A delight­ful Dan­ish say­ing, told me by my friend Joan Jacob­sen: “Du kan vænne dig til alt, und­ta­gen sult…når først du har væn­net dig til det, dør du af det.” [You can get used to any­thing except hunger …Once you’re used to it, it kills you.]

Jason Hunter, who vis­it­ed for almost a week, left this morn­ing. He head­ed back up north, where he will under­take a vision quest. He will fast for four days in prepa­ra­tion. It will be inter­est­ing to see how it affects him. He was good com­pa­ny while he was here. For­tu­nate­ly, it was pos­si­ble for him to take the train part of the way. Even the ten-hour jour­ney on Ontario North­land Railway’s North­lander will take him only half of the way home, but it will be much more pleas­ant than tak­ing bus­es or hitch­ing rides. The final half, of course, must be done by airplane.

The media, at least here in Cana­da, have been tak­en com­plete­ly by sur­prise by recent events in Thai­land. A fac­tion of the Thai mil­i­tary says it has over­thrown Prime Min­is­ter Thaksin Shi­nawa­tra. Pre­sum­ably, a long sequence of impor­tant events led up to this, but none of them attract­ed the atten­tion of jour­nal­ists in North Amer­i­ca. It might be wise for peo­ple here to pay a bit more atten­tion. At place of con­cen­trat­ing on dubi­ous and implau­si­ble attempts to bring democ­ra­cy to places like Afghanistan, we should be more con­cerned about its pre­car­i­ous posi­tion in rel­a­tive­ly impor­tant places like Thai­land. For Thai­land is an impor­tant coun­try, with tremen­dous eco­nom­ic poten­tial. It is unique in the region in that it nev­er suf­fered the expe­ri­ence of colo­nial­ism, though it has had to dance nim­bly between the pres­sures brought to bear on it by Britain and France (which had colonies on either side of it), by Japan, Amer­i­ca, and China.

Under Thaksin, Thai­land seems to have had a thin veneer of demo­c­ra­t­ic process, under which steamed a caul­dron of cor­rup­tion, manoeu­ver­ing by the mil­i­tary, and fac­tion­al dis­putes. It is not clear to me exact­ly who wants this sud­den mil­i­tary coup, and who oppos­es it. I sim­ply don’t know enough to have an opin­ion about Thaksin and his poli­cies. To tell the truth, I’m embar­rassed that I know next to noth­ing about this impor­tant country’s pol­i­tics. Thai­land is the kind of coun­try that should be able to find its inner strengths, and estab­lish a work­ing democ­ra­cy. There is no scar­ring lega­cy of colo­nial­ism, it is full of enter­pris­ing and well-edu­cat­ed peo­ple, it has a vig­or­ous cul­tur­al life, it has not been torn up by war. But it doesn’t seem to be able to make things work. I’m hop­ing that some Thai cor­re­spon­dents will give me some insights into this per­plex­ing situation.

I’m enjoy­ing a vis­i­tor from my old stomp­ing ground, Peawanuck. You will have to look hard for it on a map — it’s an iso­lat­ed Weenusk First Nation com­mu­ni­ty of only a lit­tle more than a hun­dred inhab­i­tants, and can­not be reached by any road. It’s about thir­ty km up the Winisk Riv­er from the shores of Hudson’s Bay, and is sur­round­ed on all sides by the 23,552 square km of Polar Bear Provin­cial Park (the name of which is some­what mis­lead­ing… it has no vis­i­tor facil­i­ties, is reach­able only by air, and spe­cial per­mis­sion is required before vis­it­ing it). But this lit­tle town has a spe­cial place in my heart, and I am delight­ed to give hos­pi­tal­i­ty to any­one who hails from there.

My guest is Jason Hunter, a musi­cian and film-mak­er. I’ve had to work much of the time he was here, and he had his own affairs to attend to, but we did find time to explore near­by Don Val­ley togeth­er. The trip held a sur­prise. I took Jason through sev­er­al wood­ed ravines, then to an aban­doned brick pit, now flood­ed and filled with ponds, marsh­es, ducks and tur­tles, and a “sacred spot” with a won­der­ful view of the city. Near that, there is a large aban­doned fac­to­ry, in ruinous con­di­tion. It is board­ed up and pro­tect­ed by chain-link fences, but that is noth­ing to enter­pris­ing tres­passers. We were soon inside, walk­ing among the immense brick ovens, illu­mi­nat­ed by shafts of light from the decay­ing and dam­aged roof. But we were not alone. We heard the nois­es of some oth­er intrud­ers. So climbed up to the rust­ing cat­walks that criss-crossed the ovens. The oth­er peo­ple were a cam­era crew, prepar­ing an elab­o­rate pho­to shoot. The mod­el was a tall woman, pos­ing entire­ly naked, except for a fan­tas­tic bird head-dress and a trail­ing cape. It was in imi­ta­tion of a sym­bol­ist paint­ing that I rec­og­nized, but could not name. Sens­ing that our ogling was impo­lite, we retreat­ed to oth­er parts of the ruined fac­to­ry, find­ing a way up onto the roof. I had told Jason there were all sorts of odd things to find in the Don Valley.

Puz­zled by the blog title?  Peawanuck means “flint­stone” in Cree.

The Pope has just denounced Cana­da for its pop­u­lar and polit­i­cal sup­port for gay mar­riage. Cana­da has, through­out its his­to­ry, been a coun­try with a Catholic major­i­ty, at least in the­o­ry. But, in fact, the prac­tice of “pri­vate reli­gion” — the search for some per­son­al phi­los­o­phy inde­pen­dent of any orga­nized sect or author­i­ty — is what actu­al­ly pre­dom­i­nates in Cana­da, as well as an ingrained belief that church­es should stay out of pol­i­tics. This has long been a sig­nif­i­cant cul­tur­al dif­fer­ence between Cana­da and the Unit­ed States. Most Cana­di­ans would not like­ly know the reli­gious affil­i­a­tion of any of their politi­cians, and would not think it of any inter­est. Canada’s for­mer Prime Min­is­ter, Paul Mar­tin, who is a prac­tic­ing Catholic, remarked today that the Pope’s opin­ion did not in the least affect him. “It’s the job of the courts to apply the Char­ter of Rights, and it was my job as Prime Min­is­ter to see that those rights were respect­ed.”  Read more »

Anoth­er “friend­ly fire” inci­dent occurred in Afghanistan, where two US A‑10 Thun­der­bolts straffed a Cana­di­an Forces base camp. Five Cana­di­an sol­diers were severe­ly wound­ed, and one killed. The dead sol­dier, Mark Gra­ham, was a wide­ly liked Olympic track star. This fol­lowed close­ly on four Cana­di­an com­bat deaths over the week­end. Com­bat deaths are to be expect­ed, but yet anoth­er “friend­ly fire” deba­cle involv­ing poor­ly-com­mand­ed Amer­i­can forces killing Cana­di­an troops is re-enforc­ing doubts the Cana­di­an pub­lic has about our “mis­sion” in Afghanistan. All the more because Stephen Harper’s Con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment has made it obvi­ous that Cana­di­an forces are increas­ing­ly deployed as mere mer­ce­nary forces for George W. Bush. As far as Harp­er is con­cerned, there is no Cana­di­an for­eign pol­i­cy. There is only George W. Bush’s pol­i­cy. How­ev­er, the Cana­di­an peo­ple seem to have anoth­er notion, that the Cana­di­an mil­i­tary is intend­ed to defend Cana­da and the inter­ests of the Cana­di­an peo­ple, and to engage in com­bat on for­eign soil only when the moral issues are clear and unequiv­o­cal. Read more »

If you want to know the dif­fer­ence between a free coun­try and a col­lec­tivist, sovi­etized soci­ety, where the State directs, manip­u­lates and social­ly engi­neers the life of the indi­vid­ual, then one has only to walk into a drug­store in Cana­da and then into one in the Unit­ed States. In any Cana­di­an drug­store, any woman can pur­chase Plan B, the “morn­ing after pill”, with­out pre­scrip­tion or harass­ment, as is her right. In the Unit­ed States, this is not the case. There, the State rules over the most pri­vate domain of the indi­vid­ual. As in Com­mu­nist Chi­na, Amer­i­cans suf­fer a gov­ern­ment which con­sid­ers their bod­ies the prop­er­ty of the State. Their most inti­mate per­son­al choic­es do not belong to them, but to an all-pow­er­ful col­lec­tivism, to the Leviathan. It makes me pro­found­ly grate­ful that I live in a sig­nif­i­cant­ly freer, more indi­vid­u­al­ist soci­ety, where, as one Cana­di­an Prime Min­is­ter once pro­claimed, “The State has no place in the bed­rooms of the nation.” 

There are many things of which I dis­ap­prove in my own coun­try, and Lord knows there are plen­ty of stu­pid things that hap­pen here. But, at least we are not reduced to such pathet­ic serf­dom that we sur­ren­der our sex­u­al organs to the tyran­ny of squalid bureau­crats and a Supreme Sovi­et on Penn­syl­va­nia Avenue.