Thinking About Winter Again

This weekend was the last weekend of Winterlude, a two week celebration of winter. We went to a park in the city where there were giant, that’s GIANT, slides constructed out of snow, enormous snow sculptures, and various, deliciously unhealthy foods. Parents where pulling their small children around in sleds. There was a place to try your hand at ice-fishing and, best of all, there were a group of young Inuit from the north demonstrating Inuit dance, drumming, throat-singing and games. A friend of mine from the States was visiting with his daughter and they were duly mesmerized, as was I. There is something so haunting about throat-singing. It is, for me, the closet human sound to the evocativeness of the loon’s song. Why would it emerge from a culture of the far north? Was there a sound or a process in nature they were imitating? The cry of ice as it breaks-up, the whoop of the Sandhill Crane, the torment of insects driving a caribou mad?

Their games, which required minimal space and, oftentimes, maximum exertion, were many. The most intriguing was the one legged kick, where you jump off both legs and kick one as high as you can to strike a suspended object. They were kicking an object suspended higher than their heads. The world record is 9 feet 6 inches. Unfortunately, the wild applause they deserved was significantly muffled by everyone’s mittened hands. They received a standing ovation of dull thuds.

I came home from that and, coincidentally, sat down with the paper and read a book review of The Geography of Bliss. I haven’t read it, but the guy’s thesis seems to be that the happiest people live in northern countries. Why? Because, in cold climates, people have to support each other more. Who wudda thunk it!

Quick-takes on President Obama in Canada

Ottawa felt the love. Obama felt the love.
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The press conference was...a press conference. I thought of Mario Cuomo--the former governor of New York and one of the few governors cut from Presidential cloth who never pursued the office--saying you campaign in poetry and govern in prose.
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Ignatieff, leader of the opposition, shared with Obama that Canada's presence in Afghanistan is strategically adrift. How refreshing to hear that named.
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The focus has to shift. The real Obama story is no longer Obama but what gathers around him: crowds, fans, adorers expressing their adoration. Harness that energy...and then look out.
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Didn't it look like our Prime Minister felt the glow of Obama?
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One member of the crowd, when asked by the reporter what one question she would ask Obama, said "How can I help?" That's it. What is coaslescing around Obama is energy trying to figure out how to apply itself to making a difference. We want to remake the world; we know it needs re-making; tell us how.
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When he deviates from the planned travel route--a la his spontaneous visit to the Byward Market--even I cringe a bit, as I imagine the Secret Service must. No, I don't think anything would happen up here. But in the States...He loves crowds. ...Who wants to consider this possibility? I don't.
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Astounding to see footage of Bush's last visit to Ottawa juxtaposed with the Obama visit. The crowds--such anger in one, such love in the other.
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Prediction: Canada's love for Obama will outlast the United States'.
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Tell us how. If only his fans can collectively let go of waiting for his answer and, instead, get to work...

Ted and Dolores and a Nation of Lawbreakers

I’ve just returned from Boston, not the easiest city for drivers, but at least the speed limits around it make sense. Speed limits are the one Canadian law I face every day, usually in the mode of a transgression, which is easy in Canada given that speed limits are set everywhere in the country by one Ted and Dolores Kunkel of Minerva, Manitoba.

Ted is now 82 and still drives around with his bowler hat on and Dolores, two years his senior, sits beside him. Mostly she tells him to slow down, but since Ted’s hearing has been failing of late, a quick elbow to his side works best. Every year Ted and Dolores receive a stipend from Transport Canada to drive around a region of the country in their old Ford Fairlane and see if new limits should be set.

I’ve been noticing that as Ted and Dolores have been getting older, speed limits have been getting lower. It’s particularly noticeable when one drives to the States and then returns to Canada. Many of the U.S. highways have posted limits of 65 mph and you rarely see anybody going over 75 mph. Up here they’re posted at 100km/h and—wouldn’t you know it—mild-mannered Canadians have little choice but to become a nation of law breakers, rogues and rebels. Truth be told, it seems we’ve even paid off the provincial police who don’t give a lick until the speedometer passes 120km/h. Yessirree, it’s not even that uncommon to see mild-mannered Canadian folk blasting down the 401 at 140km/h.

This sad state of affairs—setting speed limits so low that the entire nation is composed of criminals—extends to suburban streets. Sometimes out on the more rural roads, they get it right, but that’s only because it wasn’t on Ted and Dolores’s itinerary. What’s to be done? Apart from having Transport Canada throw a big retirement party for the Kunkels, why don’t we create a movement to set speed limits designed for the rest of us? Post the speed limit on the 401 at 120km/h—or 130 for that matter—and then, by golly, enforce it. In a matter of days, the number of lawbreakers in the country would be cut in half! A statistic any law-and-order party would be only too happy to crow about.

Note: Yes, yes, I know speed limits do not fall under federal jurisdiction, but creating a fictitious couple for every province seemed like an unnecessary expenditure of energy. The Canadian federation may be inefficient, but when you write, you get to pretend it isn’t. If that’s not an incentive to write, what is?

"And There's A Canadian Connection!"

I can sense from a mile away when that phrase is about to be used. And I say "mile" because it's the American part of me that does the sensing; Canadians don't seem to have a clue because the connection, whatever it is, genuinely matters to them.

What am I talking about? Why everything and anything, as long at it's something that shows Canada and/or Canadians matter in America, have influence, contribute, etc. The most recent example is the Canadian media mentioning the dress Michelle Obama is wearing on the cover of the current Vogue. "There's a Canadian connection," they say. Get this: the designer of the dress once lived in British Columbia for five years! In Canada, that's a kind of news.

This sort of thing is a regular Canadian practice. The Space Shuttle goes up and there's sure to be something about the "Canadarm" on it: "and the astronauts used the Canadarm, made right here in Canada, to fix the problem." Then, of course, there's always at least one Oscar-nominated movie that will elicit "...and there's a Canadian connection! Yes, the Assistant Gaffer went to summer camp in Kenora, Ontario, which he said was a crucial formative experience." I hardly exaggerate.

Canadians are compelled to look for their connections to those things that are hot/trendy/ successful in the States. I squirm whenever I encounter another example of Canada using the U.S. as its barometer of worthiness. "We're not worthy!" repeats Mike Myers character in his Wayne's World movies. The irony is that Myers, a Canadian comic who has made it big in the U.S. film industry and is therefore lionized up here, could only have created that refrain by drawing on his Canadian soul. "We're not worthy!" says Canada....but, well, if there's something happening in America with a Canadian connection, then just maybe we are worthy. Maybe. Then again, maybe not.

Canadian?...Or a hyphen-Canadian?

Last night, at a community event, I was introduced to the judge who had presided over the Citizenship ceremony where I became Canadian. Though several years have passed, I remember well the sensitivity the judge had brought to the occassion; she read the name of every country represented in the room and spoke warmly about the contribution of Immigrants to Canada. Meeting her gave me the opportunity--a few years late I admit--to thank her. How timely to come back from the event and find a heated email exchange between some friends on the nature of Canadian identity. Here's the exchange in its entirety:

--The only Canadians are the natives. The rest of us, Afro & Asian notwithstanding, are more properly Euro-Canadians. If Donovan Bailey's kids are Afro-Canadian, then my kids are Euro-Canadians. "Canadian" is code for white. The code sucks. (Note: Donovan Bailey, a gold medalist in the 100 meter dash in Atlanta, is from Jamaica and would more accurately be called a Caribbean or Jamaican-Canadian)
--No no no, re: aboriginal. We need to be inclusive. After a few years, if someone wants to be Canadian, I wouldn't quibble. My mother's mother's mother came to Newfoundland. I'm going with being Canadian.
--But we are not inclusive. It is a myth and a lie. Your black neighbours in Nova Scotia self-identify as Afro-Canadian. You are a Euro-Canadian, albeit in denial. Get back in touch with your Euro roots.
--No no no - we're not all these hyphenated things. Most afro-Canadians have been in Nova Scotia longer than my mother's mother's mother was in Newfoundland. Accept your Canadianess.
--What is the shame in your European roots? What part of your family tree do you want to saw down and burn so the rest of us cannot see its influence on you? Hyphens are nice. Embrace the lowly hyphen. You can do it.

I'm tempted to give them squirt guns and let them have at it. Then again, since they're Canadian (if not Euro-Canadian) they should probably be given hockey gloves so they can "drop the gloves," Canadian code for a good ole fist fight. Clearly something seems to be at stake for both of them.

To one, the unhyphenated word "Canadian" represents a kind of structural racism--it is only used on people who are white European, otherwise everyone else needs to have their hyphen. Therefore, lets get rid of the stand-alone term "Canadian," with its implied racism, and have white Canadians be forced to claim their hyphen, just like everyone else does. Then we would be closer to having a just society.

To the other, "Canadian" is quickly available to whomever wants to claim it. You've been here for two generations from the former Czechoslovakia--sure you can be just "Canadian" if you choose; here for a few years from Somalia? Yup, you can be just "Canadian" too!

Notice how they are both imbued with the very Canadian trait of wanting to insure fairness--one wants fairness through putting the hyphen on everyone, and the other through removing it. But in all cases, let's make sure its the same for everyone. Ah yes, it's no wonder I love Canadians, plain or hyphenated.

Last thought: In Canada--with the highest per capita immigration rate in the world--where multiple identities are common, a hyphen is simply an expression of that multiplicity. Whenever the hyphen melts away from one's identity, then it melts away. For those for whom the multiplicity matters, then the hyphen stays. That seems fair. Are we not each entitled to our own relationship to our histories? One of our emailers is Canadian it would seem, whereas the other is Euro-Canadian. I'm a border mongrel. Am I Canadian-American or American-Canadian? Yes.

Last Reflection on the Meaning of the Inauguration

In the early Fall of last year I went down to the U.S. to assist with a meeting of one hundred key leaders of an ageing northeastern industrial city. The purpose of the meeting was to create a shared vision for the city for the next five years. Attending were the city’s institutional elites—the mayor and congressman, the Presidents of the local university and colleges, the CEO of the largest companies in the region, etc—along with an equal number of leaders from grassroots organizations, neighbourhood associations and place-based agencies. It was a diverse and eclectic group representing the diversity of the city; many of the folks there had never been in the same room with each other and likely never would have, had it not been for this meeting.

It didn’t take long—in fact, it was in the first small group I was with—for some of the city’s more painful history to emerge: times when public housing was razed for “city improvements” and the poor did not have a voice. I learned that the city had a history of racism, and that a surprising number of its black citizens had, in recent years, migrated south—to Atlanta—because there was more opportunity there and less racism. By the second day it was obvious that the underlying tension in the room was “for whom was this vision being created.”

The lack of trust in the room seemed to split down racial lines. It was not a rift over intention. Everybody knew that each person was there for the same intention—to make the city a better place to live. But within that intention, there were different understandings of what better meant, and what better would look like for different segments of the city. For lack of a more articulate way to put it, there was a sense by the black folks that the white folks just didn’t get it.

At the time, what struck me was how race was the wound in America that just will not close. It was the subtext of much of that meeting; the skepticism being carried by some of the black participants was palpable and not easily understood by others who had no point of reference for understanding its origins. There were some poignant moments, as when the white CEO of the city’s largest technology company, an older gentleman near retirement, reached out to a much younger black man and said “I need you to educate me.” You could feel the yearning to connect across the divide of history and pain.

It strikes me that this reality is the real backdrop of Obama’s inauguration. Block out the Capital that was behind Obama as he took the oath and focus, instead, on all the ghosts gathered, ghosts of lynchings and marches and white-only restaurants. The Inauguration was a healing ceremony, plain and simple; it was a “laying on of hands” on the body politic of the nation; its effect was to close the wound of race that began to bleed when the first slave ship came over from Africa. Other stitches had been sewn to help close the wound—the Emancipation Proclamation, Booker T. Washington, Marian Anderson and Jackie Robinson and the Voting Rights Act and Colin Powell—but this was of an entirely different order. The nation, including States that had stood proud for the Confederacy, had voted in a black man to lead them. I believe the wound closed completely that day; yes, scar tissue surely remains, but perhaps, in time, we will discover that too has healed.

The Inauguration: Scenes from a Canadian Pilgrimage --Part 3

Part 2 can be found below this posting.


Having decided we needed an hour and half to get back to our bus, we took our leave and headed out into the late afternoon. The sun was bright, the air still cold, the mall noticeably emptier. Our walking route back to our bus—one we planned in consultation with the museum’s kindly janitor—would take us past the Washington Monument and the White House, over to 18th street, then north to K street, where we would turn east for the 18 blocks back to our bus. As we passed by the last Jumbotron on the Mall, a group had gathered to watch the President, his VP and their wives on the giant screen as they reviewed the marching bands. “Poor Michelle,” said one woman, “she looks so underdressed!”

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Our walk near the Washington Monument took us to where the bands were waiting in the cold to begin their parade down Pennsylvania Avenue. Marching bands strike me as a deeply American (take your pick) pastime/obsession/art form. The baton twirlers from Tennesee, jumping up and down in their bright costumes and leotards, looked as frozen as orange popsicles.

I don’t know why the Inauguration of new Presidents always happens in January—it could be they wanted it timed to the New Year, or perhaps to honour Washington crossing the Delaware in the bitter cold. I like to think it’s because they wanted the national character to have a certain backbone, for the incoming President to have a chance to demonstrate how they can tough out the cold and, thus, so can the nation.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

As we headed north on 18th street and left the Mall for good, I remembered the last political event I had attended. It was days after 9/11; a memorial service was going to be held in front of the Canadian Parliament for those killed in the Twin Towers. I felt called to be there, though I expected few would show up, mostly the Americans living in town. When I turned the corner and saw the front of the Parliament filled with people, I could barely hold back my tears. And when that enormous Canadian crowd sang the Star Spangled Banner, I lost it and—surprised by my own raw emotion—wept like a baby.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Between that event and this one, so much has been lost. The press had been cowed, the constitution trammeled, the nation broken into irreconcilable camps, and a pre-emptive war waged on false pretense. I had, in those eight years, moved past anger into a kind of deep, resigned sadness. The country I grew up in had become something I no longer recognized. Walking along K street though, past countless stalls selling Obama Inauguration memorabilia, I realized I was participating in America’s extraordinary ability to re-invent itself. Even all the young men selling Obama trinkets were part of that reinvention. The Inauguration was a business opportunity and damn if they were going to miss it! America may lose its way, it may trip and fall—and, yes, when it does, the ground shakes most everywhere—but it will, as this young President said, get up, dust itself off and find where tomorrow is headed, likely well before the rest of us.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

It was good to be strolling in the falling light with my sons. The youngest said to me, “Dad, you know what was neat about this? Everybody treated us like we were old friends, everybody, and it’s all because of Obama.” Everybody had treated us like old friends. In some way, I had a sense those hours on the mall were America at its very best—generous in spirit, kind towards one another and, in light of the remarkable diversity, curious about one another’s stories. It was as if we shared an understanding of why we had come, that the Inauguration was somehow a symbolic moment beyond words, and that the occasion had honoured us just as much as we had honoured it.

“Dad,” said my eldest son, “Obama’s my man. He could whip Superman by using the power of his words.” I confess that wasn’t a contest I had particularly envisioned. Nonetheless, I realized my son seemed to have landed upon his first living hero. Not being much of a sports fans, he had heroes on his walls but they were from movies: Viggo Mortensen as Aragon in “Lord of the Rings” and Christian Bale as Batman. Maybe now those posters would come down and he’d put up the Obama poster he had bought. If I had ever been his hero, I had fast been losing ground in that department anyway; now I could settle in to just being his dad.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

We were the last to board the bus. As we left the city, the drop-down screen in the bus started showing the movie Forrest Gump, an appropriate choice —I had forgotten how the movie is a tour through recent American history. Tom Hanks, as Forrest, stands behind George Wallace, the then Governor of Alabama, as Wallace tries to keep the federal government from integrating Alabama’s schools. In my childhood, George Wallace was one of the symbols of the racist south, a politician still fighting for The Confederacy.

Watching the film, I was struck by the refrain, “stupid is as stupid does,” that Forrest repeats at various times. Leaving Washington behind, I wondered if the film hadn't stumbled upon the epitaph for the Bush years.

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Going back to George Wallace wasn’t necessary for me to recall how racism had been alive and well and official in my own lifetime. One night in the 70’s, when I was in college in Philadelphia, my black roommate came back late. He was steaming mad, and I knew something had happened. He and his friend Glen had been walking in an upscale white neighbourhood of Philadelphia when some cops stopped them, then frisked and interrogated them. Unwilling to believe they were college students, the cops threw them in the back of their squad car and dropped them off in a neighborhood where blacks were, to put it mildly, not welcome. The mayor at the time was Frank Rizzo, a law-and-order bigot who had started out as a cop and received global coverage for his hardball tactics against the local Black Panthers. Rizzo was a brute and his police officers had free rein. When it comes to race, suffice it to say America has its share of history to redeem. It is not hard to make the case that the real task of the Inauguration had been to lift the enormous weight of that history.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

I asked two of the students in the back of the bus what the day had been like for them. They said they had grown into their political awareness with George W. Bush as President. It occurred to me that if the two of them were twenty, then Bush had become President when they were twelve years old. They said they had grown up hating the United States, and now, well, they would have to re-evaluate.

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We pulled into a truck stop sometime between exhausted and catatonic. Symbols of a world I didn’t know filled the aisles—hunting and Harleys and Big Rigs (not a reference to trucks). T-shirts and trinkets for a different slice of the electorate. What does Obama mean to the folks for whom these symbols speak? Were any of them at the Inauguration?

* * * * * * * * * * * *

How does a country go from a Bush to an Obama? How could those 20-year old students make sense of it? You come of age thinking your neighbouring country is a war-mongering, rogue state that had sent Canadian citizens off to Syria to be tortured and now, suddenly, that country has a remarkable young President, reasonable, wanting to uphold the rule of law and its constitution. A nation as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It had been a tough go—eight years of Mr. Hyde. And yet there is something in the American project—its call to higher values, its belief in its unique destiny—that makes it susceptible to lofty rhetoric, and when that rhetoric moves in a humane direction, it is glorious to behold. On some level though, I couldn’t help think that Obama, as the working President, would be burdened with what Obama, the symbolic President, means. When the working President doesn’t live up to the symbol, and surely he won’t, what will happen?

* * * * * * * * * * * *

For the last hour of the ride, late in the night, I read more of Leadership Without Easy Answers, the section where Heifetz looks at the nature of Presidential leadership by examining Lyndon Johnson’s efforts to pass the Voting Rights Act. He quotes from LBJ’s speech to the nation on March 16, 1965:

Rarely in any time does an issue lay bare the secret heart of America itself….a challenge, not to our security, but to the values and the purposes and the meaning of our nation. The issue of equal rights for American Negroes is such an issue, and should we defeat every enemy, double our wealth, conquer the stars, and still be unequal to this issue, then we will have failed as a people and a nation.

The Voting Rights Act passed in August of that year, but perhaps the final answer to the challenge he gave to America “as a people and a nation” was answered more than fourty years later, on January 20, 2009.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

We got off the bus in Ottawa at 5:30 in the morning. The city was frozen in snow, much colder than D.C., and nobody was around. We called a cab. The milk of human kindness was fast asleep across the capital. The government had been pro-rogued. The politicians were back in their ridings. Nobody—neither the pundits nor the people--knew what would happen next. Down in the States though, “Next” had already begun.