Canadian Writers: Understanding Canada no more

By Canadian Writers (names listed below) Globe and Mail, June 19, 2012
Margaret Atwood, Neil Bissoondath, George Bowering, Dionne Brand, Wayson Choy, Elizabeth Hay, Jack Hodgins, Thomas King, Alistair MacLeod, Rohinton Mistry, Timothy Taylor, Jane Urquhart, Aritha van Herk, Rudy Wiebe, D.M.R. Bentley, Neil Besner, Eva-Marie Kroller, W.H. New, David Staines, Brian Trehearne

On May 1, 2012, the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade issued the following brief statement:

“In the current fiscal context, the decision was made to focus our programming on the department’s core mandate first. As a result, we are phasing out the international Canadian studies program, and will be reducing the funding and geographic scope of the International Scholarships Program.”

Thus ended 40 years of grants to visiting scholars, to international organizations that fostered Canadian studies abroad (in countries as far flung as Australia, China and South Africa), and to programs throughout the world that developed courses and symposia on Canadian subjects.
Visiting scholars would come to Canada for a month or so; then they would return to their home institutions, having agreed – one of the stipulations of their grant – to teach, in the next five years, three courses related to Canada. Many scholars spent as much as seven times the amount of their grants on expenses related to Canada. And many of them are now producing some of the finest studies of Canadian economics, politics and culture.
Many organizations throughout the world are now struggling in despair with their dwindling economic base – for example, the Association for Canadian Studies in the United States, the Association for Canadian Studies in Australia and New Zealand, the Central European Association for Canadian Studies and, of course, the overarching International Council for Canadian Studies, which unites all these groups in a forward-looking path.
And gone, too, are the many symposia that highlight Canada’s major role in the political life of North America, in the economic challenges of the present day and in the astonishing cultural life that is being seen and read across the globe.
We, the undersigned, both writers of literature and teachers of our literature, lament the closing of “Understanding Canada.” Although we understand the federal government’s move toward austerity, we still believe that there must be a strong place for Canadianists throughout the world to come together, to teach about our country and to do the important research and write the publications that are at the forefront of our lives as Canadians.
We strongly urge the federal government to create a system that will replace “Understanding Canada” and give a new impetus throughout the world in the blossoming field of Canadian studies.


Austerity be damned.
This government cares not a wit for the development of human understanding and for building bridges between and among different cultures, only about their own re-election. And since they and their base are demonstrably ANTI-INTELLECTUAL and also parochial and provincial in the extreme, unless and until there is an opportunity to  fly jets and drop bombs, or perhaps secure trade agreements, they could not care less.
This, for some including your scribe, is another of many "last straws" that bring Canada to its knees, both in the eyes of the scholars and in the eyes of the world, when this government has already besmirched our international reputation perhaps irretrievably.
Another sad, and unnecessary day in Canada's national life!

Harper slammed by EU President..."we did not come to receive lessons"...

By Bill Curry, Globe and Mail, June 18, 2012
Los Cabos, Mexico
Tensions between Europe and the rest of the G20 broke wide open in Los Cabos as the president of the European Commission laid bare his frustration with the constant lecturing from outsiders, including Canada.

The president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, reacted tersely when asked to respond to recent comments from Prime Minister Stephen Harper that Europe does not need outside help to stabilize its economy.

“Frankly, we are not coming here to receive lessons in terms of democracy and in terms of how to run an economy because the European Union has a model that we may be very proud of,” Mr. Barroso said.
He and European Council President Herman Van Rompuy answered questions Monday at the G20 summit following a news conference in which they outlined long-term plans to move toward deeper financial integration of the euro zone.
The European Commission president said his members are moving toward a banking union, including guaranteeing each other’s bank deposits. But some of these details may not be outlined until the fall and it is not clear when they will ultimately be put in place.
Still, Mr. Barroso did outline a move toward some of the specific reforms Europe has called for.
The euro zone will move toward more integrated banking oversight and a common deposit guarantee system. The European Union will also consider, “under strict conditions,” ways to package the zone’s combined debt.
“But let me be very clear, any future euro bonds or stability bonds will not be a license to spend. On the contrary, they will become a powerful tool for increased discipline and stability,” he said.
The comments from the leadership of the EU increases the heat on German Chancelor Angela Merkel, who leads Europe’s largest economy and is highly skeptical of moving quickly toward deeper integration. German leaders have expressed concern that such changes would let struggling member states off the hook from making the tough economic decisions necessary to put their nations on a sustainable track.
U.S. President Barack Obama was expected to urge Ms. Merkel to soften her stand during the two-day summit, and the President later spoke positively of their discussion Monday. After Monday evening’s G20 leaders dinner, Mr. Obama was scheduled to have a late-night meeting exclusively with European leaders.
Both the U.S. and Canada are refusing to contribute more money to the International Monetary Fund, but Mr. Harper’s Conservatives have used particularly derisive language in arguing Europeans should not get a cent of Canadian tax dollars.
On Monday afternoon, Mr. Harper said his meetings with other G20 leaders at the summit make him believe that the “great majority” of the leaders support Canada’s position. However, Canada and the U.S. are the only G20 members stating they will not contribute additional funds this week to the IMF as part of a plan to raise more than $430-billion in new commitments.
Thankfully, the European Union leadership is pushing back against the strident tone and attitude, considered arrogant in some quarters including this one, of the Canadian Prime Minister. Not only has his government refused to ante up financial support as part of an international commitment to support the failing economies in several EU states, thereby putting even more pressure on Germany, but also he has continually lectured the EU on how to "get back into line" with his prescription for fiscal discipline.
Harper happens to lead a Canadian government whose financial institutions' rules and regulations were long established prior to his even becoming Prime Minister, and while he can take national pride in the discipline and stability of Canadian banks and the Canadian economy, he and his government have done precious little by way of enhancing that performance. Taking credit, and lecturing other world leaders, while they are attempting to solve a serious crisis, even perhaps a fundamental flaw in the structure of the EU, without original common banking and monetary policies, does harm to their diligent work, and severely damages Canada's reputation among the global community.
Sometimes, and we believe this is clearly one time, Canadian Prime Ministers, even if they have something critical to say to other world leaders, ought to keep their comments private, more humble and thereby potentially more effective.
Should that lesson not be among the top five in any Prime Minister's "how to" manual, upon taking office? Clearly, Harper missed that part of the orientation package, probably deliberately.

New Tone, New Facts in Environmental Movement

By Stephen Bede Sharper, Toronto Star, June 17, 2012
Stephen Bede Scharper teaches at the Centre for Environment, University of Toronto, and is author of the forthcoming book, For Earth’s Sake: Toward a Compassionate Ecology (Novalis).

David Suzuki, the dean of Canadian environmentalism, was joined last Thursday by U.S. journalist Richard Louv, author of the bestselling book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder, for a public conversation at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

As these two environmental pioneers parleyed, it became clear that an environmental agenda centering chiefly on conservation, government policy and an urgent, doom-laden, sword-of-Damocles advocacy was quietly morphing into one focused on relationships, children, education, wonder, joy and the healing power of nature....
“When we started the Suzuki Foundation in 1990,” Suzuki recalled, “we thought we had only 10 years.” Influenced by data provided by the Worldwatch Institute, which publishes a much-cited annual State of the World report, Suzuki rebuffed suggestions that the foundation focus on schools, deeming there was “no time” given the grave and imminent threats to our ecosystems.

He now calls his decision quite candidly a “fundamental error.”
Louv echoed Suzuki’s sentiment, recounting a recent meeting with a group of U.S. university students, all focusing on environmental studies, but none connecting with any mainline environmental organizations. One factor was age — the average member’s age of the Nature Conservancy is 68 — but a second reason was articulated poignantly by one of the students. “I’m 20 years old. All my life I have heard we’re finished. The planet is doomed.” Such eco-nihilism is rarely an effective recruitment tool.
Happily, Louv’s work is decidedly non-apocalyptic. Last Child in the Woods helped inspire a growing movement reconnecting children with nature.
Harvesting clinical research showing that children suffering from attention-deficit disorder, depression and suicidal tendencies are often greatly helped by exposure to nature, Louv co-founded the Children & Nature Network, whose vision is to foster “a world in which all children play, learn and grow with nature in their everyday lives.”
In 2010, Louv was invited to address 5,000 pediatricians at the American Academy of Pediatrics annual meeting. They not only warmly received his words, but in some cases have begun to give “nature prescriptions” to children, recommending taking in nature rather than just taking pills to get well. In Portland, Ore., Louv reports, an urban park has become a veritable wellness centre for children, with park staff seeing themselves as “para-health professionals.” Adopting a “climb two maples and call me in the morning” approach, park staff sign off on doctors’ health prescriptions after children have taken their recommended dose of nature.
His most recent book, The Nature Principle, is a cogent plea for a newly imagined future — one that eschews obsession with ecological armageddon and instead focuses on the restorative powers of the planet.
Citing Martin Luther King, Louv states, “Any cultural movement will fail if it can’t paint a picture of a world where people want to go to.” Louv is gravely concerned about the rash of popular, post-apocalyptic cultural images of the future. If, when we think of the future, we only envision some “Blade Runner-Mad Max-Hunger Games scenario,” Louv comments, “we are in real trouble.” Such a post-apocalyptic framing of the future, he fears, is almost as great a threat as climate change.
And then there is this, from Fareed Zakaria's Interview with  Bjorn Lomborg on June 17, 2012
ZAKARIA: This week, hundreds of world leaders and tens of thousands of environmentalists will convene in Rio de Janeiro for the U.N.'s Conference on Sustainable Development. My next guest says that summit will be a wasted opportunity. The U.N. is focused on the wrong target. For every person who might die from global warming, he says, 210 will die from health problems caused by a lack of clean water and pollution. Bjorn Lomborg is the author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist" and other books and he joins me now to explain all this. So, you have a "Foreign Affairs" article coming out, in which you point out what the past history of these kinds of predictions and, you know, environmental concerns have been. Explain that point briefly.

BJORN LOMBORG, AUTHOR "THE SKEPTICAL ENVIRONMENTALIST": Well, fundamentally, it's the 40th anniversary of the limits to growth. The idea that we were going to run out of everything. And even if we weren't, we were going to be screwed anyway because we would basically be polluting ourselves to death.
ZAKARIA: This was the report that came out from Stockholm, and it was the Club of Rome report.
LOMBORG: Yeah, it was actually, it came out from Rome. And it was "The Limits to Growth" report.
ZAKARIA: Right.
LOMBORG: That ran computer models, back then -- of course, remember, computers seemed like they were telling the truth no matter what you put into them. And I think with the -- with the oil embargo in '73, just one year later and oil prices shooting up, there was a real sense that, yes, we are running out of everything.
ZAKARIA: Yes.
LOMBORG: You know, we are running out of oil. And we need to conserve everything. And we are really on a very, very wrong path. In many ways, you can say, it's set the environmental agenda certainly for a couple of decades.
ZAKARIA: And then, so what are the facts?
LOMBORG: Well, the problem is they were wrong. They were first of all wrong that we were going to run out of food. But perhaps more importantly for the environmental concern, they were wrong about the idea that we were going to run out of all resources. Actually, if you look at the cost of resources, which is the economist's way of looking at how many resources do we have left, the cost of resources generally have come down about sevenfold since 1850. And yes, it's ticked up in the last ten years. But still, just from about twice as much, but if you look at the whole curve, it's very clear, it's a clear downward trend.
Why? Because innovation is much, much more important than using up the resources. The Club of Rome thought was there's only this much resources. When we've used up that, we are really up a creek. But of course what they forgot was we find many more resources and we get much better at exploiting poor resources further away, but even cheaper with technology. And that's really what we've done with virtually all resources.
ZAKARIA: What about the other half of that report, which was about pollution?
LOMBORG: Yes. They also assumed -- and again, it makes sense. In a cultural setting, obviously industry is you put out -- you have belching smokestacks. And they thought as we get richer and richer and there are more and more people, you'll have more and more belching smokestacks. But of course, what they forgot, was technology actually handles a lot of that. Now, we've actually seen air pollution come down in much -- most rich countries for most of the last century. So, it's not just the technology after the Club of Rome report. But of course, after '72, we put extra effort into making regulations that meant that we've gotten even lower levels of air pollution.
ZAKARIA: But this -- and so you support those government regulations?
LOMBORG: Absolutely. We want to have regulation where it makes sense. Where it -- where there's lots of people dying, for instance, from air pollution. That is a real concern. But you should also recognize what is it that drives the ability to care about the environment? It is that you're rich enough that you don't have to worry about your kids dying tomorrow. And that's my real concern about the way we look into the future when we go down to Rio in just a few days, what are we talking about there? Well, we're talking about going to a green economy, and we're talking about global warming. But in reality, the real issues of most of this world is still air and water pollution. Why are we not talking about the important issues in the third world? Why are we talking about -- if you will, somewhat more esoteric issues that clearly care -- concerns first world people? There is perhaps a 0.06 percent of all deaths in the developing world caused by global warming. There's 13 percent of all deaths caused by air and water pollution. Let's get our priorities right.
I'm just blown away by the way that virtually everything we talk about, if you read the U.N., their little leaflet that they distribute for the Rio summit, they show how we should all get electric cars and we should go organic and stuff like that. No. Most people in developing world cannot afford an electric car. But what we should do is focus on innovation to make those cars so cheap. Then the next half century, everyone will want them.
ZAKARIA: And how can we focus on air and water pollution in the third world? How do we deal with bringing that number down from 13 percent?
LOMBORG: Well, there are two main solutions. One is that we have a lot of technologies that we know how to get clean drinking water. We also know how to get much of the air pollution, most of the air pollution deaths are actually caused by indoor air pollution. People cooking with bad fuels like dung or cardboard. Let's make sure they actually get access to fossil fuels. That makes a lot of people uncomfortable, but of course that's the reality that we live with. And that's why 2 million people don't have to die in the developing world each year because of unsafe cooking and -- and heating fuels. But the long-term solution for that, of course, is to make sure that people actually get richer in the third world. It's a poverty problem. And so I'm a little concerned about the fact that we talk a lot about the Kyoto Protocol. But there's another city with a protocol that we don't talk very much about, the Doha Round. The idea of free trade. That is one that most economists would estimate would give much, much better opportunities in the long run for most countries in the world to actually get rid of their old problems, both environmental, but also all the other poverty-related problems, and then start focusing on environmental problems.
There is perhaps a 0.06 percent of all deaths in the developing world caused by global warming. There's 13 percent of all deaths caused by air and water pollution. Let's get our priorities right.
This quote from Lomborg, is both rivetting and compelling. It defines an issue in much more specific terms, and focuses the minds of public-minded environmentalists, politicians and those with both motivation and leverage on solutions, and not on impossiblities.
With both the Suzuki-Louv conversation, and the Zakaria-Lomborg conversation, we see a far different tone based on far different facts, than both the tone and the facts at the time of the Limits to Growth report from Rome.
We hear frequently, about changes in diet required by new research that points either to the positive contributions of once considered harmful foods, or the dangers of what were once considered healthy foods.
We also hear about the misguided applications of research, in over-medicating, for example, based on too much intensive input from the pharmaceutical industry through doctor "in-house" trainings, that morph over time into public admissions of misused and out-dated information.
The environmental movement is not without both its strongest advocates and its need to set an new agenda in both content and in process.
And a kinder, more gentler, more factually based approach could conceivably garner more adherents, and more acolytes and more research, not to mention more public conversation, discussion and learning at all ages and levels.
It is time, we humbly submit, to begin to consider similar re-evaluations on many fronts, especially those in which combatants are poised with weapons, both physical and verbal, to paint their opponents into "defeat" as is the modus operandi of the Tea Party movement, as expressed by the recent winner, over Senator Lugar, in a primary for the Republican Senate seat, "There must be a winner and a loser in this war!"
It is precisely that kind of politician who is leading us to the brink, of his own limited intellectual and moral and cultural brain, and to the spectre of too many "brinks" of too many cliffs.

Hungarian Political Philosopher not optimistic about the demise of hope

Guest lecturer, this week, on tvo's Big Ideas program was Gaspar Tamas,

Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Philosophy of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
His topic was "The Failure of Liberal Democracy in Eastern Europe and Elsewhere."
The thesis was that, whereas in the past since the second world war, people have generally spent their lives in institutions starting with hospitals, then schools, then the military and then a job, marriage family and death, much of it financed by government, governments today have to make choices about who they are going to "support".
If one is old, (and he points to a frightening bias against the aged which also demonstrates a significant change from 'before' when the young respected the elderly) or infirm, if one is unemployed and therefore not producing anything the society needs, and there is a rapidly growing cadre of such people, then governments may be inclined to pass over such people in favour of both the young, the healthy and the employed.
Ironically, according to Tamas, the world could provide the basic necessities of home, food, shelter to all its people, there is no political will to do so. So while the old order is fading, and along with it many of the basic premises, such as we are all equal as persons, there is no evidence of a new paradigm replacing that old one.
He foresees a serious and unpleasant upheaval in this forthcoming period of history, and as a socialist, who has studied and experienced much of Eastern Europe, he notes that the impact of the change is being experienced in those countries both because they are poor and because the governing structures are failing.
Here is a quote from Gaspar Tamas, from an interview with International Socialism, Issue 123, June 29, 2009, in which the interviewer is Chris Harman:
What was important in hindsight was that in the first two years I spent in the highest chamber of my country as a lawmaker two million jobs were lost—and I don’t think I noticed. That is one of the greatest shames of my life. I don’t think it figured in political debates at that time. There were important debates concerning constitutional rights and republican versus monarchist symbols, fights over control of state radio and television. I won’t say political conflicts were not important but compared to the economic disaster they were of less importance, and we did not see the interdependence between the two. Why did the ruling class need the centralisation of media power? Because it was losing majority support from the population that were getting impoverished. We were totally naive and our discourse at the time was that of classic liberalism and pretty ineffective. This liberal party will probably now, and quite deservedly, disappear from parliament.

I began to realise what was going on around me by the time that legislature came to an end and I decided not to stand again for parliament. It was not only a Hungarian problem. From Siberia to Prague and from Alma Ata to East Berlin there was the same problem. What happened was not the transformation of the economy but the destruction of the economy. We did not come up simply with a new capitalism but with a black hole. It was one of the great demonstrations of the destructive power of capitalism.
The methods were the same you can witness in other parts of the world—downsizing and outsourcing, privatisation and social dumping. Foreign capital arrived in search of consumer markets, closing down manufacturing industry it had bought for a song—but the difference was in the dimensions. Everywhere there has been a great loss in workforce, especially in manufacturing, but here a total way of life was lost. The quite successful cooperative agriculture practically disappeared; the new family farms did not prove commercially viable. Unemployment in the countryside is endemic. I remember well during the miners’ strike in Britain, when people all of a sudden realised it was not only the mining industry that was going to go but the culture of hundreds of mining villages, so that Wales could never be the same afterwards. But here we have had a qualitative change, a situation in which a whole culture is gone. From the 1920s the Stalinist system—however monstrous, tyrannical and state capitalist it was—had through urbanisation and industrialisation created the livelihoods and life forms of hundreds of millions of people. They may have been disappointed and dissatisfied with the way of life but nevertheless it was theirs. And nobody had prepared them for what was to replace it. It was not something better, not something we might call “change”, but instead the end to economy as such.
In large parts of Eastern Europe and the Eurasian landmass there was the loss of what we knew of as civilisation, which was very much dependent on the state. The state has barely started to function again in Putin’s Russia—in a very unpleasant way—but it is starting to work regularly, making records, collecting revenue, paying civil servants, answering letters, receiving citizens with complaints. But in the early 1990s even that was not available: it was a total disaster. Meanwhile we, the froth at the top of it, were celebrating the triumph of freedom and openness and plurality and fantasy and pleasure and all that. That was frivolous, and I am deeply ashamed.
Somehow I knew there was trouble. This was reflected in my writings. But the analysis I offered was of a superficial political kind. There were signs—for instance, American policies towards the Balkans, the Gulf War, general dissatisfaction that things were not going well. But these were viewed as transitory phenomena: the transition was difficult but in the end everything would be all right—just the same approach as the “right believing” Communists had had to Stalinism. Terrible sacrifices for now—and then the radiant future, “les lendemains qui chantent”.4
But everything was not and was not going to be all right. As someone as it were professionally engaged in theoretical research, I felt I had to understand it. So I started to read and re-read theory and economic science, and empirical sociology and history, and tried to understand what was going on, trying to find out what was wrong in the foundations of our thought and trying to find some way out. I even had a detour in conservative literature critical of liberalism and from there was a leap to Marxism. (Funnily enough, conservative criticism of liberal pieties such as that of Michael Oakeshott and of Leo Strauss eased my way towards Marxism.) So I spent long years in learning—rather than re-learning, for I had never been before a really knowledgeable Marx reader—and went back to school. I tried very slowly and thoroughly to understand the character of the former regime, why the transition to the market was the way it was and why market forms were not sufficient either in general or for the local endemic problems of East European state capitalism.
It took a long time, and an even longer time to formulate this publicly and articulate it politically and to change my discourse, my language, my vocabulary. It was like a long illness and a long recovery. But I think I may be finally at the beginning of a new life.
During his tvo lecture, yesterday, Tamas noted, sadly even tragically, that while people vote, witness the Arab Spring, they do not expect anything to change so they are paying lip service to the right to vote without holding out hope that their vote will make a positive difference in their lives.
So, he really focussed on the demise of hope, as well as the disintegration of public institutions, at the same time as the numbers of unemployed are exploding and the governments' capacity to provide what was once considered the basic social net is evaporating, with no new political theories or political philosophies emerging on the horizon that would suggest some new way forward.
He also pointed to the fact that governments are already moving toward making decisions that support the inner circle, while closing off support for those on the outside of the circle.
Today, Greece will vote on whether to remain inside the European Union, or whether to leave and return to their traditional 'drachma' currency. The proposed austerity program that guts public pensions, requiring people to work longer into their senior years, among other features, has left a bitter taste in the mouths of many Greeks. The young socialist who proposes to leave the European Union could conceivably win the national vote. And there is considerable speculation that if Greece leaves, that will set off a domino effect potentially resulting in Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Italy also leaving the European Union. And that could start an economic tidal wave from which no country would be immune, including the precarious U.S. economy.
Using the perspective of Tamas, and reading some of the 'tea leaves' of the reports of world unrest, government impotency, growing impact of global issues like the environment about which so little is being done, there is no doubt that we are passing through a very difficult period of history, from which the outcomes do not look either inviting or welcome.
Should food shortages, opportunities for authentic work, government failures, international collaboration failure and the spectre of starvation and the erosion of hope all converge, there will be violence, bloodshed, turbulence of an order that will make the Arab Spring look like a summer picnic, and the vaccuum that will emerge, in political terms, could propel the kind of power grab by those who can least be trusted with power...and that could lead to places no one would even consider contemplating.

A Hymn to George Cusden, My Father!

He was born, George Cusden, in Alvinston in 1905, son of a baptist pastor and a kindergarten teacher-mother, the eldest of four that included a younger brother and two younger sisters. It was a spartan life, from all reports, depending on the resourcefulness of the imagination for play and the closeness of siblings for warmth, companionship and interaction.
Both parents were severe disciplinarians, especially on themselves, and worked hard to make ends meet.
The children spoke of frozen water in the wash basin on cold winter mornings, so meagre was their income that fuel came at a high cost, and was usually in short supply. His sisters spoke of "never witnessing a word of conflict between their parents" as a badge of honour, although today, some, including your scribe, wonder if this scenario was more a sign of repression on both parts, and perhaps even a little apprehension on his part, anticipating the critical parent, especially from his kindergarten teacher spouse.
 His first baseball "glove" consisted of heavy brown leather stuffed with straw, and he kept it for all of his ninety-one years, a token of a childhood long ago, far away, yet never out of sight or memory. His large muscular hand filled that "mitt" as he invariably called it, and with his long right arm he never tired of throwing the ball, whether in a real game or just a "game of catch."
His father, John, had sailed alone from England in 1898, coming to Canada as an Anglican curate, although upon arrival, he enrolled in the Baptist training school at McMaster, and served in four Baptist charges including: Alvinston, Burgessville, Thornberry and Parry Sound.
In the last of those four charges, the congregation, apparently, according to several sources of 'oral history', demanded that he remove from the pews and from church membership, at least one family whose pedigree was not "up to snuff" as perceived by those responsible for the operation of the church. They were poor, shabbily clad and probably lacked a full and complete education, even to the end of high school. Also according to the same sources, the pastor, my grandfather, refused, and was summarily dismissed from his post.
Naturally, an already strained family budget was now replacd by an empty cupboard and ice-box, and while the ex-clergy took work gardening the town 'park' that enclosed the cenotaph, the eldest son sought full-time work in a local lumber yard, bearing the name, Johnson's Lumber. His father, according now to family reports, became exceedingly depressed, and after being discovered to have attempted to take his own  life (by his eldest son), was admitted to the hospital in Whitby, then for the mentally ill. His tombstone declares his death date as 1925; so his eldest son knew his father for a mere twenty years.
Both sons now having secured employment, one in the lumber yard, the other in a retail business, their two sisters were soon ready to enrol in nursing school, while their mother was constrained to "take in borders" as the family oral history remembers it and passed it along.
My father, George, in 1922, having transferred from the lumber yard to the hardware and building supply business owned and operated by the family that founded the town of Parry Sound, the Beatty family, soon met and began dating a young woman who had moved to town from Brent, a sparcely populated location of a CNR roundhouse managed by her father in the northwest section of Algonquin Park. In the late 1920's, she enrolled in the nursing school at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, where he would visit her from time to time, sitting up to sleep on the all-night train after leaving work at 11:00 p.m. on Saturday night, arriving early Sunday morning for a brief visit, before having to catch the return train home in order to arrive back for work on Monday morning, following another all-night train ride home. That endurance and the calm with which he underwent most of his life, help to define the man I know as my Dad.
He had known what today we would call "extreme poverty" in his youth; he had also developed a sense of maturity, having become the 'man of the house' as the eldest son, upon the illness and death of his own father.
His sisters quite literally adored their two brothers, and following graduations, one from Kingston General Hospital, and the other from Sick Children's Hospital in Toronto, would visit at least annually their two brothers still in Parry Sound, from their respective residences in Toronto and Kingston.
These annual visits, frequently coincided with Christmas vacation from school for me, and eventually for my sister, born in 1954, when I was twelve. These two nurses, our aunts, also developed a long-standing tradition of taking their month-long vacations at a rented cottage on Georgian Bay, until they found one they purchased, and that became their eventual retirement home, after some winterizing and retrofitting. These vacations were shared by many other practicing nurses, some head nurses, some former army nurses who had transferred to the Canadian Red Cross following the second war, some former classmates from nursing school, and even one pediatrician who taught at the Queen's Medical School, and his wife.
Naturally, our family were invited to meals hosted by Rowena and Eleanor, or as my sister and I preferred, "Auntie Row" and "Auntie Eleanor," known mostly by her friends as "Tommy" in honour of the famed British soldier "Tommy Atkins".The "guests" at Row and Eleanor's cottages, both rented and owned, became a window on the outside world for children raised in the confines of what is commonly regarded as the "most conservative town in Ontario," Parry Sound. They gladly told stories of world travels, experiences in other lands, as if they knew implicitly of the provincialism that both protected and limited children from the little town, dependent as it was primarily on government cheques to civil servants for its winter survival, while in the summer American dollars flowed up and down the "main drag" known as James Street, being lavishly spent by U.S. Republican tourists, some of whom even landed on tour ships out of Duluth Minnesota.
These "boat people" would patronizingly and generously throw pennies to the dock below where the local kids would "scramble" to retrieve them in the weekly, Thursday afternoon "penny-scramble."
By the time I was in school, in the late forties, Dad had risen in the small hierarchy of the hardare-department-store-building supply store, at the main corner of the town's only intersection with traffic lights, James and Seguin Streets. He "managed" probably anywhere from 6-12 employees, the numbers rising for the summer trade, and dropping down after Labour Day. His cadre of workers without exception, worshipped the ground on which he walked; his intuitive attention and caring and respect for their individual persons and needs, including those of their families, linked to his high expectation of his own performance and their's, resulted in a highly effective and efficient retail operation, catering in the summer to large lodge owners and operators south and north from Parry Sound, resulting in considerable growth of the business, and annual "bonus" payments for my father, although never a profit-sharing contract.
I was in the second year of undergraduate studies at Western when he approached me with this question, "Would you like to join me in buying the hardware store that is now for sale across the street from where I work?"
This man who had borrowed cars from a friend to drive me to music festivals as a young boy, and had been immediately ready to "play catch" or even touch football whenever I happened to mention it, and had walked to and from work, a pleasant twenty-minutes only, but on nasty weather days, a biting experience, for more than a dozen years, now sought a partnership, really a life-partnership with his only son, in the business he knew and  understood intimately. It was in this business that he had grown a professional reputation for managing among Ontario's elite, many of whom vacationed on Georgian Bay, and among the northern U.S. visitors, some of whom were CEO's of major corporations, all of whom sought out "George" for their hardware, sporting good and fine china purchases in Parry Sound. And, I knew, as did everyone who knew George, that this was an extremely proud man, yet at the same time a very humble man, who loved the best suits and cigars, a very warm house, and the family's many picnics on the shore of Georgian Bay, which we reached on a loaned boat from another of his many friends, Tan Geddes.
I recall the conversation as if it were yesterday.
"I would dearly love to work with you for the rest of my life," I recall uttering spontaneously, "but I really have so little interest in and knowledge of hardware and even less interest in learning its fine points that I think it would not be a good thing for me to accept your very kind invitiation."
In what now appears as a pivotal moment in both of our lives, although I certainly could not have known so then, he responded, caringly, openly and calmly, "I understand, and I accept your decision, but I thought I would at least ask."
"I am very glad to have been asked, and I do hope that I have not disappointed you with my answer," I told him speaking from somewhere deep inside my being.
"Not at all," was his response, and the subject never raised its head again, in his remaining thirty-five years, until his death in 1996. This conversation occurred in 1961.
Never did I hear my father utter an unkind word about anyone. Even the phrase, "four just men,"  by which he dubbed newcomers to the Session of the Presbyterian church in which he served as a member, was the only phrase that I ever heard him use in derision, and he clearly held their new-found, born-again evangelism as repulsive as did I, and many others. They had "converted" at the urging, preaching and charismatic oratory of the then new Balleymena-born evangelist who had been hired to serve as clergy.
Although Dad never openly criticised them or the clergy, his secret scepticism and perhaps even cynicism were well known in our family, although my mother "religiously" bought in to the hype. I shared my father's scepticism, and eventually left the church, based on my then sixteen-year-old's belief that the blather that was being preached in the pulpit was utterly bullshit. I still do, today!
However, the gifts from my father include a love of most sports, both spectating and participating, a curiosity and a critical survey of humanity's oddities and grace, a detachment from all forms of authority, especially from those who abuse their power, a wonder and an awe at the majesty of the universe and the complexity of human and mother nature and an attention to detail, while preserving the "big" picture, that only he could both explain and comprehend.
As I have often said, in describing my father to others, "He taught me about the highest and best angels of other humans by living from his own every day of his life! And he brought into graphic relief their dark side, simply by the light of his presence.
I remember and thank him every day, and I am proud to honour his memory on this Father's Day, 2012, sixteen years following his death.

B.C. Court declares invalid Criminal Code prohibition of physician-assisted death

By Sunny Dhillon, Globe and Mail, June 15, 2012
British Columbia’s Supreme Court has declared a section of the Criminal Code that prohibits physician-assisted death invalid.
In a decision released Friday, Madam Justice Lynn Smith says the Criminal Code provisions “unjustifiably infringe the equality rights” of the plaintiffs in the case, including Gloria Taylor, who suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

Joseph Arvay, who represented Ms. Taylor, said that his client cried with relief on hearing the decision. He said that he does not know what her plans are.
Mr. Arvay said he imagined that the government would appeal the ruling, but hoped they would not.
A spokesperson for the federal government said the minister needed time to read the extensive ruling, but that they would be reviewing the judgment.
Grace Pastine, of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, met reporters outside B.C. Supreme Court and called the ruling “a watershed decision.” She called the case a “major victory for individual rights at the end of life.”
Ms. Pastine read a statement from Ms. Taylor. It said: “I am deeply grateful to have the comfort of knowing that I’ll have a choice at the end of my life. This is a blessing for me, and other seriously and incurably ill individuals. This decision allows me to approach my death in the same way I have tried to live my life – with dignity, independence, and grace.”
Will Johnston, B.C. chair of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, said the ruling opens the door to potential elder abuse.
“We think this judgment decided to minimize and disregard the evidence of harm in other jurisdictions where assisted suicide and euthanasia has been practiced,” he said.
Udo Schuklenk chaired an expert panel of the Royal Society of Canada that studied end-of-life decision-making and said, in a report released last year, that informed Canadians should have the right to choose death within a regulated system, even if they have not been diagnosed with a terminal illness.
Dr. Schuklenk, a bioethicist at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., said the judge in Friday’s ruling clearly took into account the panel’s finding that there is no evidence that vulnerable people would be at appreciable risk of abuse if euthanasia was decriminalized. “If there is no appreciable risk, surely autonomy-based considerations mean people should be able to make these sorts of choices towards the end of their lives and have these choices respected,” he said.
Ricardo Smalling, a lawyer who is a research fellow at Queen’s, said the law is generally still valid, at least until next year, which means other people cannot legally exercise the same option. But, if the government does not do something about it, or if the B.C. Court of Appeal or the Supreme Court of Canada does not grant an injunction to stay the implementation of the decision, then assisted suicide will automatically become legal, he said.

Justice Smith has given Parliament one year “to take whatever steps it sees fit to draft and consider legislation.” During that time the ruling is suspended. However, the judge has also granted Ms. Taylor a constitutional exemption during that period that permits her to proceed with physician-assisted death under specified conditions.
“The evidence shows that risks exist, but that they can be very largely avoided through carefully-designed, well-monitored safeguards,” the judge said of assisted suicide in her ruling.
After decades of both research and public debate, perhaps the time has come for Canada to begin to open the door to physician-assisted death for those incurably ill who wish to take that decision.
Of course, no systemic guidelines have been designed or adopted to prevent as much risk as possible; however, now the door is ajar for those, including Ms Taylor who suffers from ALS.
Whether the government will appeal the decision is still not known. There are already those promoting the case of elder abuse in the light of this decision, a courageous one on the part of the justice who write it.
We applaud her courage and her compassion, and we look forward to a healthy debate on the merits, hoping that the issue does not become mired in either ideology or religious absolutism.

Is there hope for the future of the Liberal Party...building bridges, yes!

By Jeffrey Simpson, Globe and Mail, June 15, 2012
The more profound question, however, is not about the potential candidates about whom we shall all hear much in due course, but about the party. Canada is now a more ideological place than when the putative Martin dynasty collapsed.

Certainly the Harper Conservatives are far more ideological than the Progressive Conservatives whom they supplanted. In the face of this ideology, buttressed by an unshakeable, motivated and often angry core of about a third of the electorate, many of those who do not share, indeed fear, this ideology have shifted to the New Democrats as a sturdier vehicle with which to confront the Conservative bulldozer.
The Liberals were a protean party in a largely middle-class country, devoid of ideological moorings, capable of shifting according to events and circumstances, a party of internal compromise, the sturdiest bridge for many decades between French- and English-speaking communities and renowned for immigrant absorption into the party and Canada and a broad internationalist agenda in foreign policy.
From Wilfrid Laurier to Mr. Martin, the Liberals were anchored in Quebec. Now, they are a scattered remnant throughout the province, moribund in many regions, scarcely alive in others, vital in only a few. Since the demise of the Meech Lake accord, the largest number of francophone Quebeckers have withdrawn from governing Canada and preferred to be in opposition, first with the Bloc Québécois, now with the NDP. As they withdrew from governing Canada, by definition, they withdrew from the Liberals who were, after all, once the natural governing party of the country.
We live at a time of growing economic inequalities, which separate classes and groups. We live at a time of growing regional disparities, as Alberta and Saskatchewan leave the rest of the country behind. We live at a time of widespread economic uncertainty, with high debt levels, stagnant per capita incomes for the middle class, the fear of unemployment and no shelter from international economic storms.
To these anxieties the Conservatives offer their alternatives; to these divisions and inequalities, they largely turn their backs. In reply, more and more Canadians are turning to the NDP with its alternatives, which at least have the virtue of being known: more state activity paid for by higher corporate taxes, the foil for the Conservatives who prefer a smaller state and lower taxes.
The battle lines, ideologically and regionally, are drawn, and the Liberals are a bit on both sides of the line and definitely off to the side of the real action. It will take sharper analyses of the forces at work in the country and the world, and compelling ideas that flow from those analyses, to make the Liberals relevant.
To these anxieties the Conservatives offer their alternatives; to these divisions and inequalities, they largely turn their backs.
However, Mr. Simpson, having the country held hostage to 33% of angry red-neck bigots (conservatives) opposed by a state-focused opposition reduces Canada to a binary choice. Is that what the world, and the political world is reduced to, and is that what Canadian voters have left from which to choose?
For the past century, Canada has been relatively moderately and modestly well governed. While there certainly have been blips of arrogance and insensitivity, nothing really compares with the arrogance and insensitivity of the current government.
The "third option" seems so blatantly missing from so much of our public discourse. Binary choices, either-or propositions leave a culture and a people starved for something different than all-out war between two competing factions.
There are, also, in Canada so many bridges that need to be built, metaphorically, since Harper has just committed $1 billion to another bridge connecting Windsor to Detroit, without the State of Michigan anteing up a single penny, another of Harper's foreclosures.
Liberals could offer policy planks that would:

• bridge the east, central and western regions of the country, starting with healthy, collegial and collaborative formal, informal and regularly scheduled conversations with the provinces, to develop a national strategy for a number of national issues including: energy, environment, education, inter-provincial trade, health care standards, enhancements and efficiencies, food, shelter and employment opportunities and eliminating poverty across the land
• bridge the cultural divide that pits regions against one another for a pot of public support dollars that are meted out too much by patronage and not enough by excellence
• bridge the divide between economic development and environmental protection
• bridge the divide between competing international interests, as a medium-sized power mediator, negotiator and even arbitrator if requested
• bridge the gulf between new immigrants and the Canadian culture, in ways being led by former Governor General Adrienne Clarkson
• bridge the gulf between English, French and Native cultures, by fostering education, visitation and travel adventures between and among the various groups, for both learning and community development experiences
• bridge the gulf between what is known about Canadian history, politics and culture and what Canadians know about our own country through travel exchanges, community partnerships, educational opportunities including the development of CD's for example that could be shared from region to region, and televised on public television, as a way to open doors and minds to the people of this country, based on information about the people of this country, with a view to shattering some of the stereotypes
• bridge the gulf between the dollars available for scientific research and research in the humanities, culture, the arts and languages
• bridge the gulf between Canada's past and our future as a nation, building on our best accomplishments, while discarding some of the limiting shibboleths, archetypes and fossilized definitions and expectations
• bridge the gulf between a economy based on natural resources and an economy based primarily on information, research methodology, and complex communications
• Bridge the geographic gulf that separates the disparate regions from one another through a national transportation grid of new high-speed rail, short commuter flights and high-speed water transportation

And in the process of such "bridging" the Liberal Party can and probably needs to shed some of the parts of its history that is holding back, even preventing public support for the party....
things like

1. considering the political solution to the return of power to reside in a single person, man or woman
2. maintaining the vatican structure of governance as no longer viable for the future life of the party
3. holding the party's hand out as the primary purpose of communication with members/associates when there are so many knowledgeable people eager and willing to submit proposals on the 100-year vision of the country, for example, and no party is even considering soliciting such visions, so compacted is their current political vision that it barely extends to the next election in 2015
4. changing the party's vision and focus from regaining power to educating and inspiring the people of the country through highlighting party members/associates as public speakers, for a fee, to various public interest groups in order to develop an vibrant dialogue of both ideas and processes that will engage both the thinkers and the ordinary people in a concerted attempt to develop a new national consciousness around learning, debating, and championing the various competencies and their persons, so that both ideas and national leaders become respected household names and kitchen table discourse, not focussed exclusively on the economy, as both of the current government and opposition parties would like to have it

This nation deserves not only the best the Liberal Party has to offer, as well as other political parties and this is the time to build a new nation, very different from the one that Harper and his gang are currently immersing in the granite of their minds and the landscape of the country, as their's, not our's.