On the Nation­al News, a tour through the com­plet­ed ren­o­va­tions of the Library of Par­lia­ment, in Ottawa. This is no ordi­nary library. Com­plet­ed only nine years after Con­fed­er­a­tion (the for­ma­tion of Cana­da as a nation-state), it is a mag­nif­i­cent High Vic­to­ri­an Goth­ic fan­ta­sy, a cir­cu­lar cone of fly­ing but­tress­es and mul­ti-coloured stone that ris­es atop the cliffs along the Ottawa riv­er. The inte­ri­or is very beau­ti­ful, employ­ing a cir­cu­lar, radi­ant plan. Light streams into it from the sky, in the man­ner of a cathe­dral. In the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, Cana­da still retained its tra­di­tion of fine crafts­man­ship in wood, and the work that was done in this library is the equal of any­thing in the world. On the news item, one Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, who was a jour­ney­man car­pen­ter in his youth, said “this stuff is porn for any car­pen­ter”. Read more »

I’m stretched out on the couch. At the oth­er end, sphinx-posed above my right foot is a cat — not mine, but a long term vis­i­tor. Next to the oth­er foot is my rab­bit Stampy. They are both star­ing at me, with that air of aris­to­crat­ic dis­dain that both have per­fect­ed. Cat own­ers are famil­iar with it, but they may be sur­prised that rab­bits can be just as proud. I’m not going to dis­turb them. I’m grate­ful for the calm. Nor­mal­ly they would be chas­ing each oth­er around the room.

I’m read­ing a nov­el, and lis­ten­ing to some choral music by Chris­tos Hatzis, who may be Canada’s answer to Arvo Pärt. A mug of hot choco­late (made prop­er­ly with cocoa, not some instant junk), cheese and crack­ers on the table beside me. Elec­tric lights have been dimmed and replaced with a small oil lamp, which emits a hint of ros­es from its scent­ed lamp oil.

So I can’t work up any anger over any polit­i­cal news. At the back of my mind, an idea for a new nov­el is start­ing to take form, so I’m not con­cen­trat­ing too strict­ly on the book. In fact, I should prob­a­bly set it aside and read it prop­er­ly lat­er, when my head is not drift­ing into my own fic­tion writ­ing. I do a lot of writ­ing in my head. Not from lazi­ness. My right wrist was severe­ly dam­aged many years ago (bro­ken in twen­ty places), and it is phys­i­cal­ly painful for me to spend too much time at a key­board. Those long stretch­es of work for clients, where I spend many hours fill­ing out data­bas­es on Excel tables, are real­ly hard on me. So I do as much writ­ing in my head as I can, before actu­al­ly sit­ting down to type. I’ll some­times have entire pages in my head, com­posed while walk­ing or rid­ing a bike, before they are put down, though that very process will gen­er­ate all sorts of errors, which have to be cleaned up on rewrite.

Things are improv­ing, finan­cial­ly, very very grad­u­al­ly. I’m deter­mined to trav­el next year, and I’m lay­ing the ground­work to do so.

Stampy sud­den­ly desires a Maria Bis­cuit. For some rea­son, he is obsessed with these tea bis­cuits, import­ed from Spain. He would rather eat them than car­rots. He jumps on my chest, push­es his face under­neath my book and into mine, and pulls at the frame of my glass­es with his teeth. This is his method of issu­ing a non-nego­tiable demand. I’ve always sus­pect­ed that Stampy has trained in spe­cial camps in Afghanistan, or Wis­con­sin, or wher­ev­er rab­bit ter­ror­ists do it.

I cave in to ter­ror­ism. The Maria bis­cuits are kept in a brown cook­ie jar which is with­in reach. The music has shift­ed to Hatzis’ Foot­prints In New Snow, which incor­po­rates that pecu­liar form of Innu­it throat-singing where two women sing direct­ly into each oth­ers’ mouths. The atmos­phere in the room has changed from serene to spooky. The oil lamp, burn­ing down to a short wick, is flick­er­ing, and throw­ing unsta­ble shad­ows on the wall. I have a flash of mem­o­ry or a lone­ly evening on top of a moun­tain in north­ern Que­bec, at the back of the north wind, besieged by cold shiv­ers and thoughts of Wendigo.

The lamp goes out. The cat and the rab­bit dis­ap­pear, off to the bed­room for some secret game. The room has grown dark. I hear voic­es laugh­ing in the street. Red LEDS on the com­put­er and audio equip­ment, burn like fireflies.

You can be in so many places, with­in one room.

Pak­istani dic­ta­tor Per­vez Mushar­raf revealed, in an inter­view with the CBC (Cana­di­an Broad­cast­ing Corp.) exact­ly how the lead­er­ship of the Grand Alliance Against Ter­ror­ism sees Canada’s role. With some insult­ing­ly snide put-downs, he dis­missed any con­cern in Cana­da about casu­al­ties in Afghanistan as cry-baby weak­ness. Read more »

Soraj Honglaradom, at the Phi­los­o­phy depart­ment of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chu­la­longko­rn Uni­ver­si­ty, Bangkok, has gra­cious­ly allowed me to quote his e‑mail con­cern­ing the coup in Thailand:

The coup d’e­tat was per­pe­trat­ed by a group of offi­cers who are dis­at­is­fied with the Prime Min­is­ter Thaksin Shi­nawa­tra, who has gen­er­at­ed such an intense amount of con­tro­ver­sies in Thai­land as has nev­er been expe­ri­enced before. The tran­si­tion process is going on smooth­ly and there is no vio­lence. At the time of writ­ing this mail, every­thing appears calm. The “Reform Group for Democ­ra­cy under Monar­chy”, as the group calls itself, has declared today (Sept.20) to be a hol­i­day and so I am writ­ing this from home. Many peo­ple that I know actu­al­ly wel­come the event, as they are fed up with the regime of the Prime Min­is­ter. From my past expe­ri­ences with pre­vi­ous Thai coups, what will hap­pen next is prob­a­bly that the Reform Group will name an inter­im Prime Min­is­ter. A new char­ter will be draft­ed (the much vaunt­ed Con­sti­tu­tion of 1997 last­ed only nine years), and final­ly a gen­er­al elec­tion will be called. No one knows exact­ly when this will hap­pen, but my guess is that we will expect a gen­er­al elec­tion with­in a year. This is only my guess: things have a way of unrav­el­ling them­selves in unex­pect­ed ways.

Mr. Saro­j’s com­ment rings true to me. It seems to fit the oth­er reports I’ve got­ten. Read more »

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 »