presumption in favour of diversity that we need to their suppliers such as architects and planners. In between Canada and China. make sense of law and legal challenges in relation this regard the “less Jane Jacobs” of the article is Careful readers see valuable insights Trudeau to different types of associations (including reli- not what we need or are likely to get. has gained as a seasoned traveller. His under- gious associations) that exist in Canada. More than anything, Jacobs would have been standing of documentary filmmaking as produ- One size, in short, does not fit all. appalled to think that an orthodoxy had been cing icons and not real people, his reading of Ai As for the face-coverings debate involving the created from her writing, or that people would be Weiwei as an artist who knows how to please the niqab or burka, the author fails entirely to examine wondering what Jane Jacobs would do, as happens western audience, and his observation of Vivian, this issue in relation to a more foundational moral from time to time. She wanted people to observe his translator and guide, who has been humbled idea—that of “civic friendship.” If we cannot see and to think, not to search her texts for clues. as a result of living away from her native country, someone, we cannot really be in any kind of civic Having her writing treated as a rigid prescription are a few sparkles that highlight the good quality friendship relationship with them. This is why we for all time was not her intention. of Trudeau’s travel writing. At one point, he reveals consider it inappropriate to wear balaclavas when Describing her as “Mother Jacobs” or “Saint that he includes comments about politics not out we come in from the cold on a Canadian winter Jane,” or seeing her as a kindly old grandmother in of interest but because “it’s work.” This perhaps day. The face coverings (not the nun’s habit or her later years, disguises the fact that she was fero- forced him to take “the Orient Express” to live up the turban or the yarmulka or the head covering) cious in argument and debate. She left more than to the expectations of a journalist. do indeed offend civic friendship and that sort of one commentator wobbly kneed. The reviewer Leilei Chen analysis is useful and overdue in Canada. might have found it invigorating to debate her face Edmonton, Alberta Iain T. Benson to face. Sydney, Australia Alan Broadbent Toronto, Ontario

32 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada BATTLES AND BATTLEFIELDS

The Harper Era in The Iconic North The Weight of Command Canadian Foreign Policy Cultural Constructions of Voices of Canada’s Second World Parliament, Politics, and Canada’s Aboriginal Life in Postwar Canada War Generals and Those Who Global Posture Joan Sangster Knew Them J.L. Granatstein Edited by Adam Chapnick and Explores how the “modern” South crafted Christopher J. Kukucha cultural images of a “primitive” North that Edited and introduced by one of the reflected its own preconceived notions and foremost military historians of our time, Leading scholars and analysts of social, political, and economic interests. the carefully curated interviews in this Canadian politics assess the Harper book bring Canada’s Second World War era in foreign policy. October 2016 | 978-0-7748-3184-0 | PB generals to life. August 2016 | 978-0-7748-3320-2 | PB August 2016 | 978-0-7748-3299-1 | HC

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ubcpress.ca stay connected thought that counts Northern Lights Exploring Canada’s Think Tank Landscape DONALD E. ABELSON Paperback, 392pp

“Very little is known about think tanks in Canada, but this volume fills in much of the missing information – who they are, what role they play in the policy process, how they have developed over time … a substantial addition to the academic literature on politics and policy.” Keith Brownsey, Mount Royal University

Empty Promises Why Workplace Pension Law Doesn’t Deliver Pensions ELIZABETH J. SHILTON The Flowering of Modern Chinese Poetry Cloth, 312pp An Anthology of Verse from the “Retirement security and pension coverage are Republican Period high on the public policy agenda, and Elizabeth TRANSLATED BY HERBERT J. BATT Shilton has done an impressive job of making AND SHELDON ZITNER complex legal concepts, rules, and cases easy to Introductions by Michel Hockx understand.” Freya Kodar, University of Victoria Paperback, 448pp

“… arguably the best collection available in English to date, further enriched by the insightful introductions and informa- tive biographies. It is an enjoyable read for anyone interested in understanding Chinese modernity through the lens of poetry.” Michelle Yeh, University of , Davis

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“There is something in the tremendous loss of species at the No Free Man MQUP hands of humans discussed here that invites comparison as a Prairies version of Farley Mowat’s Sea of Slaughter.” Canada, the Great War, and Darcy Ingram, University of Ottawa the Enemy Alien Experience BOHDAN S. KORDAN Cloth, 416pp, 24 photos

“… reshapes our understanding of Nourrir la machine humaine Canadian society and the making of Nutrition et alimentation au Québec, 1860–1945 the Canadian nation (at home, rather than on the battlefield) during the CAROLINE DURAND First World War. It is an excellent Couverture souple, 336pp resource for readers and scholars Récipiendaire • Prix du Canada en sciences humaines, 2016 wishing to understand Canada’s long Finaliste • Prix littéraire Trillium en langue française, 2016 history of internment and human rights violations.” Une étude qui questionne la pertinence des conseils diététiques Alexander Freund, University dans la société québécoise et propose des explications sur leurs of Winnipeg racines idéologiques et scientifiques, leur efficacité et les résistances qu’ils suscitent.

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