Homelessness 2020

 

I hesitated before pulling in beside the taxi that was parked in front of my bank. From the passenger door a long leg had appeared. Stockinged foot, sock rumpled and unclean. Behind that, a torso slumped over against the dash. The taxi driver ran around to the front of my car and signalled for me to stop. After he retrieved a blue clog from the sidewalk, he waved me forward as he tried to fit the clog on that extended foot.

 

When I opened my car door, I heard a low growl and saw the owner of the leg. Long grey hair. A flowing beard. As the man stood up, the driver put an arm on his shoulder. “Are you sure you don’t want a ride downtown?” The man uttered a guttural shriek.

 

I asked the driver, “Do you need help?” He shook his head. ‘No…at least, I don’t think so.”

 

When I returned to the car, I could hear the man still shrieking. The taxi driver, now placing himself between the man and me, said, “This lady needs to get into her car.”  As I passed by, I heard the taxi driver say, “Now you keep that money safe. Put it out of sight.”

 

The driver took off hurriedly and the man walked over to my car and began to pound against the door and thump on the roof. He leaned toward my window and stared at me, howling. His expression was furious, beseeching, incomprehensible. His blue eyes were intense, penetrating. I remained motionless as the hammering on the roof continued, along with the snarls and moans. It was an inhuman sound, unlike any I’ve ever heard. The closest I’ve experienced are the screeches from the herons’ nests when the eagles swoop in and capture their chicks.

 

People walked along the sidewalk in front of me. They went in and out of the bank. Most of them stopped for a moment to stare at the roaring man but no one offered assistance. I thought back on times when community members have been moved to help each other. In the last few snowstorms, neighbours came to my door and brought soup. They offered to shovel my driveway. In certain circumstances, people have been moved to step up and offer help. And they felt better for it. But not in this kind of situation.

 

The man continued to circle my car, again and again, peering in at me, making that unearthly sound, hammering the roof. He was angry. Afraid. Terrifying. I didn’t think it would help if I got out of the car and tried to talk to him. I considered calling for help but was afraid to open the window. I could have phoned 911, but what good would that have done?  Finally, I leaned on the horn until the man staggered off, still howling.

 

After several minutes, I drove to the shopping mall. Surprised to find myself still trembling, I stayed in the car and wondered what I might have done differently. Not far away was the location of the tent city where three hundred people lived until temporary housing was constructed and the tent city was dismantled. The temporary housing accommodated 168 people, and I seem to remember that there was an application process in which the most motivated people with less critical problems were given preference for relocation. Where have the others gone?  The ones who whose psychiatric illnesses were pronounced or whose substance abuse was extreme?

 

Last year, I was one of the people who wrote letters in support of providing temporary housing for homeless people. I helped with welcome packages for the new residents, and had little sympathy for the neighbours of the shelters who complained that they were now afraid to leave their homes. Not surprisingly, there were some incidents when people moved into the shelter. An eight-foot wall was constructed around the compound and periodically people wrote abusive messages on it.

 

Several decades ago, I was a social worker on the psychiatric ward of our regional hospital. We set up a halfway house for individuals with psychiatric problems. Now there are a number of halfway houses but they are full with waiting lists and they are not designed to provide emergency responses for the growing number of homeless people who, despite psychiatric and substance use problems, are not connected to medical services.

 

Back when the food banks first began in our community, we social workers spoke out about the need for these services to be offered on a very short-term basis only as crisis interventions. We believed governments and communities could tackle the problems of poverty and homelessness, and that we would not continue to require such patchwork solutions. Now, all across our country, there are local, regional and national associations of food banks that are doing crucially important work to meet an ever-increasing demand. Our local food bank now has hired a Director of Development in order to help find ways of responding to the increasing need.

 

Some people have suggested that provincial institutions should be set up to incarcerate people with extreme psychiatric and addiction problems, but that only shifts the problem. As a community we need to find ways of supporting people who live amongst us.

 

At the grocery store, I added extra money on my tab to support the food bank. Then I stopped by the Salvation Army person who was collecting money in front of the liquor store and gave her all my change.

 

I thought about fingers and dykes. Walls and borders. The passing of bucks. Complexity, and an impossibly divided and broken world. About the new year ahead.

Resilience and Hope

Last December I was given a Christmas cactus which had small white buds from which magnificent white blossoms shot forth – magically, it seemed, orgasmically, as each flower reproduced itself. After the blooms died, I put the plant out on my patio where it endured rain, snow, ice, freezing temperatures, and then heat and blazing sun. I had ignored it, forgotten about it, but a month ago I brought it inside, admiring the shiny green leaves that had lasted through the year. Soon small white buds reappeared and, despite my neglect, it bloomed even more profusely than the previous year.

The thought of it, a pleasing and resilient evergreen plant that asks for nothing, demands no care at all, responds to abuse with a generous cascade of blossoms! It made me wonder. If I were God, I decided, and I’d produced the Christmas cactus, I would not have gone on to create humans.

The world is in dire shape and it’s easy to feel hopeless. We humans have done great damage to our planet but there is yet much beauty out there and it's worth putting in some effort to salvage what we can. And it starts with maintaining hope.

When I sat down to try to sketch my Christmas cactus, I'd just learned that a beetle had been named after Greta Thunberg, that tireless young advocate for action on climate change. So, I decided to include the Greta Thunberg beetle in my sketch and let it carry the message of hope. Because even if it is true, as Thunberg has said, that hope is not enough, action can spring from hope. It’s a starting point in dark days.

In her new book, Almost Everything, Anne Lamott writes, “Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.”

She’s right. Humans can’t compare with Christmas cactuses, but we do have the capacity to hope and to act. We need to show up and we need to act. And positive action helps us to continue to be hopeful.

 

 

Things that Matter

Yesterday I heard that our prime minister had been photographed wearing blackface make-up. He was in costume for a school fundraiser with a theme of Arabian Nights. That was in 2001.

The media went ballistic. No need to speak of crisis climate, health care, housing or any other of those possible election topics. The prime minister wore make-up that portrayed him as blackface. Later it became brownface. And then a second instance was reported. Now there seems to be evidence that there were three occasions when he appeared with blackface. This is the most important of pre-election news.

I don’t suppose the prime minister had bad intentions at the time and he has since apologized. He says he did not then think that his behaviour was racist but now he does and he deeply regrets what he did.

Racism is a serious problem and I’m glad that times have changed so that we now have to be much more careful about what we say and do.  Not long ago, things were very different. When I was young it was traditional at our Presbyterian church for the men of the church to do a minstrel performance at the annual Christmas concert. We all looked forward to it. I believe my father, who had a splendid bass voice, was wearing blackface when he sang “Ol’ Man River.” He didn’t think he was mocking anybody. He admired Paul Robeson more than any other person at the time. And, at that time, we all thought that imitation was the highest form of flattery. I think that proverb may go back to Marcus Aurelius, but we know better now.

Wearing blackface or brownface make-up as part of an Arabian Nights event would have seen by most people as a costume, not as mockery. Similarly, I did not think I was mocking the Roma people when I dressed my young daughter as a gypsy on Halloween. Nor was she mocking homeless people when she wore a hobo costume. My father-in-law, a very tall man of imposing bearing liked nothing better than donning a dress and a hat for a New Year’s Eve party. My mother-in—law did not feel she was being mocked -- and she happily helped him apply his rouge and lipstick. She thought it was funny.

The truth is, we used to kind of like dressing up. We liked pretending to be something that we were not. It was fun.

When I spoke of these things to my daughter, she replied that, confusing as it may be, the pendulum may need to swing the other way for a while. “The ‘we’ you are speaking about,” she said, “are all members of a specific ethnic and cultural group, and perhaps more conversation about how white people feel about white people’s behaviour is not the top priority.”  

That made me step back and rethink my own privilege. Born in Vancouver in 1942 to British-born parents in a comfortable neighbourhood. Being female had some limitations but, overall, it was an extremely fortunate situation that I took for granted. I had access to education and work opportunities that many others lacked. I did not question that.

Yes, times are changing -- and it is a very good thing that we old people must now become more sensitive and more aware.

Writers now have to be very conscious of appropriating the voice of others: non-indigenous people cannot write about indigenous people. Men should not write in a woman’s voice. We have to forget the advice of one of our Parliamentary poets and others who advised us to “write about what you don’t know.” On the contrary, these days we must all be careful never to pretend to be what we are not.

But I regret some of the limitations. Laurence Olivier could not now give his brilliant Othello performance and, although the theatre allows for lots of gender-switching, it’s not likely that a white man will ever be cast in that role.  Soon we will get rid of the Dame traditionally a woman played by a large man in the Christmas pantomimes. From the other perspective, though, it was wonderful to see the two women who played the lead male roles in Coriolanus at Bard on the Beach this summer; it was a gripping performance in which I was mostly oblivious of sex or race.

Privileged Caucasian people, of whom I am one, cannot these days give our imagination free reign. Rather, we must mostly stay within the confines of our own narrow little lives. We will learn to do that.

In the meantime, it's heartening to see that the young people I know are conscious and respectful of diversity. They deplore racism and are clear that wearing blackface make-up is wrong.

 

They are also concerned about the state of the planet and, as we approach an election, they want to know more about the platforms of all the political parties on important issues such as climate change, health care, funding for education, and so on, rather than being bombarded with media reports of “scandals.”

 

This is an important election. Would it not be better to focus our discussions on the substantive measures that truly could improve the lives of disadvantaged and racialized residents in Canada?

 

Evolution

“You’re a usage snob,” my friend tells me.

“Better a usage snob than a usage slob,” I snap back.

The key word I chose for this year was “evolve” which means to develop gradually but it also implies growth or maturity, not merely to be changed.

There is a Greek word, apoptosis, which means natural death of cells. I read that its ancient Greek usage was to describe the “falling off” of petals from flowers. That description makes me feel wistful. I see such a falling off all around me. It makes me resolve to evolve into a nicer person.

It’s not easy, when it's not in your nature, to be nice to and about everyone and everything, but I’ll try. Smile more. Say nice things. Agree with others that people and things are nice. Secretly, though, I will snicker about the etymology of the word nice: from the Latin nescius, meaning ignorant. Or the Old French meaning, careless, clumsy, stupid.

I know I’ve been complaining too much about the persistent and pervasive use of the word lovely.  Lovely is from the old English luffic and once meant affectionate, loveable, but, as George P. Marsh pointed out in The Origin and History of the English Language,“ it is now used indiscriminately to all pleasing material objects, from a piece of plum-cake to a Gothic cathedral.” Language evolves, but I don't always like it.

I tell my friend that I am an old crank. She agrees.

Yet I am determined to evolve.

I can stop being cranky.

Become nice.

Watch for it!

It will be lovely.

 

 

Opression, Poverty, William Blake

William Blake wrote his poem, Auguries of Innocence, more than two centuries ago, but much of it seems quite current. I have always thought that the first four stanzas might help encourage people to abandon mindless travel to escape boredom or the cold in favour of staying home and paying attention to what is close at hand:

 

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower 

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 

And Eternity in an hour

 

   The next eight lines speak to the horror of confinement, slavery, hunger, and suffering, conditions which Blake says enrage heaven, frighten the regions of hell, and call for reparation. The lines should frighten many politicians.

 

A Robin Red breast in a Cage

Puts all Heaven in a Rage 

A Dove house filld with Doves & Pigeons

Shudders Hell thr' all its regions 

A dog starvd at his Masters Gate

Predicts the ruin of the State 

A Horse misusd upon the Road

Calls to Heaven for Human blood

 

Auguries of Innocence is very long and complex and I am not a Blake scholar, so I would not attempt to give an analysis of the poem, but in addressing oppression and poverty it is quite clear that he sees them resulting in grave reprisal:

 

The Babe that weeps the Rod beneath

Writes Revenge in realms of Death 

The Beggars Rags fluttering in Air

Does to Rags the Heavens tear.

 

At the end, the poem acknowledges inequity -- although it suggests that it might change each morning, each evening: 

 

Every Night & every Morn

Some to Misery are Born 

Every Morn and every Night

Some are Born to sweet delight 

Some are Born to sweet delight 

Some are Born to Endless Night 

 

Finally, it warns that we will be led to believe a lie unless we see through the eye of some larger light, which for Blake is God and only when we see through that light is a Human Form is displayed:

We are led to Believe a Lie

When we see not Thro the Eye

Which was Born in a Night to perish in a Night 

When the Soul Slept in Beams of Light 

God Appears & God is Light

To those poor Souls who dwell in Night 

But does a Human Form Display

To those who Dwell in Realms of day.

For Blake, this Human Form would be Jesus, the ideal human being. I am not a religious person, so I do not see this poem in religious terms, but to me it proposes that one can understand larger issues through the small things that are close at hand. Indeed, maybe Blake is telling us that we can only grasp the meaning of large ideas by seeing them through what is immediate and nearby.

All of this, without my even having to refer to the climate crisis, seems testimony to the value to be found in simply staying home. Or as Ram Dass would say …being …here… now.

 

 

 

In Search of One’s Self

When I was young, people often spoke about Self-consciousness and Self-doubt, aspects of personality that were frequent conditions back then, and about the need for successful people to develop Self-esteem. In the 1930’s and 1940’s, Dale Carnegie had produced several popular books and delivered hundreds of lectures on this topic of Self-confidence. Freudian and Jungian psychoanalysts promoted Self-exploration and towards a goal of Self-knowledge. In the 1950’s, Abraham Maslow gave us the concept of Self-actualization as the highest stage of personal development. This led to the human potential movement of the 1960’s and 70’s, a time when institutions made it clear that ordinary people could seek personal growth and Self-awareness through workshops on sexuality, Self-expression, psychodrama, Gestalt therapy, primal screaming, astrological awareness and a host of other Self-improvement approaches.  

Throughout the next couple of decades, the glorification of Self flourished with approaches that focused on Self-worth in terms of one’s financial portfolio. There were best-selling books on the habits of highly successful people. Nietzschean concepts of Self-management, Self-autonomy and Self-mastery were revived; the sovereign individual was celebrated. Personal appearance was highlighted and expensive programs on pursuing excellence and dressing for success were marketed. We began to pay more attention to how we look, and the “lookist” society thrived.

Then came the cell phone. Now we can instantly capture our looks and successes in every aspect of our lives. We can circulate our mirrored reflections to the world at large. Hairstyles, pedicures, shoes, breakfasts, doobies, margaritas, tequila shooters, cappuccinos, electric bicycles, home décor, sunglasses, underwater massage experiences, etc., can be instantly replicated and circulated to a global audience.

Does this Self-regard increase our happiness, our Self-esteem? Do the hearts and likes and affirmations from hundreds of followers increase our Self-confidence? Or are we as filled with Self-doubt as much as we ever were? Many psychologists have proposed that selfies are exacerbating insecurity, anxiety and depression and decreasing confidence.

Can we escape this omnipresent presence of Self-regard? About fifty years ago, in discussing Albert Camus’ The Stranger, my college instructor spoke of “the prison cell of Self.” Is that concept relevant today? It seems, instead, that our current philosophical dilemmas are the result of the imprisoning cellphone of Selfies.   

The News Today

Recently an article by Oliver Burkeman in the Guardian* made me think about how I spend my time and what takes my attention.  Burkeman quotes Adam Greenfield’s account of a day spent with a friend inside Manhattan’s Old Town Bar in November, 2015 when, while enjoying beer and French fries, their phones started to vibrate. The article explains that:

In Paris, Islamist terrorists had launched a series of coordinated shootings and suicide bombings that would kill 130 people, including 90 attending a concert at the Bataclan theatre. As Greenfield reached for his phone in New York, he recalls, everyone else did the same, and “you could feel the temperature in the room immediately dropping”. Devices throughout the bar buzzed with news alerts from media organisations, as well as notifications from Facebook Safety Check, a new service that used geolocation to identify users in the general vicinity of the Paris attacks, inviting them to inform their friend networks that they were OK. Suddenly, it was as if the walls of the Old Town Bar had become porous – “like a colander, with this high-pressure medium of the outside world spurting through every aperture at once.”

It made me recall a day in Montreal in November, 1963, when I was sitting with friends in a bar that I think was called The Captain’s Locker, just around the corner from Aux Délices on Stanley Street below Ste. Catherine’s. We didn’t have cell phones, of course but suddenly, when the volume on television at the bar was turned up, we heard reports of the assassination of President Kennedy. Whatever we’d been talking about seemed inconsequential, our lives very small and insignificant in contrast to these events in Texas. My friends and I, then in our early twenties, thought of ourselves as bohemians, poets and artists who rejected convention and materialistic values, yet the conversation quickly switched to the tragedy of the American president’s death, international politics, the American nation, the economy. The announcers spoke at length about the grief of the beautiful widow in her blood-spattered, pink Chanel suit.

I knew that, although the news was from another country, it was important for us and for the world at large, yet as I sat with my friends in the Captain’s Locker I found myself thinking of another tragic death. I had no way of explaining my sense of its importance to anyone else, but it was this. Until I was 12 years old, I’d studied piano with a woman I will call Mrs. LeClerc. She was in her late forties at that time, was once a beauty queen and was still strikingly attractive. At my lessons she wore what my mother called “hostess gowns,” long, flowing, low-cut dresses in dark green or wine-coloured velvet. She was kind and encouraging, and I adored her. Mrs. LeClerc had a handsome 24-year-old son, Bill, who occasionally drove me home after my lessons, sometimes bringing along his pretty girlfriend, Linda, a girl whom everyone loved. To me they were an enormously glamorous family and I was thrilled when I was included in an invitation to Bill and Linda's wedding. Over 60 years later, I can remember the church, the organ music, and Linda’s wedding dress. I also remember her going-away suit which later that night would be splattered with blood after the car they were driving went off the road on the Hope Princeton Highway on their way to Penticton for their honeymoon.  I can still recall how transformed Mrs. Leclerc’s appearance was when I next saw her. Everything in her life had changed, I thought, in the twinkling of an eye. That afternoon in Montreal, it was Mrs. Leclerc for whom I grieved, conscious that the ripples from her tragic loss were minuscule compared to that of the First Lady’s bereavement and that few, if any, would know about her loss. What was it, I wondered back then, that is important in our lives? What was real? What mattered? Who mattered?

As Burkeman says, “We marinate in the news,” and the crises we experience there “can feel more important, even more truly real, than the concrete immediacy of our families, neighbourhoods and workplaces.”

As it happened, just a year after President Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, I experienced a tragedy of my own which led to my beginning a period of daily psychoanalysis. Every day, I reported the dreams of the previous night, the way they connected with the activities of my day, and the thoughts and associations they prompted. It was a fascinating process which had the effect of making me view my life in relation to my dreams and what they signified. Daily events became grist for the hourly mills of analysis. It was seductive, and it might have gone on for years. Fortunately, the man I would soon marry had come to Montreal and we began living together. Somehow I knew that I had to make a choice between paying attention to the reality of our new relationship and our life together or to the attraction of the wide, speculative world of psychoanalysis. I chose that man. That life. The everyday reality of it.

I was wise then. I saw the dilemma, and I made the right choice.

And so why, now, do I let the small daily details of my one and only little life be swamped and submerged by the barrage of information that seeps in each day on my cellphone, my computer, my car radio -- the omnipotent and ever-present news media?

Of course, in these troubled times, some of the news is important and must be heeded. But now, more than ever, it’s time to pay attention to what is near at hand. And to do what matters. Close to home. The only place where you know you can make a difference.

 

*see https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/may/03/how-the-news-took-over-reality

Teamwork and Tactics

In my work as an academic administrator I generally avoided sports metaphors. I didn’t think of my work as a game, and so I didn’t think it was about teams, winning or losing, and so on. But when you work closely with a group of colleagues, the concept of teamwork does become important. And ethical, respectful treatment of one’s co-workers is essential.

It used to be considered unethical for people conducting research to record the words of others without having written consent of those other parties. It was considered highly unethical to tape a conversation without the other being aware of it. I know times have changed, but have they changed to that extent?

And if it were a trusted colleague who was secretly recording your words, someone you trusted and whom you thought was on the same team as you? Well, the word “unconscionable” does spring to mind.

The case of the former A-G presenting such a tape recording as evidence of her being bullied has alarmed me for a few reasons.

First, how could she, in all conscience, do such a thing?

Second, if she would record one conversation, how many others might she have recorded? Had she taped conversations with Butts and Trudeau but been unable to get them to say what she wanted? We’ll never know.

Third, what did she think the recording proved? It offered no new information. Both parties just said what they’d already said -- except that one person was speaking tactically and the other was responding candidly.

 

So Many Shades of Grey

So Many Shades of Grey

 

There’s a gloom in the air and a haziness in my head. The world feels grey to me.

But the daily news in Canada today is not at all grey. It’s fast, furious and frenzied, and there’s no room for greyness

On the one side we are offered villains (black) and on the other there are martyrs (white). I don’t see them that way. I just see well-meaning people with different ideas about how to do their work, people who are not infrequently making mistakes.

I don’t see illegality in the news reports of what’s happening. I don’t see corruption. I don’t see scandal. I am stuck somewhere in a grey territory.

There’s a great deal of talk about “speaking truth to power” these days, especially in relation to the two women who have been ejected from caucus. The phrase originated with the Quakers in the 1950’s and was then employed by a succession of activists and political leaders. Feminists used the term a lot in the seventies and eighties. It meant something important then, but the expression now has become a cliché which simply means talking about one’s own “truth.”

I used to think that speaking truth to power meant bravely standing up and speaking directly to authority figures – one’s boss or one’s colleagues. It took a lot of courage, I thought, to confront people who had very different ideas about things.

On the couple of occasions when I went to the president’s office to protest some initiative, or spoke out against a decision at a board meeting, I was very nervous. But that’s the way I thought such things were done. Directly.

Now it’s done differently.  “Speaking truth to power” simply means speaking out and, more and more frequently, it means speaking through the media. It's perhaps a very literal and apt use of the term, since the media now IS the power. When you want to speak to power you must tweet, text and go on Facebook, but you don’t actually ever  need to talk face-to-face. Both social media and print media will take your truth and spread it widely. It will be presented in the powerful whiteness and blackness of its platforms.

There are no greys in these stories; people line up on one side or the other. This will not result in a resolution of the issue at hand, but it will certainly produce an escalation of it. Folks seem to like that.  It’s the way of the world. And I have to admit there’s a comforting kind of clarity, simplicity and tidiness in these black and white pictures. 

However, they can be jarring to those of us who are accustomed to seeing so many shades of grey.

Becoming Uncomfortable

In the Sixties, I went on marches to protest the war in Viet Nam. In the Seventies and Eighties, I went on peace marches and anti-nuclear protests. It always felt exciting to be with a group of like-minded people “speaking truth to power,” and at times it seemed that perhaps we were being heard, at least briefly. More recently we’ve had the Occupy movement and the Women’s March, which were important but had little effect.

Friday’s school Climate Strike, inspired by Greta Thunberg, felt very different from all those previous demonstrations. Surely a global demonstration of 1.5 million in 123 countries in 2,000 cities may serve as a turning point. The attendance in front of Nanaimo City Hall included almost 200 people, a far cry from the 150,000 who turned out in Montreal, yet enough to make a strong statement. And it was good to see three of our city councillors speaking in support of the strike.

“Adults are stealing our future,” said one young speaker, while generously making a point to thank the grey-haired people who turned up to support the strike. I think he’s right. My generation’s  contribution to environmental degradation is certainly something about which we should be ashamed.  Also shameful is the fact that it has taken children to send out the message that climate action is urgently needed.

Or course there are Twitter trolls who question Greta Thunberg’s motives and suggest that she is a pawn of various political interests, but from all reports her integrity seems to be solid. Others claim that she has exaggerated the problems and that her facts are inaccurate. This fact checker says Greta “has done her homework” and that for the most part her facts are backed up by science:  https://faktabaari.fi/greta-thunberg-has-done-her-science-homework/.

Will she be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize? I hope so. But, most of all, I hope that these young people don’t give up their protest. I hope they keep the strike going until we comfortable elders are also moved to take action.

I can’t remember who said, “The enemy of good is not evil but comfort.” I’m pretty sure, though, that the time has come for us all to get a lot more uncomfortable.

Being Fair

 

 The current flurry of sensational news about the “scandal” in the Canadian government is unwarranted, it seems to me. Many of us want to be armchair politicians, armchair lawyers and armchair policy analysts  -- too much time is being spent in armchairs! And from that vantage, government activities are being viewed as reality TV or soap opera.

Like most of the people talking about the SNC-Lavalin issue, I am not a lawyer, nor do I know much about public policy, but what I’ve read about Deferred Prosecution Agreements leads me to believe that it's something that could be worth trying. It has produced good results in other countries, apparently, as a tool that can impose reforms, rehabilitate, receive financial restitution and monitor compliance.  Surely this new legislation should be tested or at least explored with some discussion and consultation.

My brother, who has a long and distinguished history in public policy analysis, made these comments, in the context of a much longer discussion of the issue.

Given this new legal machinery, opening up new law in an arena of deep ambiguity and complex tradition, with vast scope for interpretation and discretion, extensive external advice on possible application to this first case would seem essential.  A more aggressive option would be consciously to try out the untested new mechanism, to see whether in this test case an appropriate DPA might be negotiated that the AG and a judge could approve, as is required before it could be recognized. 

Is this case not precisely the sort that lends itself to a negotiated fine with a remediation approach and ongoing incentive to improved conduct rather than an imposed fine with a punitive sentence?  Should this not be a case for deference to a Prime Minister with a majority mandate when it comes to interpreting what constitutes the public interest? 

It seems to me that the remediation could be seen as a settler’s version of restorative justice and a better prospect than settling immediately for the punitive court system. At least it deserves to be explored and tested.

It disturbs me that all the media reports focus on casting people in roles as heroes or villains, rather than people doing their jobs, sometimes achieving good results and sometimes mishandling things. Who is telling the truth, people ask: is it “my truth” or “the truth” or something else?

I find myself thinking about one of our early and great Canadian novelists, Ethel Wilson, writing – twice – in her wonderful novel, Swamp Angel, “It takes God himself to be fair to two people at the same time.” (Wilson wasn’t given to repeating herself, so I think she really wanted the point to get across.)

It’s not easy to be fair if we just cast people as right or wrong, honest or lying, heroes or villains. It’s much more helpful to focus on the actual decisions and actions, and they seem to merit some scrutiny. Can the DPA be a useful tool? Is this a case which lends itself to this approach?

And perhaps we should do that within the context of the overall achievements and conduct of our current government. There may be instances of mishandling, poor judgment, bungling, etc. but these are not scandals and they are not criminal.

And so much good has been achieved.

 

Snow

.

It snowed yesterday and the day before and the day before that. Snow, snow, snow. Some people say that there are as many as 52 names for snow in Inuktitut. That may be an exaggeration but there seems to at least be these ones: aput 'snow on the ground', qana 'falling snow', piqsirpoq 'drifting snow', and qimuqsuq 'a snow drift.'

We should have more names for snow. For example it would be good to have a name for disappearing snow. That’s what’s happening here today and, though I complained about being housebound, about the slippery streets, and about the cold, I’ll be sorry to see it go, because soon I’ll start worrying about whether the coming summer is going to bring us the heat waves and forest fires we saw last year.

In Orman Pamuk’s poignant political thriller Snow, “the silence of the snow” is a theme throughout the novel. The Snow Palace Hotel, where the protagonist Ka stays, is in the snowbound city of Kars. The snow symbolizes a world which is cut off from the outside world and also the apathy of its residents.

Snow is often used as a symbol in literature. I recently read Edith Wharton’s wonderful 1911 novel, Ethan Frome, set in a town in which winter represents isolation and unhappiness, yet there is also reference to “the crystal clearness” of the winter. In Shakespeare snow can refer to purity, chastity, or the decline of old age.

Snow can have positive or negative implications or sometimes both, as in the final words of James Joyce’s The Dead: ‘His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their latter end, upon all the living and the dead.’ Some critics have claimed the snow here represents death and desolation, but surely it also suggests the opportunity for renewal and another chance. Sometimes the bleakest scenario offers the chance to turn things around.

That’s how I see it. Sometimes things seem hopeless, like yesterday’s New York Times article on global warming entitled “Time to Panic,” yet I am determined to believe that individual action can prompt political action and we can turn things around.

I’m going to keep in my mind the image of the beautiful labyrinth that artist and poet Sophia Rosenberg created on Lasqueti Island last week.

 

 

The labyrinth path shows a journey that offers a return and a new beginning. But we have to stay on the path. We have to keep putting one foot in front of the other. We have to think seriously about our footprints.

 

 

 

Clear-sightedness

A few years ago, my vision worsened. My eyesight was blurry and I found it hard to see when I drove  at night, and my ophthalmologist said I had to deal with my cataracts. I’d resisted this advice previously because, although I am quite brave about things that take place below the neck, I hate the idea of anything being done to my eyes. In nightmares, the thought of needles being put in my eyes is at the top of my torture list.

But it was time. What made it easier to face the surgery was the positive experience of many of my contemporaries. And, in particular, old friend told me that what was wonderful was not just the clarity of vision but the brilliance of colours. “It’s as though your eyes had been covered by brown sludge,” he said, “and then it’s removed and everything brightens.” That sounded good.

I kept those thoughts with me as I gritted my teeth and faced the scalpel and found, a few days after the surgery, that he was right. What had looked like a brownish-blue bowl would now have to be called cerulean. It was that bright! A scarf that I’d thought of as mauve was actually closer to magenta. A brown shirt had become tangerine. Surgery had coloured my world!

However, it hasn’t made me as clear sighted as I’d like to be. I still see the world through the eyes of someone who’s been looking at it for almost seventy-seven years. These are old eyes, and they see things through a film of custom and habit.

When I was young, I knew my parents didn’t live in my world. They didn’t like the music, magazines, movies or books I found so exciting. They didn’t appreciate the way the fifties and sixties had changed everything. They saw an erosion of the values they’d held, and the things that delighted me just depressed them.

Looking back now, I begin to understand how it was for them. I know that nostalgia is an unreliable emotion that produces a good deal of falsehood but it’s hard not to look back. It’s difficult for me to see things without a lens of disappointment and I fear for the future. I can cope with social media, but I don’t like it. I admire the savvy of the young, but I can’t imagine that anything good can come of internet dating. I’ve never thought I was a prude, but I now find much of today’s world vulgar.

It’s my old eyes. I wish I could see things freshly.  I need a procedure that will remove that sludgy film of experience that is limiting my vision. I guess a lot of us old folk do.