Here I go Again - being Cynical....

I am not a fan of the Tragically Hip. I am not saying I don't like their music - I just don't know it. In fact, as I almost never listen to popular radio, I have never consciously listen to one of their songs. I may have heard any number of their tunes but I have never specifically listen to or for them. One however, would have to be totally oblivious to any discussion of popular Canadian culture to not know that their last concert happened in Kingston on Saturday and that it was their last concert because Gord Downie has inoperable brain cancer. In spite of not knowing their music, I can admire the way they are leaving and the fact that they have helped to raise a lot of money for research. Anytime our consciousness is raised as to health issue - it is a good thing. If my only news source were the links and comments on Facebook, it would be easy to assume that I was only one of a handful of Canadians who were not watching their three hour, uninterrupted by commercial, concert on CBC. After all even the Prime minister was there (sarcasm intended).

It would appear, if one only uses social media as the primary news source, that this band is not only the most Canadian of all bands, but that they have been loved by everyone. It is equally as clear that the country is in near mourning over the loss of these cultural icons. One can only imagine what will happen when Mr. Downie does succumb to his illness.  I have little doubt that there will be cries for a state funeral.

This public expression of love and affection for a rock band that while they certainly were reasonably popular, they did have six gold records and did manage to hang around for a long time, are just that - a rock band. While his lyrics may have been particularly Canadian and may, on occasion, have raised issues of social justice - the band did not change the world (or for that matter even the music world). People's reaction to the announcement that Mr. Downie was dying strikes me as being a bit over the top. It feels as if this public out pouring is similar to people leaving flowers for Princess Diana, or just Prince or some other famous person who has passed. The size of the pile of flowers has little to do with what good the person has done, or their actual impact upon their community but rather it is based on what people think they should feel. Case in point - Penny Lang, a Canadian folk singer/legend for fifty years, died last week. Her music was almost always about hope and change and joy. Her death barely made the news. No one left flowers for her.

Emile Durkheim, one of the founding "fathers" of sociology wrote about collective effervescence - that sense of being part of something larger than oneself that one gets when one participates in a particularly meaningful ritual. Collective effervescence can generate within the individual an intense emotion, a sense of joy. That sense can be felt when one sings Oh Canada at a hockey game, goes to a Christmas Eve service at a church, lays flowers at a memorial for someone one never really knew or in this case when one publically mourns the passing of a rock band. I wonder if the Canadian response to Mr. Downie's announcement and the band's subsequent Canadian tour had far more to do with our need to feel as if we are part of something larger than ourselves, that by participating in this national grieving that we are in fact celebrating the fact that we exist collectively.  I also wonder if this need to seek out experiences that create this collective effervescence is in part because there are so few rituals in our lives than do create this sense of belonging. The majority of Canadians (especially young Canadians) do not attend church or participate in rituals. Perhaps Durkheim was on to something just over a hundred years ago. Perhaps we need to feel as if we share collective emotions - that we are not just people who are bonded though social media.

As a side note - I wonder how many of the people who enjoyed CBC's commercial free coverage (and in doing so they lost money by not showing the Olympics) will support the CBC the next time someone argues that a national broadcaster is irrelevant. I wonder how many people would consider paying a tiny bit more in their taxes to support such a corporation. My bet is rather few of them.

Fall is Coming

It is now mid August. Summer is on its last legs. Soon we will be into fall. Within a few weeks everyone will be getting back into their busy mode. How do I know? The days are getting shorter. Even on the West Coast there are a few trees that are starting to gradually change colour. The Canada Goose/geese are starting to gather and most significantly of all - for the past ten or so days the newspaper flyers have been full of ads for "Back-to-School' specials.

For the past ten or so years, when those ads started to appear - I knew that my summer was almost over. Those ads were a reminder that I would have to start saying good bye to my west coast family and friends and head back to Ontario. There was always a sense of sadness and some anxiety as I tried to squeeze too much into my last few days on the island. I use to dread seeing those ads. It was not that I didn't want to get back to my other life. I always looked forward to those clean crisp days of falls, of playing with wool or going to the Peterborough Farmer's Market on Saturday to sell my weaving. After six or seven weeks of sleeping in a variety of beds or on the ground, I was ready to sleep in my own bed. By the time those ads started to appear, I always knew it time to get back into my routines and to see my Ontario family and friends.

This year, of course, things are different. Those advertisements telling students and their parents that they need completely new outfits, pencil crayons in more colours that the human eye can see, reams of paper (both lined and un-lined) and of course a myriad of technological devices almost guaranteed to  ensure a student's success appeared on time. And like Pavlov's dog, right on time I started to experience that sense of panic that I needed to get things done because fall was right round the corner. The appearance of those ads meant that my life was going to change - again.

It is not surprising that I had this almost visceral panic. For almost all of my life, at least from the age of five, fall meant that I had to do something. I had to go to school, work was going to start to get really busy, the kids needed stuff , people were going to have expectations of me, I was going to have travel back across Canada, I was going to have to say goodbye etc. etc. But in spite of my automatic reaction to the coming of fall - there is no need for anxiety. None of those things need to happen this year. This year I am not going back east, I don't have to say good bye to anyone. My life will not be profoundly different on September 1st than it is today. No one will expect me to do anything. And yet in spite of knowing this, I still have this sense of things undone, of opportunities missed, of the need to get really busy and do something.

Conditioning is a powerful tool. I, along with my expectations, attitudes and responses, have spent the last 67 years being shaped at least in part, by my environment and the people in it. While I know that my automatic anxiety response to the coming of fall is absurd and completely unwarranted, I can't help it. There are so many things I thought I would do this summer that I did not do. People and places that I thought I would see, grandchildren who I would see more of, or things that I would weave. I feel as if I need to get up earlier, work harder, be more active. I sometimes wonder if this sense of impending doom is just a result of my Baptist/Protestant work ethic upbringing or if I am afflicted with some mental illness (or if there is much of a difference between the two).

While it would be delightful to know that this condition is curable - I suspect it is not. I would guess that I will, to the end of my days, regret the coming of fall and of all of the things that I did not do.

Olympics

Ah summer......in a year that can be divided by four....it must mean that it is time for the summer Olympics. I don't have access to cable or to a satellite dish. I seldom remember that I can watch at least the highlights via the internet. I am therefore, somewhat insulated from the hyper nationalism that seems to permeate the airwaves. And I am glad. It is not that I don't like watching some sports. The volleyball games (if they were broadcasted) the women's rugby or some of the track and field events could be entertaining. But what is broadcasted has little or nothing to do with what is worth watching. It has far more to do with what the producers of such marathons of over-indulgence think their national audience need to see to maintain national enthusiasm. It is not surprising therefore, that viewers of an American, British or Canadian broadcaster might see quite different Olympics. I appreciate that for the athletes and the people who love them, getting to the Olympics may be a life time goal. Someone however, needs to remind those who participate in and those who organize the games that (1) a significant number of the people living within walking distance of the various venues are dealing with life threatening issues and have neither the time nor the money to watch the coverage, never mind attend and (2) except for contributing an incredibly miniscule portion of my taxes towards supporting Olympic athletes  I have done nothing and therefore do not get the right to feel pride in "how well my country is doing".

I am sure it is exciting to be that young Canadian woman who has done so well in the pool, or those women from the women's rugby team that got a medal. I am equally as sure that as they mounted the podium to receive their medals the furthest thing from their minds were the hundreds of thousands Brazilians who live a kilometre or less from the venue and who struggle daily to earn enough money to feed themselves and their families. I am sure it is difficult to remember as they are having their hot showers that there are families just down the road who do not have access to running water. It is not their fault that there is so much poverty in the host country. If they had decided to boycott the Olympic games - nothing would have changed (although if all of the athletes boycotted - it might be interesting), the games would have gone on with other athletes. But surely it says something about a society that orchestrates such an excessive celebration of nationalism and elitist athletes. I understand the arguments as to why bringing the Olympics to a region should be good for the economy and the people  (I once had a wonderful ride from someone who had been part of the Calgary winter Olympic committee. He was quite eloquent about how much good it had done for the area and yes the ski jump/bob sled run are still in use for training almost 30 years later). But it seems to me that more and more, that as the costs go up, the benefits to the local region go down. It also seems to me the there is an inverse relationship between the wealth and stability of the country and how much the games actually benefit the area.

I believe that we should support people who want, at a personal level, to compete against themselves and others so that they can achieve their goals. I do not think that we should make such events about nationalism, nor should we make competing so expensive that athletes from poor nations cannot compete. The event should not cost so much money that the residents of the host county are dislocated and at the end of the games are in a worse position (financially and socially) than they were before. I am not suggesting that we make those elite international athletes less important or less valued but rather that we make the residents of the host country equally as important and as valued.

Commission on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women

The Government of Canada has announced the scope of its inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women. It has also said who will be the five commissioners leading the inquiry. On the surface it would appear that the inquiry's scope of investigation has been well thought out and it all likelihood will satisfy at least some of the people who demanded such an inquiry. The five commissioners are certainly well qualified and reflect most of the characteristics of the missing and murdered women including both gender and cultural/national roots. Not surprisingly however, the membership of the commission does not reflect the social class of the women whose stories are at the heart of the need for a commission. However, in spite of the well intentioned job description and the carefully chosen participants, one still needs to ask the question - why is there a need for a commission at all?

" Justin Trudeau said the "victims deserve justice, their families an opportunity to be heard and to heal" and that "we must work together to put an end to this ongoing tragedy." (CBC). I agree that it is important. It would be even more useful however, if there was a way for all Canadians to have to hear those messages, to listen to those stories. I am afraid that like so much of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's hearings and report - the vast majority of Canadians will blithely get on with their lives and pay little or no attention to this commission's work. For Canadians who have thought about this issue, have read, have listened and have talked about it - the issues are quite clear. Within a society that is sexists in nature, that is permeated with racism and that has intentionally or non-intentionally practiced cultural genocide for at least 200 hundred years - it can come as no surprise that the lives of Indigenous women have been deemed less important. We have known for a generation that our policing, our court system and our correctional system are woefully inadequate to correct the imbalances within our society. I remain unconvinced that another two years will do very much at all to change that.

CBC reported that Dawn Lavell-Harvard, the current president of NWAC (Native Women's Association of Canada) has said that "There's not going to be the commitment to make the changes we need if people don't see evidence,... And that kind of incontrovertible, independent evidence that can't be brushed off." She might be right but I don't think so. For so many of us the evidence is already clear - I do not need more proof, I don't need more evidence. For those who deny the truth, for those who live in their elite bubbles that protect them from the reality of other lives, for those who insist that the world is evolving just fine - stories are not going to change their minds.

I accept that people need to tell their stories and that for some to do so on a somewhat public national stage with be cathartic. We should encourage people to do so. But I would prefer it if a substantial portion of the 53 million dollars go to actually creating change. I would prefer that money was used to providing meaningful and accessible education so that Indigenous peoples - specifically young women had a choice as to how they spent their lives; I would prefer it if some of that money was used to fund a different way (other than incarceration) of supporting people when there was conflict within their community or within their family, I would prefer if there was a rural transportation system to ensure that people don't need to hitchhike, I would prefer if small communities had better access to health care (including mental health), clean water and decent housing. But most of all I wish that the funding be available to help the communities decide what they needed and wanted to do.

I am glad that the commission is finally underway. I truly hope that it meets the needs of people and that the recommendations that come out of it are looked at and implemented. But most of all I hope that we do not have to wait two years for changes start to happen. We know what we have to do - lets get on with it.