Archive for 2008

CBC Radio 2 has invited Canadians to name forty-nine songs from north of the forty-ninth parallel that explain to President-elect Barack Obama who we are. The difficulty is this: what exactly constitutes a Canadian?? Healey Willan, the Dean of Canadian Composers, certainly deserves a place, but he was born in Britain. Still, he described himself as “British by birth, Irish by extraction, Canadian by adoption, and Scotch by absorption.”

And what about Robert Goulet who grew up in Canada but was born in the U.S.? He made his name in the Broadway production of Camelot singing “If Ever I Should Leave You.” Neither country claimed him after he mangled the American national anthem at the Muhammad Ali-Sonny Liston heavyweight fight in 1965.

Both Willan and Goulet are on my list, which is sweeping in its embrace. My nominations tilt toward artists from Atlantic Canada, which may reflect my own Celtic roots, but also celebrates the many talented individuals and groups who have sprung from that region, Cape Breton Island in particular.

I’ve picked a few songs for political purposes: The Tragically Hip’s “New Orleans is Sinking” and Bruce Cockburn’s “If I had a Rocket Launcher.” Other choices exist just to let the President-elect know that we’ve been good at this for a while. A 14-year-old Priscilla Wright, for example, appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1955 singing her international hit, “Man in a Raincoat.”

In no particular order, here are my forty-nine picks for the President:

John Allan Cameron - The Minstrel of Cranberry Lane

Hank Snow - I’m Movin’ On

Ian and Sylvia - Four Strong Winds

Rita McNeil and The Men of the Deeps - Working Man

Bryan Adams - Summer of ‘69

Great Big Sea - Tickle Cove Pond

Healy Willan - Passacagalia and Fugue No. in E Minor

Gordon Lightfoot - The Canadian Railroad Trilogy

P.J. Perry - The Song is You

Joni Mitchell - Chelsea Morning

Gilles Vigneault - Mon Pays

Ashley MacIsaac - The Devil in the Kitchen

Jann Arden - Insensitive

Susan Aglukark - O Siem

The Rankin Family - Fare Thee Well Love

k.d. lang - Constant Craving

Various - O Canada

Leonard Cohen - Suzanne

Sarah McLaughlin - Angel

Stan Rogers - Barrett’s Privateers

Ren? Simard -Comment ?a Va

Priscilla Wright - Man in a Raincoat

The Diamonds - Little Darlin’

The Guess Who - Runnin’ Back to Saskatoon

Stompin’ Tom Connors - Bud the Spud

Celine Dion - Titanic

Alannah Myles - Black Velvet

Barenaked Ladies - If I had a Million Dollars

John McDermott - Danny Boy

Anne Murray - Snowbird

The Canadian Brass - Messiah

Ronnie Hawkins - Forty Days

Paul Anka - Diana

Neil Young - Helpless

Bruce Cockburn - If I had a Rocket Launcher

Moe Koffman - Swinging Shepherd Blues

Alanis Morissette - Thank U

Nelly Furtado - I’m Like a Bird

Kate and Anna McGarrigle - Bundle of Sorrow, Bundle of Joy

Jeff Healey - Angel Eyes

Roch Voisine - I’ll Always Be There

Shania Twain - (If You’re Not in it for Love) I’m Outta here

Robert Goulet - If Ever I Should Leave You

The Barra McNeils - Mouth Music

Liona Boyd - Madrilena

The Tragically Hip - New Orleans is Sinking

Terri Clark - Better Things to Do

Blue Rodeo - Bad Timing

Natalie MacMaster - David’s Jig/Valerie Pringle’s Reel

I have a problem with “no problem.” The ubiquitous phrase has insinuated itself into dealings with store clerks, office assistants, even professional occasions. Say “thank you” for some service rendered and the likely response is “no problem.” I detest the words; they smack of smart aleck and smarminess all in one.

Other cultures have similar expressions but they somehow seem worthy. When we lived in Washington, D.C., the equivalent was “uh-huh,” always spoken in a languid manner. I vividly remember the day I held a door for a stranger, she said “thank you,” and I automatically said “uh-huh.” I was pleased to have finally learned the local lingo.

So, too, when we lived in Florence. Initially, my Italian vocabulary was limited to twenty words and six of them were “prego.” The most common use occurs when a person says grazie, thank you, and you say prego, for “you’re welcome” or “not at all.” If you open a door and indicate to a woman she should precede you, you say prego. When you enter a restaurant, a waiter may say prego, as in “come in” or “at your service,” or he’ll say prego when he delivers dinner, as in “there you go.” In a store, if there are several people waiting, the clerk will say prego for “who’s next?”

In Washington, “uh-huh” brands you as belonging. In Italy, you can’t get by without prego. In Toronto, “no problem” needs to be replaced by something more pleasant. I just happen to have a happy candidate. It’s “you’re welcome.”

It’s hard to imagine a more lamebrained idea than the one that has just been launched at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont. So-called facilitators have been appointed whose job it is to monitor conversations on campus for racist or homophobic content. If such felonious phrases are overheard, the facilitator is supposed to step into the circle of perpetrators and lecture all concerned about the impropriety of such statements.

What’s next? The Bad Breath Brigade? A swat team to wake up students asleep in class?

This at a university that’s just cancelled Homecoming celebrations because almost 200 were arrested in a melee involving throngs of drunken students and rabblerousers. This at an institution struggling to find a new principal at a time when twenty such openings exist across Canada.

This is political correctness taken to ludicrous extremes.

I predict the speech police will last until the first one gets punched in the proboscis.

Our good friend Betsy from Washington, D.C. has just headed home after a two-day visit. We met Betsy, a southern belle, while we lived in Georgetown in the early 1990s and have maintained the friendship ever since. Her visit was a reminder how enjoyable Washington is and how unplugged you can become from events.

On election night, she told us, houses across the city emptied as people headed for Lafayette Park, across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, where they sang “Hey, hey, bye, bye” in full-throated joy to the current occupant, George W. Bush.

With the election of Barack Obama, race relations in the city that’s two-thirds African-American have improved 100 per cent. Everybody’s talking to one another other and feeling good about their political future. Together.

As for the economy, the latest trend in Georgetown is for people to run up their credit cards with no intention of ever paying off the charges. It’s as if they expect a government bailout or, if that’s not forthcoming, they’ll declare personal bankruptcy. Either way, everything is free.

Still, reality has sunk in with some people. Betsy spotted a neighbor, who had just renovated, swinging a pick ax to clean up some cement in front of his house. When she asked what he was doing, he said he didn’t want to call his architect about the repairs. Anything the architect arranged would be far too expensive.

Robert (Bongo Bob) Thomson, sometime leader of the Social Credit Party and a florid speaker who favoured malapropisms, used to say, “If so-and-so were alive today, he’d be rolling in his grave.” Well, if John Robarts were alive today, the former Prime Minister of Ontario would be spinning at high speed at the thought of his province receiving equalization payments.

Back in the salad days of his government in the 1960s, Robarts was happy to participate in the program, but he also warned that it couldn’t go on forever. Complaints from the have-not promises, he said, might one day “kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.”

Most of the focus on the $347 million in equalization payments that Ontario will receive has been along the lines of?’how the mighty have fallen.’ I have a different view. I think we should send the money back. Clearly, equalization has seen the end of its useful life now that former have-not provinces are haves, and haves are have nots.

Wastage offers another reason to end the system. By the time Ottawa recorded the taxes it collected, chased down fraud, thought about what to do with the funds, and paid some bureaucrats and consultants to massage the results, what had probably been $400 million shrank to $347 million.

By the time Ontario records what it gets, sends people to Ottawa complaining that the amount wasn’t enough, assigns civil servants to ponder how to spend the money and then distributes the funds through a variety of programs, further leakage will likely reduce that amount to something like $300 million.

Why not just leave the original $400 million in the hands of the taxpayers who earned it, lost it, and are now about get three-quarters of their money back again? And what about the $8.4 billion that will go to Quebec next year? How much of whatever that amount started out as will be frittered away on the way through? Snuffing out the National Portrait Gallery offers paltry savings by comparison. The goose is well past her best-before date.

The American election today provides a useful reminder about the merits of the two-party system. For the last five decades, we’ve had far too many elections that produced minority governments because there are too many choices. The Alliance-Reform-Progressive Conservative liaison got rid of a few startups. We need more such consolidation.

Here’s my prescription:

1. As long as the Green Party popular vote remains in single digits, and the party has no seats, their leader cannot participate in televised debates during the election.

2. Unless the Bloc Quebecois decides to run candidates outside Quebec, BQ candidates can no longer run federally. Seventeen years is long enough to be a regional party. The Creditistes, under Real Caouette, were in Parliament for eighteen years, became a joke, and finally petered out. The Bloc needs to be drummed out.

3. New Democratic Party seat totals have fluctuated between 13 and 37 over the last five elections. Time to fold the tent that was never very big anyway. If Bob Rae can become a Liberal, so can the rest of that merry band.

After allowing 10 per cent of the popular vote for fringe candidates, that would leave a Conservative Party and a Liberal Democratic party (for lack of a better name) fighting for 90 per cent. By playing in such a ball park, some team is sure to win a majority, thereby bringing stability to the land.

Without some such action, we’ll become like Italy with its more than sixty governments since the Second World War. Italy without the sunshine and stylish good times.

I finally got around to watching on YouTube the infamous ATV interview with Stephane Dion conducted during the election campaign. It is a journalistic travesty. There are so many things wrong from a reportorial and human standpoint, it’s hard to know where to start. But let’s begin by acknowledging that Dion was tired. Steve Murphy launched a lengthy first question on the economy. The wording contains snippets from Dion’s speech earlier that day and finally gets around to the nugget when Murphy asks: “If you were prime minister now, what would you have done that Mr. Harper has not done?”

Dion begins to answer, flounders, wonders what timing Murphy has in mind, then asks to restart the interview. OK, so far. Restarts are commonplace in taped interviews. But Murphy does not rephrase the question to make it clearer, he goes through the whole laborious wording again.

Again Dion stumbles, an aide interjects an off-camera explanation, and there’s another restart. The third attempt ends quickly when both Murphy and Dion dissolve into laughter. The fourth works and Dion does fine.

As everyone was leaving, a Dion aide commented to the field producer something to the effect of surely you’re not going to put everything on air. “Don’t worry,” said the producer. But back at the station, they have second thoughts. They ask the higher-ups at CTV who review the tape and declare everything will air.

Despite the promise made.

Despite the fact that they humiliated Dion.

As someone who has worked hard to learn a second language and struggled to maintain it at some level of functionality, I can tell you that verb tenses are tough. I think the question that gave Dion so much trouble in English - his second language - was posed in the past pluperfect subjunctive. Little wonder he had trouble.

I was also reminded of my own former boss, Robert Stanfield, and his struggle to learn French, which was not bad. But it always helped if the interviewer stuck to the past, present and future tenses. They were hard enough. Hypotheticals in the past pluperfect subjunctive are ridiculous.

I think ATV fell into the trap of trying to prove the conventional wisdom that Stephane Dion wasn’t up to the job. In this case, maybe it was the journalists who came up short.

It was August when I became a temporary member of the Red Sox Nation, sitting in the Pavilion Club section, between home plate and third base at historic Fenway Park, munching on a frank and drinking a beer. The weather couldn’t have been better on that fine summer’s eve. Jon Lester was on the mound for the Red Sox, the home team jumped out to an early 8-0 lead and went on to post an 8-4 win over the Texas Rangers.

Equally important was the mood of the place. Entire streets were closed off for the festivities; there was fan appreciation in every pitch and play. The next day, wherever I went in Boston, the game was dissected right down to that two-seam fastball Mike Timlin threw in relief.

Last night, the Red Sox bowed out and the newbies go on. I hope Tampa Bay’s success does not give Blue Jay management any ideas. The Rays dropped the Devil part of their name this year and went from worst to first. The Jay have already changed their logo so many times they look ridiculous.

And I worry about seeing Paul Beeston as Acting CEO. With Cito Gaston signed up, what’s next? Will Pat Gillick rejoin, too?

Whatever route they take, here’s the outcome I’d like. I want to be able to go into a corner store in Toronto the day after a Jays game and talk about plays in detail with strangers the same way I did in Boston that week. After more than 30 years with a Toronto team in the show, I’ve never had that pleasure.

Someone was telling me recently about what he called an “out of body experience” that occurred while he was in Fiesole, the village that dates to Etruscan times and sits high on the Tuscan hills overlooking Florence. He was staying at Villa San Michele, one of the top hotels in the area, and was drawn to music coming from a large ballroom. Inside the room was a blonde opera singer, standing beside a pianist, rehearsing a performance.

My friend sat in a corner, the only other person present, smoking his cigar for twenty-five minutes while she sang popular arias from such works as Carmen and Madama Butterfly. Her voice was so lustrous, the occasion so special, it has become one of the most treasured moments of his life.

Tuscany is known for its beauty, art, and food, but for me it is just such serendipitous encounters that sets it apart from other travel destinations. My all-time favorite occasion came about when I happened to meet a Benedictine monk at San Miniato al Monte, a church on a hill on the other side of Florence from Fiesole. Nicholas was slight of build and must have been eighty, but his face was unlined. The small room in which we stood together was not just quiet, it was as if time had slowed down to match his measured pace. He was beyond serene; there was a stillness about him that was palpable. His shaved head gave added prominence to piercing eyes that seemed to say, “Look within me and see what I have.”

There was time for only one question. “What is it,” I asked, “that you enjoy about your life?”

There was no hesitation; his response was as rhythmic as the Gregorian chants performed there daily: “I am happy. I have my vocation. We live together and help each other. I live in peace and joy.”

Neither better poetry nor finer philosophy have I ever heard.

Like most poltical junkies, I switched back and forth between the two debates last night, but I finally gave up on the fivesome. Steve Paikin did a fine job as moderator, but there were simply too many voices for anyone to be properly heard. I must admit I’m fed up with the Bloc, with no seats outside Quebec and no plans to run candidates in the rest of Canada, appearing with national leaders. As for Elizabeth May, much and all as I admire her policies, she was like the second cousin who comes to the family reunion and holds court a little too long.

The format for Biden-Palin was better, even though moderator Gwen Ifill had mixed success getting Sarah Palin to answer some of the questions asked. (I’ve always believed that was the secret of appearing on TV. Forget about the question and give the answer you want.) Joe Biden was smooth, almost too smooth for my taste. He wisely stayed away from attacks on Palin, but did score some direct hits on John McCain. As everyone milled about at the end, I winced and said to myself, “Don’t hug her.” He didn’t.

Both Biden and Palin exceeded expectations and she mended her reputation after a few poor outings of late. I awarded the match to Palin on points. But it all somehow seems so irrelevant, given the current financial debacle. No one can stop that juggernaut; no one even knows how much worse it will get. Least of all the candidates in either country.