Opprobrium from Reprobates (Mavi Marmara II)

Of course, I was being either absurdly wishful or rhetorical in titling my last posting as "Speaks for Itself." The wide availability of the footage showing the Israeli naval soldiers descending onto the decks of and being immediately swarmed has had very modest impact on the "truths" which are promulgated. And none at all on the fulminating from Turkey itself. Its leadership has been putting on quite a show of righteous outrage, one does not know in earnest blindness of cynical popularity-seeking among an electorate emotionally akin, no doubt, to the Young Turks who initiated the attack and thereby paid the mortal consequences.

Indeed, it is fascinating to see just the sorts of nations who have stepped forward with high-minded public recriminations of Israel. Loudest, of course, is Turkey, which still soft-soaps its history of violence against ethnic minorities within its own sphere - whether those be the old genocidal atrocities against the Armenians or the more recent repression of the of Kurds, 40,000 of whom have are estimated to have been slaughtered by the Turks -- not to mention the millions exiled from their homes.

Or what about that stalwart of peace, Vladimir Putin who now stands shoulder to shoulder with the Turkish Prime Minister chastizing Israel. What makes the commandoes action aboard the Mavi Marmara especially egregious, in his view, is that the killings occurred in international waters. Far better, then, to butcher tens of thousands of Chechens in their own homeland whilst razing the capital of Grozny from the air - all this arguably so that this vicious little KGB agent could consolidate his power and perpetrate the steady process of de-democratization in post Yeltsin-Russia.

And China? - I hardly need remind anyone of the oceans of blood that tyrannical regime has spilled from its own citizens nor the 50 year blockade and murderous suppression of Tibet: no, more to the point, this is the same bunch who have obstinately refused to condemn North Korea for its unprovoked and deadly attack on the South Korean naval corvette, Cheonan. That incident was subjected to an international review - much as Turkey, Russia, China and numerous other bastions of international propriety now call for in the case of the Mavi Marmara. But China still waffles on laying blaming North Korea, while espousing "shock"at those awful Israelis. So, if I get this straight, China can readily pass judgment and condemn where there has been no investigation, but then say nothing when there has been as in its Korean backyard.


There is plenty more wrong with the picture. The worst error the Israelis committed was not boarding the vessel firearms pointed and at the ready. But then, unlike their poor Turkish "victims", the soldiers weren't planning for to attack anyone.

Speaks for Itself

Amidst the predictable international opprobrium piling onto Israel over the boarding, violence and subsequent death on the Mavi Marmara, have a look at how these idealistic humanitarians responded to the first commandos who came onto the deck.

Gandhi would have been so proud.

REDUX IV: Big Pigs and Little Wolves

I see that I have been being lax in pumping out the columns that hoards of you await impatiently each day. Yes, that means you too Fred. So once again I delved into the cobwebby archives, this time inspired by a lovely half hour spent in the class at Prince George's Ron Brent School. I was invited to read to the group of Grade 3 and 4 scholars and in sifting through the leftovers from my daughters' younger days, came across an old fav' - The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig. Years ago when Genoa hosted a G-8 summit, I had been moved to think of this inversion of the more familiar nursery tale not because of the role reversal but because of the sanguine moral of the retold version. Making these points again now in the immediate aftermath of the badly miscalculated Red Shirt siege in Bangkok and with another of these economic parlays soon to come to the bucolic Muskokas, I guess that's enough reason to dust this entry off and hope that in its own small way, it can help keep a humane perspective as the inevitable protests unfold with the ever-present threat of violence.

*******

Death in Genoa, or the Pig/Wolf Alternative
(from the Coast Mountain News, circa July 01

Nothing, you think, is as unarguable as death. But differences in the pictures Canadian newspapers chose to run of the young G-8 protester dead on the Genoan pavement say otherwise. One photo showed diminutive Carlo Giuliani stone dead and bloody - and you can’t help but think: My God the Fascist bastards have finally killed somebody in their paranoid defense of globalization! But other photos seem to depict him of one of several aggressive hooligans about to toss a fire hydrant into a police jeep. He got what was coming, right? Or dead wrong?

Would you have shot someone waving this unusual “weapon” as you sat cramped up in a car? Or on the other side, if a carabineri aimed his rifle at your head might you have just tried to shield yourself with whatever was at hand? Misunderstandings abound in the deadly heat of such moments but only foretell far broader and deeper clashes of world-view.

That even the ultimately unambiguous fact of death can so divide and confuse us, symbolizes the widening gap between those who see the various annual gatherings of world leaders and bankers as a ushering in a new era of world prosperity and those who think “globalization” is at the roots of most that is wrong in our world. As one watches the path from the now almost innocent days of UBC bearspray to bloodshed in Seattle and thence to death in Genoa, the questions must be asked, where next? What happens in beautiful Kananaskis when Jean “Let them eat pepper”, “Grab them by the jugular” Chretien, hosts his compatriots at another meeting of the G (for Gluttonous?) 8? Already the limited access roads to this foothills paradise are being touted as a principal reason for this venue.

In seeking a way out of this inevitable escalation of violent means by both sides, political leaders and anti-globalist NGOs could do worse than study comparatively the well-known tale of the three little pigs and the big bad wolf, and Eugene Trivivas far less familiar inversion, “The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig”.

No question that the organizers of these incessant gatherings of lofty politicians, bankers and bureaucrats, have absorbed well the lesson from the original “Three Little Pigs” -- that only way to survive a wolf at the door, is to surround yourself with impenetrable fortifications. “Build it (strong) and they won’t come”, the wisdom seems to go.

You’d think that fifty years of the nuclear arms race might have taught the world that when you surround yourself with increasingly vicious armed guards, the other side will adjust its tactics to a higher and more dangerous level. Any reasonably intelligent national leader, social psychologist or child who has had time on life’s playground can tell you that “aggressive defense” begets a fearfully symmetrical response of escalation. It is a theoretically endless race but in reality has a very untheoretical and foreseeable ending – someone gets killed. And that is what happened on the road from Seattle’s 1999 World Trade Organization riots to young Giuliani on that street in Genoa. If you think you can end it all by lighting the fire and waiting for a wolf stupid enough to go down the chimney, you really do believe in fairy tales!

Here is where the alternative re-telling about the little wolves and the big bad pig may have teaching value for a lesson that Canada better learn before next year at Kananaskis. In this redone version, like the little pigs, the little wolves leave home warned by Mama Wolf to watch out for a roving sadistic swine whose purpose (unlike the Big Bad Wolf) is not to consume but simply to terrorize the cubs for the pure joy of doing harm. (Probably exactly what our esteemed political leaders believe to be the motivation of many anti-globalists)

The Little Wolves start where the three little pigs ended – their first abode is brick. When the Big Bad Pig arrives he goes through the ritual but futile huffing and puffing and gets out a sledgehammer which is predictably more effective. Escaping narrowly, the wolves go for a concrete home the second time around. Again the giant hog huffs and puffs before availing himself of a pneumatic drill and again sends the cubs scurrying for new shelter. House three is nothing short of a fortress one that would impress even the G8. There’s barbed wire, iron bars, armoured metal plates, steel chains and 67 padlocks, not to mention a video surveillance system. Mr. Big Pig breaks through the initial lines of defense but seems stumped for a few minutes. Alas he returns with dynamite.

After their apparently impregnable house is blown sky high, the little wolves do something that M. Chretien would not probably understand. They build a beautiful but utterly flimsy house of flowers. When the Big Bad Pig makes his inevitable appearance and does his huffing and puffing, he is overwhelmed by the wondrous fragrances. Instantly he is transformed into “the Good Big Pig”, and dances a tarantella to the little wolves’ amazement. They all end up playing “piggy-in-the-middle” and living together happily ever after.

Something to think about. Now you may say that the Grouse has spent one too many hours out in the eastern sun (yes I am on P.E.I.) to imagine for even a moment that there is a lesson from this tall tale applicable to the real world of violent protest and more violent defense. Still, bear with me, given the apparent lack of workable alternatives. I really believe a way must be found for these international high level gatherings to open the doors and bring in those who scream from the outside and who are so profoundly troubled by globalization. The press is telling us that the leaders are listening: fine, let the youthful idealists in to smell the flowers and not only affect but be seen to affect, decisions made, for the most part, by old men who, unlike those protesters, will not have to live all that long in the world they are bent on redesigning.

Turpel-Lafond For Premier!

Kash Heed, BC's one-time new wunderkind top cop, has just set the new and unlikely to ever be broken record for the shortest comeback in political history. Having resigned with some dignity a fortnight ago for relatively petty fund-raising irregularities in his riding, he surges back for less than 24 hours only to be toppled by a somewhat more startling revelation: Terrence Robertson, the crown prosecutor assigned to check out the first infractions and who cleared Heed of wrongdoing, turns out to have been from a law firm that had donated to the same campaign that was under Robertson's investigation. CBC calls this "the latest twist in a complicated political story," but I think it's not very complicated at all, much less so than my struggling teenager's Grade 10 math homework. It ain't corruption but, rather, blundering stupidity and that charge sticks right up into the Premier's office, if not orifice.

In turn, this is really so minuscule a failing compared to so much of what Gordon Campbell and his gang's hopefully sunset years (better if it's months) have entailed. Gord began his reign doing his Edward Scissorhands routine and has continued to work hard, when not letting his hair down in Hawaii, to deconstruct the provincial educational and medical systems. He threw all sorts of money at trying to pry open somewhat apocryphal moratoria on offshore oil and gas and no doubt, had he been successful, would have demanded a standard of environmental precaution at least as lax as the Gulf Coast of the USA to where his government dispatched numerous field trips so that we could learn from their impeccable engineering! In a Throne Speech shortly after the IOC's decision to let Lotusland host the Winter Olympics, the Campbell Government was even drivelling about lighting the torch with fuel pumped up from beneath the Queen Charlotte Basin! This monumental ignorance of what offshore exploration and development entails must have made even the most enthusiastic proponents wince.

Since then, offshore oil and gas for BC has crawled back into its cave, but Campbell and company continue to find other ways to devastate the social and physical environment. Most recently, having announced the highly improbable re-entry of the Site C dam on the Peace, they introduced legislation to try to stifle the work of one of BC's and Canada's most passionate public servants, Mary-Ellen Turpel-Lafond, the province's Representative for Children and Youth. This was a position created as a result of the 2005-6 Hughes review of British Columbia’s child protection system, following in the literal wake of countless cases where children purportedly under BC's care, were harmed, often mortally.

Turpel-Lafond was such a good choice that it's hard to believe the Campbell government made it. Hailing from the remote indigenous community of Norway House in northern Manitoba, she has been twice cited in Time Magazine as a young leader to watch, nationally and globally. She has a law doctorate from Harvard and a master's from Cambridge. She and the great national Aboriginal leader Ovide Mercredi co-authored a superb book about First Nations struggles, In the Rapids. One could go on but this is enough to say that when, inevitably, Campbell et al. reverted to their nature and blindsided Ms. Turpel-Lafond with legislation restricting her access to information to do her job, she didn't back down. As it stands, she will take the Office of the Premier and the Ministry of Children and Family Development to court over the new legislation. Definitely the wrong person to screw around with, Gord-O!

As this tragicomedy unfolds, the larger picture issue of provincial leadership hoves into view for me. I think of how Carol James, the NDP leader, has not ignited much enthusiasm as a potential alternative and also of how there have been increasing public musings on the need for a third party (again!) in BC - like we didn't get into enough of a mess as a result of Campbell's coup of the fallible but worthy Gordon Wilson's single-handed resurrection of the Liberal Party.

But I don't care who drafts her - a new party, the NDP or the faltering Canucks - we are indeed fortunate to have the likes of Turpel-Lafond at the helm of so crucial a portfolio as she now holds, and I want to be first to say that there is an even bigger ship of state, badly in need of her trusted, capable and knowing hands. Whether as the leader of a new party or - if the NDP has any smarts - of the current opposition, let's start the call now: Mary-Ellen for Premier!

Heirs to the Original Tea Party - Unfitting and Unfit

Back when Bill Clinton booted George Bush sr., out of the White House, the Republicans and their neo-Con henchman launched a concerted effort from day one of the new presidency to do everything possible to get rid of him. Bill helped matters along some years later with the Lewinsky nuttiness, but there had been no doubt from the start that a coup d'etat was being carefully orchestrated. For it is bad enough to have a Democrat in power but absolutely devastating for the American right for the guy to be a better speaker and populist than any of their own good old cracker boys.

Flash forward past the Clinton presidency and the eight year moronic rule of George jr. and history repeats itself with another high camera appeal Democrat at 1600 Pennsylvania. To make matters worse for the bigots, the guy is - omigod - Black. And so the wheels of the great right wing machines once again are grinding and spinning, searching for any way possible to make sure that Obama's tenure is short and unsweet. Although 16 months into this well-planned hysteria, Obama's stimulus package and health care initiatives are cited as the reason why a "new revolution" is needed, in fact the right-wing machinery started up its hate campaign even before the man was taking his presidential vows. On January 19th, the day before the inauguration, a conservative chat-group's moderator posted a call for a "commemorative tea party" as her way of saluting the incipient Obama years. Don't let the guy even warm his new Oval Office chair before trying to stir up evocative imagery of insurrection.

And so it has continued from the earliest stages of Obama inheriting Bush's mess. Well aware that the new Administration might be in a weak and stupefied state on realizing the horrendous financial bequest of the predecessor, the Republicans and their fundamentalist allies struck fast.

By February 10, less than a month into Obama's term, the rallies had started and in March, CBS News would rhetorically headline, "A Growing "Tea Party" Movement?"
Syndicated Fox commentator, Dave Ramsey raved on about the need for a new Tea Party on February 11, 2009. Feeding off the fear and loathing that stemmed from nationwide foreclosures and ban failures, a battery of nasty media-savvy proselytizers strove to create - with at least partial success - the appearance of spontaneous popular uprising. Soon there would even be martyrs to the cause such as lifelong anti-tax nutbar Joe Stack who killed and injured others on his suicide airplane run into the office building housing the Internal Revenue Service in Austin, Texas. Incredibly an elected US congressman from Iowa would then opine empathy for Stack's attack, stating, "if the U.S. had abolished the I.R.S back when I first advocated it, he (Stack) wouldn’t have a target for his airplane.” This while a family was still grieving the death of a father and grandfather whose crime was just having worked for the IRS.

Aside from the gargantuan unpleasantness of these people and their ideas what is most offensive to me as a guy who once lived for several years in Boston and enjoyed boning up on its impressive history, is the utter opposite-ness of what the original Tea party and its participants were all about versus these inarticulate little fascists who have pirated the name for their scurrilous mission. The Boston Tea Party in December 1773 was precipitated by legislation imposing stiff new taxes on tea. The leaders of this insurrection were not, however, principally griping about costs added to their favourite beverage. They were upset at having to continually live with decisions imposed by legislators over whom they had no control. Their key slogan was "no taxation without representation." Boycotts were organized and when ships carrying the now politically-unpalatable tea refused to head back to England, protesters dressed as Mohawks, boarded the vessels and dumped the goods into the harbour. This in turn set off a vigourous intercontinental debate, with leaders in the Thirteen Colonies largely siding with the "party" while outrage and a call for strict and military measures stormed in Britain. The American Revolution followed less than 3 years thereafter.

Now keep it firmly in your mind: the original Tea Party was about asserting the rights of Americans to elect those representatives for making critical public decisions. Flash forward to the demagogues and their redneck followers who are today's "tea parties," and you can see what a travesty and insult taking that name is. This mainly lily-white network of cloned mobs, at its roots, hates the guy and the congressional majority party that fellow Americans democratically elected. In particular, they loath the young president who received 53% of the popular vote in 2008 and perhaps even more so, Nancy Pelosi, who hails from that foreign city on the US west coast polluted with gays, abortionists and that sort. Pelosi it may be necessary to recall was elected repeatedly to the House of Representatives in legitimate congressional elections by legitimate electors. In 2006, she was unanimously endorsed as the House leader by the party which had captured the majority of seats in - I shall be repetitive - a legitimate election open to a free electorate.

These pathetic self-appointed heirs to that noble first Tea Party, vigourously wish to undermine the democracy which those Bostonians demanded 236 years ago. The government and system that arose from 18th century courage is precisely what they want to pull down and replace with the worst of the losing leaders, the ones the majority of Americans so wisely rejected in 2008. This time around unlike in 2000, the republican candidate did not have the Florida ballot boxes overseen by his brother or a Supreme court packed with his dad's and Reagan's cronies to seize power from the Democrat who won. So the "Tea Party-ers" figure they can accomplish a similar illegitimate wresting of power from the electors by proudly and loudly making braying asses of themselves at every opportunity.

So Screw the Junos...in Memory of Stan

Every year Canadians get themselves all worked up about what we call the Junos. It's a nice closed little honouring of Canadian musicians. Mind you, our artists are eligible for the biggy of all music awards south of the border, the Grammys. But here they get to play all by themselves in the awards sandbox without fear of sand kicked in the face by innumerable talented Yanks.

Harmless enough, I guess, but much less so is the continuing stubborn failure of the parent body which runs the Junos, CARAS, the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences to do the right ting when it comes to the long late Stan Rogers. Stan, in case you are very young or very isolated was a literally giant folk singer who grew up in Ontario but with the soul of emigre Maritimer. He loomed irreplaceably into Canadian lives and then legend in the mid 1970s with the stunning array of ballads he mainly composed but which sounded more like genuine songs from Nova Scotia's past then many of the real things. From the boisterous if ultimately tragic acapella shanty "Barrett's Privateers" to the oft-covered love song, "Forty-Five Years", to the celebration of outport life in the title track and the several laments for what Atlantic Canada was losing even before the cod collapse (which one of the songs, "Make and Break Harbour" anticipates), the album alone would have qualified Stan for honours far higher than any posthumous parochial Juno.

And Stan was far from done having limned the shades and contours of his ancestors' lost Nova Scotia home. Later, he would add more of his own sea classics like the Mary Ellen Carter, plus insights into the hard life of the rural Canada whether that be of a farmer struggling against unpredictable prairie weather (Field Behind the Plow), a rancher wife musing on growing old ("Lies"), or a ex-rodeo rider turned cattleman driven to violence by poachers ("Night Guard"). Perhaps most famously, he took the measure of the entire country driving across Canada with the historically resonant, "Northwest Passage" which the online Canadian Encyclopedia notes as often being hailed as Canada's unofficial national anthem - certainly it's a lot more melodic and makes a great deal more sense than shallowly repeating that we stand on guard when actually we don't. In 2005 in CBC's Jian Ghomeshi's widely publicized compilation of Canadians'picks for country's all-time top fifty songs, Northwest Passage ran a close fourth, miles - excuse me, kilometres - ahead of many pieces by individual and group musicians now nicely ensconced in CARAS's dubious hall of fame.

Stan, again as most of you will know, perished in 1983 at the age of 34 in a plane fire coming back from a gig in Texas. American folkie John Gorka penned "That's How Legends are Made" in tribute:

There was a man
Who came from north of here
He could raise his voice
And he could raise a beer
And when he left
The music stayed
And that's how legends are made.

Alas, all this legendary and nationally-beloved creativity has never been enough the collective unintelligence of CARAS. One can excuse a bit of oversight initially, of course, but there has been no shortage, indeed a deluge of outraged calls from all quarters to do the right thing and belatedly install Stan in the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. It should have happened no later than the year after his death. But now, it seems, CARAS has if anything got obstinate. These petty little faceless pipsqueaks who can hide behind some opaque decision-making process, refuse year after year, ignoring a groundswell of advocacy from the arts community as well as everyday people who, unlike CARAS can see the obvious.

You can still find an online petition long mounted by the excellent literary magazine, Geist, and it's worth a go to add your voice. But I'd also suggest that we need a boycott - I think it's too late this year - and perhaps some closer scrutiny of whether there is taxpayer money behind the Hall of Fame, CARAS and the Junos. It's way past time that we should be tolerating the foolish and it seems willful disregard for an icon who was in every way so much bigger than CARAS and its little gonad-less zombie trophies.

Hillary, Meet the Canadian Chicken Littles

NOTE: ON APRIL 16TH MY LETTER WHOSE NON-PUBLICATION IN PART SPARKED THIS POST LAST WEEK, SPRANG TO LIFE ON THE OP-ED PAGE OF THE CITIZEN, FOR WHICH THANKS. THIS HAPPENED AFTER I EMAILED THE URL FOR THIS BLOG TO THE NEWSPAPER - A RESPONSE CAME THAT THEY HAD NOT SEEN THE ORIGINAL, AN ODD MISPLACEMENT SINCE I MAINTAIN QUITE AN ACTIVE CORRESPONDENCE. BUT THERE IS A FIRST FOR EVERYTHING AS CAPT. EDWARD SMITH MUSED TO HIMSELF FROM THE BRIDGE OF THE TITANIC, LO THESE 98 YEARS AGO! STILL, THOUGH ALL IS FORGIVEN, I'LL LET MY ORIGINAL FIT OF PIQUE STAND, FOR IN IT THE AVID READER MAY TAKE SOME AMUSEMENTS...

I have been waiting patiently all week for the local journal of record, the Prince George Citizen to carry my spirited rebuttal to an editorial in which they roundly castigated Hillary Clinton for having dared to answer honestly a question posed by CBC's George Stroumboulopoulos. Alas, the good editors have not seen fit to share with other readers the fruits of my insights on the matter. Thus must I resort, as is my wont, to grousing.

A couple of contextual things minor and not. On the minor side, those of you who are disadvantaged by not waking up to this crisp little paragon of journalistic endeavour, the Citizen, should know that one of the most common applications of the readers' privilege of getting their letter published, is this kind of thing (made-up but close to the usual form and literary merit):

I really want to thank whoever stole the little Black Sambo lawn ornaments from my house on Bumtickle Street. My late mother gave Shirley and me them for our silver wedding anniversary. So I hope you enjoy them whoever you are.

This kind of razory riposte comes forth from the readership almost as frequently as creationist and homophobic screed.

The other more important background in case you missed it - and my American fans who have bigger things to occupy them may well have - is that when Hillary replied ever so tactfully to direct questions about the US disposition to Canada's announced 2011 departure from the Afghan NATO mission, there followed loud caterwauling across this fair Nation's op-ed media. The Winnipeg Free Press dubbed her Hurricane Hillary, noting her bluntness on Afghanistan as well as Canada's duplicitous stance on abortion and occluded approach to international diplomacy regarding the Arctic.

The Globe and Mail's Lawrence Martin, apparently never having read the source transcripts on Strombo's question and Hillary's answer, called for Clinton to get a hearing aid; hadn't Canada been clear enough on its impending pull out for some time, he demanded? Of course, Hillary's actual answer showed nothing but crystal clear awareness of the Canadian position and probably more respect than this arbitrarily dated pull-out policy deserved. Perhaps -- a wag might say -- it was Mr. Martin's communicative organs that need upgrading?


Not to be out-shouted by his journalistic betters, the tiny imperfect local Prince George paper lashed out at Mrs. Clinton with such gems of reasoning as this: "...one hopes Clinton didn't see the death of Cpl. Fitzpatrick, the 141st Canadian soldier to die in Afghanistan - and the resurgence of interest in the war it has generated across the country - as a pretext to contradict the Tories." Fitzpatrick was the first Prince George-born Canadian soldier to die in Afghanistan and his memorial services the day before the Citizen's editorial naturally riveted local attention. But one has to have some pretty ludicrous visions of grandeur to imagine that as Hillary chose her words in response to Strombo's question, foremost in her mind was the goings on in odoriferous little Prince George, BC, 3000 miles away.

But to repeat, despite my best efforts to set the Citizen straight on this, they seemingly have deep-sixed my anti-flatulent elixir for editorial bloat. Thus here in its bullshit-cutting entirety, the not-to-be-seen letter:

Dear Editor,

Canadians have a very bipolar disposition when it comes to Americans stating their views about us or about matters pertaining to us. We maintain apocryphal notions of how little the USA cares and knows about us but then when a high-ranking official like Hillary Clinton ever so tactfully indicates that our presence as a continuing ally in Afghanistan would be welcome, there pours out the kind of bombast and hyper-defensiveness seen in both the editorial and editorial cartoon in today’s Citizen (Saturday, April 3).

It is hard to grasp how what Mrs. Clinton actually did say could lead to such bloviating. In the wide-ranging interview that has caused such offense CBC’s George Stroumboulopoulos naturally got around to Afghanistan and Hillary’s first response only praised Canada as a great ally whose forces “have been superb.” After further kibitzing about Americans and Canadians playing hockey in Kandahar, the interviewer asked straight out, how Hillary felt about Canada’s scheduled pull-out. Given that the American policy which Obama (with Hillary) developed so painstakingly for months is well-known, what else could she say but the extraordinarily temperate statement about Americans regretting the Canadians’ leaving. Her remarks, as Citizen’s editor admits have not worried knowledgeable foreign policy experts a whit.

But still came the howls and teeth-gnashing of Canadian editorialists, displaying the behaviour more of a thin-skinned adolescent who can’t take the mildest criticism than of a supposedly mature neighbour. To go on to imply that Hillary could have even further tempered her remarks in light of Cpl. Fitzpatrick’s death is to push this self-centered hot air to the furthest outpost of overstatement.

Still, I am glad that the Citizen has now raised the connection between that tragic loss and Canada’s position on military withdrawal. For it brings forth the question we should be asking: if Afghanistan was worth dying for in 2010, what will have magically changed that makes such sacrifice utterly unthinkable beyond 2011? I never thought the mission had prospects for success midst the endless turmoil of that sad country, but I fail to see that anything but the calendar will change next year, certainly not whatever underlying rationale took young Fitzpatrick away from here and, then, ended his promising young life. Thank you, Hillary for helping us get real in pondering such literally grave matters.

Lovingly,
Norm

Thoughts on the Death of a Prince George Soldier

Today they bury Corporal Darren James Fitzpatrick here in his home town, Prince George, BC, otherwise known as BC's Northern Capital, or, by a select fewer, the home territory of the Grouse's Perch. The young man's death has surfaced all the kudos and patriotism one might expect when locals are involved. Thus phlegmatic local journalist and blogger, Ben Meisner, for example, is today defiantly asserting pretty well nothing new in tribute to the fallen youth,as he concludes his opinion article, as usual, "I’m Meisner and that’s one man’s opinion." Shouldn't be very hard to defend an airy opinion that amounts to nothing more than admonishing us to respect the dead. Meisner, like, I would guess, most Prince Georgians and all too many Canadians, is willing (I paraphrase Meisner) to "leave it to people with a better understanding" as to whether the sacrifice is worth it.

Coincidentally, the national news gab in Canada on this funereal Tuesday, whirls around some rather mild remarks made by US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, which unsurprisingly reiterated that the Americans would like Canada to remain beyond the highly artificial pull-out deadline of 2011. Her words as exactly as reported by CBC: "But I'm not going to sit here and tell you we're happy about it because … that wouldn't be telling you the truth. We'd love to have Canada stay in this fight with us. But again, you know, you've got your own considerations and we respect that."

More pretty harmless stuff but, like they say, when your sleeping with an elephant even a mild fart can get your attention.

The question I have as we bury Darren today is why, if it is worth battling the Taliban and Al-Qaeda baddies this year, worth seeing young Canadians whose lives have hardly begun lowered into graves, is there something that magically changes and makes it no longer worthwhile in 2011.

No, Meisner, such illogical decision making is not in the hands of anyone who "knows better" than you or I. The mission in Afghanistan is either worthwhile now (and will remain so in 2011) or not. Under the leadership of a man whose brains are so scrambled that one year he drips apologetic verbiage to Native people for the historic harm they've suffered and the next, claims Canada has no history of colonialism, we had better start thinking this one out ourselves and making it clear to the Pols just how much we are willing to sacrifice or not, and why. Then perhaps, all those Darren Fitzpatricks will be at rest.

Resistance a la Canadienne

I really must be brief because I'm on a bit of writing roll in some studies I'm doing about parallels between Canada's continuing colonization of indigenous peoples and the life of one Gitskan ex-offender. That study zeroes in on the idea of resistance and how, within the well-laid strictures of Canadian society, individuals can find the elbow room to resist.

Along comes this preposterous brouhaha about the remarks Bloc Quebecois leader, Gilles Duceppe, made to the separatist faithful. The now oft-translated text was exactly this:

"For now, we're members of a resistance movement. But members of today's resistance movement are tomorrow's victors. Long live a sovereign Quebec!"

It's not that complicated a statement and utterly consistent both with the lengthy history of separatiste conviction and, more broadly, historic and worldwide independence movements. Fact is, the land that is now Quebec was invaded and conquered by a different cultural-linguistic nationality 250 years ago. Organized opposition to the outcome of this conquest is what resistance means.

However, the combination of Canada's mediocre journalistic mainstream -- who haven't had a figure skater with a dead mother to blather about for a few weeks -- and the no less mediocre morass of federal politicians in government and opposition who need to distract us from their own incapacities -- these social groups have combined to extrapolate wildly from Duceppe's quite legitimate statement of aspirations.

As if the word "resistance" have never had any other connotation, the first step in their dumb and transparent elision was to hold forth that Duceppe was comparing himself to the famed French resistance of World War II. Notwithstanding that Duceppe has validly pointed out the broader usage of the term "resistance" in social change movements and, specifically, his inspiration from writings of Pierre Vadeboncoeur, the late Quebec union activist, bleating MPs continued their duplicity inferring that if Duceppe saw himself as a French resistor, he was saying the Canadian Government were like the Nazis.

Blowhards like Foreign Affairs Lawrence Cannon and the vastly disappointing Liberal leader, Michael Ignatieff, seized upon this nonsense no doubt to divert us from their own obvious shortcomings. Internal email memos puffed up with righteous indignation with statements such as “It seems that Gilles Duceppe has forgotten that Canadians, including Quebeckers, bravely fought Nazism during World War II.” Good grief!

What this is all symptomatic of is the utter shallowness of what federalist populations understand about Quebec sovereigntist agenda and, really, about sources of pride in this thing called Canada. It is as if, no longer having torch-toting Olympic propaganda to cheer about, the masses need an even more ridiculous focus for waning pseudo-nationalism. Let's create an enemy that we can all be offended by as a distraction from a government, indeed a parliament that's nothing to be proud of.

Brings to my mind another far-fetched (maybe) analogy such as when Hitler's thugs burned down to the Reichstag and then blamed it on Jews and Communists. That's how false claims can bolster up an otherwise morally bankrupt regime. As I now return to my essay about internal colonialism, especially recalling Mr. Harper's erasure of Canada's shameful history of colonial suppression of Natives, I'm thinking that perhaps the analogy Duceppe never intended about Nazis and the Canadian government, fits not all that badly.

REDUX III - Where have All the Ooli-gone?

Alas this reduxed article remains as timely now as many springs ago when it was written. The Bella Coola River where once this many-named oiliest of smelt abounded in early spring, is unlikely to see much more than stragglers for the 12th straight year. What is even more irksome, is that after such a long time with the Nuxalk (Bella Coola) Natives and others pressing for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to do something about this ecological disaster, the grapevine just yesterday brought forth news that the Fraser River eulachon (with that geographic specificity) is being considered under Canada's Species at Risk procedures. This perpetuates DFO's ignoring and ignorance of the far greater and more recent cultural significance of the eulachon in remoter northern areas than in the churning grey sewage pit known as the Fraser River estuary! This is an indigenous treasure and with all due respect, the Fraser First Nations have not exactly made diminished eulachon the high priority as have their more northern coastal brothers and sisters.

But as with the Olympic transfusions of public dollars from poorer regions to the richest, apparently, it is still the Lower mainland that will always get the goods.

So without further ado... an old but still relevant Grouse from the past(April, 2002):

*****

Where have all the ooli-gone?

[Warning: A not very funny Grouse column lies ahead -- and I heard you wags saying "so what's new?"]

For the fourth consecutive year that wee fish of legendary greasiness, Thaleichthys pacificus has failed to return in any worthwhile numbers to the Bella Coola River. Indeed, field surveys turned up less than a dozen as well as a puzzling small flux of eggs drifting seaward.

Lest I infringe upon the customary terrain of my journalistic neighbour Mr. Trischler,(a fisheries biologist who also had a column in the Coast Mountain News at the time of writing) I shall not linger long on the bio-ecology behind this. Which is easy because the level of scientific knowledge about oolichan is nothing less than an embarrassment for a country with Canada's reputation in fisheries biology. Our aquatic scientists have done ten times more research on sticklebacks! And on "really valuable" species -- i.e. ones whose primary significance is "making real money" -- well they seem to get at least one trained ichthyologist per spawner!

Au contraire for the fish of many spellings (ooligan, ullachun, eulachon, olachen, hoolican. etc). Venerated as it may be by First Nations it has been subject to a perilous neglect, scientifically and managerially, whose consequences are now dreadfully manifest. Through the years of this very real crisis, and in the absence of any long or deep baseline information, little more could be done than to wring hands and mutter about the effects of El Nino.

Alas one thing we do know is that the vast majority of these smelt cousins live only three years. It takes neither a biologist nor mathematician to deduce that if it's been four since they graced the Bella Coola in any significant numbers, they are as Monty Python, said of the infamous dead parrot, "history, kaput, finis, ceased to be, gone to meet their maker, bereft of life, and joined to the choir invisible." An ex-oolichan run.

And the response beyond Bella Coola - other than one or two scientists running about here and there looking for traces and some belated "Species at Risk" funding, Canadian society has been a shrug or less. Leaving aside the bio-disaster of all this, I want to speak of the cultural tragedy but that is not mine to tell. It is the Nuxalk's. They are the ones who could explain, if asked, what it means to have your larder and medicine chest stripped of this live-giver, to no longer be able to show your kid how to make grease or trade the stuff for goods and good will with neighbouring oolichan-less peoples. And to see irrevocably shattered this primeval bond between generations alive and departed.

I can only recount two little stories to convey in miniature what has been lost. Both are from the one and only oolichan-spring I've lived through since coming to Bella Coola nigh five years back. We'd moved into Ivan Tallio's home on the river in October 1997 and were delighted to realize how close at hand were the shacks and stinkboxes the Nuxalk used to make oolichan grease. Years before I had worked with a Da’naxda’xw hereditary chief whose territory was at the mouth of the Kleena Kleene on Knight's Inlet. I had been invited but not had the two weeks to spare for the journey to his remote camp of cultural immersion in someone else's rites of spring.

Now, here in Bella Coola, I had literally a front row seat in my La-Z-Boy as thorough my picture window I could see the natural and human rhythm of the oolichan's return. Come the last full moon in March the aerial reveries of gulls and eagles foretold the wondrous event. Soon, River Road was humming. In the thick of it all was a man who I'd seen do little else all winter but wander about picking up recyclable cans, now miraculously transformed into a master of an ancient ceremony.

When he and I had casually chatted only weeks before, I'd taken him to be no taller than I. But now he swaggered about like the architect of a rising skyscraper, five-six and going on seven feet. Here was someone no longer in need of $1,500 healing trips to "Choices" or an HRDC-sponsored Life-skills course to know his place in life's big picture.

And where is he now that there is no run of oolichan? I see him some early mornings despondently checking out the trashcans near empty picnic benches from which no one even bothers to watch the river for the old miracle.

And also from that spring, I recall a knock at the door and Howard Walkus inviting me over to scoop whatever I needed of still live oolichans from a big cold washtub in his backyard. And his grandsons, Lorne and Jordan knocking on my door night after night and gifting me with their own small boys' catch of life-bringers until my then pregnant wife said "please no more fried oolichans this week!"

But these are a white man's bitsy tales from a much larger tragic story that has befallen our Nuxalk neighbours. I have worked in the past two years with the Nuxalk Fisheries Program as they raise research funds and sample of the hand numbing waters of the Bella Coola. But it is lonely out there on the river with no saviour fish. Will they ever return?

The biology is not encouraging and so it is also on a cultural or rather cross-cultural note I end. In Newfoundland when the cod collapsed, provincial and federal governments knew and cared that the very survival of important rural life-ways was in jeopardy. Our society as a whole dug deep in its pockets and transfused several billions of dollars to merely sustain outports. Here in Bella Coola, it is not so clear that money could ever mitigate the manifold losses to the Nuxalk community. But a start must be made somehow.

In the aftermath of those wonderful Bella Coola Town Halls last month where the predominantly non-Nuxalk assembly sang the peace-cry, "Two Cultures, One Community" it is time for something tangible as well as symbolic. Why not a jointly composed "Oolichan Manifesto" that begins with conveying the shared grief and outrage of this socio-economic cultural and ecological catastrophe in a common voice heard all the way to Ottawa?

REDUX 2: The End of Trivia (9/11 one year later)

This column appeared in the Coast mountain News at approximately the first anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon

* * * *

Another perfect late summer back to school morning in Bella Coola. The river was down from its last rain driven surge and the only sound outside was the distant drone of Wayne Sissons’ Cessna off for some secret cove among the countless such in this seeming untroubled world of the Central Coast. As is I my wont I was limbering my dialing fingers for another go at CBC Daybreak’s trivia contest, a ritual at precisely 6:53 A.M. each day. Although it was only Tuesday, and I had four days left to qualify, I’d be gone all the rest of the week to Port Hardy.

And then as every conscious human being now knows that September 11th morning lurched sickeningly sideways. Co-host Mark Harvey, voice quavering with emotion and disbelief said planes had crashed into the World Trade Centre and there’d be no more trivia that day.

We rushed to the TV and caught first glimpse of images that quickly became emblematic of that day of horror for many weeks and months, probably forever. Within the hour, I learned that like everyone else in North America, I would not be flying that day nor for some time to come. But for the most part locals here were not very immediately affected by the terrorist attacks. Bella Coola Air got special dispensation to fly some stranded travelers in from the wilderness and then we went about things much as before. Of course, our airwaves and newspapers were inundated, first with fast-breaking news and then with specials ranging from benefit concerts to vitriolic debates about “root causes” to a peculiar onslaught of special programming dedicated to sating our sudden appetite for things Islamic.

As time passed and locals eventually made whatever voyages afar had been in their pre-9/11 plans, they probably noticed the stepped-up security – some poor fellow at Dayton International even had to closely inspect my sweaty sneakers - and then by the added costs which Her Majesty graciously passed on to the traveling public in most (though not yet our) airports.

Now a year has passed and like throngs of journalists and pseudo-journalists worldwide, I am drawn like a moth to flame to muse on what it all has meant, what, if anything, has changed. And I must leave to my colleague pundits in lesser outlets like the Globe and Mail or CTV NewsNet, who have more space, time and are paid better, to fill in the big picture of impacts of September 11th on lives, individual, community, national and global.

Here, so far out of the way, the question of how life changed, is if anything, more problematic. Internationally the effects are blatant and innumerable: We know the footprints of those dire events can be tracked forward to numberless further heartbreaks, like four dead Canadians on an Afghan steppe; the tilting and pitching of stock markets around the world; the inspiring collapse of the Taliban, the less inspiring fact that a total nincompoop has achieved one of the highest approval ratings in the history of the American presidency.

Yes, the world turned upside down. But here? The economy slides downward but on an incline that was quite evident well before Bin Laden dispatched his disciples on their mission of terror. Nighttime TV has changed a bit with some too-close-for-comfort action shows being canned or postponed and the irrepressible Politically Incorrect Host, Bill Moyer, indeed being repressed for daring to criticize U.S. military wisdom, such as it is. Around the world, young men of swarthy complexion and unrecognized accent find air travel uncomfortable at the very least.

But again, these are distant things. The Bella Coola River rushes onward as do the comings and goings of our seasons and people – and, how we too have lost so many dear folks since last year albeit as a steady current of emigration and fatality rather than in one cataclysmic moment! Which brings me in my crabby side-wise fashion to the point that perhaps what changed most and, I hope, enduringly, right here in Bella Coola as in so many sleepy hollows all over this continent – is the heightened sanctity we now attach to what, before that September morning, seemed so trivial -- the smile we can bring to another’s face with the smallest act of good humour or forgiveness; the extra pause taken to appreciate the mere continued existence of people and things we previously took more for granted; the next breath and the one after of some withered old-timer whose knee we once sat upon. And, as always, we turn to the radiant, close-to-God forms of our children with the twofold sentiment – “thank heavens I still have them; thank heavens that they were not among the many so suddenly orphaned one year ago.”

At 6:53 each morning the new hosts of CBC Daybreak still call forth devotees to what they call “trivia” and I even sometimes succumb to dialing in with an answer, though probably less often because of the memory of Mark Harvey’s solemn pronouncement that morning. But way back in my mind, a new small voice is arguing that in this year since some 3,000 souls were so pointlessly, so obscenely destroyed, nothing is trivial anymore.

REDUX 1: Not Wanted on the Voyage (Sept.00)

As already noted, this was the inaugural Grouse column back in the last year of the old century and millennium, which, of course, was 2000 - you wanna argue about that??

****

Well, yes, I know that! Grouses technically don’t perch. I thought that in taking wing, so to speak, with this the first of what will become -- given the power of public demand -- a long series of not so amicable perspectives on the world near and far, I’d give you (those few who know or care to distinguish passerines-- perchers -- from phasianids - literally, pheasantish things) at least the first complaint.

Now, down to business at hand. And speaking of creatures whose plumage far exceeds what is necessary for the ordinary conduct of one’s affairs, my first topic concerns the very pinnacle of formal authority in this fair province of British Columbia, his vice-regalness, the Lieutenant-Governor, the very honourable Garde Gardom, QC, who in early incarnations served the Bennett government and more recently opined how BC at the time of George Vancouver’s visit only needed the presence of humans to fulfill its destiny (somehow forgetting that there were already more than a few indigenous folks wandering about the future province).

Notwithstanding, it was with cardiac palpitations that I opened a gilded letter and learned of the latest perk in my brief tenure as your faithful Area D Director (Central Coast Regional District): The Honourable Mr. And Mrs. Gardom requested the pleasure of my ever so humble company aboard the HMCS Regina one fine late summer evening in September 2000.

Now I know very well that in the echelon of real political power the Lieutenant Governor stands somewhere in importance between the deputy assistant to chief legislative janitor and her majesty’s royal rodent exterminator. But, no matter, I have a confession: I am a devoted royalist (and I hasten to say that this disposition preceded indeed managed to survive the overblown claptrap that grew up around the life and death of the late Princess of Wales). I think having a chief nobody who, in very rare historic circumstances of legislative and/or executive insanity can exercise his or her prerogative, is a remarkable if serendipitous safeguard against American-style nut-bar leadership.

This and the fact that many the summer evening passes in beautiful downtown Bella Coola when there is -- may I say ? -- something of a dearth of entertainment options, made me anticipate with uncharacteristic enthusiasm this coming pomp and circumstance. We the elected were to be ferried out to the royals’ yacht at precisely 6 o’clock for goodness-knows-what ceremonial and gustatory delights!

Especially given the issuance of the invitation by both Mr. Gardom and the missus, I assumed that my long suffering wife, Sue Ellen, and other spouses of the select invitees would be welcomed on this excursion. But being a man of proper protocol myself I thought it best to confirm and so called one Allison Collins, the designated staff person on the invitation.

To my surprise my modest request met with a polite but firm “no way, José”. The good Miss Collins explained with great and firm patience that spouses were not invited because that would lead to excessive numbers and thereby limit the total number of regional dignitaries on the list. Maybe they’d run low on hors d’oevres. Perhaps the tub would tip. No congestion, please, at this floating levee!

I was caught quite off guard because I had never heard of a reception by royalty, or its proxies, which treated so offhandedly the critical role spouses play in making public life bearable. I sputtered out something about knowing that there would be room because I knew of several RSVPs already conveyed to the Lt.Gov. But Ms. Collins knew the self-promulgated laws of the voyage was unyielding. She explained that if an exception were made for any one of us, why others would be very upset.

And now I did get offended. The belief that community leaders of the Central Coast would break out in petty bickering over such a matter spoke volumes of an unflattering image apparently held about Central Coasters by our more southern, urbane and presumptively “civil” servants. Seeing the unrelenting nature of Ms. Collins on the matter, I informed her that the pleasure of my company aboard the vice-regal vessel was not to be had that evening. Then, as is my wont, I dispatched an e-mail to Mr. Gardom’s office to this effect:

“As explained over the phone we locally elected officials work on an entirely volunteer basis and are required to spend many evenings away from our loved ones, not on pay like provincial politicians or government staff but pro bono. To expect that we would want to go out on a Friday evening solo is, to say the least, insensitive. It is especially grating to see that his Honour, Mr. Gardom is co-hosting this event, at taxpayer's expense, with HIS spouse. Protocol and respect would dictate that the invitation be similarly and equitably extended to our spouses.”

“The fact that there were absences from your original invitation list (of which I am aware by official communication) but that inappropriate "rules" limiting attendance are still being enforced because you think there would resentment, displays added evidence of disrespect for the leaders of our region. We are much too busy around here trying to do our jobs as political leaders to be so childish.”

Alas, I have not had the favour of a response and two weeks have passed. Not to worry. My late, dear Uncle George told me that each of life’s tribulations is really a teacher, and, oh, haven’t I learned quite a bit what protocol – and common courtesy – means at BC’s loftiest governing altitudes!

Reduxing the Grouse

It usually can be only the widely acclaimed -- which the Grouse is not - to get away with regurgitating old columns as if they are or should be held with general reverence by the readership. Nonetheless, the felicitous coincidence of having run in to a rather busy spell away from Grousing and, part of that busy-ness, doing some long overdue housekeeping on my various hard drives and related storage devices, thereby finding past writings - that I want to put out into Blogland a few forgotten "treasures." These are from the glory days of the Grouse's Perch and the Coast Mountain news.

As noted briefly elsewhere on this blog, the Grouse really began in September, 2000, when I got royally pissed off by the BC Lieutenant Governor who sailed his yacht into North Bentinck Arm at Bella Coola pre-inviting elected officials of which, I was one (Area D representative on the Central Coast Regional District). Sounded like a lark even if it might mean having to tidy myself up, something I am rarely inclined to do. Just for courtesy, never for a moment expecting anything but an enthusiastic "yes" I called to confirm that spouses could attend. The startling answer was "no" and from that sprang the much ruffled first grouse that soon became a regular column.

So such as they are I shall mount a number of those much earlier grousings, opening, as needed with some context-giving.

Hope you enjoy this waddle down memory lane...

WARNING

Olympic Spirit, Canadian Style

Tempting as it is to seek ways creative or otherwise for completely avoiding the puffed up coverage of the current Vancouver-Whistler Dunciad, this would be to forego just too rich an array of the sort of hypocrisy, your Grouse feeds on like an orca on a stranded seal pup. Thus we shall probably re-visit the balmy melting slopes of the Winter Olympics as the transgression list inexorably lengthens.

Segueing in, I’ll begin by first linking to a short, perhaps a shade too obvious but still worth-marking angle not only on the dishonest claims generally made about any Olympiad, but also of the utter irrelevance of the ever-expanding array of obscure winter sports about which, at any other time no one gives a rat’s ass – nonsense like moguls, skeletons, snowboarding, and strangest of all, biathlon (as in ski, ski, ski, shoot something, then ski, ski, ski… etc.) Jason Zengerle, senior editor for the the New Republic mag concludes his article “Why Bother with the Olympics” by contrasting them with the merited worldwide adulation of soccer, which, “requires no affirmative action. People just like playing it and watching it.”

Yes, obvious, but amidst the jingoistic Canadian trumpeting of how we are "welcoming the world," it’s good to hear a stark reminder that, in comparison to the upcoming World Cup in South Africa, Vancouver’s Olympiad is truly small potatoes.

Item 1: VANOC's INSTA-VERDICT
The unseemly haste with which the organizers – those long-notorious bullies called VANOC, released a statement exonerating themselves and their lightning-fast (read bloody dangerous) luge track, for the tragic opening day training death of Georgia’s Nodar Kumaritashvil. And I quote:

“It appears after a routine run, the athlete came late out of curve 15 and did not compensate properly to make correct entrance into curve 16. This resulted in a late entrance into curve 16 and although the athlete worked to correct the problem he eventually lost control of the sled resulting in the tragic accident. The technical officials of the FIL were able to retrace the path of the athlete and concluded there was no indication that the accident was caused by deficiencies in the track..”

Even run of the mill traffic accidents need more investigatory time to assign culpability than this self-serving “the-show-must-go-on” gutterwash. But, then, VANOC has never been known for sensitivity to what it breaks or whom it hurts in its fanatical headlong rush to these "games" (Read Read Read)

Item 2: KICKING GUEST ASS, CANUCK STYLE

Item 2: Ah the glory of it, the exemplary spirit of true international sisterhood, seen in the opening game for Canada’s defending gold medal women’s hockey team! Saturday against the lowly Slovakians: they run up the biggest blow-out in Olympic hockey history. 18-0!

Was it really necessary to have laid it on so thick and humiliate an obviously inferior squad ? Sure, part of it, is that goal differentials affect final standings. But, get real: does anyone seriously doubt that Canada’s ice-borne amazons will make it to the final against their US arch-rivals? Lovely job of hosting, ladies, putting the lie once more to this “welcome the world” and “we-re a nation of nice ‘guys’ “ crapola.

* * * *
I can’t hardly wait to see how we’re going to follow-up on the first 24 hours of blaming the deceased victim of a dangerously-designed luge course and running up big scores against hapless underdogs. GO CANADA, GO!

Anticipating Schadenfreude from Vancouver Olympiad

Well, I have to say that with every rescue truckload of snow they have to drag onto one of the Vancouver Olympic sites, the tiny cockles of my mine heart go up a few degrees. Today, as the CBC and other dog-tails of the Canadian media are wildly wagging about, is day one of the massive bread-and-circuses operation that Gordie Campbell and his lightweights have been blustering about through most of their regrettable tenure as BC's government.

If I knew voodoo or other magical arts and could bring down a big wet heat wave from Whistler to the mountains of North Vancouver, I would do so. But there is an added glimmer of hope for we who would delight in the Olympics turning into a meteorological fiasco. The final carrier of the flame that has been traipsed literally all around Canada, is top secret. But word on the street has it that Wayne Gretzky got fingered (hey, I was fingering him long before this! Read here, here and here)for the endgame of that happy torch tradition that goes back to and still echoes Hitler's Olympiad.
Flash back to Turin in 2006 when the not-so-Great-One "managed" (no one ever explained much about what that management entailed) the Canadian Men's Hockey Team and they finished a dismal 7th. Remember ? - that was when the Whiner abandoned the team in the dying seconds of loss to Russia, wiping tears from his baby blues, a phony replay of the now immortalized weeping when he, quite voluntarily, deserted the Edmonton Oilers for fatter paychecks south of the border.

Or, more recently than that, note that in their first post-Gretzkian season the Phoenix Coyotes are actually winning again! You take my drift, eh? Have that arrogant, over-rated twit carry the torch to the lighting of the Olympic flame tonight and the whole dog-dumb spectacle that will inconvenience Vancouverites for the next several weeks, may be jinxed and flop as badly as his other recent sports involvements.

For me, avid antagonist of the Vancouver Olympics and of Gretzky, all that would be needed for the perfect storm at tonight's foolishness is to have Celine Dion sing a tribute to Princess Diana.

Margaret Roberta Howatt Dale - 1922-1990

She was my mother. She was born in the village of Cape Traverse, Prince Edward Island, terminus for the mail "ice-boats" that plied the Northumberland Strait before ferry service and long before the fixed link bridge crossing. She grew up mainly in Summerside, became a teacher in a one-room school and then went to work in the post office. During World War II, a young Czech trainee, Bernard Dale, from the nearby air force base, kept buying stamps from her and eventually, they married. Thence my brother, Peter, my sister, Ari and lastly, me.

As my father was an military officer, we moved about, first to Ottawa in 1949 and then to the Montreal area, where my mother resumed teaching at the Preville School in 1959. I was among the pupils in her first incoming Grade 6, an intriguing experience for both of us. She continued her school career until a UN job took my father to Nigeria in the midst of that nation's civil war in the mid sixties. With my father she returned to Prince Edward Island in 1968 and lived there until 1987 when they both moved to Victoria.

Her passion was always animals with an enormous Newfoundland named Angus her deep love until his passing from which, I think, she never fully recovered. Among her things I would later find a little poem scrawled on a note pad:



To Angus

"My Friend is dead.
At peace? Gone to rest?
No
He is dead.
God is there a place
where good dogs go?
I don't know many things
He sleeps in my heart, I loved him so

I know that he was alone when he died
The lilacs had just been born
Did they mourn my dead friend?
I loved him so."




In late 1989 she was diagnosed with lung cancer and died this date (January 21) in 1990. Countless gifts she left us not least of which, a quite brief journal she began to keep December 16, 1989. In it she dutifully recorded the coming and going of pains and medications but also wrote of the things and people she loved, the dreams she had, whether realized or not, and of what, in what turned out to be her final days brought comfort - old pictures, the sound of rain on the roof, and...

Dec. 24, Sunday:

"Had some rather special experience this A.M. during my slumber (6-7:30) I needed this inspiration badly because I was starting the day with the same concerns as yesterday. The message was, 'live today to its best, don't worry about tomorrow... According to the speaker the message is one of Jesus. I had never heard that one before..."

Later she would muse, without, it seemed, huge regret, that she once wanted to write a "great novel...now, look at this!" So her journal,more valued on my shelf than any other book, the picture here of her with me as a baby, and a vaster collage of memories she gifted me with, today define my horizons. I listen to some favourite music of hers, Strauss waltzes, and reflect: whatever is best in me, Ma, you've put there.