Canadian History: A Live Grenade
June 10, 2013 § 2 Comments
All History is both political and public in nature. I tend to describe myself as a public historian. As such, I am interested in how history is viewed by the general public and I’m interested in the intersection of public memory and history. But that should be obvious to anyone reading this blog or what I’ve written on the NCPH’s history@work blog. But, sometimes I tend to forget about the inherent politicisation of any act of history or memory.
To wit, I got drawn into an argument on Twitter yesterday, my foils were both Canadian Army soldiers. One retired, one active. One I have never come across before, the other is a guy I follow and who follows me. The discussion was about Stephen Harper’s new paint job on his plane, one that makes it look like a Conservative Party of Canada Airbus, rather than an RCAF plane. We argued about the colours of the Royal Canadian Air Force, and whether red, white, or blue belong there (we all agree they do), and in what proportion.
The outcome of the argument is irrelevant. What is interesting was the very fact that we were having it in the first place. In Anglo Canada, history has long been a dead subject, it wasn’t usually the topic of public discussion or debate, and when it was, it was something we could all generally agree on, like hockey. Even when Jack Granatstein published his deliberately provocative (and generally quite stupidly offensive) Who Killed Canadian History? in the mid-90s, Canadians generally yawned and looked the other way.
But, in the past few years, largely I would argue as a result of Stephen Harper’s Prime Ministership, Canadian history has become a live grenade. Anglo Canadians argue about the role of the monarchy in our history, we argue about the role of the military in our history, and so on. Canadians are having real arguments about their history for the first time in my life. And, as much as I despise Stephen Harper and his government, I suppose we have him and they to thank for this.
Stephen Harper: Revisionist Historian
May 3, 2013 § Leave a comment
By now, it should be patently clear that Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, is not a benign force. He likes to consider himself an historian, he’s apparently publishing a book on hockey this fall. But, I find myself wondering just what Harper thinks he’s doing. I’ve written about the sucking up of the Winnipeg Jets hockey club to Harper’s government and militaristic tendencies. I’ve noted Ian McKay and Jamie Swift’s book, Warrior Nation: The Rebranding of Canada in the Age of Anxiety (read it!). And I’ve had something to say about Harper’s laughably embarrassing attempt to re-brand the War of 1812 to fit his ridiculous notion of Canada being forged in fire and blood.
Now comes news that Harper’s government has decided it needs to re-brand Canadian history as a whole. According to the Ottawa Citizen:
Federal politicians have launched a “thorough and comprehensive review of significant aspects in Canadian history” in Parliament that will be led by Conservative MPs, investigating courses taught in schools, with a focus on several armed conflicts of the past century.
The study was launched by the House of Commons Canadian heritage committee that went behind closed doors last Monday to approve its review, despite apparent objections from the opposition MPs.
When this first passed through my Twitter timeline, I thought it HAD to be a joke. But it’s not. Apparently, Harper thinks that Canada needs to re-acquaint itself with this imagined military history. I’m not saying that Canadians shouldn’t be proud of their military history. We should, Canada’s military has performed more than admirably in the First and Second World Wars, Korea, and Afghanistan, as well as countless peacekeeping missions. Hell, Canadians INVENTED peacekeeping. Not that you would know that from the Harper government’s mantra.
As admirable as Canada’s military has performed, often under-equipped and under-funded, it is simply a flat out lie to suggest that we are a nation forged of war, blood, and sacrifice. Canada’s independence was achieved peacefully, over the course of a century-and-a-half (from responsible government in 1848 to the patriation of our Constitution in 1982). And nothing Harper’s minions can make up or say will change that, Jack Granatstein be damned.
To quote myself at the end of my War of 1812 piece:
Certainly history gets used to multiple ends every day, and very often by governments. But it is rare that we get to watch a government of a peaceful democracy so fully rewrite a national history to suit its own interests and outlook, to remove or play down aspects of that history that have long made Canadians proud, and to magnify moments that serve no real purpose other than the government’s very particular view of the nation’s past and present. The paranoiac in me sees historical parallels with the actions of the Bolsheviks in the late 1910s and early 1920s in Russia. The Bolshevik propaganda sought to construct an alternate version of Russian history; in many ways, Canada’s prime minister is attempting the same thing. The public historian in me sees a laboratory for the manufacturing of a new usable past on behalf of an entire nation, and a massive nation at that.
Every time I read about Harper’s imaginary Canadian history, I am reminded by Orwellian propaganda. And I’m reminded of the way propaganda works. Repeat something often enough, and it becomes true. The George W. Bush administration did that to disastrous effects insofar as the war in Iraq is concerned. But today, I came across something interesting in Iain Sinclair’s tour de force, London Orbital, wherein Sinclair and friends explore the landscape and history of the territory surrounding the M25, the orbital highway that surrounds London. Sinclair is heavily critical of both the Thatcherite and New Labour visions of England. In discussing the closing of mental health hospitals and the de-institutionalisation of the patients in England, Sinclair writes:
That was the Thatcher method: the shameless lie, endlessly repeated, with furious intensity — as if passion meant truth.
I suppose in looking for conservative heroes, Harper could do worse than the Iron Lady. But it also seems as if Harper is attempting nothing less than the re-branding of an entire nation.
On Libertarianism
May 1, 2013 § 4 Comments
Libertarianism is a very appealing political/moral position. To believe and accept that we are each on our own and we are each able to take care of our own business, without state interference is a nice idea. To believe that we are each responsible for our own fates and destinies is something I could sign up for. And, I have to say, the true libertarians I know are amongst the kindest people I know, in terms of giving their time, their money, their care to their neighbours and community, and even macro-communities.
But there are several fundamental problems with libertarianism. The first problem is what I’d term ‘selfish libertarianism.’ I think this is what drives major facets of the right in the Anglo-Atlantic world, a belief in the protection of the individual’s rights and property and freedom of behaviour, but coupled with attempts to deny others’ rights, property, and freedom. This, of course, is not real libertarianism. But this is pretty common in political discourse these days in Canada, the US, and the UK. People demand their rights to live their lives unfettered, but wish to deny others that freedom, especially women, gays/lesbians, and other minority groups (of course, women are NOT a minority, they make up something like 53% of the population in Canada, the US, and UK). So, ultimately, we can dismiss these selfish libertarians as not being libertarians at all.
My basic problem with true libertarianism is its basic premise. If we are to presume that we are responsible for our own fates and destinies, then we subscribe to something like the American Dream and that belief we can all get ahead if we pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and work hard. I find that very appealing, because I have worked hard to get to where I am, and I feel the need to keep working hard to fulfill my own dreams.
But therein lies the problem. Behind the libertarian principle is the idea that we’re all on the same level playing field. We are not. Racism, classism, homophobia, sexism, misogyny: these all exist on a daily basis in our society. I see them every day. I have experienced discrimination myself. And no, not because I’m Caucasian. But because I come from the working-classes. I was told by my high school counsellor that my type of people was not suited for university studies. I had a hard time getting scholarships in undergrad because I didn’t have all kinds of extra-curricular activities beyond football. I didn’t volunteer with old people, I didn’t spend my time helping people in hospitals. I couldn’t. I had to work. And I had to work all through undergrad. And throughout my MA and PhD. In fact, at this point in my life at the age of 40, I have been unemployed for a grand total of 5 months since I landed my first job when I was 16. And having to work throughout my education simply meant I didn’t qualify for most scholarships. So I had to work twice as hard as many of my colleagues all throughout my education. And that, quite simply, hurt me. And sometimes my grades suffered. And within the academy, that is still problematic today, even four years after I finished my PhD. But that’s just the way it is. I can accept that, I’m not bitter, I don’t dwell on it. But it happened, and it happened because of class. Others have to fight through racism or sexism or homophobia.
So, quite simply, we do not all begin from the same starting line. We don’t all play on a level playing field. Mine was tilted by class. And, for that reason, libertarianism, in its true sense, does not work. If we wish to have a fair and just society, we require ways and means of levelling that playing field, to give the African-American or working class or lesbian or son of immigrant children the chance to get ahead. Me? I worked hard, but I also relied on student loans, bursaries, and what scholarships I could win based on grades alone. My parents didn’t pay for a single cent of my education, not because they didn’t care or want to, but because they simply couldn’t afford it. I got some support from my grandparents each year, to go with the student loans/bursaries/small scholarships. And thank god I did. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to do it. I’d be flipping burgers at a White Spot in Vancouver at the age of 40.
Re-Manufacturing the War of 1812
April 30, 2013 § 2 Comments
Over at the National Council of Public History‘s (NCPH) blog, history@work (wherein public historians such as yours truly discuss issues related to history and the public and historical public memory), I have a new piece up on Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s delusional history of the War of 1812, entitled Re-manufacturing 1812: Stephen Harper’s Glorious Vision of Canada’s Past. From the title, you can probably guess my angle on Harper’s attempts to re-brand Canadian History through the War of 1812. Quite frankly, I find it disturbing. Let me know what you think.
On Humanity and Empathy: Boston and Rehtaeh Parsons
April 18, 2013 § Leave a comment
Monday’s terrorist attack at the Boston Marathon was a little too close to home for my tastes. A few of my students were there, near the finish line. A couple had left by the time the bombs went off, a couple had not. They were unhurt, as they were far enough away from the bombs. I know Boylston Street well. A few days before the Marathon, I was there; I had dinner in the Irish pub in the Lenox Hotel, which is across the street from where the second bomb went off. In my mind’s eye, I can see exactly where those two bombs were.
Like most Canadians and Americans, for me terrorism happens in the abstract. It’s a news report on TV, it’s on our Twitter timelines, it’s pictures in a newspaper. Sometimes, it’s a movie. But we don’t experience it personally, and this is still true even after 9/11. I have not experienced terrorism personally, and yet, I have never been as close to a terrorism attack as I was on Monday. Not surprisingly, I feel unsettled.
But I have been shocked and dismayed by some of the responses to the bombs on Boylston Street. Aside from those on Twitter declaring this to be a “false flag” attack (in other words, a deliberate attack by the US government on its people), which is stupid to start with, there have also been those who have been declaring that this happens all the time in Kabul or Baghdad or Aleppo. That is very true, it does happen everyday in those places. Indeed, for far too many people around the world, terrorism is a daily fact of life. That is wrong. No one should live in terror. But by simply declaring that this happens all the time elsewhere, you are also saying that what happened in Boston doesn’t matter. And that is a response that lacks basic humanity.
This has been a week where I’ve been reminded too often about our lack of humanity. The inhumanity of the bombers, of the conspiracy theorists, and those who say this doesn’t matter because it happens all the time elsewhere.
News also broke this week about disgusting, inhumane behaviour surrounding the Rehtaeh Parsons case in Halifax. There, “friends, family, and supporters” (to quote the CBC) have taken to putting up posters in the neighbourhood around Parsons’ mother’s house supporting the boys who sexually assaulted her, declaring that the truth will come out. I’m sure those boys are living in a world of guilt and shame right now, as they should. But to continue to terrorise a woman whose daughter was sexually assaulted, and then teased, mocked, and bullied for two years until she took her life is inhumane. It is inhumane that those boys assaulted Rehteah in the first place. It is inhumane that her classmates harassed, mocked, and bullied her for two years for being a victim.
There has been plenty of positive, especially in response to the Boston bombings. As I write this, President Obama is at a memorial service in Boston for the victims of the bombing. There are plenty of stories of the humanity of the response of the runners of the marathon, the bystanders, and the first responders. #BostonStrong is a trending hashtag on Twitter. Jermichael Finley of the Green Bay Packers will be donating $500 for every dropped pass and touchdown to a Boston charity, and New England Patriots receiver will donate $100 for every reception and $200 for every dropped pass this season. Last night’s ceremony at the TD Garden before the Bruins game was intense. And so on and so forth. This is all very heartening. It shows that we are humane, that we can treat each other with empathy and sympathy and dignity.
But it doesn’t erase those who lack humanity. I had a Twitter discussion last night about this. About how this kind of inhumanity seems to be everywhere. This morning, I was talking to two students about this inhumanity and how it just makes us depressed and wanting to cry. I wish I could say that this is a new phenomenon in society. But it’s not. This is one of the (dis)advantages to being an historian. We have the long view of history, quite obviously. We have always been a vengeful, inhumane lot. We’ve used torture since we could walk on our hind legs. The Romans’ favourite past-time was gladiator fighting, where two men fought to the death. Public executions were big deals, social outings. All to watch a man (and occasionally a woman) die. What is different now is the Internet allows people to express their inhumanity so much easier and so much quicker, and to gain further exposure in so doing. And that is just unfortunate.
Getting Redevelopment and Community Right
March 12, 2013 § 2 Comments
Yaletown in Vancouver has undergone massive redevelopment in the past two decades. It was once the site of Expo 86 along False Creek, and before that, an urban wasteland (actually, after Expo, too). But today, it is a sea of glass towers; one statistic I’ve seen said the population just in Yaletown approaches 30,000, though I find that hard to believe. All along False Creek is a string of residential condo towers; all along Pacific Boulevard, from Granville to Cambie streets there are towers and pied-à-terre condos. Some of them even look nice.
As I went out for my morning run today (I’m staying with my sister here), I noticed something: this is actually a well-thought out urban redevelopment. There’s a billboard on Pacific Blvd that says that Concord, one of the developers is building community here. It’s easy to scoff at that claim. But it’s not a ridiculous claim. My sister knows her neighbours. More than that, she has friends amongst them. Dog owners around here have claimed a patch of Cooperage Park on False Creek as a dog run. They police each other, making sure nobody leaves their dog doo behind. They also police each other’s dogs, making sure they behave. There’s a bunch of cafés and restaurants along Marinaside Drive (I know, what a horrible name), and they’re populated with regulars, the neighbours around here. People nod and say hello to each other on the streets and along the path that goes along the bank of the water.
There’s more, though. There’s actual, real parks here. Cooperage stretches almost from the Plaza of Nations at the head of False Creek towards and under the Cambie Bridge. A few blocks on is David Lam Park, which lies between Pacific, Drake, and Homer streets. But it’s more than that. These parks are actually used. There’s basketball and tennis courts at David Lam, and a playground. An elementary school is on David Lam and the children can be seen playing in the park at recess and lunch and after school. The path along the water is almost always busy with joggers and cyclists, as well as roller-bladers and walkers (Vancouver was experiencing one of its trademark torrential downpours when I was out taking pictures today, thus, aside from one intrepid jogger, there was no one out playing).
When I lived in Vancouver in the late 90s, there was a lot of hand-wringing about the redevelopment of the old Expo site. The city was determined to increase density, to follow the model of the West End, which is apparently the densest neighbourhood of North America that’s not Manhattan. So the old Expo lands saw these condo towers grow out of the ground. The major difference between the West End, which lies on the other side of the Burrard and Granville Street bridges and this area, which is part of the larger Yaletown neighbourhood, is that Yaletown tends to be resident owners, whereas the West End is largely rental units (there are, of course, many exceptions to both).
At the end of the day, however, Vancouver got it right. There is community here, the public spaces are widely used. The cafés and restaurants are, with the exception of one Starbucks (this IS Vancouver, after all) independent operators (this isn’t as true as Pacific Blvd., the main east/west thoroughfare, which has plenty of chains in between and around the indie stores). This also contributes to community, as the small business owners connect to their local community in a way that Starbucks and Quiznos can’t. And studies show that locals are more likely to patronise these small businesses than the chains. Indeed, this morning, Bojangles, the local indie café was busy, filled with both commuters on their way to work and those with more time to sit and enjoy their coffee. Whereas the Starbucks, while it got a fair amount of foot traffic from commuters, it doesn’t have the same community feel.
I fear, however, that Montréal is getting it wrong with Griffintown. The early plans for the massive redevelopment of Griff by Devimco called for massive shopping areas and big box stores. The commercial developments were supposed to pay for the residential developments. As for anything else that urban residents might need, well, “Whatever,” Devimco seemed to say. Of course, Devimco’s bold plans were thwarted somewhat by the recession. The redevelopment is now a mixture of Devimco’s big District Griffin (how tragic it would be to have that old English name on the neighbourhood, eh, OQLF?) and a smattering of smaller developments, with the massive redevelopment of the old Canada Post Lands at the other end of Griff at the foot of rue Guy.
Missing, though, from all these redevelopment plans in Griff was any idea of what residents were supposed to do. There still are no plans for schools in the neighbourhood. It wasn’t until early 2012 that the Ville de Montréal announced that it had earmarked some money to create public parks. It’s still not entirely clear where they’ll be, other than the already extant Parc St. Ann/Griffintown at the bottom of rue de la Montagne at Wellington. And given Montréal’s history of development and redevelopment, and the fact that the mayor, first Gérald Tremblay and now Michael Applebaum, just has dollar signs in his eyes when talking about Griffintown, I have zero hope of Griffintown being redeveloped right. In fact, I am almost positive it will be a disaster.
It’s tragic, as Montréal has a chance to redevelop a huge swath of valuable land at the foot of downtown, to emulate what Vancouver did with Yaletown in the 90s and 00s. But it has done nothing to suggest that it will get it right. And that’s trafic.
Ten Thousand Saints and the Nostalgia of the Record Store
March 12, 2013 § 2 Comments
Last week I read Eleanor Henderson‘s excellent début novel, Ten Thousand Saints. This was a book I randomly came across, and, like most books I randomly come across, I was lucky. Ten Thousand Saints tells the story of Jude, a disaffected teenager in Burlington, Vermont (disguised as Lintonburg, for reasons I don’t quite understand since the rest of Vermont gets to keep its names), a sad sack little city about two hours from Montréal on Lake Champlain. Jude, I should also point out, is about a year older than I am. His best friend, Teddy, dies of an overdose on New Year’s Eve 1987, after he and Jude huff pretty much everything, including freon from an air conditioner, but Teddy also did coke for the first time, introduced to him by Eliza, Jude’s step-sister, who’s in town for a few hours from NYC. Teddy’s older brother, Johnny, also lives in NYC.
The novel then follows Jude, Johnny, and Eliza through the hardcore scene in the NYC underground in the late 80s (looking at Henderson’s picture on her website, she does not look the sort who would). Jude transforms from a pothead huffing high school dropout in Burlington to a straight-edge hardcore punk in NYC, frontman of his own band, the Green Mountain Boys (a clever play on their Vermont roots and Ethan Allen during the War of Independence). Henderson does a great job of illuminating the culture of the hardcore scene of the late 80s, both in NYC and around the rest of the East Coast, as well as issues of gentrification on the Lower Eastside of Manhattan, especially around Tompkins Park in Alphabet City, where Johnny lives, and around St. Mark’s Place, where Jude sometimes lives with his father.
Ten Thousand Saints made me nostalgic. At the other end of the continent, in Vancouver, I was starting to get into some of this music, if not yet the scene. Many of the bands Henderson references were in my cassette collection by 1989-90, a couple of years after Jude and Johnny were rocking out in the Green Mountain Boys. Though I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why the standard bearers of the straight edge scene in the late 80s, Fugazi, are not mentioned, though Ian McKaye’s earlier band, Minor Threat, are the gods of Jude, Johnny, and their crowd. What made me nostalgic was record stores. This is how Jude got into the scene in NYC in the first place, hanging around the record stores of the Lower East Side.
As I mentioned in my last piece here, on the Minutemen, Track Records in Vancouver was where I began to discover all these punk and hardcore bands in my late teens. Track stood on Seymour Street, between Pender and Dunsmuir, and as you went up the block, there was an A&A Records and Tapes, then Track, then A&B Sound, and then Sam the Record Man. Two indies and two corporate stores. And between the four of them, you could find anything you wanted and at a reasonable price. Zulu Records also stood on West 4th Avenue in Kitsilano, a short bus ride from downtown on the Number 4 bus. Of those stores, only Zulu remains. I’m in Vancouver right now, and I think I’m going to make my way over there today.
But it was in record stores that kids like me learned about this entire universe of punk and alternative music in the late 80s. In places like Track and Zulu, we heard the likes of Fugazi and the Minutemen, as well as the Wonderstuff and Pop Will Eat Itself and the Stone Roses playing on the hi-fi. This is where we could find the alternative press and zines, I found out about all these British bands from the NME and Melody Maker. You’d talk to the guys working in the stores (and it was almost always guys, rarely were there women working in these stores), you’d talk to the older guys browsing the record collections about what was good. Some of these guys were assholes and too cool to impart their wisdom, but most of them weren’t. And then you’d rush home to the suburbs and listen to the new music, reading the liner notes and the lyrics as you did.
For the longest time, I held out against digital music. I liked the physical artefact of music. I liked the sleeve, the liner notes and the record/cassette/cd. In part, I liked it because of the act of buying it, of going into the record store, even the corporate ones, listening to what was playing in the store, looking around and finding something. There’s not many record stores left. The big Canadian chains are all dead and gone. Same with the big American ones. In Boston, the great indie chain, Newbury Comics, isn’t really a record store anymore. The flagship store on Newbury St. has more clothes, books, movies, and just general knick knacks than music. Montréal had a bunch of underground stores up rues Saint-Denis and Mont-Royal, but they’re slowly dying, too. And here in Vancouver, the only one I know of is Zulu (though I’m sure there’s more on the east side, on Main, Broadway or Commercial).
I miss the community of music, it just doesn’t exist anymore. I suppose if I wanted to, I could find it online, discussion groups and the like. But it’s not the same. There’s no physical artefact to compare and share. There’s just iTunes or Amazon.
Writing Montréal
February 2, 2013 § 1 Comment
I am reading Kim Echlin’s beautiful novel, The Disappeared, right now. It was shortlisted for the Giller Prize in Canada, and it won a Barnes & Noble award down here in the States. The awards are very much deserved, Echlin’s prose is beautifully constructed; sparse, taut, sensual sentences follow the heroine, Anne Greves, from the cold streets of Montréal to the scarred streets of Phnom Penh in the wake of Pol Pot and genocide in Cambodia. It is compelling reading.
But (and you knew this but was coming), I find myself fascinated with the problems in writing Montréal, as The Disappeared is full of them. I have sometimes wondered if Montréal, being the complicated, chaotic, bizarre city it is, can even be successfully written, especially en Anglais. But, of course it can. Mordecai Richler. Rawi Hage. Occasionally, even we academic types get it right, most notably, Sherry Simon in her brilliant book, Translating Montreal: Episodes in the Life of a Divided City. Montréal is not your average city. Your average city is a huge, complicated, seething multitude of humanity. Your average city is complicated, it is corrupt, it is beautiful and it is dirty and savage. Montréal is all that and more, in large part because it is, as Simon argues, a divided city. Divided cities, of which there are many in the world, are necessarily more complex and complicated. There are competing historical narratives and political realities battling for space on the cultural and political landscape of the city. Derry, Northern Ireland, is a small divided city, but the city is caught between two competing narratives of the city’s past, one Catholic, one Protestant, fighting for dominance.
Montréal, of course, is rent between the francophone version of the past and vision of the present and the anglophone equivalent. Historically, the city is split down the middle, blvd. Saint-Laurent, the Main. To the east, francophone and Catholic, to the west, Anglophone and Protestant. But this dichotomy doesn’t really work in reality, as the Irish complicated it, they were Catholic and lived in the west end, they were English-speaking and lived in the east end. Then the Jews came around the turn of the last century and settled in between the French- and English- speakers. And then the rest of the world came, and the city became multicultural in the last third of the 20th century. Then there’s the question of class. Montréal today is a city that holds a history for all these diverse populations, speaking their own languages, going to their own houses of worship, patronising their own businesses. But Montréal also holds a history of these people crossing their divides, and working together, shopping together, sharing their food and their language across these divides. We historians are left to find all these disparate strands of Montréal and attempt to unravel the complications, to look at how the complications arose, to see how all these peoples co-operated, and how they conflicted.
To return to The Disappeared, Echlin gets caught up in all of these complications. For example, the main character, Anne Greves, an Anglophone teenager in the 1970s, whose father teaches at McGill, lives on avenue du Parc. Anglos in Montréal today tend to call it Park Ave. Even bilingual ones. In the 1970s, Anglos did not call it av du Parc. But Anne also uses the English names for nearly everything else in the city. Bleury Street. The Oratory. Mount Royal. Old Montréal. And of course Anne would, all my cousins who are Anne’s age, who still live in Montréal, use the Anglo names. The only other locale in Montréal that gets called by its French name by Anne is the bishop’s cathedral downtown, Marie-Reigne-du-Monde. Being the Montréal purist and historian, I find these kinds of misnomers distracting. Perhaps it’s because Anne is caught between these various Montréals, perhaps it’s because she came of age in the late 1970s and the 1980s, when we fought about all of this, what to call things, what language we must speak and so on. And maybe it’s because Montréal is just here in passing, it’s where Anne is from. Soon, we are in Phnom Penh with her, sifting through the aftermath of Pol Pot’s psychotic reign.
But Echlin’s problems with nomenclature in Montréal really only speak to the general day-to-day issues on the street there. What you call av du Parc (OK, I admit, I’m an Anglophone who tends to use the French names) reflects a lot on who you are, where you’re from in the city, what your politics are. The same is true of Saint-Viateur, Mary Queen of the World, the Oratory and so on and so forth. And it is exactly this nature of the divided city I adore about my hometown. And I have to admit, I kind of miss it.
The Working-Class and Community, Griffintown and Beyond
February 1, 2013 § 6 Comments
Almost to a person, every former Griffintowner I talked to over a decade of working on the neighbourhood commented on the sense of community they felt in living there, how it was a place where people took care of their neighbours. David O’Neill, who helped me extensively during the research and who put in me in contact with many former Griffintowners, commented that when he was growing up there in the 1940s and 50s, it was like having a community of parents, everyone watched out for each other’s children on the streets. And if O’Neill and his friends got up to something they shouldn’t have, by the time they returned home, their parents would be waiting for them with the intelligence, ready to punish the kids.
But Griffintown was never unique for this characteristic, this is a commonality to nearly all former working-class neighbourhoods I’ve ever read about, on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. It is also a way that is lost today. People who grew up in close-knit working-class communities are almost always nostalgic for what has been lost. They miss the community and comaraderie they experienced in those communities. They miss what kept them in line, be it the Church or work, or just the simple existence of real and authentic community.
The universality of this mindset hit home the other day in Salem, MA, at the National Park Service’s Custom House site. When the Park Service created the site, they removed a set of derelict buildings that had popped up in an alleyway behind the old Customs House on Derby Street. In the early 20th century, an entire working-class immigrant community existed along Derby Street, and in the alleys behind the Customs House. Here there were tenement houses of varying quality and shops and services that served, first, Irish immigrants, and then, in the 20th century, Poles and Russians and Ukrainians. Taking aside the question of the authenticity of the Customs House site given the destruction of the homes of this long-gone working-class community, what struck me the most was the description of what was once there, including a quotation from a former resident, Dorothy Philip, as seen in the photo here.
Canada and the North American Triangle
January 5, 2013 § 3 Comments
Twice in the past few weeks, I have been caught up in discussions about the role of the monarchy in Canada with Americans. These discussions rather astounded me, I have to say. In all my years, I have never really thought all that much about the role of the Queen and her representatives in Canada. Sure, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II is the head of state in Canada (as well as everywhere else in the Commonwealth), but her actual role in Canadian politics is close to nil. Governors-General have been little more than figureheads, responding to the whims of Prime Ministers since the 19th century, not the Queen.
For my American interlocutors, however, the Queen was a big deal for Canada. They’ve all spent a fair amount of time north of the 49th parallel, and they’re all insightful people. The argument goes something like this: Canada has been prohibited from achieving a full sense of independence of its own because of the on-going association with the former colonial parent through the person of the Queen. Because Canada is not completely sovereign, it cannot be a fully independent nation. It will always be beholden to the United Kingdom. To a person, they all argued that Canadians (at least Anglo Canadians) are very British, in all manners, from our dry sense of humour to our stiff upper lips, and even down to our accents. I was dumbfounded.
I argued that the Queen means very little to Canadians. Aside from the hardcore monarchists, she’s just this grandmotherly woman who pops up on TV now and then. I pointed out that Americans are actually more obsessed with the royal family than Canadians, as evidenced by the marriage of Prince Receding Hairline to whatshername last summer. Sure, the Queen is on our money, but how is that different from Washington and Lincoln being on American money? And certainly Washington has reached the status of a monarchal icon in the USA by now. I argued that, despite the fact that the Queen is the head of state, the Prime Minister is the one who wields power, and quite a lot of it. The Prime Minister decides when elections are to be held, what the policies of government are, etc. In short, sovereignty lies in the Canadian people as expressed through our elected representatives and the Prime Minister; the Queen has nothing to do with this.
But then one of them brought up Prime Minister Harper’s underhanded attempt in 2010 to avoid an election by asking Governor General Michaëlle Jean to prorogue Parliament. He argued that we had an unelected representative of the Queen deciding the fate of the Canadian government. Good point, I conceded, but, the Governor General in 2010 acted in accordance with established constitutional law in Canada and the entire Commonwealth; she acceded to the wishes of the Prime Minister. This wasn’t good enough, the fact remained that the Governor General is unelected. Full stop. And this is proof of Canada’s lack of full sovereignty.
Now I certainly do not buy into the argument that Canada was born on 1 July 1867. As far as I’m concerned the date that we chose to celebrate the birth of our nation is entirely arbitrary and artificial. I have also argued on this blog that Canadian independence has been achieved piecemeal. From the granting of responsible government in 1848 to the patriation of our Constitution in 1982, Canada has inched towards independence. I’d go so far as to argue that in many ways, 1982 is the true date of Canadian independence, as finally our Constitution was an Act of our own Parliament. I certainly do not buy the argument that Canada is doomed because the nation wasn’t born in violence and a war of independence like our American neighbours.
There is also the argument that Canadian unity can never be, due to the fact that upwards of 40% of the population of the second largest province (at any given time) wish to separate from the nation. And, for this reason, Canada is an artificial nation. I think this is a simplistic, and even stupid, argument. It assumes that all nations were born of the nationalist movements that swept across the world from the early 19th to the late 20th centuries. The continued existence of massive multi-ethnic nations such as Russia and China bely this. So, too, does the on-going persistence of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, despite the continued threat of the Scots nationalist movement. Instead, I argue, Canada is successful precisely because it is not a national nation, it is post-national and can house more than a single nation. Indeed, this is what makes Canada not just bi-cultural, but multi-cultural, as we learned in the 1960s, whatever government policies of the day might be.
So I’ve been left stewing over the role of the monarchy in Canada, thanks to my American interlocutors. I’ve also been stewing over different conceptions of democracy. Britain is the modern birthplace of democracy. It is where the people slowly gained control over their nation from the monarchy. At one point, the House of Commons was filled with men hand-picked by the king and his minions, true. But by the 19th century, this was no longer the case. In the UK, the Queen is little more than a figurehead, just like in Canada. But, of course, Elizabeth is English, she’s not Canadian. Thus, she is a foreign queen, according to my American friends. But it’s not that simple. That is an American argument. American democracy works very differently than British or Canadian democracy. And notions of what democracy mean differ as well.
To wit, a few weeks months ago in the Boston Globe, the resident conservative columnist, Jeff Jacoby, was making the argument that the best way to determine whether or not gays and lesbians should be granted rights was through referenda. Only by giving voice to the majority could we determine whether or not a minority should be granted civil rights. That, concluded Jacoby, is how democracy works. To my Canadian mindset, this idea was shocking and appalling. Pierre Trudeau once opined something along the lines that the best determinant of a free and open society is how that society protects its minorities. In short, the rights of minorities should never be left up to majorities. That is what democracy is.
And maybe that’s what this argument boils down to: Canadians and Americans have very different ideas of what democracy is. And for that reason, whilst my American conversants were appalled that Canada would have an unelected, foreign queen, I, a Canadian, could care less. The Queen has no real impact on Canadian life and politics. Her “representative” in Canada, the Governor General, is appointed by and serves at the pleasure of the Prime Minister. And the Governor General has, since 1848, deferred to the wishes of the Canadian Prime Minister. Canada is no less a sovereign nation for this.
And Canada’s inferiority complex has nothing to do with this relationship to the UK, it has everything to do with being the junior partner in North America with the United States and Mexico. Canada is the smallest of the three countries in terms of population, and ranks only slightly higher than Mexico in terms of the size of its economy. The only way in which the colonial relationship with the UK actually does matter is in the sense that Canada has never had the chance to fully stand on its own. It WAS a British colony. And today, it is by and large an American colony. I mean this in terms of the economy, Americans own more of Canada’s economy than Canadians themselves do. And we currently have a governing party, the Conservative Party of Canada, that acts like a branch plant of the American Republican Party.
Matthew Barlow 