Reading for the Day after the Election: Yann Martel, Stephen Harper, and Thomas Mulcair

Among the many things that occur to me this morning after the Canadian election is that Yann Martel is going to have up to five more years of sending Stephen Harper books every two weeks. I have no doubt he'll find much good reading to send the PM--still head of a minority government even though he thought he'd get a majority--but I'm sure Martel is disappointed that it is necessary. He'd hoped that his campaign to provide the PM with a little instructive and pleasurable bedtime reading would only last a few months when he began more than a year ago.

As Martel wrote in the letter accompanying Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange sent the day before the election, "There’s an element in the novel that is eerily familiar. The government under which Alex (the hero) lives is democratically elected, yet it has recourse to policies that undermine the foundations of democracy. We have seen these kinds of policies for eight years now in the United States, a country morally bankrupted by its current president. You claim to have a solution for what to do with Alex. The experts disagree with you, and the courts and the people, certainly the people in Quebec, are also resisting your ideas, but you think you know better.

"Are you sure, Mr. Harper, that what you have up your sleeve aren’t so many" of the same method used to brainwash Alex?

Let us hope that the three opposition parties will find common cause frequently in the next Parliament and thus be able to turn back the retrograde, ill-considered, uneffective program of the Conservative Party.

And it's good to see that Tom Mulcair won again in Outremont, proving that his by election victory wasn't a fluke. I spent 12 hours helping to get out the vote, climbing stairs to triplexes, knocking on doors, explaining how important this election was. The work paid off because the gang of NDP volunteers--almost all young, I was older by 20 years than the vast majority of them--brought Mulcair a significant victory.

Kudos also to Anne Lagacé Dowson and her excellent team in Westmount-Ville Marie. What a great job against very tough odds!

Krugman Wins Nobel for Economics: A Harbinger of Change in the Right Directon?

Great news Monday morning: Paul Krugman got the Nobel for economics. His win was big surprise, because the prize has gone most often to conservative thinkers and upholders of the ideas that perfect competition can be assumed and that the market always works.

As we have been seeing over the last few months, that kind of ideology is filled with holes, and unfortunately the world seems to have fallen into one of them. Krugman thinks the Brits may have found a way for us to fall out--he said in an interview today that he felt more hopeful after Sunday's meeting of European finance ministers than he had on Thursday--but the really encouraging thing is that perhaps the era of blind faith in retrograde economics may be ending.

Let us hope that Canadians vote strongly in favour of more progressive ideas today.

Happy Thanksgiving, and Let's Get the Good Guys to Out Vote

It's Thanksgiving Day in Canada and we are recovering from our Thanksgiving dinner yesterday. About 30 people ranging age from 14 months to 83 years--a great pleasure to see so many friends and family. We did the turkey, chicken, a Vegan chili and some vegies and everyone else brought a great variety of delicious things. The coup de théâtre came when Emmanuel, Elin's cojoint, carved the turkey on a movable cart next to the buffet table. White or dark, as you liked it. Great fun!

And today, once everything is put away, the task is help Tom Mulcair win this election.

Enjoy the holiday, and figure out who you should vote for in order to stop Harper. The news this morning had Elizabeth May of the Greens telling her supporters to vote for her only where an opposition canidate was out of the running: in other words, anybody but Harper.

Saturday Photo: Good News on the Tar Spot Front

A summer of rain, last year's effort to rake up infected leaves, or maybe just the natural immune system of trees. Whatever the reason this year the dreaded tar spot disease has not been as prevalent. These leaves were picked up yesterday, as the fall colours begin to come out spectacularly. A year ago not one of the leaves would not have been splotched with fungus growths which look just like tar spots.

A little hope for the world!

Voting on Things Other Than Political Candidates: Horsetrading and Literary Prizes

Recently I’ve had the interesting but pleasurable experience of being on the jury for a literary prize in another province. We were asked to read about 30 books, and to come up with a winner and a short list of no fewer than five others. It was a relatively painless process since there was general agreement about the best. In addition there was no maximum number for the short list so we could add favourites to it which weren’t unanimous. The result will be known in November so I won’t say who won or even what province it was, but I thought of our cordial deliberations when I read an item from The Guardian which Quillblog points out in the run-up to the literary prize season.

The British newspaper talked to one member of every jury over the 40 year history of the Booker, and the result is both entertaining and very instructive about the process. Obviously there’s a lot of horse trading when the stakes are so high and only one book can bring home the prize.

The moral is: make sure that the juries change every year. That doesn’t happen with the Nobel Prize jury apparently, which allowed one misogynistic juror to block giving the prize to women for more than 20 years. As for this year’s prize winner, Le Clezio, I haven’t read anything by him, but like many others I’ll be looking for books by him the next time I go browsing for something to read.

What the Crash of 1873 Means Today, Or Emile Zola, Greed and the Current Economic Mess

Of all the novels by Zola, why did you choose La Curée (The Kill in English) to discuss: that’s a question I’ve been asked several times this fall at the book discussions I lead in four Montreal libraries. My answer until now has been that it is a good yarn and when I read it in the summer of 2007 while researching my book The Walkable City: From Haussmann’s Boulevards to Jane Jacobs’ Streets and Beyond I was struck by how much Aristide Saccard, the developer at the heart of the novel, resembled people involved in cities today.

According to Zola’s story, Saccard made a fortune in the Haussmannian re-building of Paris in the 1860s and early 1870s. How like the men behind the plans to redevelop Griffintown in Montreal. I thought. The developer Devimco has wrested big zoning concessions from the city with promises of a massive shopping/office/housing project that will radically change part of Montreal’s old industrial area. For a while it looked like Devimco was getting a license to make money while doing great damage to the city’s urban fabric.

Just how apt that comparison is came home this morning when I opened Le Devoir to read historian Scott Reynolds Nelson of William and Mary comparing the current economic crisis not to 1929, but to that of 1873. Real estate speculation, shaky financial arrangements, unsecured loans and most of all greed were behind that crash. “Land values seemed to climb and climb; borrowers ravenously assumed more and more credit, using unbuilt or half-built houses as collateral. The most marvelous spots for sightseers in the (Paris, Berlin and Vienna) today are the magisterial buildings erected in the so-called founder period,” Nelson writes in an article called “The Real Great Depression” published in The Chronicle Review and taken from the Oct. 17 number of The Chronicles of Higher Education, When the bubble burst the depression which followed lasted four years in North America and seven years in Europe, he says.

Needless to say tonight when we talk about La Curée in Kirkland, I’ll have his article on hand as well as the one from Le Devoir which includes comments from local historians on the effect of the 1873 Crisis. According to Jean-Claude Robert of the Université du Québec à Montréal, the slump here led to thousands of Québécois moving to the US North East to find work in the factories there. Should be a good discussion tonight, I think.

Problems with Private Public Partnerships: They Don't Save Money in Health Care, and They May Well Not Be Able to Renew Our Infrastructure

More Public Private Partnership woes: Martine M. Bellanger, economics professor at the French École des hatues études en santé publique, reports that European and North American experience shows that costs are higher in PPPs for health care than in publicly financed health services.

Governments have access to lower interest rates, she notes, adding that in the UK, where Margaret Thatcher’s government set up the first PPPs in 1992, the current government stopped plans for more in 2006. The fact that the profit motive is closely linked to any PPP also works against PPPs actually saving any money.

At the same time, the Quebec government announced that it will go ahead with a PPP to build an extension of highway 30 south west of Montreal. The project is supposed to cost $1.5 billion, or $43 million a year over 35 years. The same Le Devoir story that told of the agreement quoted government and consortium officials as saying the current financial turbulence shouldn’t affect the long term success of the project. Any further PPPs will be much harder to arranged, Pierre Lefebvre, the head of the PPP agency, admitted, however.

It remains to be seen how the credit crunch which is affecting banks and financial markets all over the world plays out in providing the renewal of infrastructure and the health system that we are going to need over the next decade. Setting up PPPs where the motivation is profit doesn’t seem to me to be a wise use of either our energy or of the money which the public sector will have available to invest in the fulfilling the needs of citizens.

Of Slugs and Life Cycles: Early October Notes

Indian summer, Véronique the weather woman explained on Radio Can this morning, is when we get three sunny day with temperatures above normal after the first frost. In Montreal we aren’t there yet, since there hasn’t yet been frost, but certainly after several nights of near freezing temperatures today looks like Indian summer—clear blue sky and lots of sun. What my mother called “October’s Bright Blue Weather.” Lee says this is the finest season of the year

However, one of the downsides of this splendid season is that tender plants have to brought inside to escape the cold. Not only is it fair amount of work, but sometimes you bring in more than the Boston ferns, begonias and the like. Last night I saw a glob of something on the floor of the living room, and discovered a slug, valiantly making its way across the polished hard wood toward…well, I imagine it was seeking a place of shade and moisture.

Like the insects that Renaissance painters often put among flowers and lush vegetables in their still lifes to indicate the tension between the abundance of life and our eventual death, the beastie made me think of the various fashions one can view things. I profoundly dislike slugs, and I dropped this one in the trash with no compunction. Yet its end must have been a tragedy in slug terms. Slugs, like the lovely spider in Charlotte's Web, die in the fall.

Those painters knew that we will die too. For the generations brought up since the advent of antibiotic and vaccines against many killer diseases in peaceful countries, death is a stranger, so it is understandable that many of us forget that simple fact. Knowing that is essential to making the most of what we have and can do between now and the end--and hope that our fall will not come either painfully or before our time.

Carpe diem!

Time and Tide Wait for No Man, and Stephen Harper's May Be on the Wane

A week and a day before the Canadian federal election, and perhaps the tide is turning. A Canadian Press –Decima poll show Conservative support slipping to its lowest since the campaign started, while the NDP and the Greens have made nice gains and the Liberals remained steady. Stephen Harper’s gang had 39 per cent on Sept. 17-20, but only 34 last week, the Liberals 23 vs 24, the NDP 17 vs 20, the Greens 11 vs 13, and the Bloc, steady at 8 per cent.

That last figure is particularly important, since one of Harper’s hopes was to pick many seats in Quebec from former Bloc voters. It doesn’t look like that’s going to happen, and over the weekend a number of big, mult-organizational rallies came out against the Conservatives. They didn’t say who to vote for, but the message was sure: vote for which ever candidate can beat the Conservative in your riding.

Simon Jackson has some interesting musings on the CBC’s web site about strategic voting. He’s talking mostly about voting to push an environmental agenda, but certainly in other places many voters will vote Bloc or Liberal or NDP in order to assure that Harper will not get a majority. I’m convinced that the NDP has a good chance of picking up a couple of more seats in Quebec because disaffected Liberal voters are realizing that giving Layton and his team a louder voice in Ottawa is gong to help all of us. Certainly its clear that Tom Mulcair’s support--which was supposed to evaporate after his by election win last year--is holding very strong. And in Westmount-Ville Marie, Marc Garneau has effectively disappeared from the campaign, I’m told. The idea of his NDP opponent Anne Lagacé Dowson in Parliament makes me want to stand up and cheer.

We shall see what we shall see, of course. Excuse me now, though. Must get some work done here before I go off to see if I can lend a hand on the campaign trail.

Saturday Photo: Temperatures Drop, but the Chilis Keep It Hot

Jean Talon Market is full of produce right now, the bounty of months of sun and summer rain. I've never bought a skein of chilis, but a string of garlic is something that I'll have to get this year. By spring, the stores here are selling garlic from China, which seems incredible. Far better for the local growers and our carbon imprint if we buy garlic from Quebec, it seems to me.

Forced Migration and the Politics of the Future: A New Report from Oxford

The migrating geese remind me that humans migrate too, and have done so since our ancestsors began following herds across the savanah or moving wih the seasons into uplands as the berries, seeds and roots ripened. We were part of a wave of migration ourselves, that of the late 1960s and early 1970s which saw Canada welcome thousands of educated Brits and Yanks, arriving to teach and do research in a rapidly expanding system of higher education. As I’ve said before in this blog, we came when Lee got a three year contract at McGill in 1968, and we stayed

But other migrations are neither has happy or as volulntary. The Refugee Studies Centre at the University of Oxford has just published an issue of Forced Migration Review containing 38 articles on climate change, displacement and migration. Available as pdf files or in printed copies, the publication examines the role that global warming and erratic weather patterns have played and will play in the movement of populations. Not only will rising sea levels in the future affect low-lying regions of the world, but drought and floods—amplified by human destruction like deforestation—threaten increasingly to destroy people’s homes and farms, sending them on the road, seeking somewhere else to live.

We in North America may think that we are more or less sheltered from this. The effects of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 are still viewed as an aberration, an example of bad disaster planning, although we will be affected too. What should be our stance vis à vis the displacement of millions? Do we open our doors to those with money and training? Do we shut down completely? Do we assume our responsibility for what is causing these climate changes? Will the current financial crisis in the US make things that much worse?

These are big questions, which aren’t going to go away. Ask your local candidates about them.

What to Answer When the Phone Rings: Getting Polled in the Middle of the Leaders' Debate

Right in the middle of the debate between the five Federal party leaders last night we got a call from a polling firm wanting to know what we thought about the leaders, what we thought were the issues, and how we rated the local candidates. It is the second time in a lifetime of political action that we’ve been polled, and I was delighted to give the NDP, Jack Layton and our local MP Thomas Mulcair full marks. In so far as the poll is large enough, my comments will be lost among the others polled, but they aren’t going to hurt in an election where a lot of people are considering strategic voting. A winning non-Conservative candidate is what a lot of voters are looking for, whatever their nominal political allegiance.

The strategic vote in Outremont should definitely go to Mulcair and the NDP. Over the last three weeks I’ve made a lot of calls for Mulcair, and it’s clear the support he had a year ago when he won a by election is holding. There’s some fall off among Bloc supporters who voted for him to keep out the Liberals, but my guess that’s not going to make much difference. Last week a poll for La Presse gave him a 10 point lead over the Liberal Sébastien Dhavernas, 37 per cent to 27 per cent.

Of course you may ask why I answered the telephone when I should have been glued to the television watching the debate. Well, there’s only so much political discourse one can take, particularly when one has a good idea of the principles and policies each leader champions, so I retreated after 15 minutes to get some work done for my book talks next week.

The same logic will apply tonight for the English language debate and the one between the two vice-presidential candidates in the US. Besides we’ll be celebrating the launch of my friend Ann Charney’s new novel Distantly Related to Freud (Cormorant Books.) The party runs from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at Nicolas Hoare Books, 1366 Green Avenue, Westmount. Should be a lot more fun…

To Everything There Is A Season: Looking Up from the Economic Mess to See the Geese Flying

The world is in flux, and not just economically. Yesterday afternoon I heard a skein of Canada geese honking their way across the sky, and at noon the farm program on the CBC was full of complaints about geese scouring fields as they begin their migration. One of panelists, a dairy farmer, told of having to out six or seven times a day to shoo them away. Last week travelling by train from Ottawa to Toronto we saw a couple of hundred of them rise from a lake or marsh in the distance, fly seemingly randomly at first and then slowly form the familiar Vs as they gained altitude.

Seems a little early for the migration to me. I usually hear the flocks flying over a little later in October, but perhaps this year is different in some way. Certainly the trees are turning glorious colours earlier than I’ve noted in the past. Last year it was a dry during the summer, but began to rain in September and it seemed the leaves stayed on the branches quite a long time as if to draw all the strength they could from the growing season. This summer was lush and wet, and already many trees are turning fabulous shades of red and gold. Perhaps the good conditions allowed them to store up lots of sugar which now they can display as if at their leisure since the temperatures have so far stayed quite warm. (Is there a lesson about saving to draw from this? Maybe.)

Whatever, on this mild, overcast morning several of the trees in the cemetery were already glowing with colour as if lit from the interior. This annual spectacle is one of the pleasures of living in this climate, and a reminder that there are forces in action that continue no matter what our current, pressing worries are.

And if you’d like to know more about the science behind this (because most things have a explanation) check out the National Geographic’s 2004 article “Why Do Fall Leaves Change Color?”

The Legacy of the Depression, or 80 Years after 1929 Nearly Everyone Has Forgotten

Maybe there’s an 80 year rule in history: for 80 years memories of a war, a prolonged disaster, a political cul-de-sac remain vivid enough to affect the decisions people make collectively. That might explain the re-Balkanization of the Balkans in the 1990s since 80 years after the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo the region erupted into the bloody conflict which saw the dismemberment of the former Yugoslavia. What had led to the events which touched off the First World War had faded from common memory.

And now we have the finance mess in the US. Next year it will be 80 years after the Great Crash of 1929, and the people who remember are growing fewer. Lee and I were born long after it, but the Great Depression which followed marked our parents significantly. How they reacted was quite different—his parents were extremely frugal while mine spent whatever came their way—but the long shadow of those years of penury were part of our family history.

Maybe that is why the possible consequences of the Wall Street meltdown seem to weigh so lightly on some Congressmen and –women. Certainly the 67 per cent of the Republicans who voted against the bail-out package are either blinded by ideology or are so removed from the economic stresses of ordinary life that they just don’t get what is happening.

The Democrats who opposed seem to base their opposition on righteous concern over the idea of rewarding the people who got us into the mess. That I can understand—applaud even—yet somehow a way out of this mess must be found.

Or else, as Bing Crosby sang in 1932:

They used to tell me I was building a dream
And so I followed the mob.
When there was earth to plow or guns to bear,
I was always there, right on the job.
They used to tell me I was building a dream
With peace and glory ahead --
Why should I be standing in line, just waiting for bread?

Once I built a railroad, I made it run,
Made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad, now it's done --
Brother, can you spare a dime?

Once I built a tower, up to the sun,
brick and rivet and lime.
Once I built a tower, now it's done --
Brother, can you spare a dime?

Once in khaki suits, gee, we looked swell
Full of that Yankee Doodle-de-dum.
Half a million boots went slogging through hell,
And I was the kid with the drum.

Say, don't you remember they called me Al,
It was Al all the time.
Why don't you remember, I'm your pal --
Say, buddy, can you spare a dime?

Once in khaki suits, ah, gee, we looked swell
Full of that Yankee Doodle-de-dum.
Half a million boots went slogging through hell,
And I was the kid with the drum.

Say, don't you remember they called me Al,
It was Al all the time.
Why don't you remember, I'm your pal --
Buddy, can you spare a dime?

Buddy, Can You Spare a Dime? by E. Y. Harburg and Jay Gorney

Margaret Atwood on Culture and the Canadian Economy

The trouble with being away is that you miss things. Not only did the whole world’s financial system nearly go up in smoke last week when I was gallivanting around, Margaret Atwood had some terrific things to say about the value of culture and the way Canadians have been led astray by the conservatives.

Her first foray was an op-ed piece in The Globe and Mail, entitled "Mr. Harper is wrong: There's more to the arts than a bunch of rich people at galas whining about their grants”. You’re not likely to find it through the usual sources because, it seems, Ms. Atwood is a rare person who can write for the Globe and not be required to sign over electronic rights. Nevertheless the piece was pirated, and is of such value that I’m going include a link to it even though I hate electronic rights grabs.

She also spoke at length with Sinclair Stewart in Saturday’s Globe. Part of this is promotion for the Massey lectures she will give in November and part is a general reflection on where we are economically, given these difficult times. Stewart asked her: "Are we better off in Canada, or should we be worrying as well?"

She replied: "We shouldn't have spent our surplus...We should have put a lot more into new technology. The typical Canadian story is some genius invents a new thing, can't get any money for it, and takes it to the States.”

Then on Sunday she was in The New York Times, this time touting the book that is being published from the Massey Lectures, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth. Because the Sunday Magazine audience is different from the business page on, the interview took a different tack:
So what led you to take up the subject of debt? Long ago, I was a graduate student in Victorian literature. When you think of the 19th-century novel, you think romance — you think Heathcliff, Cathy, Madame Bovary, etc. But the underpinning structure of those novels is money, and Madame Bovary could have cheerfully gone on committing adultery for a long time if she hadn’t overspent.

Are you saying we should view her as a pioneer of deficit spending? You can examine the whole 19th century from the point of view of who would have maxed out their credit cards. Emma Bovary would have maxed hers out. No question. Mr. Scrooge would not have. He would have snipped his up.

And Stephen Harper? What do you bet he doesn't even have a credit card?

Saturday Photo: Books of Memory

Anik See's book Saudade (Coach House Press) was also launched at the three events I was part of this week. She's a charming, tough young woman who has written a very interesting book which is part travel journal, part memoir. Over the last 15 years she's bicycled all over the world, and her observations and sensibility combine to make most interesting reading.

Now based in Amsterdam, she had some great stories to complement my own ideas about how cities should be organized. Amsterdam, she says, was not the city full of bicycles that it is today, but the result of conscious choices made a couple of decades ago. The city was being choked by cars, but instead of building more roads, the decision was made to favour the bike. The result--after years of bike-riding education for kids, adults and drivers--is a place where rush hour is quiet except for the whoosh of bikes passing with the occasional bike bell ringing.

Gives us hope for here, I think.

Toronto, Ottawa and The Walkable City

To get to Toronto Island you take a ferry from downtown, the way you can take a ferry to get toNorth Vancouver from downtown Vancouver.

After walking through downtown Ottawa this afternoon, I began to wonder if ferries might make transport easier between Ottawa and Gatineau. Lines of buses and masses of cars waited to cross the bridges, and the people I spoke to said there is much discussion about the need for a new bridge. Could ferries from strategic points be an easier answer?

On the Road with The Walkable City

We're off to Ottawa this morning (and not Paris, as the picture might lead you to believe.) Would like to think that the visit might help change the government might, that's not very likely. Anik See and I will be reading and talking and all that tonight beginning at 7 pm. at Nicolas Hoare Books, 419 Sussex Drive.

Do you think we should go over and knock on the door at 24 Sussex? But then Steve will be on the road, too, won't he?

The US Financial Crisis: Hey, Wait a Minute, You’re Going to Give the Guys Who Got Us into This Mess Complete Control?

"Cash for Trash" is the title of Paul Krugman’s most recent column, and Naomi Klein is calling for resistance to the latest attempt to use a crisis in the interests of Disaster Capitalism.

There are few who doubt that massive efforts are needed to right the listing financial ship, but what is being proposed goes far further that. “If the government is going to provide capital to financial firms, it should get what people who provide capital are entitled to — a share in ownership, so that all the gains if the rescue plan works don’t go to the people who made the mess in the first place,” Krugman writes.

“It would be a grave mistake to underestimate the right's ability to use this crisis -- created by deregulation and privatization -- to demand more of the same,” Klein says, adding “The only hope of preventing another dose of shock politics is loud, organized grassroots pressure on all political parties: they have to know right now that after seven years of Bush, Americans are becoming shock resistant.”

Let’s hope so. It may not be time to go to the barricades, but it sure is time to write, e-mail and protest.

Carless Day, Bixis and the Walkable City

"So, did you walk here?" the interviewer asked me when we started out talking about The Walkable City at Radio Canada International. I had to laugh because actually I took the bus and Metro, although I could add that I planned on walking home.

The interview and the errands I ran on the way back account for this rather late post. But this is a day when partisans of muscle-powered transit should be pleased. Not only has the city of Montreal just unveiled the first rental bikes--the Bixis--that will be available at selected places around town, but it's Carless Day downtown. The former intiative is far more serious than the latter: a similar program in Paris has proved extremely successful, and there's no reason why Bixis should be very popular here. I was astounded by the flotilla of cyclists this morning: obviously people of all ages are cycling now. The latter is more public relations exercise than serious attempt to make Montreal a place where you don't need a car, but perhaps even this kind of hoopla is necessary.

Whatever, I'll pass along the link when the RCI program airs. In the meantime, it's another gorgeous day for walking.