CBC Axes Vancouver Orchestra: Just Another Nail in the Coffin of Serious Music?

The CBC Vancouver Orchestra will be no more, following the end of its fall season next November. It is the last radio orchestra on the continent, and it was felled by budget cuts, according to Jennifer McGuire, executive director of CBC English Radio. The money saved could be used more efficiently by spending it on other CBC Radio 2 musical programs, she said on the CBC website. "The commitment we're making is that our job is to find new ways of working with musical organizations out there to make sure that innovative and creative Canadian music still gets on CBC Radio."

That might be true. When the orchestra was formed 70 years ago there was no Vancouver Symphony nor were there dynamic university music programs. Now, it could be argued, the CBC could indeed get more bang for our bucks by supporting these other groups. The fear is, of course, that the CBC will fritter away the money saved on its silly re-structuring of programming. It is significant the McGuire appears not to have mentioned classical music specifically when she talked about using the money saved on “innovative and creative” music.

What she should be required to do is to show where the money will go, and just how the CBC will preserve the heritage of serious music that the CBC Vancouver Orchestra helped establish.

And a couple of musical notes from Montreal: On Good Friday we heard an absolutely marvelous performance of Bach’s St. John’s Passion at the Church of St. Andrew and St. Paul. It looked like it was being recorded: not to be missed when it is broadcast.

April 12 the orchestra and choirs of the McGill University music school will give Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem at Église Saint-Jean Baptiste. Tickets are only $10: 514 398-4547. Definitely worth putting on your calendar if you are near Montreal.

ERDC Annual General Meeting: The Fight Continues

Last night was the annual general meeting of the Electronic Rights Defence Committee, a group which more than ten years ago took the first steps toward a multi-million dollar class action lawsuit against the publishers of The Gazette for copyright infringement of freelancers’ work dating back to 1985.

February 25-27 the Honourable Justice Eva Petras heard our request for class action authorization, and last night our lawyer Me Mireille Goulet gave a rundown on what she and the other side (now consisting of Montreal Gazette Group, CanWest Global Communications, Hollinger Canadian Publishing Holdings, CanWest Interactive, Southam and Southam Business Communications, Infomart Dialog and Cedrom-SNI) argued. David Homel, our class representative, was there too, as were several other stalwarts who attended the proceedings to show their solidarity.

We also elected a new executive. The previous members all wanted to continue and were re-elected unanimously so Ron Diamond will be treasurer; Jack Ruttan, secretary; and Ann Charney, Peter McFarlane, Stuart Robertson and Merrily Weisbord will continue as members-at-large, with myself as president. Tracy Arial and Julia Gedeon, who have been involved from the beginning, have also agreed to be members-at-large.

Me Goulet told us that we are not likely to get a decision on the class action authorization before the end of the summer: the judge has six months to study the case and render her verdict. But well before that we will launching a fund raising campaign to compensate Me Goulet. She’s been working without compensation for five years, and while she’ll get a percentage of the judgment when we get one, that may be a long time coming. So stay tuned for more about the campaign. We’ll have an announcement in a few weeks time.

Stop Before You Switch Your Light Bulbs: Fluorescent Bulbs May Actually Increase Green House Gas Emissions, Depending on Where You Live

That’s it, we’re not switching to fluorescent light bulbs.

A new report by researchers at the University of Toronto “To Switch or not to Switch : A Critical Analysis of Canada’s Ban on Incandescent Light Bulbs” indicates that using the low-heat bulbs will actually do more harm than good in a places, like Quebec, where electricity comes from “clean” sources. That’s because the heat from the old-fashioned bulbs adds marginally to the warming of the dwelling, decreasing the need to heat. The effect may be small, but the researchers say at least three Canadian provinces will actually increase their carbon footprint if their residents make the big switch.

Where electricity is generated by coal, the situation is different, the researchers agree.

Ever since the Harper government said it was going to ban incandescent bulbs in Canada by 2012, I’ve been complaining. In their current configuration they provide disagreeable light. A ban on the old fashioned kind of bulb doesn’t do anything about more important ways to save energy and cut down green house gas emissions, such as boosting public transportation and retrofitting buildings to conserve heat.

In the story in La Presse which reported the researchers' findings, little mention is made of what the effect might be in summer time when incandescent bulbs add to the ambient heat, thus possibly increasing the need for air conditioning. Maybe then the advice of my grandmother would apply though: she always said it was much cooler to sit in the dark on a summer night than under a light. Must make a comparison if summer ever comes again!

Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory: Why Obama and Clinton Must Not Fight Each Other to the Bitter End

Somewhere in the basement we have a Dukakis poster saved from the 1988 US presidential election. Actually it was the one used in the California primary that year, and I traded an Ed Broadbent/NDP poster for it when we were visiting in Fresno. That was when I was deeply involved in the NDP here, and I’d taken Broadbent posters with me in order to have an excuse to go in and talk to the Democrats. It was the middle of June and Dukakis had just won California, ensuring the nomination. But to my enormous surprise, his office was being packed up and stored until after the Democratic convention in August.

I remember telling my husband how stupid I thought that was: even if everyone was tired after a hard-fought primary campaign, they’d be much better off to keep things going at least on a minimal basis in order not to lose momentum. It was a recipe for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

That is what I fear may happen this time with the Democrats. Hillary Clinton has just committed two terrible gaffes: not commenting at greater length on the underlying sentiments Barack Obama expressed in his excellent speech last week , and mis-remembering conditions when she went to Bosnia as an emissary for Bill during the troubles there. The latter is perhaps understandable: Bosnia was a scary place in 1996, and her memories might easily have grown starker with the passage of time. The first gaffe is more serious. What Obama raised is “an important topic,” she said, before launching into an interesting but considerably more prosaic speech about Iraq and infrastructure.

To my knowledge she has not gone further than that, which just won’t cut it in my opinion. Bill Richardson, governor of New Mexico, may think the same. It is not an accident, I’m sure, that he came out for Obama a couple of days afterward.

Along with the Dukakis and Broadbent posters hidden away next to the camping equipment we haven’t used in several years, we have one other poster from the 1988 campaign. That’s the one for Jesse Jackson which I also traded for that June. This time it was in the Los Angeles airport and the young woman decked out in Jackson buttons was still campaigning for what seemed a lost cause. Unlike the two other campaign posters now hidden away, I’ve had the Jackson poster pinned up in the guest bedroom for years. Keeping the faith, I guess. Waiting for a sea change in American society.

Which might just have been accomplished.

I’ve still got some questions about Obama’s economic policy and his plan for health care, but it’s looking like he’s the person to lead the United States toward positive change on a lot of fronts. What is absolutely essential is that he and the Clintons make peace in the very near future so they can fight and beat John McCain and the Republicans. The future of the whole world is at stake.

Holidays for Everyone: A Proposal for Reasonable Accommodation

Today is Easter Monday, which is a holiday in Canada as is Good Friday. The legacy of a time when the country was overwhelmingly Christian and Quebec was almost completely Catholic, the two holidays today give ammunition to all groups who want their own religious holidays recognized. To recognize Christian festivals is all right, but if you do you must recognize the festivals of others, it seems to me. That is what “reasonable accommodation”—a phrase that has been receiving a lot air time in Quebec for the last year or so—means.

But what would happen if we changed all our legal holidays to ones which are purely secular? There are several already in both Canada and the US: Thanksgiving, Labour Day, a holiday near the end of May with various names, Patriotic celebrations in June and July, a day off in February in many places. Perhaps we should add a solstice/new year combination in December and a spring festival near the vernal equinox. This would not mean that various religions wouldn’t be able to mark their special festivals (including permission for taking a day or two off on very important days,) but that our societies would include everyone in officially sanctioned celebrations.

We are countries of immigrants, and we must not allow ourselves to be caught in a sectarian framework that no longer reflects who we are.

Saturday Photo: Spring Flowers for a Frosty Spring

No, these are not tulips growing in my garden, but some hothouse ones given us by a nice little old lady for whom we shovel snow. We'd do it anyway--our parents grew old a long distance from us and had to count on the kindness of strangers, so we figure turn about is only fair play--but she does know exactly what pleases us.

And what could be nicer on this frosty third day of spring 2008 but spring flowers. There was some melting around here, but Quebec City has now passed the 500 cm snow mark--deep as a diving pool, more than 15 feet--while traffic for 200 kilometers on the main road on the lower shore of the St. Lawrence going toward the Gaspé peninsula has been closed because of another storm.

What a winter! Do enjoy the holiday though, be it Easter or (a little late) Navrus and Purim.

Notes from the Writing Game: The Violets of Usambara Arrives! (Or Should it Be "Arrive?)

The first books arrived about 4:30 p.m. yesterday, and I can’t say how relieved I was. We’re having the first launch of The Violets of Usambara next Tuesday (6 p.m., Paragraphe Books, Sherbrooke and McGill College) but when I talked to the publisher’s office a couple of days ago, the books hadn’t arrived from the printer. I had visions of the incredible Marc Côté, Cormorant’s soul, getting on the train from Toronto next week with several boxes of late-arriving books. But it appears that all is well.

Yes, all is well. I feel particularly good about the quote that Antanas Sileika, a fine writer himself and head of the Humber College creative writing program, gave us to put on the jacket cover:

“Mary Soderstrom’s Violets of Usambara is a moving novel that explores the possibility of redemption in a morally complex world. Cutting between Canada and tension-filled Burundi, it has echoes of Graham Greene both in setting and tone, but it is above all Soderstrom’s intelligent investigation of power and its absence and love over the lifetime of a marriage.”

It is so nice when people you respect understand what you’re trying to do.

First Day of Spring? More Snow and Something to Make You Laugh

Quebec City is getting 35 cm of snow today, and, although there was some melting yesterday, we've supposed to receive a little more today too. The first day of spring, and the snow banks are still 7 feet high in the back yard!

So to celebrate here's something that may make you laugh:

Three blondes, an American, a German and a Canadian, die and find themselves before St. Peter at the pearly gates.

He tells them that before he can let them into heaven that they must explain the significance of Easter.

The blonde American says: “Easter is a big party when you eat turkey and chocolate and drink too much.”

“Nooooooo,” St. Peter cries and sends her to hell.

The blonde German says: “At Easter we celebrate the birth of Jesus and exchange gifts.”

“Nooooooo, not at all,” St. Peter cries and send her to hell.

The blonde Canadian says: “Easter is a Christian festival which usually coincides with Passover. Jesus was betrayed by Judas, then he was crucified and died. Then he was put in a big cave which was closed by a big rock.”

St. Peter is very pleased. “That’s right. Very good.”

But then the Canadian continues: “Each year since then the rock is rolled away from the entrance to the cave and Jesus comes out. If he sees his shadow, there will be six more weeks of hockey.”

And St. Peter faints…


Courtesy of Élisabeth Humblot. My translation.

Ice, Books, and Ian McEwan's Beaches on the Fifth Anniversary of the Start of the Current Iraq War

I had hoped to have some interesting feedback to share from one of my book groups on Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach. This group, which was started in the late 1960s and has been meeting every two weeks with much the same cast of characters ever since, discussed the short novel last night. I was really looking forward to learning what the others thought about the connection between “On Dover Beach” in Saturday and the setting for this book. The poem by Mathew Arnold, you’ll remember, saves Henry Perowne’s family from a crazy agressor. But Chesil Beach, in which the sea's "melancholy, long, withdrawing roar" is distantly heard , is the scene of a couple’s first, disastrous night together. No “Ah, love, let us be true/To one another! ” in this story.

The weather and the automobile did me in, however. I had forgotten to check to see if the garage door was free—it freezes up frequently when there is a little thaw and melt water drips off the roof, only to freeze at night. It took me 15 minutes on my hands and knees to chip away at the bottom to get the door open, and then when I tried to start the car nothing happened. Of course, it had sat there for nearly three weeks (February 28, I think) when I last used it to run errands and had it washed at the car wash. Lee thinks that maybe some water froze on wires to the starter motor (the car lights went on, indicating the battery is still good) but there’s not much you can do about that when you’re half an hour late already.

So I missed the meeting. Damn! Maybe in two week’s time the weather will be more clement.

In the meantime, though, a word to note the fifth anniversary of the starting of the current Iraq war. Saturday takes place on the international day of protest the month before the US and "the coalition of the willing" began the war. Perhaps a further quote from "Dover Beach" is appropriate.

"..the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night."

White Stuff And Green Business: Recycled Paper Company Has a Good and Bad Week

The last few days have been good ones and bad ones for Quebec paper company Cascades. Part of the roof on its sorting facility north of Montreal collapsed a week ago because of snow accumulation, But the “green” company got a boost Monday when the Globe and Mail reported that its paper towels were recently found to be the only product among 1,018 supposedly ecologically correct items made by many companies that wasn’t fudging green credentials.

The Globe’s story said that TerraChoice Environmental Marketing Inc. checked out products sold in big box stores against their claims, and only Cascades was telling it straight. According to the story, Cascades was begun in the 1950s when Antonio Lemaire found himself blacklisted for union organizing in a textile plant. To make a living he turned to recuperating industrial and municipal waste, in effect recycling long before the practice became the thing to do. A half century later, his son Alain directs a company that is poised to break into larger markets, the Globe’s story said.

Cascades recorded a small profit in the last quarter of 2007, much better than it had done in the same period the year before. Its products include toilet paper, paper towels, tissues, wipers, and a line of fine papers. For a complete list of products and outlets, check out the website.

As for the problems caused by damage to the plant, the company is assuring customers that it will be business more or less as usual. Sure hope so: it would be too bad if all that white stuff did in what appears to be a green enterprise worthy of encouragement.

Cheesy? Not at All. Some Favourite Cheeses Take Center Stage

A friend visiting from Vancouver laughed last week that she’d never seen people take cheese as seriously as the ones she’d shared a meal with last weekend in Montreal. “Two plates of different cheeses and an hour of conversation about where they came from and what they tasted like,” she said. “Come on. Isn’t that a bit much?”

Well, not really if you like cheese. One of the interesting things about Quebec agricultural policy was a decision about 20 years ago to increase the value added to milk production by starting a fine cheese industry. Farmers were sent to France to study, loans were available to buy equipment. Promotion campaigns were begun. The result is a very fine bunch of cheeses, ranging from old classics like Cheddar and Oka, to excellent raw goat milk cheese.

All the talk about cheese inspired Lee and me to indulge our taste for fine cheeses by having a meal on Friday (a day I’m home late) of homemade tomato soup with a spread of cheese. Delicious! And there was enough for dinner Saturday, and lunch on Sunday.

Current favourites:
Four year old Gouda from Holland
Époisses from France
Bouc émissaire from Quebec

Two favourite cheese shops: Hamel at the Jean Talon Market and Yannick, fromagerie d’exception, in our neighborhood.

Saturday Photo: The Fun Side of a Heavy Subject

Snow can be heavy stuff. The roof collapsed on a grocery warehouse in the Laurentians this week, killing three women. Today a man and his daughter in the Beauce region barely escaped when the snow load was too much for their roof. And all the kids in the Commission scolaire de Montréal were sent home at 10 a.m. Friday morning because of fears that the roofs of several schools were carrying dangerously heavy snow loads.
Crews will clear the roofs over the weekend "as a precaution," school officials say.

We're approaching snowfall records all over eastern Canada. In Montreal that's 383 cm, set in 1970-71, and only about 30 cm less than what we've received so far this season. With snowfall possible until late April we might make it. In the meantime, people are busy clearing snow from roofs, particularly in the mountains which didn't get the periods of thaw which melted some snow in Montreal.

But snow is fun, too, and the parks have been full of sledders and cross country skiers.

Department of "What Are They Smoking at the CBC?": Russell Smith's Modest Proposal

“No classical? Then kill Radio 2 and get it over with” Russell Smith said it well in Thursday’s Globe and Mail. “…the point of having a government-funded radio station is not to garner the largest possible audience; if that were the goal, and that goal were attained, such a station would be commercially viable and no longer in need of government support. I also assume that art and intellectual inquiry can sometimes be challenging and demanding of intense concentration, and that they are naturally not always going to attract lucrative audience, and that this does not make them any less valuable, which is why governments in enlightened countries support them and provide access to them.”

He ends: “..furthermore, a radio station that is indistinguishable from commercial stations--other than by its fanatical niceness—will have no reason to receive government support. why not just shut it down already?”

Right on! as we used to say.

If you want to read the whole version of the column, here's the link. You'll have to pay $4.95 to read it unless you're a Globe subscriber, however. I’d like to think that Smith will get a portion of that, but I’m pretty sure he won't. The Globe has been requiring its freelance writers to sign over their electronic rights for some time. Unlike the screenwriters of the Writers’ Guild of America, print writers get next to nothing even though they provide a substantial portion of the content for print and electronic versions of newspapers and magazines. But that’s another topic.

Hoarse, but Happy: Report on a Day Filled with Talk about Books

Yesterday I think I talked more than I ever have. Teachers and broadcasters will scoff at the four hours of class and hour and a half of book discussion I did: nothing unusual for them, I imagine. But I’ve never taught, and I’ve only come lately to leading book discussions. Until four years ago, my stock in trade was getting other people to talk—the old reporter’s task—not talking myself.

But yesterday I’d been invited to give three sessions at Cégep Brébeuf on Green City. It’s being used in an advanced English class, as the jump-off point for a research and writing project about the cities I consider in the book. The young people are Francophone, by and large, and aged from about 17 to 19. (Cégeps come after 11 years of elementary and secondary school in Québec: there are two year programs for kids who plan on going to university, and three year trade programs.) Their questions were interesting, and I enjoyed answering them. It was nice also to be able to invite them to the launch of The Violets of Usambara because there is a Brébeuf connection: the main male character Thomas Brossard, a Franco-American from Boston, spent a year boarding in Brébeuf’s high school program while his parents were divorcing.

Then last night the Atwater Book Club talked about Irène Némirovsky’s Suite Française. This is the third time I’ve led a discussion about it, and there is a great deal to talk about. I came home hoarse, but wound-up because the group always has such interesting observations. They got invites to the book launch too, of course.

And for anyone who might be interested, there will be two launches:

The publisher Cormorant Books is
sponsoring one

6 p.m. Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Paragraphe Books

2220 McGill College Avenue (corner of Sherbrooke Street)

The English translation of Hélène Dorion's latest book, Days of Sand (translated by Jonathan Kaplansky) will also be feted.


Then there will be one for Violets alone in Mile End (where a good deal of the action takes place) at

7 p.m. Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Librairie L’écume des jours
125, Saint-Viateur West
(corner of Waverley)

Rohinton Mistry Is a Class Act

Rohinton Mistry is a class act: Les Durochères got a letter from him Tuesday, thanking them for awarding him the Prix des Durochères for 2007 to his novel A Fine Balance.

You’ve probably never heard of the prize which comes with no money attached. It’s given each year by our neighborhood book group (most of us live or lived on Durocher avenue) to the best book we’ve read and discussed that year. We choose the winner at a supper in December when there is much laughter, good food and wine as well as some serious talk about books. We consider the 10 books we’ve read during the year (we meet once a month except in July and August.) The books read are frequently in French (8 of us are Francophones, and two are Anglophones) but our taste is eclectic to say the least. Once the winner is chosen one of us writes to him or her with the news about the Prix des Durochères, and we wait to see if we get a reply.

To date we’ve received three letters: Robertson Davies the year we picked The Deptford Trilogy, Yann Martel for Life of Pi, and Mistry. The year we read Blindness by Jose Saramaago one of our number was at the Guadalajara book fair when he was and she presented that year’s letter to him. In the cases when we’ve had responses, I think the writer has been charmed by being read and appreciated by women who have read their work in another language.

The letter from Mistry will go in the archives that one of our number began on a whim shortly after we started. Now more than 20 years later, we’ve collected many photos, a couple of menus, these letters, and memories of books well worth reading.

Griffintown Project: Including Larger Apartments for Families--and Boomers--in the Mix

More hearings on the Griffintown redevelopment project last night: it seems so many people want to speak that two more evenings of public hearings are planned.

Among the new things brought up are the lack of feasibilities for families—no provision for a school, few green spaces, not many apartments that would be large enough for the archetypal family of four, let alone a larger family.

The points remind me of the discussion that went on during the redevelopment of Vancouver’s Expo 86 lands. There the private developer was required to provide a certain number of subsidized housing units and two and three bedroom units. The result has been an astounding growth in the number of families in the area, with the result that the Elsie Roy elementary school was opened in 2005, the first in 30 years in the centre city. It was enough for The New York Times to pay attention: "Spurring Urban Growth in Vancouver, One Family at a Time "

Mixing ages in a neighborhood is as healthy as mixing uses. What should also be remembered that three bedroom apartments are very attractive to couples of a certain age who are looking to sell a larger house. Right now most new quality condos have only two bedrooms, although they might have two or even two and a half luxurious baths. But active and well-off retirees may want a bedroom for the grandkids when they come to visit, plus two other rooms that can be master bedroom and home office. Or—and this is the great secret of older couples—his and her bedrooms. The fires may still burn, but if one of the lovers snores, afterwards they may want to spend the night in separate rooms. No developers seem to realize this, although with Boomers aging, the market is bound to grow.

Burundi Food Production Shows Modest Improvement, but Half the Population Goes Hungry

Sobering thought: Burundi’s population has grown 33 per cent since 1988, but food production has dropped 41 per cent. The figures appear in a report prepared jointly by Burundi's Ministry of Agriculture, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), following a joint assessment in January.

Things improved slightly during the last harvest—up 2 per cent over the previous year’s—but still 600,000 of the nation’s 8 million citizens will need food aid since there is a shortfall of 486,000 tonnes of grain. A third of the population consumed only 1,400 kilo-calories per person per day while fully half of all households had what the report called “adequate, consumption in terms of quality, quantity and diversity.”

Nevertheless there is some good news. “Concerted efforts by the government and FAO…led to a gradual improvement of cassava production, a revival of large-scale gardening as a source of food and income for vulnerable households and a better banana and sweet potato crop,” the report adds. It also calls for “sustained donor support” for the country, which is” emerging from more than a decade of civil strife.’

Bujumbura, Burundi’s capital, is the scene for part of my new novel The Violets of Usambara. That we are in the middle of planning a couple of book launch events where there will be good wine and tasty nibblies is almost embarrassing when considered against the background of this report. But that is, of course, one of the concerns of the book: what is the right thing to do, and can we undo what has been done in the past?

Saturday Photo: Icicles Are Signs of Spring

It will all melt.

Have no fear. Environment Canada said today that spring will probably be cool, but no mention was made of spring not coming at all.

Another storm is forecast for this weekend, but on Friday the temperature got well above freezing and the snow began to melt in the sun. Icicles like these only form when the weather is getting warmer. They are, paradoxically, a sign that winter will not last forever.

Islam in Indiana, Wimples on Woman's Day:A Book and a Video to Recommend

The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf by Mohja Kahf was the book for one of my book groups this week. I had to miss it, and I’m sorry because I’m sure the discussion was lively.

The author, now a professor of literature at the University of Arkansas, has written a first person story about one young Muslim woman raised in Indiana and her complex relationship with the US, Islam and her own essence. She says that she wanted to call it Henna’ed Hoosiers, but that the publisher said that wouldn’t cut it. Maybe, but it gives some idea of the complexity of the story and the long journey the narrator makes.

It reminded me of Miriam Toews’s A Complicated Kindness, a book which won many awards when it was published in Canada a couple of years ago. It has the same clear-eyed regard for a closed and intense religion (Toews comes from Mennonite background) where love, anger and rejection are all mixed up together in a good story.

Definitely worth reading if you’d like to know more about Muslims in North America, and people of faith in general.

Also definitely worth a look is a video that morphs faces of women from art. The link was sent to me as a Woman’s Day Greeting, which seems to me very appropriate. It’s also available on YouTube, but I like this one better because you’re not distracted by extraneous visuals. (And do you see a similarity between some of the headgear worn by these lovely ladies, and the hidjab? Plus ça change etc.)

March Roars In: Maybe We'll Have a White Easter

Wednesday Quebec City received its 400th centimeter of snow this season, a fitting milestone in its 400th anniversary year. In Montreal we haven't had as much--only about three meters or something like 9.5 feet--but this is turning out to be a record-beating year.

I took the picture last Sunday, a beautiful mild day with blue skies and much sunshine. Lee had just finished cleaning up after the last snowfall, and the snow banks are nearly as tall as he is: you can get some idea when you realize that the fence is at least seven feet high.

Then it began to snow again, with an accumulation of about 20 cm and much wind. The drifts look to be knee deep, but I haven't gone out to check. If it weren't for the fact that we get our oil deliveries in back, I think I'd try to talk Lee into just letting things as they are until the thaw. It is early March, after all. Spring is only a little more than two weeks away!

Department of "What Are They Smoking at the CBC?": Radio Two to Be Dumb-downed further

There had been a short story in Monday’s Globe and Mail saying that Jurgen Gothe was calling it a day after 23 years on CBC Radio Two (and its predecessor,) and that Disc Drive will be deleted in another putsch on what is supposed to be Canada’s premiere music network.

Then on the 6 p.m. radio news (Radio One, of course, since Radio Two no longer has news broadcasts worth the name) Eli Glasner reported on the official announcement: Radio Two daytime programming will be revamped. He added that audience figures following the last shake-up—which changed evening programming—had not been followed by increased audience share.

Why am I not surprised? Far too much of what Radio Two is now offering is nothing that you can’t find other places. It would appear that we almost lost Saturday Afternoon at the Opera to “Opera’s Greatest Hits” or some such last fall. At least that’s the way the first of Bill Richardson’s programs went. Thank goodness cooler heads prevailed, Bill was given a chance to do some excellent interviews, and we still have real operas.

The news release says that the CBC is looking for new program ideas. Maybe I ought to come up with one. What about this: let’s showcase the hundreds of excellent serious musicians in this country! Let’s give the same kind of coverage to new classical music that Jian Gomeshi gives to new pop music! Hell, let’s be as proud of our musicians as we are of our literary superstars like Margaret Atwood and Yann Martel. We've got it, let's flaunt it!

Now if only the CBC would get the message...

Needed: Marching Orders for Afghanistan

March 4, the only day of the year that is a command. Not a bad day to talk about the wars again.

Prince Harry is back from them, looking not at all like either Laurence Olivier or Kenneth Branagh playing Prince Hal. A nice looking, well-built young man who may be a good junior officer but seems no more thoughtful than most 23 year olds I have known. That is, of course, why countries try to get their soldiers young, when they are still foolhardy and seducible,.

The news also speaks of another young man whose homecoming will be quite different. Trooper Michael Hayakaze of Lord Strathcona's Horse regiment based in Edmonton was killed Sunday by the blast from a roadside bomb. He was the 79th Canadian soldier kill in Afghanistan. A shame.

Maybe the command for today should be: March home.

Cuba and Castro: The Story Is More Complicated Than Americans Think

A ghost on the cover of The New Yorker this week, or rather the outline of Fidel Castro in smoke, to commemorate his announcement that he is stepping down.

I remember the Spanish class when our teacher Mr. Frankel practically cried, he was so happy that Batista had been overthrown. His wife was Cuban, and her family had suffered under the dictator. When Castro and his friends took over, Mr. Frankel was sure times would get better.

There’s no way of telling what happened to his wife’s family—he would be in his 80s by now, and after I left to go to university I came back only a few times. But certainly the saga of Cuba has been something to watch with interest. In Canada we’ve had a good vantage point too: there is no trade embargo here, Cuban dairy cows are descendants of Quebec cattle, Havana is a favourite winter get-away destination.

Lately, as I’ve been researching The Walkable City, I’ve learned about the way Cubans responded to the collapse of the Soviet empire in the 1990s by making a jump into green, urban agriculture that may teach us all a lot about what can be done on not much land with recycling of waste and careful cultivation. And, as it happens, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts has a big exhibit of Cuban art right now which has been getting rave reviews.

But as Castro fades to black I found these links to a very unusual look at Cuba today: two short programs about Havana produced last summer by Al Jazeerah’s English service. Check them out if you like dancing…and surprises.

Saturday Photo: Skiing and Skyline in Montreal

One of the pleasures of living in a city geared to winter is the way people combine winter sports with ordinary life. Mont Royal Park has about 10 kilometers of cross country ski trails in the middle of the city. On nice afternoons these lengthening days, a steady stream of people head for the trails.

That's the downtown skyline in the background, and this year there is even more snow (the picture was taken about a year ago when we had far less than the current record snowfall.) A sunny, cold late winter day is hard to beat.

And the bicycle? Well, an increasing number of people ride all winter, although I've yet to see anyone balancing skis while riding a bike through traffic.

Feisty Photog Fights Formidable Foe: Ron Diamond Challenges Devimco in Griffintown Development Dispute

Ron Diamond is a feisty guy. A commercial photographer who only shoots digital photos “when the client insists,” he has high aesthetic standards and is unafraid to take on the powers that be. Earlier this week he dared Devimco, the development company that wants to redo the Griffintown area of Montreal, to buy out his lease in a building which Devimco wants to tear down. According to The Gazette, Ron wants $1 million, or he won’t budge.

He is quoted as saying he spent $10,000 renovating the space into a photographic studio, and he doesn’t want to be chased out.

That sounds like Ron. He’s the treasurer of the Electronic Rights Defence Committee, and each time we’ve talked lately he’s railed over the Griffintown plans. The development would be a disaster, he says, adding that he objects strongly to the way the city of Montreal appears to be encouraging it. On Tuesday at the hearings into the ERDC’s request for class action authorization, he mentioned that he was planning to make a protest at a “consultation” on Griffintown that night.

Good for him. If he had e-mail, I’d send him a note of congratulations. But just as he prefers taking pictures with film, he doesn’t truck with computers much. When the ERDC has an email exchange on some subject, I end up printing it out and mailing it to him. His pictures are great though, I think. That's his photo of me that I use for my blogspot.com profile, and it's better than any pix that's ever been taken of me.

The world needs more talented contrarians like him.

Where's the PQ, Now that the Talking Is Getting Tough on Health Care?

Coming up for air after three days of intense concentration on the ERDC class action authorization hearing, and I realize that I haven't heard any meaningful comment from the Parti Québécois, the supposed major left wing party in Quebec provincial politics on the controversial report on health care handed down 10 days ago.

What is going on? Why hasn’t Parti Québécois leader Pauline Marois come out against the more egregious proposals of the Castonguay report on Quebec’s health care? She's made some insignificant comments, but hasn't even congratulated the one dissident voice on the panel, Michel Venne, who was named to it by the PQ.

The Liberal Health Minister Philippe Coulliard promptly said no to proposals to introduce user fees and, while he may have backpedaled some, clearly distanced himself from moves by the right wing in Quebec politics to dismantle universal health care.

The very left wing Quebec solidaire party attacked a number of the report's proposals, and the right wing ADQ (quite predictably) called for more privatization. The puzzle is why the Parti Québécois, which for so long was thought to be a rampart of progressive ideas in Quebec has said so very little

It is a most disturbing state of affairs, and one which the PQ should not let go on, at the risk of becoming completely irrelevant on the provincial scene.

But then again there are those who'd say the PQ has been irrelevant for a long time.

(Apropos of the ERDC hearings: I was so wrapped up in them that I completely forgot that I'd agreed to talk last night to a group of children's writers about royalties, taxes, and stuff like that. My sincerest apologies. I don't think I've forgotten anything so totally and inconsiderately in 20 years: the last time was when I was involved in the 1988 federal election campaign and I missed a parent-teacher meeting!)

Time and the River Flowing: Buildings, Snow, and Climate Change

A quiet interlude in a very busy week.

It is the noon break in the ERDC hearings and after a quick sandwich with other freelancers, I go back up to the 16th floor of the Palais de Justice where the hearing room is, and find a corner by a window to get some work done. No computers are available, so I lean against the wall next to one of the floor to ceiling windows and pull out a notebook to write the old fashioned way.

But outside it is snowing lightly. A bigger storm is forecast for tonight but now the temperature is around freezing and the snowflakes dance on the other side of the window. Snow covers the flat roof of the old Palais building (built in the 1920s) across the street The 15 glass pyramids which cover the skylights—like the Louvre’s pyramid in miniature—look pale green in the light, while the 16 Greek columns across the façade are several shades grayer than the snow on the sidewalks.

The “new” Palais (completed in 1971) is faced in marble whose intricate patterns I have never noticed before. But how long the panels will stay in place is a question; already the joints between three panels outside this window have begun to chip. Who is going to notice this evidence of passing time, up in the cloud sas it is? When will the windows—cold to the touch on this relatively mild winter afternoon—be retrofitted with panes that provide better insulation?

Oh dear, environmental thoughts intrude. I push them aside, because there are some words that have to be put down immediately. Yet, I can’t help noticing that the river, flowing at the bottom of the slope beyond the old Palais, is full of floating ice. Fifty, even 40 years ago it would have been frozen solid at this time of year.

Oh yes. Time and the River Flowing. We have changed things, haven’t we?

It's a Small World Department: Adrian Tomine in Mile End

I thought the name was familiar when I checked the masthead in The New Yorker to see who had done the brilliant cover, Shelf Life. “Adrian Tomine” said something to me, as the saying around here goes. And then when I was running errands on the weekend I saw the posters again. The neighborhood is plastered for his reading and appearance tonight (Tuesday, February 25) at the Drawn and Quarterly Bookstore, 211 Bernard West (two blocks east of Park Avenue.)

What I hadn’t put together is that Tomine is published by Drawn and Quarterly Press, an edgy and quite successful graphica publisher based in Montreal. It opened the bookstore about 18 months on the edge of Mile End. (There are now three independent bookstore in a two block area: besides D + Q, the excellent used bookstore S.W. Welch and the delightful French librairie L’Écume des jours are on the street south, Saint-Viateur.)

Tomine will be at D + Q at 7 p.m. tonight. Thursday February 28, he’ll be in Cambridge, MA at 6 p.m. in the Brattle Theater, an event co-sponsored with Harvard Bookstore. Then it’s on to Providence, RI on Friday, February 29, at 7:00 PM. in the Rhode Island School of Design auditorium . The week following he’ll be in Washington, D.C, on Wednesday, March 5, at 7:00 PM. at Politics & Prose.

That's terrific. With that kind of interest his books are likely to have a good, long shelf life, and are unlikely to end up being burned as in his New Yorker cover, or at S.W. Welch.

ERDC Hearing on Class Action Authorization Begins

Finally, our day(s) in court!

The Electronic Rights Defence Committee (ERDC) today begins a three day hearing before Judge Eva Petras of the Quebec Superior Court on authorization for a class action over electronic rights and copyright. It’s a saga that goes back a long way, but may yet end in affirmation of the principle that copyright rests with the creator unless specifically ceded.

On April 7, 1997, the ERDC, of which I’m the current president, took the first steps toward the multi-million dollar class action against Southam Inc, CEDROM-SNJI, Infomart-Dialog and Southam Business Communications for 37,000 instances of copyright infringement of freelancers’ work dating back to 1985.

More than ten years later, the ERDC is still up in arms over the fact that freelancers’ work was (and frequently still is) reproduced electronically without consent or compensation. David Homel has been our class representative since 2003 (our first class representatives Nancy Lyon and David Fennario had to withdraw) and the case has been modified to reflect changes in The Gazette’s ownership. The defendants now are Montreal Gazette Group, CanWest Global Communications, Hollinger Canadian Publishing Holdings, CanWest Interactive, Southam and Southam Business Communications, Infomart Dialog and Cedrom-SNI). Making these changes has slowed the case down, but we also have met with delaying tactics on the other side: it took nearly a year to arrive at a mutually agreeable date for the class authorization hearing now set for February 25-27.

Other information about class actions against newspaper and media over the issue of electronic rights grabs:

1. In October 2007 the Canadian Supreme Court ruled five to four in the Heather Robertson vs. Thomson case that freelancers do indeed hold copyright on their work reproduced in electronic data bases. This is good news, although the closeness of the decision is disappointing. Now that the points of law have been settled, the Robertson vs. Thomson case will go to trial on the question of “implied consent” September 29, 2009.

2. The US$18 million class action settlement in the United States which followed from the Tasini vs. New York Times case is currently in limbo. Some class members contested the settlement, the US Court of Appeals found problems with the definition of “class” and jurisdiction of the lower court and threw out the judgment. so even though the process of finding who is eligible to receive money began in the summer of 2005, no cheques have been given out. What comes next is up in the air.

More later, you can be sure.

Saturday Photo: Another Vision for Griffintown

This morning another slightly out of kilter Griffintown photo: the red brick building on the left contains a store front which will open as a gallery in March. In the center is a garage that specializes in auto body work, and on the right (not shown because my frozen hands didn't point the camera right and I didn't realize it until later) is a shop which makes custom bicycles.

The mix is the kind Jane Jacobs talks about in several of her books--relatively cheap rents, urban location, demand for various sevices, an incubator for ideas and industry. She would not be in favour of the Devimco plans to redevelop Griffintown: I imagine she'd say that it's on its way to redeveloping itself.

That seems to be the message of work by Robert Mellin of McGill's School of Architecture and his students. In part, he recommends that: "Development of the Griffintown area ...be permitted to happen in a long-term, incremental way so as to repair the damage wrought by drastic urban renewal and the forced resettlement of residents in the area.:

His report goes on to recommend "a vision of a “living/working” quasi-industrial, but urban landscape of production." What is not needed is " a strictly 'pleasure-oriented' landscape of consumption, with its attendant banal condos, parks, and shopping malls."

Banal? Well, that's not the word I'd use. But I agree there's a lot to be lost if Montreal and Devimco proceeds with the sort of "lifestyle centre" development they're proposing. The borough council will discuss the project March 10.

Adrian Tomine's "Shelf Life "Is Enough to Make a Writer Weep--with Laughter and Despair

The New Yorker cover for the coming week depicts just what happens to many books. Entitled "Shelf Life," it shows graphically what a short time a book has to prove itself on the market place, and in people's hearts.

Not a cheery thought, as we prepare to launch The Violets of Usambara at the end of March. Plans are being made for launch party at Paragraphe Books Tuesday March 25 (along with Hélène Dorion whose Days of Sands, translated by Jonathan Kaplansky, is also being published by Cormorant this spring) and for one featuring Violets alone in Montreal's Mile End district where half the book takes place. That one will be Wednesday, April 2, at Librairie l'Écume des jours: more details coming up later.

The New Yorker, bless its elitist little head, has had a string of articles lately about publishing and editing, which I've commented on previously. Anyone who has literary ambitions ought to read them. But this new cover shows just what a writer is up against. Writing is tough work, and then you get burned.

Quebec Heath Care Report: Zombie Ideas May Be Laid to Rest Once Again

One of the more heartening things of this not-very-old year is the way that the report on Quebec’s health care system, chaired by Claude Castonguay, has been roundly criticized by the health minister Philippe Couillard and many others, both in and out of government.

The fear had been that in appointing Castonguay to head the inquiry, the current provincial government was stacking the deck. Castonguay was indeed the architect of Quebec’s version of Medicare, but since then he has worked in the insurance industry and has spoken frequently in favour of more private health insurance and a greater role for the private sector.

The report does suggest adding a user fee ($25 a doctor’s visit, to be tacked on your income tax) and/or increasing the sales tax to add more money to the health care pot. A string of research shows that neither user fees, but the idea is what British Columbia health economist Robert Evans calls a “zombie” because it keeps coming back from the dead.

In Quebec its latest resurrection appears to have been soundly put down: Le Devoir’s headline Wednesday was “Couillard Says No!” Also seemingly rejected was the possibility of allowing doctors to practice in both the private and the public sector: currently they must choose between them.

Some of the report’s points probably bear further discussion. Why is it, for example, that Quebec has a higher per capita ratio of doctors than other provinces, but still is running into problems with waiting lists and supply of family physicians? It could be because more Quebec doctors are women who are choosing to share practices or to practice shorter hours, which is not a bad thing necessarily. Or it could mean there are some structural problems that need be rejigging.

Just because the worst seems to have been avoided, and the current government will not rush into undercutting our free, universally accessible health care system, we should not be complacent. Decent governance—like healthful living—requires constant vigilance. And maybe some garlic too, to boost our immune systems and to keep the zombies at bay.

What is Stephen Harper Reading? Hot Thoughts or Cool Reflections

What is Stephen Harper reading? Some pretty hot stuff, if he’s plunged into the latest book that Yann Martel has sent him—or some very intellectual musings, if he’s begun reading the offering before that.

You’ll remember that Martel began sending a book every two weeks last spring when he decided that Harper needed to have something good to read before bedtime that would promote “stillness.” In early February, Martel sent the Prime Minister Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.

“Marcus Aurelius was a man of great ability selected to be Roman emperor. In other words, he was a politician, and, like you, a busy one; he spent much of his time battling barbarian hordes on the frontiers of the empire,” Martel says in his cover letter. “But at the same time, he was a thinking man—with a penchant for philosophy—who put his thoughts down on the page. He was a writer.” The book, Martel says, is “the perfect book for you, Mr. Harper. A practical book on thinking, being and acting by a philosopher-king.”

But this week, Martel sent something quite different: Artists and Models, by Anaïs Nin. It is very cold in Saskatchewan where Martel is living now, he writes, and this book is something to warm things up a bit. Nin, a diarist and novelist, wrote abundantly and freely about her life in France and the United States. Some of it is “Hot stuff. Kinky stuff,” Martel writes. This book may leave Harper cold, he acknowledges, but “it bears noting that while covering our loins and our hearts with clothes is often useful—it’s minus 23 degrees Celsius outside as I write these words—there is the risk that they are also hiding, perhaps burying, an essential part of us, one that does not think but rather feels. Clothes are the commonest trappings of vanity. When we are naked, we are honest. That is the essential quality of these lustful stories of Nin, embellished or wholly invented though they might be: their honesty.”

It will be interesting to see if either of these books gets a response—not likely, seeing that Harper’s office has only acknowledged the first offering, The Death of Ivan Illych by Leo Tolstoy. But the idea of Harper starting out first with Marcus Aurelius and then turning to Anaïs Nin in bed is mind-blowing, as we used to say.

Tonight, however, I’m returning to the Tolstoy book in the first of a series of book discussions in French at the Kirkland Library in suburban Montreal. This is the third time I’ve led such a discussion, and each time I see more things in the book. It was great choice to kick off Martel’s Stephen Harper book club.

Quebec Agriculture Commission Report Covers a Lot of Territory

A big report on the future of Quebec agriculture and food production came own last week, and the scope of its recommendations can be seen in the wide diversity of the headlines it provoked. The Gazette led with the idea that all Quebec farmers should emulate its cheese producers, and go for high quality, value added products in the future.

The Globe and Mail’s report on business picked the recommendation that Quebec farmers’ groups—particularly the Union des producteurs agricoles—should be shaken up, so that farmers can choose which organization they join.

Grainnews, a farmers’ news service, talked about the recommendation that calls for cutting back on regulations: ‘Quebec farming risks "suffocating:" commission’

Le Devoir said that farmers who are respectful of the environment will get more help in the future if the commission's recommendations are followed.

What didn’t come out--in the headlines at least-- is any recommendations about safe-guarding agricultural land around cities threatened by suburban development. That the topic appears not to be mentioned—although at least one presentation during the year touched on it—is probably a good thing. But it will be something I’ll keep my eyes on. Maintaining the current agricultural zoning is going to be essential in any attempt to keep urban places from over flowing into agricultural land in the future.

The Great Dish Washing Challenge: Hand or Machine? And What about Those Phosphates?

Canada’s Conservative government says it will bring down the limit on allowable phosphates in detergents to .5 per cent in 2010. Far too late, environmental critics are saying. Quebec, like Manitoba, will impose the limit next year, while several Quebec retailers have begun to promote low phosphate products already.

The aim, of course, is to stop phosphate from polluting water courses and lakes with chemicals which spur the growth of blue green algae. Serious water pollution may be the result. But why wait two years to impose the limits, environmentalists are asking A year is plenty of time for manufacturers to get rid of stocks, and there are a number of products—including homegrown ones—ready to fill the demand.

The saddest thing in this debate is the fact that nearly 30 years ago citizen pressure resulted in a substantial decrease in the phosphate content of detergent for clothes washing machines. At the time, it seemed the problem was going to be solved, but not only were detergents for dishwashers exempted from the regulations but also apparently no phosphate limits were put on other kinds of cleaners.

Today there are a lot more dishwashers than there were so long ago, producing a much greater phosphate load than was expected in the 1970s. If there is a moral to this story it is: do not trust a government or an industry to quietly lay down their arms if there is a way around a regulation.

A related question is: why use dishwashers anyway? New models use between 3 and 10 gallons of water per wash, apparently, but hand washing uses about half that if you are turn off the faucet between rinses. And while it may be nice to fill a dishwasher after a dinner party and turn the thing on while you go to bed to sleep off the good food and drink, for ordinary meals I’m not convinced you save much time—and certainly use more energy and water—if you use a machine.

Not convinced? A study cited on Treehugger says that new, high efficiency European machines are better environmentally than hand washing, but as the comments suggest the study may have some built-in biases in favour of the machines. Maybe we need a dish washing bee to compare technique and water use. What do you say?

Saturday Photo: Floral Extravagance

There are times when being well-behaved just doesn't cut it, and I think the middle of the winter is one of them. I love the way amaryllis flowers are anything but self-effacing. They are gorgeous, big, flashy, improvident, and wonderful. Can you imagine anything more spectacular than plants which give you two flower stocks per bulb with four flowers per stock? That they bloom when the world is full of darkness is even more fabulous.

These amaryllis are ones sold by the Canadian Huntington Foundation. For the last several years we've bought two (one of Lee's colleagues sells them) and they've lit up the darkest days of winter. Friends have been able to coax them into bloom a second year, but so far I haven't. At the moment four bulbs from previous years sit in pots in the basement, sprouting leaves, so I shall try again. But even if I don't get more flowers, we've had a grand show for a good cause.

Tough Films about Tough Situations: Family Motel and Is My Story Hurting You? at Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois

This weekend the Rendez-vous de cinema québécois begins, and films by two friends will be getting prominent play. One is a wonderful docudrama by Helene Klowdawsky, Family Motel, which we saw at the end of the summer during the Montreal World Film Festival. It tells the story of a hardworking Somali mother, who struggles to send money back to her husband and sons stranded in that country, finds herself over her head in Ottawa where she is living with her two teenaged daughters. They end up in Family Motel when they are evicted from their apartment. The story is one of those which is “truer” than a documentary: the three actresses at the center of the film are really mother and daughters, but the story is not really their story. Nevertheless it captures the spirit and courage it takes to try to make it in North America, even when you have already passed the hurdle of getting official refugee status.

It will be screened Saturday February 16, 3 p.m. at the Cinema du Parc
3575, avenue du Parc and Thursday, February 21, at the Centre Segal des arts de la scène, 5170, chemin de la Côte-Ste-Catherine.

The other is the first film directed by novelist David Homel, whose novel about the war in Serbia, The Speaking Cure, won the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction in 2003. Is My Story Hurting You? is a documentary focusing on Vladimir Jovic, a Bosnian Serb psychiatrist who saw the break-up of his country and the end of Slobodan Milosevic's dictatorship. I haven’t seen the film, but the novel was first rate and I know that David has poured great skill and passion into making the film.
The film will be shown in a French version on Sunday, February 17 at 8 p.m. at the National Film Board cinema (1564, rue Saint-Denis) and in English on Tuesday February 19 at the Centre Segal des arts de la scène (5170, chemin de la Côte-Sainte-Catherine).


Both are highly recommended. And it’s also worth noting that both films received considerable encouragement from the National Film Board, a unique organization which supports films that would never be made if the filmaker had to depend on commercial markets.

Balance: What's Needed These Days

Because it's semi-holiday, here's a little story to make you smile. Courtesy of a friend who was born in Washington State and who would like to see a change in the White House, as you might guess,

Balance

God was missing for six days. Eventually, Michael, the archangel, found him, resting on the seventh day. He inquired of God. "Where have you been?"

God sighed a deep sigh of satisfaction, and proudly pointed downwards through the clouds, "Look, Michael. Look what I've made."

Archangel Michael looked puzzled, and said, "What is it?"

"It's a planet," replied God, "and I've put Life on it. I'm going to call it Earth and it's going to be a great place of balance."

"Balance?" inquired Michael, still confused.

God explained, pointing to different parts of earth. "For example, that place will be be full of useful meals and that place will be good for growing things. There will be white people and black people, and people in between. There will be balance in all things,"

God continued pointing to different countries. "This one will be extremely hot, while this one will be very cold and covered in ice."

The Archangel, impressed by God's work, then pointed to a land area and said, "What's that one?"

"Ah," said God "That's Washington State, the most glorious place on earth. There are beautiful mountains, rivers and streams, lakes, forests, hills, plains, and coulees. The people from Washington State are going to be handsome, modest, intelligent, and humorous, and they are going to be found traveling the world. They will be extremely sociable, hardworking, high achieving, and they will be known throughout the world as diplomats, and carriers of peace."

Michael gasped in wonder and admiration, but then proclaimed, "What about balance, God? You said there would be balance."

God smiled, "There is another Washington...wait until you see the idiots I put there."

Art and Crime and the Desire to Possess: Pictures Stolen from Arms Magnate's Museum

The picture of the young man on the front pages this morning jumped out at me. It is Paul Cezanne’s "Boy in a Red Vest," which I have stared at often, trying to figure out just what is wrong with his arms. The painting would be arresting anyway, but one arm would be longer than the other if they were extended, I’m sure. Was that intentional? What does it say about Cezanne and the way he saw the world?

The reproduction I have of the painting is in the catalogue of an exhibit which visited Montreal in 1990, The Passionate Eye: Impressionist and Other Master Paintings from the E.G. Bührle Collection, (Zurich, Artemis, 1990.) It was a fabulous exhibit from a fabulous collection and I returned several times. Aside from the truly astounding paintings, I found myself wondering about the ethics of one man collecting so many masterworks, particularly when the money he used to buy them came from his Oerlikon armaments factories. The question so preoccupied me that I put it at the center of my new novel The Violets of Usambara, where the main female character finds herself asking the same questions, while her politician husband wants her to make nice with the Bürhle family because Oerlikon is building new installations in Quebec.

Yesterday Marc Côté of Cormorant Books called me with one last question before the book was sent to the printers. This morning reproductions of the painting are everywhere because thieves stole it and three others from the Bürhle museum in Zurich on Sunday. Clearly the appeal of these paintings transcends morals: somone must have them, no matter what. And what does that say about art?

Photo: Reuters

Stories Told by Children: Lullabies for Little Criminals and Lignes de faille

The Atwater Book Club and the Causeries littéraires d’Outremont begin again this week, after a hiatus for the month of January. The first month of the year is a good one for reading, but given the uncertain weather, it is not a good one to get people out in the evening to talk books. But February—well, February is a month of cold and ice, but also the days are growing perceptibly longer and I’ve found folks welcome a chance to do something.

So last night in Outremont we talked about Nancy Huston’s Fault Lines, or Lignes de faille, as it is called in her original French version. The book won the Prix Femina in 2006, but only found English language publishers last year because of the snotty comments of one of the book’s narrators, Sol, with which Huston begins the telling of her tale. It is told in four voices, each of a child of six, and goes from the present (2004) to the past, until several mysteries, personal as well as historical, are uncovered.

The book for tonight at Atwater also has a precocious child as a narrator. Baby in Heather O’Neil’s Lullabies for Little Criminals speaks in a voice that seems to me at least more authentic than those of Huston’s characters. The story she has to tell is just as harrowing, but not at all overtly political.


Both books are excellent reading, and make one reflect about the innocence of childhood. How much we know when we aren't supposed to know!

Culinary Time Travel: Supper from 1750 in New France

A very grand pleasure this weekend: Elin’s conjoint Emmanuel Nivon—with her help—presented Lee and me and Sophie and Lukas with a delayed Christmas present, a 10 course meal from the New France of 1750. Emmanuel is a passionate historian, who has worked a lot for Parks Canada as a guide and who has an amazing collection of 18th century objects. The menu, he explained over drinks, olives and almonds, was what an upper middle class family in Montreal or Quebec City might enjoy on a special occasion during the height of the French regime. (One of the things he does is give workshops to school and interest groups on life in New France in English and French: I can’t imagine a better way to learn about the past.)

We were to serve ourselves from the dishes as they came to table, he explained. The custom was to present as many dishes a possible, but the company was not expected to eat everything since the left-overs would feed the rest of the family, its employees and servants for subsequent meals. That’s a good thing because we couldn’t possibly have eaten everything, even though it was delicious.

The table was set with rimmed plates that somewhat resembled a soup dish, a soup spoon, napkin (on the right), two pronged-fork, a broad, unsharpened knife and a small loaf of bread. When we got to the meats that needed to be cut, Emmanuel feigned surprise that we didn’t have our own pocket knives with us (in 18th century New France we would have, it seems) and produced folding knives for us to use.

The first course—a farmer’s soup of rich home-made stock and vegetables--was served in the dish, and Emmanuel said to sop up any left with the bread broken off the bread. We kept our plates for each of the following courses: very few people would have had a service large enough to provide separate plates for each new dish, Emmanuel said. In between we scoured our plates with bread. There were pitchers of blonde beer, and carafes of red Bordeaux, white Burgundy and water to drink, all served in the same glass too.

Next came boudin noir and boudin blanc, sausages made from blood and ground fowl, followed by a kind of empanada (he said they show up as paté espagnol in the old documents) filled with salmon, and white fish rissoles. After that there was a ragout of capon in a cream sauce and roast pork with tangy mustard sauce “à la diable,” accompanied by wild rice, and green peas cooked with ham..

When I found myself struggling with the peas—ever try to scoop them up with a two-tined fork?--Lukas suggested I try the broad knife, which he was using. Emmanuel nodded in agreement. Suddenly I remembered my father chanting: “I eat my peas with honey, I’ve done it all my life./ It makes the peas taste funny, but it keeps them on my knife.” Ah yes, the world connects in the most amazing ways!

After that we had a little break with radishes and cucumbers to dip in salt—white salt from Camargue, not the gray stuff that would have been imported from the west of France and which contained impurities we might find delightful now. Gruyère and Gouda—both of which were imported into the colony in the 18th century—followed as a cheese course. The dessert was fresh cream cheese, with apricot and cherry preserves. accompanied by coffee and Italian macaroons. Rum from Saint Domingue (the island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic today) rounded things off.

The meal lasted five and a half hours with much laughter and good talk. Truly an unforgettable evening!

Saturday Photo: Green Light to Right Turn...Or to Griffintown Development

Green light to a right turn on Ottawa Street: with talk of an impending vote on Canada's role in Afghanistan which may bring down the Conservative minority government, the picture seems either prescient, or menacing, depending on where you sit on the politcal spectrum.

Actually it is was taken in the heart of Griffintown, "the city below the hill." which once hummed with industry. Plans to redevelop 10.2 hectares of it will be aired on February 21 by the developer Devimco, while a public discussion is scheduled by the borough council for March 10.

Another part of town which once looked nearly as forlorn as Griffintown and is now bustling was in the news this week. The idea is to make part of St. Catherine Street running through the Gay Village into a pedestrian mall during the summer months. An interesting plan--and one supported by merchants and residents--but summer seems such a long time off!

Rabaska and Gros Cacouna: Supply Side Problems May Do What Environmentalists Haven't Done So Far

Will there be a liquid natural gas (LNG) port on the St. Lawrence after all?

Assuring supplies of LNG is proving harder than expected, stockholders in Gaz Métropolitain learned Wednesday at their annual general meeting. Sophie Brochu, Gaz Metro president, noted that with the increasing demand for natural gas, competition for supply contracts is becoming hotter. The utility is part of the Rabaska consortium that wants to build an LNG port near Lévis, across from Quebec City. Spokespersons for another LNG project a little down stream at Gros Cacouna said earlier that it also was having to push back its schedule because of delays.

Both projects have been given green lights by the provincial government, but opposition from environmental groups has been strong.

“Today it’s not Cacouna against Rabaska, it’s Quebec against the rest of the planet when it comes to attracting liquid natural gas to its territory,” Brochu said. So far Rabaska has spent more than $45 million other project, with Gaz Métro picking up a third of the tab, according to Le Devoir.

This morning the newspaper also reported that, if one or both of the projects finally does materialize, Quebec may find itself being forced to give preference to US markets in time of international emergency and short LNG supplies. Under NAFTA agreements, a certain proportion of production must be guaranteed for export to the US, Charles-Emmanuel Côté, an international law professor at Laval University, said in a report prepared a year ago for presentation during environmental hearings on the project. That means that Quebec could not increase the share of production for domestic needs even if total production is curtailed.

Blogging The New York Review of Books

When I was in university I remember a professor—his name escapes me, such are the vagaries of time—who told the class with great passion: “If you have any interest in the life of the mind, you must read The New York Review of Books.”

At the time I had just discovered the publication myself, and found the essays which grew out of a review of one or more books absolutely fascinating. Yes, I said to myself then. Right on!

Over the years we have usually had a subscription, and while Lee always reads it (sometimes months and months after an issue has arrived,) recently I have grown impatient with the articles’ wordiness, lack of focus and too-predictable opinions. The wordy “fusty” had begun to come to mind with I thought of it.

The Feb. 14 issue has an article about blogs though, so I grabbed it before it disappeared into Lee’s pile of “must read—some day.” The essay is by Sara Boxer who reviews 11 books on blogs and bloggers. That she sees fit to give an etymological note on “blog” (comes from “web log,” in case you forgot) suggests that the NYRB expects its readers to be not very engaged in electronic culture. That Boxer compares the casual tone of most blogs with the opening of Plato’s Republic tells you a lot about the readers’ cultural baggage. And that she goes on for 4150 words says more than you need to know about editing at the NYRB.

Who will take time to read anything that long? Not many bloggers.

Required Reading for Clinton and Obama: Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine

As we waited to hear how the primaries went yesterday, I finished reading The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. Now I'm thinkinig of sending copies to both Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama because nowhere have I seen such a brilliant analysis of how disasters (economic, natural and jingoistic) have been turned into power grabs and chances to make fortunes.

Since the 1970s neo-conservatives, influenced by the school of economic thought created by Milton Friedman, have used every excuse to advance their free market ideas. Klein quotes Friedman: ‘Only a crisis--actual or perceived--produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.”

Clinton and Obama must have a similar, countervailing set of ideas ready and be prepared to fight the neo-cons who may lose the White House in November but aren’t going to lose their economic clout. If they don't have time to read the book, here's the link to Klein's thoughts on the threatened recession: "Why The Right Loves A Disaster"

Klein’s book is right up there with Paul Krugman’s The Conscience of a Liberal, and Chantal Hébert’s French Kiss as must-reads for anyone who cares about the world.

"Super Mardi:" The View from Radio Canada

According to Radio Canada this morning, there are 600,000 expat Americans in Canada who have the right to vote today in the 24 presidential primaries in the US.

Radio Canada news—the CBC’s French equivalent—sent a reporter to poke around the headquarters of Republican candidates Romney and McCain in California. What she came up with was several sound bites of supporters of the two frontrunners commenting in painfully accented but quite correct French. What they said was nothing new—we need a man more like Reagan, and Romney’s experience as a businessman will make him a good president, and McCain is a real hero—but I’m always surprised when reporters are able to discover Americans who speak other languages well.

Growing up the San Diego, there were few around me who considered learning another language well important. A little Spanish, maybe, if you wanted to shop in Tijuana. Or perhaps Russian, because it was thought good to know the enemy: after all it was the Cold War and beginning of the Space Age. I had to learn my French as an adult here, which means that I am forever “branded on my tongue” as George Orwell said about accents.

Radio Can also reported that American expat Democrats can vote on-line, while Republicans can vote in special voting places in Canadian cities. Don’t know how widespread this is, but California and Michigan resortissants vote by mail-in absentee ballot. This means that the votes for John Edwards of a number of people I know are lost somewhere in limbo since the ballots were mailed before he withdrew.

Gardening and God Department: Coaxing Cactus into Bloom

The days are getting longer: sunset is after 5 p.m., and it’s light before 7 a.m. Even though the groundhog didn’t see his shadow here on Saturday—it was cloudy with the tail end of a snow storm—and without a doubt we’d have six more weeks of winter anyway, the year is progressing.

But my one of my Christmas cactuses is in bloom again! Of course that’s related to winter sunshine, but still I find it a small miracle. Since the plants are sensitive to the length of day, I’ve found that they'll bloom a second time if I put them back in a place where they get sun but not for too many hours a day. So this weekend I brought downstairs the one that had bloomed in early November and which now is in bloom again. The other one, whose last flowers fell a couple of weeks ago, is back in the sunny window, in hopes that it can be coaxed into flower again.

Louise Brossard, the major female character in my new novel The Violets of Usambara, grows African violets, not Christmas cactuses, but she loves playing God with her plants. A writer often doesn't know just here his or her characters' attributes come from--and I certainly am not Louise--I understand Louise's delight in manipulating circumstances in hopes of creating something marvelous.

Saturday Photo: Griffintown on a Winter Day

Griffintown, whose grid-like subdivision pre-dates Manhattan's by several years, may become a new "lifestyle centre." Or at least that is what development company Devimco is pushing. The same day that I visited Dix30--their "lifestyle centre" set at the junction of two expressways on the South Shore of the St. Lawrence--I wandered around Griffintown too. What difference! (Check out last week's Saturday photo for a look.

This picture is a little crooked but it was so cold I had trouble keeping my hands steady. You'll notice that this building--whose electrical system appears to be up to code--is already for sale.

Ozone to Treat Montreal's Sewage: the Last Step in a Long Anti-Pollution March?

The province of Quebec and Montreal are near agreement, it appears, on a $200 million plan to treat the city’s sewage with ozone, Le Devoir reported this week. The procedure should disinfect the effluent as well as destroy residual medication excreted by the 2 million people in the catchment area. Twenty years ago when the current treatment facility was opened at the eastern tip of the island, the idea was to provide primary and secondary treatment, that is to remove solid waste and part of the rest. But concern has grown about the effects of what on life in the river and on the health of people who drink the water taken from the river farther downstream, even when it is purified conventionally.

The magnitude of the sewage problem was not recognized until the 1970s, and my first introduction into political action here came with the campaign for sewage treatment. Happily, the quality of water in the rivers around Montreal have improved remarkably since the Montreal plant—and others treating waste from off-island communities—was opened. More beaches may actually be opened to swimming soon. But it’s good to hear that the job started so long ago by STOP (the Society to Overcome Pollution) and SVP (la Société de vaincre la pollution) so long ago may finally be properly completed.

PS Just discovered that the National Film Board of Canada still has a charming little documentary about STOP “Persistent and Finagling” (1971.) How many women started raising hell with causes that touched their families!