GETTING FROM A TO B JUST GOT HARDER $6.50 LLiteraryR Review ofC Canada Vol. 15, No. 9 • November 2007 Leslie Campbell Naomi Klein: The shocking sequel H.V. Nelles Rediscovering Sir John A Jeffery Ewener The Islamic roots of western science Joyce Kline The bad boys of modern art Michael Bell Gwynne Dyer dissected Jason Bristow Are we nationalists or not? + Ken McGoogan’s northern excavations + David Dyzenhaus on the fog of apartheid + Brian Flemming on securing borderlands + Mark Lovewell on Champlain and Hudson + fiction reviews by Nancy Richler and Anne Marie Todkill + poetry by Karen Connelly, Robyn Sarah, Barry Dempster and John Barton + responses from Erna Paris, Mark Jaccard, James Laxer, Publications Mail Agreement #40032362 RETURN UNDELIVERABLE CANADIAN ADDRESSES TO Patrick Brethour, Todd Hirsch, Reg Whitaker, Bob Watts and Vanessa Watts LRC, CIRCULATION DEPT. PO BOX 8, STATION K TORONTO, ON M4P 2G1 Literary Review of Canada 581 Markham Street, Suite 3A Toronto, Ontario m6g 2l7 e-mail: [email protected] reviewcanada.ca T: 416 531-1483 F: 416 531-1612 LLiteraryR Review ofC Canada EDITOR Vol. 15, No. 9 • November 2007 Bronwyn Drainie [email protected] ASSIstant EDITOR Alastair Cheng 3 Audacious Undertaking 17 Dancer CONTRIBUTING EDITOR A review of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster A poem Anthony Westell Capitalism, by Naomi Klein John Barton ASSOCIate EDITOR Leslie Campbell 18 Family Resemblances Robin Roger 6 The First Northern Magus A review of Holding My Breath, by Sidura Ludwig, and POETRY EDITOR Molly Peacock A review of Richard Gwyn’s John A, The Man Who The End of East, by Jen Sookfong Lee Made Us: The Life and Times of John A. Macdonald, Nancy Richler ASSIstant POETRY EDITOR Moira MacDougall Volume One, 1815–1867 COPY EDITOR H.V. Nelles 19 Homage to a Magic Medium A review of Late Nights on Air, by Elizabeth Hay Madeline Koch 9 Fences and Neighbours Anne Marie Todkill PROOFREADERS A review of Borderlands: Comparing Border Security Ted Brown, Alastair Cheng, Lauryn Drainie, in North America and Europe, edited by Emmanuel 20 Getting from A to B Madeline Koch, Lorna MacPhee, Natalie An essay Szoldra, Jeannie Weese Brunet-Jailly Anthony Perl RESEARCH Brian Flemming Lauryn Drainie, Evan Wargon 23 The Young Englishman PUBLICITY 10 The Bad Boys of Modern Art A review of God’s Mercies: Rivalry, Betrayal in the A review of Anarchy and Art: From the Paris Kevin Watt Dream of Discovery, by Douglas Hunter [email protected] Commune to the Fall of the Berlin Wall, by Allan Mark Lovewell DESIGN Antliff James Harbeck Joyce Kline 24 Excavating the North ADVERTISING/SALES A review of Hummocks: Journeys and Inquiries Among 12 The Apocalyptic Eschatologist Michael Wile the Canadian Inuit, by Jean Malaurie, translated by Phone: 416-531-1483 • Cell: 416-806-6178 A review of Gwynne Dyer’s The Mess They Made: The Peter Feldstein, and Travelling Passions: The Hidden [email protected] Middle East After Iraq Life of Vilhjalmur Stefansson, by Gísli Pálsson, trans- PUBLISHERS Michael Bell Mark Lovewell lated by Keneva Kunz [email protected] 14 The Politics of the Ordinary Ken McGoogan Helen Walsh A review of Ja, No, Man: Growing Up White in [email protected] Apartheid-Era South Africa, by Richard Poplak 26 It Seems We Really Care ADVISORY COUNCIL A review of Canadas of the Mind: The Making and David Dyzenhaus Michael Adams Unmaking of Canadian Nationalism in the Twentieth Ronald G. Atkey, P.C., Q.C. 16 The War Century, edited by Norman Hillmer and Adam Alan Broadbent, C.M. A poem Chapnick James Gillies, C.M. Carol Hansell Karen Connelly Jason Bristow John Honderich Sandy Houston 16 Breakfast and Morning Paper 28 Intellectual Archeology Donald Macdonald, P.C., C.C. A poem A review of The Dialogue of Civilizations in the Birth Trina McQueen Robyn Sarah of Modern Science, by Arun Bala Susan Reisler Jeffery Ewener Grant Reuber, O.C. 17 Blue Rose Don Rickerd, C.M. A poem 30 Letters & Responses Mark Sarner Barry Dempster Erna Paris, Reg Whitaker, Patrick Brethour, Reed Scowen Mark Jaccard, James Laxer, Todd Hirsch, Anthony Westell Vanessa Watts and Bob Watts POETRY SUBMISSIONS The Literary Review of Canada accepts poetry submis- sions by email from May 1 to October 1 each year, although it solicits poetry year round. Send submissions Cover art and pictures throughout the issue by Erratum to [email protected] in a single Word file as an attachment and include the poems in the body of the Tom Pokinko. The final sentence of “Canada’s Candide,” email as well. The LRC does not review poetry. Tom Pokinko has been illustrating for the LRC since 2003. His other clients include the essay by John Richards in our October founded in 1991 by p.a. dutil issue, should have read: “There is room in The Literary Review of Canada is published 10 times a Maisonneuve Magazine and the United Nations Association in Canada. He also designs year by the Literary Review of Canada Inc. posters, including a painting used for a conference poster timed to coincide with the the West both for Henri de Navarre and for Montreal Jazz Festival. Tom is also finishing a master’s degree in Hindu ethics at McGill Voltaire’s Candide, content de cultiver son ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION rates jardin.” We regret the error. Canada $57; the rest of the world US$57. Libraries in University’s Faculty of Religious Studies. <www.tompokinko.com>. Canada $72; elsewhere US$77. Price includes postage. SUBSCRIPTIONS AND CIRCUlatION From time to time, LRC may allow carefully selected organizations to send mail to subscribers, offering products or services that may be of interest. Literary Review of Canada If you do not wish to receive such correspondence, please contact our Subscriber Service department at [email protected], PO Box 8, Station K or call us at 416-932-5081, or by mail to P.O. Box 8, Station K, Toronto ON M4P 2G1. Toronto ON M4P 2G1 [email protected] tel: 416-932-5081 FUNDING ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS www.reviewcanada.ca ©2007 The Literary Review of Canada. All rights, including transla- We acknowledge the financial We acknowledge the assistance tion into other languages, are reserved by the publisher in Canada, support of the Government of of the OMDC Magazine Fund, the United States, Great Britain and all other countries participating in the Universal Copyright Convention, the International Copyright Canada through the Canada an initiative of Ontario Media Convention and the Pan-American Copyright Convention. Nothing Magazine Fund towards our Development Corporation. in this publication may be reproduced without the written permis- editorial and production costs. sion of the publisher. ISSN 1188-7494 The Literary Review of Canada is indexed in the Canadian Literary Periodicals Index and the Canadian Index and is distributed by Film and Television Tax Credits Disticor and Magazines Canada. Ontario Media Development Corporation 2 Literary Review of Canada Discovery Spotlight The Young Englishman A new exploration history links the careers of Champlain and Hudson. Mark Lovewell spiracy against him, inexperience as a mariner on using several of the crewmembers for future God’s Mercies: was not one of them. By the time he took on Hudson Bay forays. Their case was also aided by Rivalry, Betrayal in the Dream of Discovery the Discovery’s command, he had headed three the fact that two of the conspiracy’s main insti- Douglas Hunter expeditions for English and Dutch merchants: gators had died on the return voyage, making it Doubleday Canada an attempt at a transpolar passage by way of the possible to lay all of the blame at their feet. But, 416 pages, hardcover remote Svarlbard islands and two attempts to sail as Hunter makes clear, this questionable denoue- isbn 9780385660587 across the top of Asia. On the last, after being ment was also due to a corrupt High Court of the stymied yet again by Arctic ice, he had made an Admiralty far more lenient toward conspiracies unplanned detour to North America’s eastern aboard commercial expeditions than when deal- n 1612, Samuel de Champlain was in France coast, where, to the great benefit of his Dutch ing with naval mutinies. when he learned some startling news. A masters (as surprised as they were when they Turning to the French side of his story, Hunter Iyouthful employee, Nicolas de Vignau, had finally learned it), he discovered and explored the reveals similar talents in sketching the myriad been sent to live with an Algonquin tribe far river named in his honour. intrigues that Samuel de Champlain and his up the Ottawa River. He had now crossed the Now he was again working for the English, allies faced in their colonization efforts. His por- Atlantic to inform Champlain that he had trav- charged with surveying the strait south of Baffin trait of Champlain is a highly sympathetic one, elled with his hosts to a northern sea, where he Island. On completing this task, the Discovery as he sketches a career that began in the service had seen the wreck of a small English boat and turned south into the bay beyond. Hudson of France’s Henry IV, followed by a gradually been shown the scalps of those in it. All had been insisted on sailing down its entire length, then expanding role in France’s New World ventures. killed except a boy who had been passed on to a spent precious weeks at its southern end in an Now Champlain was again navigating tricky neighbouring tribe. This tribe, said Vignau, was apparent attempt to find a navigable river. His political waters with his usual aplomb, making now willing to present the boy to Champlain to exact reasoning is hard to divine, since the bulk full use of Vignau’s tale and its provocative con- cement an alliance with the French.