Walls and Bridges: the Importance of Washington and Ottawa

September 3rd, 2011

Since human beings first spread themselves across the earth, they have encountered obstacles: rivers, mountains, scarcity of food, extreme heat, biting cold, warlike peoples and diseases – physical barriers to progress. Because of difficulties such as these, the vast majority of human history has been lived in fear.

Some individuals and civilisations embrace that fear and use it as a catalyst to attempt great feats. Ever since our species has sought new lands, one of the devices used to overcome obstacles to movement is the bridge. Bridges allowed us to eat today and build tomorrow while not drowning in the attempt. Julius Caesar made use of huge temporary bridges in order to subdue (or more often, massacre) Germanic tribes over 2,000 years ago. We use them to carry water and to drive further.

Retrospectively, however, bridges can carry more than water or cargo; they carry a lot of history. Of the three colossal countries that comprise continental North America, two of them – Canada and the United States – have capital cities that are located in parts of their respective countries in such a way that part of the cities almost became part of another country, and what links these would-be sister states are bridges. Ottawa and Washington, the respective capitals, were both capital cities by the time of the Quebec referendums and the US Civil War, which makes their capital status before these historic events all the more important and extraordinary.

When you walk, as I did two weeks ago, from Arlington National Cemetery across the Potomac River on Memorial Bridge to the Lincoln Memorial, you are walking from the state of Virginia to the District of Columbia. You are also walking from the old Confederate States of America to what was then and is now the United States of America; in another history, you could have been walking from one nation to another. The unity that Washington brings to such a vast country can be seen in concentrated form right there on that small plot of land. The bridges are stitches on an old wound.

Earlier this summer, I also walked from Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario across the Alexandra Bridge over the Ottawa River to Gatineau, Quebec. Just as in Washington, bridges link what might have become (and might yet become) an entirely separate country within the capital city. I cannot think of any other cities in the world where this is the case.

Of course, the ways that Quebec and the Confederacy went about trying to gain independence were entirely different. For the former, two referendums ended with Quebec remaining within Canada – nobody died, at least not directly. In contrast, more than 600,000 people died during the American Civil War.

Washington is a far more grandiose city. It is larger and more monolithic with more tourists and bigger things. When one takes that walk from the old Confederacy to the modern American capital – from the South to the North – the air oozes the salient sense that this is a very important place. In that respect, the city is quite beautiful because it is a beautiful thing to be there. Physically and politically, Washington itself is a monument of monuments.

Ottawa’s beauty is more understated, built as much by the hand of nature as by the hand of humanity. Taking into account how recently the city was almost split between two countries (1980 and 1995), its status becomes a significant factor in the viability of Canada remaining one country.

Both Ottawa and Washington are metropolises that could have been permanently split by rivers, politics and war. As it is, they are held together by the will of the majority of the people and by bridges, bridges that have a modern resonance far beyond their original function.

Never a fool on the Hill: The Legacy of Jack Layton

August 29th, 2011

I never met Jack Layton and Jack Layton never met me, but I feel like we would have got along well.

Why? Because everyone who has heard of or met “bon Jack” seems to feel this way. And even though I never met him, I can solemnly claim to have been present at his final appearance and heard his final words to the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Thursday, the 23rd of June, 2011. Of course, I didn’t know at the time that it was Layton’s final day in the place where he had for so long defended working (and non-working) Canadians and their interests. My notes taken from the public gallery read that he “switched effortlessly from English to French” as he (fittingly, for what turned out to be his final Parliamentary cause) sought to preserve the rights of postal workers after they had been locked out by Canada Post.

That day, Layton slowly descended the stairs with the aid of a walking cane to take his seat as leader of the Official Opposition, a role he enjoyed for just a few short weeks. His evident physical discomfort did not soften his ferocity, wit and sense of justice, however, as he calmly but stridently put forward a set of policies that were at odds with the Conservative majority sitting opposite.

Less than two months later he was dead, killed by cancer. He was two weeks younger than my mother and two years younger than my father.

There was something heroic, almost Shakespearean, about the final few months of his life. His greatest triumph – becoming leader of the opposition – coincided with his rapidly deteriorating health. Alanis Morissette would call it ironic.

Layton’s death has brought together the full spectrum of Canadians, and in my case non-Canadians, in mourning: Anglophones, francophones, young and old, federalists, separatists, immigrants, journalists, conservatives, liberals, socialists, urbanites, rural dwellers, the wealthy, the downtrodden, temporary guest workers – they all realise now what Layton meant to Canada and what Canada meant to him.

Now that he has gone, there is a palpable sense that he was maybe too good for us.

“My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.”

On Ottawa (and Canada)

June 24th, 2011

Ottawa is a city shrouded in myth, but for me two stand out in particular.

The first is that it is no fun. When I said to some friends and acquaintances in Montreal that I was heading two hours east to Canada’s capital city, they sniggered. ‘Ottawa?’ they said, ‘why would you go to Ottawa?’ It was as if we were ten years old and I had just told them that I do ballet or have a stamp collection. If Ottawa could speak, she might well say ‘my reputation precedes me.’ So why did I go? Because I had never been; and that, believe it or not, is as good a reason as any to go anywhere.

While Toronto and Montreal have agitated to become Canada’s cultural capital, economic capital, sporting capital, musical capital, media capital and, not to forget, actual capital, Ottawa has straddled the two metropolises with humble glee. While Toronto and Montreal argued like two school kids over whose Dad has a bigger car, Ottawa and her citizens got along just fine.

In that respect, the city is quintessentially Canadian, performing in a domestic context the role that Canada has traditionally played internationally. Anglo-Irish journalist and provocateur-in-chief Kevin Myers once wrote of Canada’s role in world affairs as ‘the perpetual wallflower that stands on the edge of the hall, waiting for someone to come and ask her for a dance.’ Ottawa’s role within Canada is much the same; the capital is a slight detour to the north from the main Toronto-Montreal route, just as Canada is a slight detour to the north from the main US-Europe routes. Both easily missed, both blithely dismissed.

Ottawa is fun, as much fun for the political anorak as for fans of hip hop or electro nightclubs. Much of the city’s nightlife is contained within the refreshingly low-rise Byward Market area, situated beside the Rideau Canal. On Tuesday evening, I watched the sun set over Gatineau, Quebec from a bridge connecting Rideau St and Wellington St (possibly soon to be Sir John A. Macdonald Boulevard). Below the bridge were the final seven or eight locks of the canal as it prepared to enter the river. I have always considered the construction of canals among the more underrated achievements of humanity, and the merging of sheer natural beauty with human triumph and endevour became a sort of microcosm of Canada itself.

A couple of minutes up the road stands Parliament Hill, and it is on that Hill, where Canada’s federal House of Commons and Senate meet, that the second of the myths mentioned in the opening gambits of this piece resides. As mentioned before on this page, the idea that Queen Victoria herself chose Ottawa as the nation’s capital in 1857 is one that rankles, mainly because it is almost completely untrue. I say ‘almost’ because the monarch did rubber stamp the arrangement, so to speak, but it was Macdonald, Cartier and other fathers of Confederation who decided that the small lumber town would become home to the government of Canada.

Shawni is a tour guide from New Brunswick. Towards the end of our tour, we entered a hall where portraits hang of all monarchs who have reigned from Victoria forth. Shawni mentioned the Victoria-Ottawa myth as historical fact, much to the salient satisfaction of two women from Liverpool who became instantly proud over what they believed to be true. In deference to Shawni, she is likely to know far more about Canadian history than me, but this is one thing that most historians now accept as a sort of quasi-myth. I did not want to spoil the Liverpudlians’ fun or embarrass Shawni, so I bit my bitter Irish tongue. She later told me in private that she is told from above what to say.

My brief trip was rounded off by attending Question Period in the public gallery of the House of Commons. The Prime Minister and his front bench faced the Speaker always while speaking – a strange, quirky tactic – while opposition MPs directed their vexed irritations directly at their intended targets. The main topic of discussion was the continuing Canada Post lockout, with the NDP predictably backing Canada Post workers and the Conservatives the small- and medium-sized businesses they say make Canada’s economy tick. French and English mixed, sometimes in mid-flow, from those comfortable in both official national languages. This, apparently, is what goes on in Canada’s Parliament.

Ottawa, a city that constantly seems to have to justify its own existence, offers much more than what its reputation suggests. If Canada is the country the world forgot, then Ottawa is the city the country forgets. The slight northern detour is well worth it, and the same goes for Canada at large.

The Vancouver Riots

June 17th, 2011

Last night witnessed rioting in downtown Vancouver — admittedly, a city far away from where I write — following that city’s hockey team’s loss to Boston in the final game of the Stanley Cup final. The last time that Vancouver lost the final game of the Stanley Cup series was in 1994, whereupon the city centre was also ravaged with rioting. In the interim, the city has successfully hosted a winter Olympic games in peace. So, a few questions:

The Mayor and Police force have blamed “hooligans and hoodlums” for the events. Why?

The predictable answer might well be that this is because hooligans and hoodlums — whatever, whoever and whoever they may be — are to blame. The advantage of this for the municipal administration is that it absolves them of almost all blame, and the hidden premise is that it was not hockey fans who engaged in rioting, but rather people masquerading (where would these people have been for 17 years then?). Thus, the city and its team cannot be to blame in any way. Today’s powerful and bold Globe and Mail editorial, however, smashes that myth to pieces. It is extremely obvious that there were more than a handful of people rioting, looting and committing arson, and many of those who were not were glad to goad them on. Would “hooligans and hoodlums” break into a verse of O Canada while rioting? Many if not most of those responsible seem to have been Vancouver Canucks fans — real ones, with an emotional connection to the team. If municipal authorities want to pretend this is not the case, they become part of the problem, not part of the solution.

If the event was a “disgrace”, then whose disgrace was it?

Describing an event as a “disgrace”, as, for example, interim Liberal leader Bob Rae has done, gives it a certain human root. One cannot describe an earthquake or tsunami, for example, as a disgrace because they don’t have a human root. So, if it was a disgrace, then who was disgraceful? The rioters? The city of Vancouver? The people of Vancouver? The police? The Mayor? The sport of hockey? The great nation of Canada? All of the above? None of the above?

Conditions were created, or were allowed to create themselves, for this event to happen. The fact that Vancouver lost 4-0 on the night did not help. The deployment of a police force in the three figures to manage a group of people in the six figures may not have helped. So, who is the disgrace? It is too easy for people like Rae to assign blame in a monolithic, linear fashion solely upon those who committed the acts of violence. The reality is surely more nuanced than that.

Why are media outlets tripping over themselves to compare this with soccer?

Most Canadian newspapers have mentioned soccer at least once in their editorial coverage today, the underlying theme of which is that the beautiful game is a malign influence upon hockey and Canada. However, taking into consideration the amount of professional soccer played throughout the globe — which dwarfs the amount played of any other field sport — is attending a soccer game really than dangerous? Is this comparison not a bit cheap and beside the point?

Lastly, is this not a wonderful photograph?

This photo (story here) has gone viral today, and well it should.

The Liberal Party of Canada and Fianna Fáil

May 18th, 2011

This spring that we are soon to exit from has been buttressed by two elections; firstly, in the land of my birth and family, Ireland; more recently, in the land where I now reside, Canada. To borrow Francis Fukuyama’s oft-used phrase, both of these elections were viewed, to some extent, as “The End of History” – moments in which institutions that were regarded (and more tellingly, regarded themselves) as part of the political furniture in their respective states were vanquished.

Around the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Fukuyama wrote that the advent and perceived success of Western liberal democracy might well signal the end of humanity’s sociocultural and geopolitical evolution. Things have not panned out exactly like that, with the post-9/11 decade signalling that history is not about to reach its conclusion without some unexpected hiccups.

The Irish and Canadian elections of this spring saw two parties – Fianna Fáil and the Liberal Party, respectively – humbled beyond what their most vicious nightmares might have foretold. Their hubris was to believe, within their individual states, that they had reached the end of history and had become their nations’ natural governing parties. The Liberals even went so far using “natural governing party” as a synonym for themselves, but the party was reduced to 34 seats in a 308-seat legislature two weeks ago. That’s not the work of a natural governing party.

The most commonly used translation of Fianna Fáil – Soldiers of Destiny – reveals an intrinsic sense of self-worth and belief in manifest destiny within the organisation from the outset. Pride is an essential component of any successful party, but there is a fine line between pride and hubris.

Fianna Fáil and the Liberals both more or less occupied, or attempted to occupy, the political centre within two-and-a-half party systems. Ireland might legitimately be seen as more innately conservative than Canada, which explains the generally more populist right agenda of Fianna Fáil. For the Liberals, the very word – then as now – is something of a blank canvass onto which individuals, political parties, nations and continents can paint a fresh meaning. In the United States, to be liberal is to be firmly on the left. In most of Europe, to be liberal is to be a cheerleader for free market economics while holding progressive social views. In Australia, the conservative centre-right party is called the Liberal Party. When somebody asks, ‘are you liberal?’ I usually answer based on the origin of the person who asked the question.

And so Canada, with a population largely drawn from the old world but an address in the new one, got a chance to create a fresh liberalism, defining it positively as pragmatic centrism with a liberal (excuse the pun) glazing of diplomacy abroad and help for the needy at home, and negatively as ‘not conservative’. The modern mistake of the party comes in two parts: believing that its domination of the 1990s was because it was loved and believing that pragmatic centrism, as defined above, was the permanent will of the majority of Canadians. Now, with a Liberal Party based in the East of the country (12 of the 34 Liberal MPs take their mandate from the smaller Atlantic Provinces) and a conservative government whose strength lies in Ontario and the West, the Liberal Party is also geographically removed from the Canadian centre.

After the 2002 and 2007 elections, Fianna Fáil gave the impression that it believed its version of liberalism was here to stay. Immediately after the 2007 election, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern entered RTE TV studios and essentially stated that the party was now the natural choice for Irish people. And to some extent, he was correct, but the folly was to consider this to be a permanent state of affairs. Fianna Fáil, along with the Catholic Church and the Gaelic Athletic Association, completed a trifecta of loyalties that largely defined twentieth century Ireland. They will not define the twenty first.

And neither will the Liberals, unless they stop tweaking things at the top and think fundamentally about how to become a governing party again, and not necessarily a “natural” one. The roles have been reversed since the consolidation of conservative forces in 2003 and the rise of the NDP in 2011, perhaps making the Conservatives – if anybody has a claim to the title – the natural governing party.

Montreal Four Months In; Ireland Four Months Out

May 5th, 2011

This is a list of 10 things I like about Montreal, Quebec and Canada and 10 things I miss about Dublin and Ireland. They are discussed alternately, beginning with something I like about this place. Let’s go…

 

Montreal/Canada: Pubs open ‘til 3am, even on a Sunday

“Have you no homes to go to… Can you finish up there please?” The usual GTFO call of barmen at about midnight where I grew up. When my cousin visited here, she left Toronto at about 6pm on a Sunday and set out on the six-hour drive. We still had time to meet up after midnight and get merry. With nobody forced to concentrate their drinking and socialising into narrower time periods, fewer people throw a load of alcohol into their bodies very quickly.

 

Dublin/Ireland: The Sea

Look, just look! Where I grew up, if I kicked a football from my garden gate it would – after a few hops and a little help from our friend gravity – end up in the salty goodness otherwise known as the sea. Obviously I never did kick a ball into the sea, at least not on purpose. Rivers are a poor substitute, especially when they’re frozen five months of the year. I miss the smell, the sounds and the visual beauty of the sea. And I miss swimming in it. The last time I enjoyed swimming in a river was in Ghana, almost two years ago.

 

Montreal/Canada: Integrated public transport at less than $3 a day

You have a card that cost $6, once off. You pay $72 per month or $22 per week to use four metro lines and all public municipal buses. That’s under $3 per day or around €2, cheaper than a single journey ticket from Dun Laoghaire to Dublin city on the DART. The LUAS lines in Dublin do not even meet up and you can’t buy integrated bus-rail tickets. The Montreal metro comes every five minutes or so except for the wee hours when it’s about every ten minutes. Did I mention it runs into the wee hours?

 

Dublin/Ireland: Living in a place where people like football

At the pub in which I work at weekends, the kitchen staff finish their preparation work at around 10.30am, leaving a good hour for us to sit and watch the football from England on the TV in the bar before opening. They don’t have much of a clue though. Say, for example, it’s Bolton versus West Brom, they might ask: “Is this Champions League?” Or maybe it’s Man Utd against some other lot: “So does Rooney score all the goals for Manchester?” I suppose I’m the same when I watch (Ice) Hockey, but I miss watching football with people who know what is going on.

 

Montreal/Canada: A walk in the country in the city

Montreal, as the name suggests, has a mountain (more like a large hill) smack bang in the middle of the city. My former housemate used to bring her skis on the walk to school in winter, and the walk up the south slope through the snow is a lot of fun. I can’t vouch for summer yet, but it seems like a perfect short hike to walk off a hangover. Few cities have such a wonderful natural amenity in their city centre.

 

Dublin/Ireland: Taking the piss out of each other

If one stereotype is true about Canada, it’s that people are nice. Frustratingly so. Let me make my point by way of anecdote. About two months ago I went to Quebec City with a friend that I had met for the first time three days previously. We had got along well but we both knew that there was a giant elephant in the room – neither of us actually knew each other much at all. When we got out of the car – a rideshare – my new friend went searching for his money in his bag. A slight panic set in when he could not find the $200 he swore he put in there before leaving. It was a large enough bag packed with loads of things and I had seen him put the money in there earlier, so I was sure he would ultimately find it. “Ha! Man, you are useless!” I said. What I was suggesting here by saying this was that I now felt comfortable enough in his presence to be able to take the micky out of him. It was me saying ‘we’re friends now’. Unfortunately, he took it as me being frustrated and nasty, meaning that I had to explain that in Ireland, friends spend their whole lives telling each other they are useless or fuckin’ eejits. Canadians do not do this.

 

Montreal/Canada: Respect for cyclists

450km of cycle paths. A public bike system with over 300 stations. Cyclists generally rule to roost here and, as a reluctant driver and four-time driving test failure, I think this is great. Now that the snow has disappeared I can get out and cycle to work and around the mountain.

 

Dublin/Ireland: Proportional representation

Ireland should not be held up as a beacon of leadership in how to compose a just electoral system, but this first-past-the-post thing over here is slightly ridiculous. Take for example this week’s federal election; a slight national shift to the left has resulted in a more solid right-wing government. How does this happen? The centrist Liberals lost ground to the centre-left NDP as well as some votes moving to the centre-right Tories. With vote splitting occurring between the Liberals and NDP, the Tories won more seats and a majority government without significantly increasing their vote. Counter intuitively, the Tories were delighted with a surge in support for their ideological opposite, and that’s just wrong. In Ireland the makeup of Parliament is proportionally closer to the will of the people.

 

Montreal/Canada: Classified ads

North America has realised before any part of the world that classified ads are now free to post and offer a new way of getting stuff done. If I need a lift (“ride”) to another city, it’s cheaper at short notice to get a rideshare from someone on craigslist than to get a bus from a bus company. And you can also buy THINGS. So far I have bought a lamp, a microwave and a teapot through classified ads, at a much reduced cost.

Dublin/Ireland: Playing football on grass, outdoors

With snow guaranteed to cover the ground for five or six months of the year (I just watched the weather forecast and there were snow warnings. In May.), football is played on synthetic surfaces, usually indoors. There seem to be no grass fields for football anywhere near the city. I suppose that, with land value being higher, having a piece of land redundant for half the year makes no sense. That said, I really do miss playing on soggy grass fields in Ireland. And old habits are dying hard; I’ve got cuts on my legs from slide tackling on synthetic grass. Indeed, going in for a slide tackle – one of my favourite things to do during a game – is seen as a bold move here that instantly gives the tackler a degree of respect among other players. ‘Watch out lads, this fella is prepared to bleed to get the ball back.’

 

Montreal/Canada: Tense political atmosphere being played out without violence

In case you did not know, about 40% of Quebecers want to separate from Canada. This is naturally a sensitive area and, unless invited into a conversation on the subject, I generally avoid the issue while in social settings. Comparisons with Ireland are made, and I have been asked how I can explain the perceived double standard of supporting an independent Ireland as well as Quebec’s continued role within Canada. Whatever the case, I’m just glad – if not a little impressed – that this tension is carried out on a political level through democratic means. The number of dead during “The Troubles” in Ireland is measured in the thousands. The last time that a politically-motivated death was directly due to Quebec’s constitutional status was in October, 1970, when a provincial cabinet minister was kidnapped and murdered by the FLQ. I find it amazing that extreme violence has not resurfaced since then.

 

Dublin/Ireland: Dairy products

The butter here is tasteless and white-ish and the fat content of milk is measured in low percentage points, the highest being 3.25%. I miss fatty churned goodness.

 

Montreal/Canada: Choice of beer in bars

When it comes to booze, the Irish are probably the most unwaveringly loyal and conservative bunch in the world. Walk into a pub and you see Guinness, Smithwick’s, three or four very similar lagers and maybe, if you’re lucky, one other choice. The pub I work in here has something like 22 different beers on draught and the bottles we keep in the fridge are different to those available at the taps, making about 30 in all. This is standard. Most pubs will also stock some local beers as well as imports, and there is a healthy respect for micro-brewing that sadly does not exist back home.

 

Dublin/Ireland: Being able to use Irishisms with impunity

Ireland is more like a big family, more so than its inhabitants realise. Like the best friends or siblings that have in-jokes that nobody else gets (“we see things they’ll never see” /Live Forever – Noel Gallagher), Ireland is full of euphemisms and lines that cheer us all up from time to time. Towards the end of the winter here I trained with a local rugby team, ostensibly to keep fit, but really to try and make some friends. (The latter mission failed and, after going to a wedding in March, any fitness benefit was soon lost.) The men’s team trained after the women and, as is normal with a group of men, conversation came around to which (if any) of the ladies were attractive. “She has a nice ass,” said one of the Canadian lads and, like an unconscious reflex, I said “they all have lovely bottoms”. Perhaps they hadn’t seen Father Ted, and perhaps it’s no surprise I didn’t make great friends there. Another phrase I use more consistently is to ‘give out’ to someone, meaning to reprimand them. Here, among certain people to ‘give out’ means to pleasure someone orally. Oops.

 

Montreal/Canada: Gay marriage

I’m not going to get into my argument for gay marriage here because that’s an essay in itself. Suffice to say I support it, and passionately so. It’s not an issue here, because it exists. When I was born, homosexuality was still a criminal offence in Ireland. Take note, however, that this is not a Canada-wide thing. Same-sex marriage is only legal in Yukon, B.C., Ontario and Quebec. Vive le Quebec.

 

Dublin/Ireland: Spring

It just arrives far too late here. Snow all through March and, as I said above, snow warnings for tonight. At least summer is meant to be longer, warmer and more reliable than Ireland.

Montreal/Canada: Music, shows, gigs

Young people go to gigs here en masse. And not to Justin Bieber or Coldplay, but to small gigs in dingy little places. People take each other’s recommendations and check stuff out. And it’s cheap. A lot of the stuff here at the moment seems to be electro and dubstep, a genre I can’t get into despite my best efforts, but there’s other stuff going on too. And lots of it.

 

Dublin/Ireland: Knowing where to go to get stuff

A haircut, for example. Anyone who has ever hung out with me knows that I like to take care of my hair. It’s my not-so-secret succumbing to vanity. A week before I went to my brother’s wedding in March, I went to get a haircut. Not knowing where to go, I went to a local barber. I asked him to use scissors and he ran a razor over me. I asked him to leave my sideburns and he cut them to the top of my ear. Then he ran a straight line across the back of my neck at the hairline with a raw blade. The cut was all wrong and, when I got home, one of my friends said ‘you need to find yourself a new barber.’ Two things came out of the ordeal: I took to wearing a hat and it was the only time I have not tipped for service since I got here. A few hours before returning to North America, I went to a barber in Limerick and asked for a rescue mission, which was successful (note: Johnny’s in Annacotty). I’m due a haircut very soon and am trying to find a place that won’t fuck it up. (Note #2: the place that DID fuck it up was ‘Athens’ on St Laurent, photo below.)

 

Montreal/Canada: Proper debate over healthcare

We’re too passive back home about the state of our health system. Canadians and Quebecers demand more and, with healthcare ultimately being a political issue, they usually get it. Fair play to them.

 

Dublin/Ireland: Tea, being offered tea, and being served tea in an appropriate fashion

I drink a lot of tea because it’s delicious. When you go into someone’s house in Ireland, you’re offered tea. This is one of our strongest and most brilliant national traits, and long may it continue. When I enter a home here, I might be offered juice or water. I want tea! Restaurants and pubs are worse; they serve you a vessel – sometimes a glass – of non-boiling water with a tea bag on the side. Two things: the water should be boiling and it should hit bag, not the other way around. Otherwise you have to squeeze the bag to within an inch of its life (figure of speech, people) for five minutes in order to get a weak cup of tea. When I was in Quebec City, I asked for tea in a cafe and was served green tea. ‘Do you have any black tea?’ I asked in French. ‘Earl Grey? Breakfast? Anything?’ Nope.

Here comes the Sun King. Everybody’s laughing. Everybody’s happy.

April 21st, 2011

A CTV news segment this evening focused on ‘The Royal Wedding’. “How to get those extra style points on the perfect hat,” said the newsreader before the report. The previous item on the news was an exclusive interview with Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, two weeks before a federal election. The wedding segment was longer than the interview.

Wake up Canada. You have been doing this for over 150 years now. You are more important and more intelligent than this.

Let’s go back to mid-1800s. If you ask Canadians today how Ottawa became the national capital, they would likely say that Queen Victoria chose it. The fact that she did not seems to be irrelevant. There is a part of Canadians — an otherwise largely bright and creative bunch — that is happily wrapped up in these falsehoods. In reality, Ottawa had been chosen as capital as much as a decade before Confederation. Montreal, Quebec, Kingston and Toronto were either too Protestant, too Catholic, too geographically peripheral or too fractious, respectively. Ottawa, on the cusp of anglo- and francophone Canada, seemed a good compromise. Macdonald and Cartier had settled on it and, after some domestic political dancing in the early 1860s, advised Queen Victoria to pick Ottawa in what was essentially a rigged competition. For advised, read instructed.

But Canadian history prefers the benign, servile version. Artificial nations — and by that I mean nations that are not formed out of a long-standing resident ethnicity in the area but rather by people (or rather peoples) from all over the place — seem to need a creation myth in order to justify their own existence. Rome had Aeneas. Much of the population of Israel believes itself to be God’s chosen people. The Tea Party, among other groups, in the United States is trying to accentuate the creation myth that that country was founded as a Judeo-Christian refuge or utopia. Canada’s creation myth, with the emphasis on mythical here, is a Royal one. But it needn’t be. As is often the case, the truth — the story of a democracy defining itself upon a series of compromises — is far more interesting.

And of course the wedding of William and Kate Middleton is being pre-packaged as a “fairy tale”. They really do love each other, we are constantly being told. This is stated over and over in order to banish the monarchists’ great fear: another Royal wedding where the words ‘love’ and ‘respect’ for the bride seem to be an afterthought on the part of the Prince. Actually no, Charles didn’t seem to give any thought at all to those supposed prerequisities for marriage.

I hope that the upcoming wedding is indeed based on love and respect, but that would make it the exception rather than the rule. The Royal/Windsor family detests marriage in any loving sense of the word. Remember that it was the reigning monarch, Elizabeth II — a woman to whom even convinced republicans seem determined to fawn over — who forced her younger sister to give up the man she loved because he happened to be divorced, even though he was a war hero. “Mindful of the Church’s teaching that Christian marriage is indissoluble, and conscious of my duty to the Commonwealth, I have resolved to put these considerations before any others,” she stated. If you believe the following statement that she “reached this decision entirely alone,” you will believe anything. In fact, it’s a contradiction of the preceeding statement because, as she says, she reached the decision via religious edict.

And so Canada, beautiful Canada, you can do better than this. You can start by amending the story of the birth of your nation and its capital as a story of democracy, intelligence, leadership and compromise, or you can stick with servitude and the colonial mindset. Then you can arrange your newscasts in a way that gives more airtime to exclusive interviews with potential prime ministers and not to segments about hats. Aptly, the subject of Ignatieff’s interview was the potential of him and his party to compromise with others. It could have been fifteen decades ago and a discussion about potential capital cities. Alas, the story of the next couple of weeks will probably be the wedding, much like the myth-history of a Royal choice of capital.

For some reason, Canada is embarrassed by its democratic process. Canada can do better.

He was a working man, Great White North way, now he’s hit the big time in the USA

April 11th, 2011

“You’re it!”

“No, you’re it!”

I’m certain you remember playing tag or chasing back in the day, though these days I’m sure they have tag on Xbox. Adults can play too; you only have to see the accusations between Harper and Ignatieff that one and the other are “un-Canadian”. Conservative blogger ‘BC Blue’ gives the standard party line that Ignatieff ”lived the previous 34 years out of Canada before coming back just to be Prime Minister,” with the Liberal leader seen by many as some sort of Anglo-American rather than a pure Canadian. (And these slurs are often made by the same people who berate pure laine québécois for being ethnocentric and small-minded . . . pot, meet kettle).

A few days ago, Ignatieff himself accused the Harper/Conservative team of being “un-Canadian” following the removal of a woman from a Conservative rally in London, Ontario because she was found to have ‘liked’ the Liberal Party on Facebook.

All of this has triggered some thoughts and questions for me. Firstly, if I am an Irishman living in Canada, am I less Irish than if I spent these months and years in Ireland? This had never occured to me before. I don’t believe so, but perhaps in the eyes of others I have become less Irish. I find that kind of spooky. In case the insinuation here was not obvious enough, I don’t believe that Mr Ignatieff is any less or any more Canadian for having lived about half his life abroad.

Secondly, and slightly off topic, the whole issue has made me a realise a certain paradox going on south of the border. More conspicuous than charges of un-Canadianness (or maybe it’s because they say it louder), slurs of so-and-so being “un-American” are made so often it hurts, usually, but not always, spoken or written by those on the right against big government-progressive-liberal-commie-nazis, or whatever label they wish to throw up. The United States, land of the first amendment and Tom Paine. If someone says something “un-American”, this is by definition a contradiction in terms. In fact — and here’s your paradox — the only un-American thing that one can do is to accuse another of being un-American! It’s millions of Oedipuses all running amok with loudspeakers.

Moving back up North now, and Ignatieff would do well not to engage in charges of Harper, the Conservatives or anyone else being un-Canadian. It cheapens debate and brings him down to their level. It’s not un-Canadian, it’s just uncool.

Oh dirty Lizzie May, they have taken her away!

April 5th, 2011

May Day came a month or so early this year. Or maybe that should be May Week. After last week’s inter-party tweet wars between Harper and Ignatieff  simmered down with the release of the Liberal platform and a welcome return to focusing on policy, the question of Green Party leader Elizabeth May’s participation in the leaders’ debates remains open. As it stands, she will not be invited to the debates on April 12 and 14 after television networks told her to do one as her party has no representation in Parliament.

On Friday’s CBC news, Peter Mansbridge asked Chantal Hébert and Maclean’s columnist Andrew Coyne what they think of all this (the issue is raised 8 minutes into that clip). With a degree of trepidation in her voice, Hébert said she agreed that May should not be invited, mainly because of her performances in 2008 which “did not highlight the Green Party and turned it into more of a gang of four against one,” but also because the party has “become a machine to elect Elizabeth May” and the criteria for invitation must include Parliamentary representation. Coyne was more sympathetic, noting that the Greens consistently poll somewhere in the 7-10% range and May should be present on that basis.

Perhaps he did not mean to do it, but for this non-Canadian observer Coyne and Hébert had just summoned a rather giant elephant about the size of Canada itself into the room. The House of Commons of Canada has 308 members and the Green Party attracts about one vote out of every 12 cast in recent federal elections, yet the party does not have a single seat. Hébert is probably right in saying that representation in the legislature should come before participation on the debate and Coyne was probably justified in floating the commonly-held belief among voters that the Greens are not just another fringe party. They were both right, yet they disagreed.

And so the elephant sat there in silence, present but never spoken of. Any electoral system in which a party with 7-10% of votes cannot get a single seat in a 308-seat legislature must be seen as deeply flawed. It is only natural that with support spread a mile wide and an inch deep — the exact opposite of the Bloc, as I discussed before — the Green Party is focusing on a small number of ridings where it feels it can achieve success. With May herself going up against Defence Minister and former PC leader Peter MacKay in Nova Scotia, however, it looks like the Greens will draw another blank in terms of electoral success. They will then point to their popular vote of around one million and see it as a moral victory, but there is a limit to how many times moral victories can be seen as an adequete substitute for real success.

But what is “success” for the Greens? The long-term goal must be for the party to draw up or influence policy. In the medium-term, it must be to have a number of MPs in Ottawa, beginning with at least one in this election if possible, so as they can hold government to account and use its weight of seats to influence budgets. In the short-term, the goal must be to push for a change in the electoral system away from First-past-the-post. Without a change in how elections are done, the medium- and long-term goals are just dreams.