Rupert Revisited

Diving for chump change wages again

2012-02-03T19:27:00.000-08:00

Gotta love people like Andrew Coyne and his friends.

Caterpillar Inc. buys itself a Canadian company, sucks it dry, closes it down and moves the work to points south. Much of that work will probably land, eventually, in Indiana, where the company got a $28-million goodie bag from job-hungry locals to refurbish and reopen an old plant.

So Coyne wags his finger at the union -- to the cheers of the red-meat boys -- and gives workers a lecture on times are tough, gotta face reality, ain’t no 60-cent dollah no more, gotta be competitive, and all that predictable, hard-nosed, right-wing stuff.

The company may be nasty and greedy, but its actions are exactly what we should expect in this dog-eat-dog globalized world, he says.

Canadians will just have to man up and learn to play in the real world's game where, apparently, any wage from our American boss is better than none at all. And there we are -- right back on the dock diving for quarters.

What a tough, realistic, capitalistic outlook.

Canada must have more chumps per square inch than any other nation on earth.

Porter's arrival marks watershed moment for North

2012-01-18T12:46:00.000-08:00

This week, Porter Airlines celebrated the start of its new three-times-daily flights between Timmins and Toronto Island.

At a ceremony in the Timmins Victor M. Power Airport, Porter President Robert Deluce and Timmins Mayor Tom Laughren spoke of what the expansion of service means to both the airline and the Northern Ontario city.

New business and tourism opportunities, a welcome alternative for travellers, a validation of a unique approach to air travel – the launch is all of that.

But it also marks a watershed moment for Northern Ontario.

For too many years, northerners watched in utter despair as their services shrank, offices closed and commercial operations withered. The mining sector struggled and the forest products sector imploded. Young people left town, grocery stores closed, banks shuttered branches and transportation companies cut routes.

Those were very hard times, when many northern towns wondered if they’d get from one end of the year to the other.

And the hard times were made so much more painful by the contrast with an exuberantly wealthy south, which was then motoring along on the coat-tails of an American hyper-boom.

There was much talk, in those dark days, of sunset industries and yesterday’s regions. Academics spoke openly of perhaps shutting down some of Ontario’s struggling northern towns and moving their residents to larger centres where they wouldn’t be such a drain on the public purse. Fingers wagged; lectures were delivered; people pitied their raggedy-arsed northern cousins.

Well, times change, and Ontario’s economic world is…slowly, slowly…beginning to shift from paper to rock, from south to north, from autos to minerals.

It’s been a long time coming.

And if it lasts long enough – China’s gargantuan appetites and global markets willing –Northern Ontario may have a chance, finally, to fashion a strong foundation for a sustainable economy that will carry it along into a rosy future.

In the meantime, let’s hope northerners will be gracious, understanding and un-gloating in their demeanour as they watch their raggedy-arsed southern counterparts try to come to terms with an economy that has been gutted by global forces well beyond their control.

Front groups should be up-front about funding

2012-01-12T08:53:00.000-08:00

Canadians have a right to know who is spending big money to influence their most important public policy decisions, particularly if that money originates outside the country.

The issue erupted with the opening of Northern Gateway Pipeline hearings in British Columbia this week, spurred by the federal government’s public attack on foreign-funded groups that “hijack” the regulatory process as part of a larger agenda that seeks to steer the Canadian economy away from “dirty” natural resource extraction.

Tides Foundation, which "washes" money for publicity shy American donors, has been pointed to as a concern, based on the work of B.C. blogger Vivian Krause.

Canadian environmental lobbyists don’t deny there is a lot of American money washing through their organizations. They justify it on the basis that there is a lot of foreign money flowing to the rapacious corporate side too.

Contributions from American philanthropic foundations like Tides help level the playing field so that the voices of concerned Canadians can be clearly heard above the corporate din, they argue.

One Tides defender – Vancouver writer, politician and urban food activist Peter Ladner – suggests we shouldn’t stress about it. Canada’s natural resources have always been a playground for foreigners. We’ve grown rich on it.

“Since when were organizations outside this country not ‘interfering’ with Canada’s natural resources?” Ladner asks in a mid-December article reproduced on the Tides Canada website. “Starting with the Hudson’s Bay Company, Canada has depended on all manner of foreign investors to make us the rich nation we are today.”

These arguments may be true. They may be valid. But they completely miss the point.

Canada is a small country that has long been dominated by foreign interests. Psychologically, we’re still a bit of a Rupert’s Land, far too accustomed to taking direction from other people in other countries. In our quest to become our own people, we struggle to cast off the heavy baggage of Empire and Manifest Destiny and foreign adventurers of every stripe.

That will be an uphill battle for us if we continue to let people in other parts of the world believe it’s their God-given right to interfere in our affairs.

Canadians have a right to determine their own destiny. Other people can pitch their arguments at us. They can openly lavish time, praise and gobs of money on Canadians who reflect their world views. They can posture and rant and huff and puff to their hearts’ content.

But they shouldn’t expect to get away with camouflaging their activities through phony front groups or sleight-of-hand funding mechanisms.

At a minimum, Canadians can and should demand funding transparency from individuals, companies and organizations who want to participate in the public processes that will guide our fundamental policy, political and economic decisions.

Reconciliation with the First and Foremost

2011-12-21T18:36:00.000-08:00

Well, that United Nations envoy certainly put us in our place, didn't he?

So...

Is everyone clear now on how the Rest of Us should go about negotiating with Canada's First and Foremost Nations?

One of us will propose something -- a mine, perhaps, or a forestry project that would bring much-needed revenue to our cash-strapped government for little things like, uh, health care, education, welfare or new homes in one of Canada's needy FFN communities.

Or maybe it's just a testy comeback to a bit of political grandstanding.

The FFNs, assisted by their social justice friends, will respond to this insult by running off to the mainstream media to reveal the shocking truth about the evil, colonial, rapacious and uncaring government. We will get an earful about treaties, George III, residential schools, assimilation, greedy corporations, malnourished children, inadequate funding, destitute reserves, small pox and the duplicity of settlers.

If this fails to produce immediate capitulation, the FFNs will call on their team of non-Aboriginal lawyers to ask the courts to block whatever it is that the government might ponder doing or saying or permitting to happen. They will cite a Constitution that, apparently, applies only to them.

The courts will deliberate for about ten minutes, then issue a decision that favours the FFNs, humiliates the governement, ignores the Rest of Us and sets a precedent that further entrenches the right of FFNs to most of Canada's land mass.

As these "negotiations" are happening, the FFNs will ice the cake by racing off to New York to play their newly acquired "rights of indigenous people" card. The United Nations will oblige with a scathing attack on all things Canadian. The world will tut-tut about Canada's evil, colonial, rapacious and uncaring people.

Properly chastised by our betters, the Rest of Us will give the FFNs whatever they want.

Life will go on until the next set of "negotiations."

That, folks, is the meaning of reconciliation.

Attawapiskat debate has positive impacts

2011-12-10T13:31:00.000-08:00

We owe a big thanks to Attawapiskat First Nation and MP Charlie Angus for thrusting the little community’s housing problems into the spotlight.

In setting off a firestorm, they have sparked a much-needed discussion about remote communities and their place in the larger nation. The debate has elicited nastiness and name-calling, of course, but it has also done several valuable and positive things.

First, it has prompted average Canadians to think about their relationship with First Nations and the more distant reaches of this country.

One impression emerges. The principal players in this drama – INAC and the native leadership – are locked in a dysfunctional dance that smells of another era. For too many years, this show has been run as a two-step on a ghost ship, with the Aboriginal industry providing accompaniment. There’s a wind-up gramophone on the bar, but it’s stuck in a groove of “Do as we say / Send us more money.”

Now that we’ve had a chance to peek through the porthole, we may want to shove the door open, stop the music and drag the dancers out into the light of the currrent century. It’s time for new steps to a new tune played by a better band on a different dance floor.

Second, the debate has stimulated creative suggestions, even bold actions, from outside groups.

For instance, Indian Country Today reports that Habitat for Humanity Canada is partnering with the Assembly of First Nations to help alleviate a crisis that afflicts a hundred or more reserves. Habitat has worked on Aboriginal housing for a while, but it promises to make it a priority for the next five years.

Meanwhile, homebuilder Mike Holmes, host of HGTV’s Holmes on Homes, has stepped forward to offer advice and assistance, also under AFN’s aegis

In a CBC interview, he proffered a simple solution to the housing situation – just “stop building crap” with inappropriate materials that are subject to rot, fire and mould. He suggests cinder block and drywall. And make sure you transfer the skills to build and maintain those sustainable homes to the First Nations. It will make a world of difference.

Thirdly, the crisis has exposed major weaknesses in our economic infrastructure.

For a country that prides itself on its transportation network, it is unconscionable that 15 modular homes cannot be delivered to Attawapiskat until the ice roads are ready in January or February.

Granted, this part of Ontario is vast and harsh, but we’ve been tooling around in it since the late 1600s. Yes, the muskeg is difficult. But back in the 1930s, Ontario managed to build a railway to Moosonee through very difficult terrain. And if we look across the bay, over toward the Quebec side, we might notice there are roads that link the Cree communities almost to Hudson Bay.

There is no real excuse, either, for our inability to design and build safe, sustainable communities in a northern environment.

Just 90 kilometres inland from Attawapiskat, De Beers Canada has built a safe, warm, comfortable community for its 500 employees. How could this be? How is it that one company, headquartered in distant South Africa, can conjure up a working town from the cold northern air, while we muddle along with under-serviced shacks and a string of excuses?

We will have to do a lot better -- in planning, designing, engineering and delivering -- if we wish to be known as a northern people, and if we have any aspiration of benefiting from our rich northern lands.

Chiefs jump aboard the bash-Canada wagon

2011-12-07T14:40:00.000-08:00

Canada’s Indian chiefs have escalated the dispute over Attawapiskat’s housing crisis by seeking to shame Canada in front of the nations of the world.

On Tuesday, the Assembly of First Nations passed a unanimous resolution to make Canada an object of international derision by asking the United Nations to monitor the federal government's response to a housing emergency on the Northern Ontario reserve

Chiefs asked the UN to appoint a "special rapporteur" to examine whether the Harper government is dealing with the crisis in a way that meets its obligations under Canadian and international treaties concerning First Nations people

Their declaration also calls on the federal and provincial governments to respond to communities in dire need.

The next step, presumably, is for the UN to raise its hands in horror and deem Canada an “apartheid” regime. It could impose sanctions on dirty tar sands, tainted seal meat, blood diamonds and clear-cut lumber. Perhaps a UN protectorate could also be established to control Canada’s renegade mining companies and address Canada’s disappointing performance on climate change.

Other people may have a different view, but I am thoroughly fed up with this never-ending bash Canada routine from First Nations and their friends in the social justice brigade.

In the past few years, First Nations groups have worn a path to New York, taking grievance upon grievance to the international body. They should stop doing it. It is bad citizenship that borders on treason. It damages all Canadians by painting the country as a thuggish colonial throwback.

Further, these overwrought pleas for the world’s pity are bad business. In its effort to put the squeeze on the federal government, Attawapiskat has made itself look pitiful and incompetent. That may be great for fundraising, but it's hardly a selling point for a company in need of a keen workforce. The community compounded the damage by launching an over-the-top attack on the De Beers diamond mine near the reserve, raising even more questions about the wisdom of investing large sums of money in this part of the world.

Then there's the democracy thing.

Canadian citizens do not deserve to be denigrated as irrelevant squatters, who have no right to their own lands, who should sit silently by, like good children, while First Nation governments conduct their “nation to nation” negotiations with the monarch’s representatives.

We are not in the 1700s, when Rupert’s Land was run by British fur traders and King George III could spout proclamations that would bind a people forever. Today's Canadians are not "settlers." They have a right to make decisions about their country, its lands and its resources, no matter what the UN -- or some dead English monarch -- thinks about it.

The approach chosen by First Nation chiefs is deeply insulting to Canadians. It’s part of a stale, old mindset that hobbles Canada and restrains its people from moving forward as an independent and prosperous nation.

Bad politics; bad business; bad choice.

Little Qatar, our role model on climate change

2011-11-29T13:52:00.000-08:00

This just in from the Durban climate change talks. The world's leading per-capita carbon dioxide emitter will play host to the biggest event on the world's climate change agenda next year.

Yes, teacup-sized Qatar, the filthy-rich jewel of the Persian Gulf, will be the site of the United Nations 2012 climate change conference from November 26 to December 7, 2012.

According to New Scientist, Qatar has the world's highest per-capita carbon dioxide emissions (thanks mainly to a booming offshore natural gas industry). At more than 50 tonnes a head, its emissions are seven times those of Britain and more than triple those of the United States. It also has one of the highest per-capita rates of water use, averaging 400 litres a person per day.

And it is doing little to improve that woeful record. On the contrary, it provides its citizens -- the earth's wealthiest people on a per-capita basis -- with unlimited free electricity and water, which it creates through energy-intensive desalination of seawater.

No wonder its emissions are five times greater than they were in 1990, the start date for Kyoto targets.

Fortunately for Qatar, it is exempt from the Kyoto protocols targets. Like its super-rich Gulf neighbours, it was placed on the "developing nation" list when the targets were set in 1997, and no one has bothered to update the list since.

If only Canada could get itself on the list, our climate change public relations problems would be over.

We could make all the oil sands money we wanted, and no one would say boo. Every house lit up like a Christmas tree. Lawns groaning in wet, green pleasure. Golf courses and refineries on every block.

Oh, let those energy-sucking, carbon-dioxide-emitting good times roll! And give that ridiculous fossil award to someone else for a change.

Now that's a climate change policy I could get behind.

This cannot stand

2011-11-18T21:41:00.000-08:00

The Guardian is reporting that the draft Irish budget is making the rounds of German legislators before the Irish people themselves get a chance to look at it. Needless to say, the Irish were shocked by the revelation.

"Loss of sovereignty may be an abstract notion," the Guardian article says, "but this week Irish people were confronted with what it means in reality. Revelations that draft proposals for the Irish December budget had been circulated in a German parliamentary committee were met with horror in Ireland. It has since emerged that they were sent to every finance minister in the EU."

There are explanations and apologies for the leak, of course. But the fact remains that German state legislators are vetting the Irish budget, as they will vet the Greek budget, and the Portuguese budget and, perhaps, the Italian budget. Next will come the Spanish budget and, perhaps, horror of horrors, the French budget.

When one thinks, for even a moment, of the blood and tears expended by the Irish people to shuck off the yoke of British rule in the last century, one can only feel infinite sadness at how easily they have traded away their sovereignty in this century. Whatever their financial misdeeds -- and those are still a matter of debate -- the Irish do not deserve this.

And yet it is also apparent that it cannot and will not happen. The Irish people will not allow it. Nor will the Greeks, the Portuguese, the Italians, the Spanish and, above all, the French.

There may be a way out of this. The Germans may be gifted by a sudden flash of insight; the technocrats may receive an infusion of human feeling; the bond vigilantes may take up butterfly collecting; the world may come to its senses.

Barring those unlikely interventions, however, it is clear that the dream of a peacefully, united Europe has been shattered.

"I think it will be damaging in the sense that it plays to a narrative that Germany is calling shots all over Europe," Fianna Fail leader Michael Martin told Reuters. "It will damage sentient towards Europe and that is a problem."

Do tell.

Toronto Life laughs at Timmins - Now that's funny!

2011-11-06T12:28:00.000-08:00

Can’t resist posting this item from Toronto Life’s “The Informer” column:

Porter Airlines to service Timmins, Ontario (and all of its 200 residents)

Beloved airline and free alcohol dispensary Porter Airlines celebrated its fifth birthday this month by expanding service to Timmins. The local airport provides access to the hamlet’s many attractions and serves as an important gateway to the rest of Northern Ontario. The three daily flights begin January 16, 2012, a month after Burlington, Vermont, is also added to the roster. This latest destination is one more tiny reason to choose Porter, especially with Air Canada hell-bent on a strike. New flights and beer versus pissed-off flight attendants—you decide.

If you were a highly educated denizen of Tiny Condo Inner City, you might find this very, very funny. Ever so witty and urbane. Comes with its own powdered wig.

Beloved Toronto – Always expanding the meaning of the term effete snob.

Guess we're a bunch of maroons, eh?

2011-10-31T08:19:00.000-07:00

For sheer chutzpah, it’s hard to beat Chris Gibson-Smith, chairman of the London Stock Exchange.

In an interview with a U.K. newspaper last week, Gibson-Smith urged the Occupy movement to stop blaming banks for the financial crisis and instead focus their rage on the real culprits – irresponsible governments and…wait for it…politicians

According to Gibson-Smith, governments caused all the problems by letting banks run up huge debts. Those damned politicians “allowed the financial system to explode by permitting the build-up of ludicrous amounts of debt and leverage.”

Say what?

ALLOWING banks? PERMITTING the build-up of debt? Who are these banks -- a bunch of unruly teenagers? And governments have been bad parents because they gave the kids the keys to the car instead of locking the little brats in their bedrooms until they did their homework?

They were idiots, apparently, for believing what bankers told them about the sanctity of free markets and the need to deregulate.

"No one ever said that free markets could or would be self-regulating,” sniffed Gibson-Smith. “That's where people over the past few decades have got it wrong, and many are still in denial – look at Alan Greenspan, who is still defending free markets."

Seems people got a lot of things wrong in the past few decades. What a bunch of maroons!

Wonder where they got all those goofy free-market, keep-government-out-of-our-business ideas?

Look to China for economic salvation?

2011-10-23T12:00:00.000-07:00

The bad news just keeps on coming for Ontario.

On Friday, a group of native chiefs from Ontario’s far northern region announced that they were withdrawing their support from an environmental assessment of a proposed chromium mining project.

The chiefs want one particular process – a joint panel review -- and the federal agency in charge of environment assessments has opted for a different process – a comprehensive environmental assessment. The chiefs don’t like that decision, so they are vowing to do everything in their power to block development until they get exactly what they want.

The announcement by the Matawa chiefs was not unexpected. They have been calling for a joint review panel for several months.

In fact, cynics have been waiting for this kind of announcement since the premier started extolling the Ring of Fire mineral zone a couple of years ago. Development of this area has the potential to light a fire under Ontario’s stuttering economy. It is important to Ontario’s economic future.

The premier was foolish enough to say so.

That was a very bad idea, because it raised the stakes. It also signalled to certain malevolent forces that there are significant benefits in opposing Ring of Fire development. Oppose it they will. At every turn. Because they stand a good chance of winning.

Cynics won’t be surprised. They don’t believe Ontario has the political will to undertake industrial development of this scope. Not in this part of the province. Not in this environment of political correctness. Not against the combined forces of native power-brokers, a reconciling court, Dudley Do-Right citizens, the U.N. and opaque social activism, much of it funded by organizations based in other countries.

So what to do?

Maybe Ontario should look to China.

Many years ago, China faced a similar problem -- impotent governments, factious regions and external mischief-making. It leased Hong Kong to the English for 99 years, got annual revenue and received back a thriving capitalist hub for its emerging economy. Today, China is flush with funds and actively searching for natural resource opportunities to feed its burgeoning industrial development.

Excellent deal all around.

If the premier is really committed to the development of the Ring of Fire, he should take a trip to China and pitch the opportunity to people who can actually make it happen. A good annual lease rate for the next 99 years would help pay the bills and pull down the debt. It's a heck of a lot better than what we’re facing now in the province's far north – high costs, low rewards, failure and frustration, international criticism, legal paralysis, endless obstructionism….

It’s not a great answer, but it’s probably the best we can do in the circumstances.

Let's face the fact that we’re outgunned and over-matched in our efforts to develop these contested lands. Maybe in 99 years we’ll have grown enough to be up to the challenge.

OWS gets support from odd quarters

2011-10-17T14:39:00.000-07:00

The Occupy Wall Street protesters are getting support from some unexpected quarters, among them Mark Carney, head of the Bank of Canada. And he's not the only voice from the financial world suggesting we "listen up" to the calls for change.

Last Friday, Carney told CBC's Peter Mansbridge that the protests "highlight the need for policy makers to show they are serious about forcing change." He cited an increase in inequality that started with globalization and was made worse by the financial crisis. Carney is pushing for financial reforms that would make future crises less likely.

And as a former Goldman Sachs investment banker, there's a good chance he knows and understands the murky financial backwaters that spawned the 2008 crisis.

In 1998, Goldman Sachs helped bail out Long-Term Capital Management when the overly ambitious hedge fund executed a $4.6-billion pratfall that threatened to take financial markets down with it. It was a chilling precursor to the Lehman Bros. collapse in mid-2008, and could easily have led to the same dismal outcome.

LTCM had been established by a group of financial whiz kids partly to get out from under regulatory oversight and partly to play tiddly winks with U.S. tax laws. One of its founders was Myron Scholes, a former Timmins boy who grew up to win a Nobel prize in economics for co-developing the Black-Scholes formula, which provides a mathematical model for valuing and managing the risk of derivatives.

It's not a stretch to say hardly anyone understands the Black-Scholes formula. But almost anyone trained in Finance can plug in some numbers and spit out an answer. Apparently, the formula was much beloved by the high-flying Wall Street derivative traders in the lead-up to the 2008 financial collapse.

Here's the thing. Myron Scholes, for all his qualities, has been a spectacular financial flame-out since leaving academia for the world of hedge funds. In fact, he's a train wreck looking for a place to happen. He's a serial catastrophe generator, having engineered two less dramatic, but still gob-smacking, hedge fund crashes before joining the LTCM disaster.

Presumably, he was using his award-winning mathematical model to facilitate all that crashing and burning.

Which leads to three questions -- What is the fatal flaw in the Black-Scholes model, what role did it play in the problems we are facing today, and why are we letting these people go on and on with their catastrophic financial models?

Maybe Mark Carney knows. And maybe he can do something about it.

Let's not do this again in 2018.

Northern malaise again

2011-10-05T12:25:00.000-07:00

What's up with one of my favourite economists, Livio Di Matteo of Lakehead University in Thunder Bay?

In his October 4 posting, Di Matteo surveys the pre-election political scene and finds little to like from a Northern Ontario prospective, no matter what outcome the vote produces. And despite all the talk about the North, he sees no indication that the main parties are prepared to grant the region any real decision-making power.

"As a sign of where the priorities really lie, consider the fact that in all of the main party platforms, there was no real mention of new institutions for the North or any real policy of decentralization or devolution of decision-making when it comes to northern resource development."

He admits there has been no push from northerners to win greater autonomy, and he seems baffled by this willingness to tolerate the situation.

"Northerners seem to be quite happy in their role as an economic dependency punctuated by bouts of adolescent outrage," he writes. "They will be dealt with accordingly no matter who forms the government."

Decentralization will only come when the north's aboriginal population gets big enough to demand -- and get -- a new deal, he says.

He sounds a bit out of sorts and dispirited, doesn't he?

Well, it's not easy trying to push the North toward a more self-reliant future. Di Matteo is not the first northern warrior to succumb to frustration. Nor will he be the last. Over the years, many good people have thrown their hands in the air and wandered away to do something more rewarding.

At the same time, he does make good point.

Maybe it's worth looking deeper into the reasons behind Northern Ontario's soul-sucking inability to get its act together.

Di Matteo's "Northern Economist" blog -- always a good read -- is found at http://ldimatte.shawwebspace.ca/

CRA soft on well-heeled tax cheats

2011-10-02T11:44:00.000-07:00

Financial services reporter John Greenwood raises important questions in Friday’s Financial Post (FP Street - A taxing pursuit) about big-time Canadian tax cheats and the apparent reluctance of the Canada Revenue Agency to bring them to justice.

Goodwood says the CRA has come into possession of more than 1,000 names of scofflaws who stash tax-free cash in secret European bank accounts.

“However, despite harsh criminal penalties for tax evasion in this country, not a single one of those account holders has gone to jail,” he says.

Goodwood is far from impressed with CRA’s record.

Most of its “success” has come from a voluntary disclosure program that allows cheats to confess without penalty, he says. Other cases were related to organized crime activities in Montreal, a couple of small companies, a piano player who failed to declare U.S. property and the operator of an offshore gambling site.

In fact, CRA’s record is darned insipid – almost wilfully insipid -- compared to the aggressive efforts of U.S. authorities to reclaim some of an estimated $100-billion slippage to the offshore tax dodge.

I guess Canada doesn’t need the money right now. The rest of us don’t mind paying more, thank you. Or maybe it’s just so much easier to pluck the feathers off terrified low- and middle-income taxpayers. Oh, heck. Why not both? We’ll pay more and you can turn our lives into a living hell at the same time!

In any case, if the CRA is not going to use its lists of tax cheats, perhaps the agency would consider publishing the names for us to see.

That way, we could cheerfully disregard these fine Canadians when they pop up on our TV screens bleating for more tax cuts and corporate subsidies.

The Dirty Little Secret of the '60s

2011-03-06T17:49:00.000-08:00

Was chatting with my daughter over dinner about the position of women in society, and how the decades have been so different in their reality for girls, when something was said about the '60s. I don't know who said it or what it was, but suddenly there was a scent of hostility, a rancour that I found disconcerting.

It pulled me up short, and I suddenly felt a gulf between my daughter and I, a friction -- something hard and cold that made me feel that her generation, which I had always considered my good friends, had come to the point where they wanted to push mine aside, not because they didn't like us, but rather because we had something that they could never have and they deeply, deeply resented us because of it.

I realized then that I have never really spoken to my daughter about my life in the 60s. I just don't talk about it, even though I am, I think, reasonably open about other aspects of my life. Even though it was a flashpoint of modern history; even though I had adventures that are worth repeating; even though an understanding of what I was doing in the '60s is essential to an understanding who I am today -- even with all that...I don't talk about it.

I don't know why I don't talk about it. Perhaps because it is such a private, secret part of those of us who are of a certain age, those of us who lived it.

But perhaps we should.

Our children obviously want to know. They want to understand what it was we had then. And maybe what they could aim to have now.

Maybe we should tell them. Or not.

I don't know that I'd know where to begin.

Too funny

2011-01-24T19:44:00.000-08:00

This is funny.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/bc-politics/ndp-screening-leadership-candidates-to-head-off-internet-embarrassments/article1881534/

And we despair that we have political leaders who are lacking in pizzazz, charisma, oomph, general knowledge of life? One has to wonder who will be left to run for public office in this country.

You remember those kids who used to sit in the front row of the class and wave their hands at the teacher? Ask me. Ask me. I know. I know. Well, they're running your life now. Thanks to the world of gotcha journalism and hyper-partisan goodie-two-shoes smarminess.

Let me know how it works out for you.

That Jewish State Thing

2010-09-22T17:59:00.000-07:00

A UN human rights panel has come down against Israeli's attack on a Turkish ship that tried to run the Gaza blockade this summer. The report may be thoughtful and balanced, or it may not. I have no way of telling.

But here's the thing.

I would rather see the rest of the Middle East engulfed in flames than see one hair on the head of the Jewish state damaged in any way.

I admit that it is irrational. It is also non-negotiable. In the same way that I will defend to my utmost ability the safety of the Roma and the rights of homosexuals.

I believe it is simply what must be done by people who care deeply about right and wrong.

To be brutally honest about it, the world gave away its right to moral judgement over these three groups of people when it turned its back on them half a century ago. No balanced and thoughtful UN committees can ever change that. No reasoned finding by any celebrated judicial bright-light can ever wipe away the need to right a grievous wrong that was done. Nothing will ever change the fact that desperate people knocked on our door and asked for help, and we turned them away.

We may kack away at it all we want and pretend to be fair, balanced and thoughtful, in a good modern liberal way, but when we side with Iranian nutbars and UN human rights commissions that are dominated by brutal dictators, we are merely brushing our failings under the rug. We are re-arguing the inarguable -- See! They weren't really nice people! See! It's only understandable that good, decent people could get so vexed up with them that they were forced to try to exterminate them!

Let us not do this again.

Euro Anti-Sealers Create Opportunity for Canadians

2010-09-12T10:52:00.000-07:00

How's this for unintended consequences?

Because of the European Union ban on seal products, which went into effect last month, Scottish kilt makers are turning to the skins of cute little ponies and bunnies to make sporrans for their kits. Animal lovers should be appalled. Many Scots are upset about the assault on their culture. And the change probably isn't appreciated by Scottish kilt buyers either.

According to today's Scotsman, the new-age sporrans don't look as good as the traditional seal-skin ones. They probably won't wear as well either.

Who wants to pay more than $1,000 for authentic Scottish kit, only to have it topped off with a piece of blather that looks like a 1950s Japanese knock-off?

Here's an excellent opportunity for Newfoundland outports to join forces with Inuit hunters, hire a few accomplished sporran-makers, set up a factory and offer Scots garb wearers the online chance to buy the real deal -- at a premium price, of course.

Let the Europeans wallow in their moral superiority -- as they slaughter their unwanted ponies and rabbits. But also let them pay the price of their arrogance. That's food on our tables and money in our pockets.

Maybe we should egg them on to ban trade in sheep products and beef products so we can get the whole darned thing.

Dealing with the Taliban

2010-08-25T19:40:00.000-07:00

A story in the papers this week suggests the Taliban and their supporters are pumping poisonous gas into educational facilities for girls.

Ho-hum. And on we go.

Here's what I'd do with that little tactic.

Make a list of Afghani towns, ranking them according to their acceptance of a Taliban presence.

When something like this happens, pull out the list, pick the town that is the "softest" on the Taliban and...I don't know...bomb their municipal offices, humiliate their leaders or drag out a few men and cut off their noses. Just do something disgusting and terrifying.

If another girls' school is attacked, move down the list to number 2 town. Drag out a few influential males and cut off their ears.

Repeat as required.

See how long it takes for the attacks to stop.

End of story.

Learn from Ghengis Khan and the Romans. Live long and prosper.

Wait a sec!

2010-08-18T18:40:00.000-07:00

Oh, those Faroe Islanders.

A couple of weeks ago, I was ranting along about the enviros picking on the poor, innocent, little Faroe Islanders and their understandable desire to keep up their traditional fishing lifestyle.

Well, seems those Faroe folk are not as innocent as they seem.

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/scotland/Fishermen-blockade-ship-in-mackerel.6480105.jp

In fact, they seem to be hell bent on sparking another fish war between Iceland and Britain. I don't know who is right in this argument, but I do know that the Faroe Islanders are at the root of it...again.

Maybe it's time to ask the fundamental question. Who are these guys, and what are they up to?

Which goes to show...things are not always what they seem. And you're not always right.

Tough guys; tough targets

2010-08-01T09:17:00.000-07:00

Sea Shepherd and friends have bravely assaulted another fortress of environmental evil.

Moving courageously behind enemy lines, the plucky environmentalists have exposed the latest heinous crime of yet another declasse people living a disgustingly primative lifestyle. This time, it's the Faroe Islands, a collection of fewer than 50,000 descendants of the Vikings who cling tenaciously to their traditional fishing lifestyle. Their crime is the annual "slaughter" of pilot whales, apparently a food source for these backward rubes.

Let's listen in.

"The disembowelled bodies of brutally slaughtered whales line a dockside just 230 miles from Britain - as families with children wander among them, according to a report from The Sun."

Imagine that! Only 230 miles from the almost-centre of all that is good and holy in this ever-so-precious 21st century. Butchered bodies on the beach...and children wandering among them! What savages!

The environmental Cromwells must be warming up for another full-frontal attack on marginalized Newfoundland outposts.

Be warned, you evil widows and orphans. You filthy throw-backs who wrest your meagre living from God's seas and soils and gardens. The enviros are coming to unmask you!

Tragic. Simply tragic.

The Left has lost me

2010-06-24T17:43:00.000-07:00

Anti-Semitism is a deal breaker for me.

Because of the time I was born, the things I've seen, the books I've read, the people I've known and the myriad of positions I've taken throughout my life, I cannot support any organization or ideology that advocates or condones any form of hatred for Jews.

The Holocaust happened. Pograms happened. The Inquisition happened. The insidious persecution of Jews in the Soviet Union happened. I don't know why these events happened. I will never understand this sick, deep-rooted obsession, but I recognize that it has existed for a long time, that it continues today and that it can flare up at any time, in any place, among the most unremarkable of people.

Anti-Semitism has even happened here, in the magical land of diversity.

My mother used to tell me about her summer jobs in Ontario's resort country, when she would walk down the streets and see signs forbidding Jews from visiting this store, or patronizing that restaurant. She complained that they would walk in groups, these Jews, and force you off the sidewalk. Pushy, you know. Yet she never linked these sidewalk hogs to the gentle, soft-spoken couple she worked for. They were Italian Jews with two young children, who had landed in Canada after a horrific run across Europe, fleeing for their lives from Mussolini's Italy. She quite liked them, enjoyed the children and admired the talented young doctor. Maybe she saw them as cultivated Italians rather than pushy Jews. I don't know.

She never linked these quiet, worthy people with the hateful signs she saw in the streets. As far as I know, she never wondered how those signs made them feel.

That's why it pains me when the Left fixates on the misdeeds of Israel. I listen to the stories of the Left very carefully. And my spidey senses tingle. Maybe I'm overly sensitive, but I can feel a a familiar undercurrent. There's an echo of stories told before the Pograms and the ghettos and the hand-lettered signs telling Jews they were not welcome. The old stories of financial and political control. The old tales of cunning clannishness. Jews who push their way into places they don't belong, whether those places are in the Middle East, or Berlin, or on the pre-war sidewalks of Jackson's Point.

This would, of course, be of little consequence to me if I were not a lifelong liberal who had once found a happy and comfortable home on the left. Today, however, I find myself drifting and homeless.

So I still long for social justice, agitate for workers' rights against corporate power, promote the enlargement of democracy, push for liberal values and advocate equality. But I must do it without the Left.

Because anti-Semitism will always be a deal-breaker for me, and the Left, I fear, has strayed into a place I will not go.

And I don't know where that leaves us.

Don't call for help in Scotland

2010-06-09T19:29:00.000-07:00

An inquiry into the drowning death of two fishermen in Scotland had this to say about the reaction of local firefighters to the crisis...

"RESCUE workers listened to the last cries of two drowning fishermen as they waited for a Strathclyde Fire and Rescue boat to arrive because they had no training in water rescues."

They were yelling back and forth to the men in the water. Then the cries stopped. And they waited 20 minutes more. When the experts finally arrived, they didn't come with the expected boat. They came with a rope -- the same type of useless rope that the rescue workers already had.

So two men slipped to their deaths in the dark, cold sea, and the people who call themselves rescue workers stood there like mooks listening to them drown because they weren't "trained" in water rescues. The one man who had wanted to try a rescue was dissuaded because it was judged by his colleagues to be too dangerous.

This is not the first time in recent months that emergency workers of one kind or another have stood aside while people have died, perhaps needlessly, because the situation was deemed to be too dangerous for a rescue attempt or the designated rescue workers lacked training or they didn't have the requisite equipment to affect a rescue. Or whatever.

One might ask what earthly good these people are, and why are they being paid to show up for work each day.

What a bunch of flakes.

I Think

2010-05-07T20:03:00.000-07:00

The single most important thing a person can do is question every assumption he or she makes.

There can be no certainty, ever, about anything.

And that means no knee-jerk acceptance of any ideology or partisan talking points or seemingly right-thinking position about anything.

Why is that so hard to do?

Between reality and rationalization lies...class war

2010-04-03T10:52:00.000-07:00

I think I live somewhere between reality and rationalization, but I could merely be whining, or trying to excuse a poor work ethic. Success in the things that matter to me seems so elusive. Is it a failure in me? Or a distortion in the world around me? Am I to blame? Or is the world in some way unfair?

I confess I don't know the answer. But I do know that I find Hermione Lee's piece in today's Manchester Guardian to be deeply distrurbing and, yes, even depressing. The critical paragraph goes like this:

Penelope Knox came from a writing family, "a family where everyone was publishing, or about to publish", and has written about that environment with eloquence, tenderness and wit in The Knox Brothers and in pieces about her childhood. Her uncles – the cryptographer and classics don Dillwyn, the Anglican priest Wilfred, the famous Roman Catholic convert Ronald – were intellectuals of idiosyncratic brilliance, competitive, eccentric and learned. Her aunt, Winifred Peck, was a prolific and talented novelist in the Angela Thirkell vein. Her father, "Evoe" Knox, was the editor of Punch and a fine comic journalist. Her mother, who died when Penelope was 18, had been an English student at Somerville College, Oxford, and wrote abridgments of classic literature (Pilgrim's Progress, The Pickwick Papers) for schools. Her stepmother Mary was a gifted artist, the daughter of the illustrator of Winnie-the-Pooh, EH Shepard. Her brother Rawle, a dominant and energetic character as a boy, became a journalist after his incarceration in a Japanese prison-of-war-camp. He also wrote a life of Shepard in 1979, to which Penelope contributed a vivid chapter. They had collaborated before, like many middle-class children of their era, on a nursery magazine. As a child, Penelope was an early reader ("I was praised, and since then have never been praised so much") and an early writer.

I'm sure Penelope Knox was an excellent writer, and her novels are probably worth reading, but they are not the types of things I read and they most certainly are not the types of things I would ever write. How could I? My family looks nothing like that. No acclaimed writers or illustrious converts to Catholicism. No classics dons or cryptographers. No Oxford abridgers, brilliant eccentrics, illustrators or gifted artists. Not a one. Not anywhere in the family tree.

So I am left to wonder if the grandchild of a coal-mining Welsh farmer, the daughter of a Toronto carpenter, the niece of a self-employed Dundee painter, or the great-grandchild of Presbyterian school teachers from the Kingdom of Fife could ever succeed in the literary world that embraces Penelope Knox.

I think not. And I think it's mainly a class thing.

But then again, maybe I'm just not working hard enough.

So Tired of Ideologies

2010-03-31T16:04:00.000-07:00

Politics used to be good fun. It isn't now.

Politics, as we know it today, has been hijacked by screaming ideologues of the right and the left.

Neither can be trusted. Neither can be made sense of. Neither is interested in anything other than TOTAL WORLD DOMINATION of public discourse for their own murky purposes. Both grind their ideological axes exceedingly shrilly. Their all-encompassing background screech makes reason flee and rational people fall silent.

They give me a headache.

I don't much care about the Right. In my experience, right-wingers have always been looney tunes in a self-serving, cat's-paw-for-the-would-be-elite sort of way. I am comfortable in my faith that their hidden agenda will inevitably support policies that support middle-aged white guys who want to retain their privileged rung at the top of the social ladder. No mystery there.

But the Left? Holy-crapoly, what the heck can we to make of the Left?

They support the most backward, repressive social organizations on Earth simply because they are anti-American, anti-Western and -- dare I say it? -- anti-liberal. They appear to hate all industrial workers because industrial workers don't have advanced academic degrees in the social sciences or liberal arts. They despise middle-class people because middle-class people are so boringly WalMart. They dabble in a deep-ecology philosophy that urges the extermination of "surplus" populations, loves trees more than people and advocates artisan beaded bags over the advancement of human civilization.

For them, Hillary Clinton was too old and too female to be president. Autoworkers are too redneck to care about. Rural communities are too declasse to survive. All business operations are multinational greed machines. Israelis are evil. Palestinians are plucky. Iran is a hoot. America is always wrong. And the murderous Taliban are just a bunch of big-hearted freedom fighters with whom we should sit down and talk.

What a crock of knee-jerk stupidity.

Enough of these ideologues.

Boycott European products

2010-03-05T17:40:00.000-08:00

They're at it again, those Europeans.

They destroyed the fur trade that built this country. They devastated our Atlantic fisheries. They don't like us cutting down trees or digging minerals from our lands. Now they refuse to buy our seal products.

The time come to stand up against them.

No matter what you think of the seal hunt, no self-respecting Canadian should tolerate being dictated to by a bunch of self-righteous elites who value the lives of seals above the well-being of many of our fellow Canadians.

Here's a thought. Maybe our fellow Canadians have the right to their cultures and their livelihoods.

These blowhard Europeans, however, are prepared to sacrifice ancient Canadian cultures -- be they indigenous communities or coastal Newfoundland fishing villages -- so that they can demonstrate how morally superior they are to us redneck colonials who live off the land.

These self-serving Europeans are quite prepared to accept any behaviour -- from dog-eating Chinese or whale-killing Japanese -- if it serves their economic purpose. But they can't tolerate our seal products? Give me a break.

Europeans are Inuit killers. They're Newfie haters. They attack the weakest and most vulnerable among us to make themselves look good to their politically correct friends. They and their American fellow-travellers think they're still the colonial masters who tell Canadians what they can or can't do.

There's not much we can do about them. Except this. Don't buy their products. Not one. Ever.

I Guess You Do Have to Believe

2010-02-28T16:44:00.000-08:00

Lessons learned.

Don't give up after the first week. Continue on until the end. As we always have. And always will do.

I misjudged this Olympics thing, because I listened too much to the malcontents of the Left and Right, from Canada, the U.S. and, above all, Europe. And they turned out to be as supericial and wrong, as they always turn out to be.

No matter what any one says, these were a great Games for Canada.

So maybe we should do it again some day. One day. Some day.

It was a gas, my fellow Canadians. Thank you for being you.

In the Trenches of Economic Development

2010-02-21T17:15:00.001-08:00

Richard Florida just sent this link out via his Twitter account -- http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/022110/opi_565570387.shtml

It's an article about a town in Georgia trying to overcome a negative image to kick-start a sluggish conomy in recessionary times. It's worth reading because it is true. I think Florida's point is that economic development is hard work. It's not a glitzy, easy-bake quick-fix. It's a hard slog that pays dividends slowly, if at all.

My favourite example of that truth is Sudbury, a city that found itself on the lip of an economic abyss in the early 1980s. Only those who were inside the crisis will ever know how close Sudbury came to losing it all in those frightening years. Federal industry minister Tony Clement can prattle all he wants about Brazil's Vale Inco saving Sudbury from a Valley of Death, but he will never know the sweaty stink of the real thing. He wasn't there in 1980-81 when nickel prices imploded, Inco and Falconbridge both danced with bankruptcy and the entire region tottered on the brink.

It was only a deep alliance of company, union and region (Wint Newman, Ron MacDonald and Tom Davies), along with a single-minded focus on survival, that pulled Sudbury back from the brink. That monumental struggle also laid an economic foundation that is helping the city surmount its difficulties today.

Sudburians of the 1980s attacked economic development as if they were a goal down late in the third, in the Gold medal game, with the honour of a nation on the line. They refused to accept defeat, they dug in, they fought back and they prevailed.

That's how successful economic development is done in the trenches, when the world is passing you by and the elites are writing you off as yesterday's news. It's not fancy formulas, or someone else's solutions, or intellectual constructs. It's just head's down, shoulder to shoulder, pushing together toward a single goal. It's street-by-street, house-by-house, hand-to-hand combat, in which inches are taken, then lost, then taken again.

Every job must be seized, every grant pursued, every program embraced and every possibility exhausted until the objective is realized.

It's hard, grinding work. But for those who find themselves on the wrong side of economic fashion, it is the only way out.

Let's Not Do This Again

2010-02-19T19:29:00.000-08:00

I'm a big fan of the Olympics. Have been for many, many years. But watching these Winter Games unfold, I have become somewhat pessimistic.

These Canadian festivities are not turning out as we had hoped. Instead of showcasing our humble virtues to the world, they are exposing us to global ridicule. Instead of bringing us together as a people, they have become a flashpoint for the legion of malcontents that infests our public sphere. Instead of engendering pride in our happy experiment, they are stirring the grubby troll of self-loathing that lurks in the heart of all of us.

We have put our money and our mouths on the line for these Games. And what have we gained?

The financial price has been incredible. The striving to be world-class on so many fronts has frayed our national psyche. Our efforts to appear self-confidently mature have been brushed off as arrogant and gauche by the very people we had hoped to impress.

The weather has been ridiculous, equipment quixotic, security a nightmare and incompetence rife. Athletes are being hurt, even killed. Police officers are being sent home for tawdry crimes. Too few people are speaking French. And the world press is feasting on our shortcomings, wondering aloud if these bumbling Canadians have mounted the shabbiest Olympics in history.

Worse, our athletes are seriously under performing, making our "Own the Podium" mantra ring a bit hollow even to our own ears.

We look like a nation of poseurs.

In future, when the subject of hosting a big global event comes up, why don't we let someone else plan it, design it, pay for it and host it? Let someone else take the knocks of an ill-tempered, realpolitik world? Let's dedicate ourselves to attending other people's parties. We are excellent guests. We love to travel. And we can win just as many medals -- if not more -- on someone else's dime.

Let the Americans have them. They are deaf to criticism, immune to pressure and they love to show off. Or the Chinese, who are quite capable of slapping their own people into line in the pursuit of global supremacy. The Russians. The Germans. The French. Even the Koreans, who almost snatched these Games away from us. Imagine if these Games were occurring right now in Korea. We'd be winning just as many medals, at a fraction of the cost, and having just as much fun. Then, at the end of the festivities, we could just laugh and walk away, leaving the Koreans with a pile of bills and a bad case of Olympic indigestion.

It's been a slice. But...let's never, ever do this again.

A Northern Nation at Last?

2010-02-15T11:20:00.000-08:00

Was just reading John Ivison's blog in today's National Post - http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/02/15/john-ivison-gst-cuts-don-t-make-the-hall-of-fame.aspx - and some thoughts occurred. Very preliminary thoughts. Possibly wrong-headed and premature. But thoughts, nonetheless.

Ivison opines that Prime Minister Harper may be seeking his legacy in the Arctic, a region that obviously attracts him and could certainly benefit from his attention. Also a region that is of great strategic interest again, given its vast natural resources and the new openness of potential shipping lanes in the northwest passage.

Well, we could probably do worse than look to the north.

Especially since this shifting focus is happening at a time when our Winter Olympics are in full swing, and we are being reintroduced to the thrill of being a northern nation. When the United States, our ideological beacon for the last 150 years, has become social, political and economic porridge. When Britain, an over-bearing presence in our colonial minds, is in a nose-down, stalled-out spiral on every significant dimension of civilization.

What an interest confluence of events.

So I ponder John Diefenbaker and his unrealized northern vision.

Maybe we will finally discover ourselves as a northern nation, and be comfortable at last with our flannel-shirted selves. No more chasing other people`s dreams. No more aping a distant empire`s culture. No more parrotting other people`s ideas and following in other people`s footsteps. Just being ourselves as best we can.

And finally building something of lasting value out of this strange northern brew.

Not the fastest, highest or strongest perhaps, but a fine northern place, full of good people doing interesting things.

We could do worse.

Democrats abandon America

2010-01-19T19:15:00.000-08:00

Well, the Democrats lost Ted Kennedy's seat tonight. And I am thoroughly pissed with them.

Over the past year -- after electing the first Black president in America's history -- liberal democrats in the United States have managed to trash everything by descending into factious, stupid, hissy-faced bickering. They have failed to support Obama, even though they knew how difficult his road would be. They have failed to honour the hopes of ordinary Americans. They have abjectly failed to understand the responsibility thrust upon them by this great moment in history.

They have revealed themselves as juvenile, spoiled, superficial and unworthy.

The fact that they have done this in the echo of Martin Luther King Jr's special day is especially galling.

At this sad and confusing moment, I think Americans are beyond hope. They are beyond shame.

I am so disappointed by them.

A Really Nasty Alternate Universe

2009-12-31T08:39:00.000-08:00

Who Are These People? And where did they come from?

I've been reading comment boards at the Globe and the Star again. I know I shouldn't do it. But I can't help myself. They depress me. They unsettle me. They destroy my carefully constructed view of my rational, pleasant world. But still I read them. Why?

For the same reason people watch horror movies or slow down to stare at car wrecks, I suppose. It's as if someone has torn a hole in the reality curtain to give me a peek at a really nasty alternate universe. Ninth circle of Hell stuff where people gnash their bloody teeth, shriek, scream and burn with fevered passions.

These are people who can toss off the most sullen, hateful sentiments with the nonchalence of a store clerk remarking on the weather. As if it's normal. And yet I have never heard anyone, anywhere, at any time, express such raw hatred out loud in real life. Like this poster, from today's Globe, "commenting" on U.S. President Obama:

Enough with the experiments.
Anyone heard of the other American icon?
Where is the Tiger?
When the going gets tough they all hide.
ObaMao played golf when the attack happened.
Pathetic Barry took 3 days to read a release to the press like he didn't give a sh!t.
The fraud is over.
The world laughs at Barry born in Kenya.
Dick Cheney for President.
The USA needs a real home born American today and not Barry from Kenya.

YES WE CAN'T.

Hello, Mr. Yes We Can't. This is your drycleaner calling. We have your nice white sheets ready for you, if you'd like to come pick them up. Sorry about sewing the eyeholes shut.

All right, the selection is a bit extreme, but it's not totally out of sync with a good portion of the commentary. And this is a reputable Canadian newspaper in a modern urban centre -- not some rabid little rag in the 18th century Deep South. Does Mr. Yes We Can't talk like this to his mother, his co-workers, his pals at the pub after a game of pick-up softball? Does he have a real life somewhere with a home, a family, a job, hobbies? Does he have children?

So who are these people? Do they disguise themselves as normal Canadian suburbanites by day, mingling with us at the malls and grocery stores? Or do they hide in dark basements, muttering to themselves? Are they the true face of Canada? Or a couple of Limbaugh wanna-be's holed up in a westcoast condo?

And why do I see so much of this stuff in the Globe and the Star, two Toronto-based liberal-ish publications, where the boards are dominated by screed-spewing ideologues? Why don't I find these reptiles slithering all over the New York Times or the Scotsman or the Guardian or the National Post or virtually any other reputable newspaper in the civilized world?

Maybe that's why I keep reading. To learn what, if anything, they are telling me about my world and the people I share it with. Scary thought. Let's hope they only seem to be so numerous.

Okay, My Friends. Wassup?

2009-12-21T18:04:00.000-08:00

The climate change extravaganza in Copenhagen was one of the most perplexing shows ever mounted in the Earth's sorry history.

Somehow, amid the screaming and garment-renting, Canada emerged as the arch-villain of the piece. Apparently, we of the peaceable kingdom are the Bad Thing hellbent on destroying this shiny blue orb everyone loves so much. Against us are ranged the angelic forces of Good -- led by a demented Robert Mugabe, that scoflaw from Sudan who slaughters black babies, a bunch of rabblerousers from Latin America and a handful of self-appointed leaders from countries too small to name.

The whole thing is so improbable that even the slowest among us has to stop and ask, Wassup with this?

Are we to believe that in the midst of the world's daily hurly-burly -- the clamour of Calcutta, the thrumb of Hanover, the clatter of oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, the whir of innumerable factories in China and the shriek of chainsaws in Indonesia -- modest little Canada is the Evil that will lead the world over the climate change cliff?

Come on! Pull the other one!

With Copenhagen, surely the idiotic campaign against Canada has scraped bottom. Do you people out there really believe that our seal hunters threaten the Earth's equilibrium? That our lumberjacks are pilaging the planet? Clearcutting every last pristine wilderness? That our mining companies are engaged in a conspiracy of genocide against indigenous people everywhere? That our own Aboriginal people are exterminating wild species willynilly with their marginal fur-trapping? Is this what goes on in your fevered European brains?

Ridiculous.

So what is up with this?

What's with the Canada-bashing by all these murky and unelected NGOs? And why are all those supposedly responsible European governments lending support to this drivel? Not to mention all that U.S. money flooding in to support those murky and unelected NGOs.

Interesting, eh what?

If anyone has any answers, please let Rupert know.

Searching for a Post-Left Left

2009-12-06T17:47:00.000-08:00

Oh, how I hate to admit this. But the Left -- soul of my soul, heart of my heart -- has become the enemy of everything I value.

How did I misplace the good, old, unassuming Left that worked to get working people into their own modest homes and helped them send their kids to school? Whatever happened to the people who valued the working-class life and the decent, down-to-earth folks who wanted fair wages for a honest day's work? Norma Jean - where did hell did you go?

Now it's all fight climate change and save the caribou and preserve the Boreal and shutter the shit-belching factories and stop those dirty lumberjacks, miners, steelworkers from soiling my pristine wilderness backyard latte patio garden. And fuck off with your hopes for a stone quarry that could employ your sons and daughters at decent wages because it might spoil the view when I sea kayak on your pretty shores in some distant summer. Workers should renounce their carbon-spewing jobs and their animal-killing ways to take up the noble tasks of retail and hospitality -- so they can more perfectly serve the new-veau Left when it arrives for a week of getting in touch with its excellent wild-child self.

That's what the new Left is all about, isn't it? Auto workers are uppity illiterates who deserve to be put in their place. People who shop at Zeller's and Wal-Mart are white trash. Snowmobilers, ice-fishman, bowlers, moose hunters, bingo players, Legionnaires, union members, high-school graduates and community college drudges, people who get up every day to go to work -- all right-wing red-necks. And god, don't get me started on Oshawa and Hamilton and Sudbury. Arm-pit towns full of tedious, uneducated rubes. No nightlife. No creativity. No class.

Way to go, folks. You have achieved a Left that hates the working class. Is it any wonder that working people vote for Stephen Harper and Sarah Palin?

How do we get beyond this? Because get beyond it we must, if we don't want an endless horizon of Stephen Harpers and green-grocer fascists.

We could lose the pretentious superiority. We could stop channelling the late, lamented Jean-Jacques Rousseau. We could start to like real people again. We could stop kowtowing to fever-brained neo-anarchists with delusional agendas. Above all, the Left could to reconnect with its working-class base to become a viable political force again instead of an elitist echo of 18th century nobless oblige.

If the Left can't become the post-Left, and quickly, it will find itself on the wrong side of an emerging class war. Many exquisitely educated heads will roll.

And all that was, will be dust. And all that might be, will be lost.

Bruce Mau and Sudbury

2009-11-16T19:43:00.001-08:00

Sudbury is a really cool place and I am immensely grateful for the time I spent there.

In the exercise of courageous self-examination, no other city in the world -- that I know of -- can hold a candle to Sudbury. And I say that without the slightest hint of sarcasm or wink-wink, nudge-nudge paternalism.

Over the past several decades, Sudbury has, on several occasions, bravely looked into its own heart, plumbed its depths, faced its demons. And it has learned tremendously from the truths it has seen there. It has never flinched. Just to live in Sudbury is to be smarter and braver and more alive to reality than most of the people who live in other cities in other places in the world.

So it surprises me not at all that Sudbury has had the balls to invite native son Bruce Mau, a true outlier in the world of design, to come and give advice about designing a viable future.

Anyone who has read Mau's work, or visited one of his Massive Change exhibits, has to understand that Mau is not your average garden designer. To say he has a big scope is an understatement. He is difficult, if not impossible, for a non-artist to understand. Yet it is impossible to view his work and not realize that he is on to something. Much as one might read Stephen Hawking or Roger Penrose and understand that there is something important there, even if one cannot grasp it.

Bruce Mau is not accessible in the way that Jane Jacobs or Richard Florida might be. He is difficult, tantalizing, suggestive and visionary in a way that may be beyond the ken of most of us. One may dismiss his vision, but one cannot deny he has one.

So when Bruce Mau comes to Sudbury to give advice, a wise person will listen and try to understand that advice as best he or she can.

It will be very exciting to watch this interaction between the genius designer and the intrepid city.

My hope is that Mau can be convinced to expand his range even further, and to begin to think about the design of the entire region of Northern Ontario. That would really be something to see, wouldn't it?

Poor, old CBC

2009-11-16T18:50:00.000-08:00

As is normal in our country, the poor, old CBC is being castigated right, left and centre for its new National news format. All the usual naysayers are out in force. With all the usual naysayer arguments. Why do I have to pay for...? Leftwing bias....Liberal mouthpiece....blah, blah, blah.

Sadly, the problems of the CBC have nothing to do with any of this. Or set graphics. Or colours. Or people sitting or standing. Or even demographics.

No. They are fundamentally to do with the poor, old CBC's mandate. And that has to do with Canada itself.

Unfortunately for the poor, old CBC, there is no Canada left to interpret. No Canadians to explain to each other. It's all an empty illusion. All of it. Whatever was Canada has disappeared. Evaporated. Long gone. Gone. Gone. Gone. The CBC is not even a voice in the wilderness. It is an echo in a vacuum in a bathroom in a bus station.

There ain't no there there.

Folks, there is no longer any Canada for the CBC to interpret. And therein lies the problem. That is why the CBC seems so irrelevent. It is out there on a shaky limb, all by itself in the world, trying to explain one lot of Americans to another; struggling to mediate between the expatriot leftwing Americans, who love the idea of the CBC and work there in great numbers, and resident would-be Americans, who hate the CBC and all it stands for. Blue State vs Red State stuff. Impenetrable American inside baseball stuff. Leaving the rest of us wandering around in the washroom, wondering where the voices are coming from.

Much of our public discours has become this -- various brands of Americans feuding with each other at the cottage that is Canada. Like upstate N.Y. Mohawks warring with United Empire Loyalists in Desoronto. Wannabe Republican Harper tilting at New England Liberal Ignatieff. Simpson versus Wente. C.D. Howe versus Jane Jacobs versus Richard Florida versus Tom Flanagan.

The CBC is trying valliantly to interpret Canadians to Canadians, but it can only fail. There are no Canadians left. Only ex-pat and would-be Americans grinding their tired, old axes in the safety of this vacuous piece of real estate.

Poor, old CBC.

Power Shift

2009-10-31T20:35:00.000-07:00

Rex Murphy plumbs an interesting subject in his column this weekend. Harking back to the National Energy Program, he postulates that if the eco-folk manage to derail the development of the Alberta oil sands, the resulting backlash could tear Canada apart.

He is, of course, absolutely correct.

Albertans will be justifiably outraged if central Canada's intelligensia manages to kibosh the province's last, best chance at securing a piece of economic, political and social power. This is, after all, Alberta's hour. Albertans have waited a long time for it, with many false starts on the way. At last, the political and social centre is subtly shifting west and, as a result, the country is finally balancing out. It could be seen as a sign of maturity and growth, a step toward the future and a welcome development for everyone but the long-entrenched elite.

It really is time for new blood. And it is well passed time for a counterweight to the sterile, derivitive thinking that dominates much of what comes out of the minds of central Canadian political commentators.

Rex misses the mark, however, by suggesting that this is a battle of provinces. It is not. Rather it is a fight, perhaps to the death, between working Canada -- the Canada of farms and mines and sawmills and factories -- and the old Family Compact, their children, their friends and the hangers-on.

The hangers-on are in the driver's seat now, but that won't last. Lament it as we might, the olde Empire is dead, and we must move on. If we don't, we are, of course, toast. Which we have been for most of the last century and a half anyway, so no harm done, eh?

Things that are hard to say

2009-10-18T13:21:00.000-07:00

It is so hard to say this.

Because I may be wrong. I could be misinterpreting history. Maybe others are right, and I am wrong. And if I am wrong, I will be doing a great disservice to good people, for whom I nothing but good will.

However. That said.

Islam seems to me to have become a most evil religion. Dark, lustful, bloody and hateful. As if a crack has opened in the Earth and this ugly, dark thing has emerged. Obsessed with stonings, and hackings, and the cutting off of limbs; the control of women; bombings and killings and the slaughter of innocents.

There is no light here. No colour. No playfulness. No creativity. Nothing of the golden age. It has all been sucked into a darkness so profound that it can only be equated with the death itself.

Beheadings. On video. On YouTube. On Al Jerzera TV. Let's all watch, shall we? In the name of religion. Has there has been anything like this since the Kali cult or the Aztec abominations? Glowering clerics in black robes screaming jihad against the Other? Brutal boys blowing up subways and dreaming of dead children? Twisted faces shouting sharia now, don't you know we're going to get you when we get in power?

Would we be out of order to label this satanic? If not that, then what?

How did these people get so far from the wonderful Islam of its golden age?

I guess it can happen to any religion.

Sometimes I Sit Up Late at Night

2009-09-05T18:55:00.000-07:00

Thinking about Canada, and where it's going, and what it's doing. And what it is today in these opening chords of the 21st century.

How silly is that?

Knowing that I have to get up early in the morning. Knowing that no one in this country's "thinking class" gives a damn what I think. Knowing that nothing I think makes a damn to what is.

And yet the mind can't help roaming over this jumbled landscape, can it?

It must be an obsession, this urge to scan the geography late at night. When you look at it from one angle, the country seems so full of promise and potential. From another angle, it seems so old. So woolly-headed. So peevish.

I mean, how can you have any hope when the newspaper comment boards are choked with bile and stupidity? Rightest ravings and leftist rants. All of them so annoyingly derivative. Columnists banging on about Republicans, Obama, Putin, Europe, Islam and Israel. Elected officials pilloried by reporters who find their issues in News of the World archives. Bloggers who grind old Andrew Carnegie's axe against immigrants and union bosses.

What a mess of arid thoughts and petty grievances. Does no one have an original idea?

So I wonder, in my doddering way, if all this noise really represents Canada. Is this who and what we are today? Petty, peevish and stale? Or is our so-called intellectual dialogue nothing more than a Laff in the Dark fun house, where reality refracts off a kaleidoscope of Rush Limbaugh, George Galloway, the Daily Kos and those wackos who sputter through the pages of the Star every day? None of them, apparently, having much to do with this time in this country.

Hard to tell. Could go either way.

I guess the real question is, does anyone actually care?

Our Disintegrating Country

2009-08-29T09:28:00.000-07:00

In a G&M essay today (click on title to view essay), Michael Valpy writes about signs of the disintegration of social cohesion in Canada. Remarkably - and I say remarkably because the Globe's comment boards are usually dominated by a handful of foaming morons - there are some thoughtful reactions from readers to Valpy's observations.

The piece elicits a mixed Rupert reaction. Some top of mind thoughts:

Valpy's assumption of a previous state of cohesion is a departure for the national intelligensia. I don't recall seeing any general acceptance of Canada as a social unity before. When did this happen? Did I completely miss a golden age of social cohesion? I thought we were all a-warring in the bosom. Now we're disintegrating from a cohesion we never had the joy of experiencing. Is Valpy a revisionist? Why? What's his angle?
Trudeau remains a watershed event for Canadians. He has become a symbol that marks the fork in the road between conservative and liberal positions. Maybe PET is our focal point, our source of social cohesion, and we circle his memory like wrestlers, looking for holds in multiculturalism, bilingualism-biculturalism, the Indian Act, Meech Lake, the NEP and immigration. Will we spend the next century arguing about this man? How can we resolve this and move forward?
Discontent over multiculturalism bubbles like raw sewage under the surface of this country. Is it resentment? Did the English and the French have a cozy mix-up going on, and now the Muslims have horned in? Can these "others" assimilate fast enough, or can we find another group to fixate on quickly enough, for them to avoid the fate of becoming our new source of social cohesion? What do they respresent in our national narrative?
And where will the First Nations land? I sense the approach of a tipping point. How far will the FNs have to push their ill-tempered sovereignty, self-government, pay-us-back arguments before they estrange the rest of the population? With their "wedges are us" standoffishness, do they aspire to become Canada's Roma? At what point do Canadians begin to view them as an economic and existential threat?
Canadians are fanatically nationalistic. We love this country! We revel in who we are. We may not know how to express it, but we all have a view of what it means to be Canadian. And we love us. Threaten our sense of nationalism at your peril. Many on the left don't understand this. They like to pick up arguments holus-bolus from their colleagues in other countries and trot them out as original thought. As if we don't know shop-worn when we see it. Yeah, I read the Guardian too.
Canadian intellectuals are underachievers. They are mostly derivative of American leftist/rightist intellectuals and dead European philosophers. They carp at us for navel-gazing, but they miss the point. Since Canada is the greatest, most wonderful, most butt-kicking country in the world, at least in our heart of Canadian hearts, it is only right that we should obsess over its meaning and its nuances. Of course, the proper study of Canadians is Canada.
Americans piss us off because they take us for granted and they treat us like rubes. We know they will be sorry one day. Another source of social cohesion.
Toronto is the centre of the universe. Get over it. It's also full of people from somewhere else. Many of them are from the small towns where people love to hate Toronto. Toronto is a mirage. The real Toronto is made up of 72 families in the east end who are not doing very well. They deserve your sympathy.
Do our detractors - and we have many more than our share - have any chance of making us curl up like babies in whining balls of guilt, ready to move back to our "homelands" without a fight? I think not. But they keep trying, don't they?

Interesting reaction, eh? Who would have thought?

The Importance of Being a Regular Rupert

2009-08-29T08:26:00.000-07:00

It is important, I think, to be post often, in a regular fashion, about topics that are important to you.

This is not to say that regular posting will entice readers. No, it is more to cultivate a habit of frequent and regular self-examination. To constantly inquire: What do I think about that? Why do I think this about that? How is my thinking flawed, or deep, or shallow, or insightful?

And that is the name of this Rupert game. Self-discovery. Self-examination. Self-criticism.

The three pilars of a well-examined life and the foundation of personal growth.

For how do you grow without challenging yourself and your most fundamental beliefs? Your thoughts will get stuck in the cement of certainty and you'll become a curmudgeon, half-sister to the cur with a mudgeon of self-righteousness.

No growth potential there.

Of course, there's always the question of why one would want to grow. Why not rest and snuggle down in the warm seas of stasis? Why not accept what is and go on with it?

Hmmm. Why indeed? Dunno.

Self-improvement can seem so bourgeois and petty, don't you think? So 20th century, narcistic hippie-turned-old-boomer, maybe? A tad self-indulgent and aren't-I-the-centre-of-the-universe type of thing? Is that what the Xs, Ys, Zs and Omegas see when they survey the social landscape? Should I care? Do I care?

Nope. Not a wit. Not my job.

Besides, what have they -- the Xs, the Ys, and the whole roiling alphabet of youth -- done for me lately? Except make ignorant assumptions about my life, insult my being, threaten my future and generally piss me off. (I note some anger there, and I wonder why. Subject of another post perhaps.) But life's cruel, and they really owe me nothing. Which is probably twice as much as I owe them.

So onward and upward, you self-identifying, self-obsessive boomer Rupert.

Let Us Try This Again

2009-08-04T19:20:00.000-07:00

I few years ago, I started a blog. I wrote on it faithfully. And nobody read it.

Naturally, I got very discouraged.

Hell, who wants to write your innermost thoughts, put them out there for the world to read and have the world respond with a resounding yawn.

Tough stuff, eh?

So I gave up. And that was cowardly. I should not have done that, and I regret it.

The solution?

Pick it up. Soldier on. Try again.

I will, however, change the name of the blog. Like the NDP, I look for renewal in the mystical renaming of the thing.

Let's try it again. With feeling.

And damn the readers.