THE SUBJUGATION OF TRUTH, KENT MONKMAN · 2016 · 72″ X 51″ · ACRYLIC ON CANVAS

The unpunished killing of 22-year-old Cree man Colten Boushie in Saskatchewan has raised serious questions about the legacy of colonialism in shaping settlerIndigenous relations. Gerald Stanley, the white farmer who faced murder charges after shooting Boushie on his land, was ultimately acquitted by an all-white jury in February. Stanley’s acquittal fits into a long pattern of Indigenous life being treated as less valuable than settler safety in the Canadian justice system. Although Stanley’s lawyers did not argue that he killed Boushie in self-defence, the notion that Stanley was acting to defend his rural property from raiding Indians has taken deep root among his apologists.

Defenders repeatedly invoked the motif of the isolated farmstead. Writing to the St. John’s publication the Telegram, local resident Robert K. Noseworthy defended Stanley as “a good man, who was in his home, minding his own business, when his farm was invaded by strangers.” Branden Crowe, meanwhile, wrote an op-ed for Manitoba’s Westman Journal expressing confusion about the accusations of racism surrounding the trial, asserting that it “isn’t about race, it never was. It was about a man protecting his family.” Even some law enforcement officials have pushed the self-defence narrative. In a private Facebook group, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer allegedly mused that Boushie “got what he deserved” for breaking onto Stanley’s sacrosanct property.

That Stanley is seen by some as the victim is a product of Canada’s historical and contemporary culture of white supremacy, a culture that is continually replicated and reshaped by our political and cultural institutions. I do not use white supremacy to describe pockets of skinheads and Klansmen, but to describe the dominant, normative culture in colonial settler societies. In The Wretched of the Earth, Martinican psychiatrist and revolutionary Frantz Fanon observed that “the settler owes the fact of his very existence… to the colonial system.” Canadian white supremacy is a colonial system informed and reinforced by a constellation of narratives, symbols, beliefs, and behaviours that exist to justify and normalize the erasure of Indigenous peoples, the sanctity of private property, and the inevitability of European settlement.

One of the brighter stars in the colonial night sky is that of the pioneer past.

The pioneer stands tall and the frontier stretches wide in the Canadian imagination. The Anglo-Celtic settler, having undergone the trial of the Atlantic passage, enters the vaguely defined wilderness, where, through gumption and initiative, he claws a living from the earth. He sacrifices. He suffers. He builds a log cabin. His wife has 18 or so kids and churns a lot of butter. Through his toil the pioneer civilizes the bush, cleansing his soul and securing a covenant with the land. From the soil springs mills and general stores, taverns and churches. Naturally, he takes his rightful place at the head of table and community, a father-like role that he fills admirably. Under the banners of monarchy, Christianity, and empire, he has built something out of nothing—something to defend.

The pioneer is not bound by time or place, but by project. It is this adaptability that allows for the descendants of early 19th-century Irish immigrants in Ontario and 20th-century Ukrainian immigrants in Saskatchewan to imagine a shared past

All enduring mythic heroes need a foil, to test their resolve and provide an “Other” to define an identity against. In the case of the pioneer, his prime concern is his vulnerability to attacks from the wilderness’ natural ally: the Indian. The Indian is not a historical representation of any Indigenous Nation or individual but a part of the landscape to be civilized, Christianized. He is not only a prisoner of time, but imagination. Genocide and forced removal are shrouded by the advancing frontier, while Indigenous contributions to and maneuverings of Canadian society are downplayed. By compartmentalizing Indigenous history, the pioneer is able to usurp Indigenous land rights and justify his title. The land becomes his when tamed and worked; when it becomes his property. This line between civilized and uncivilized, white and “Other,” is what defines the process of pioneering.

***

The secret to the pioneer myth’s longevity is its elasticity. Shaped by the biblical United Empire Loyalist narrative of sacrifice, trial, and redemption, the myth of the pioneer is remarkably adaptable. As fresh waves of immigrants arrived in Canada in the 19th and 20th century, “Canadian” by necessity had to become a more inclusive concept.

No longer able to rely on the memories of a common national heritage, the idea of the frontier as a project collectively tamed by waves of pioneers shaped an accessible assimilation narrative. The pioneer is not bound by time or place, but by project. It is this adaptability that allows for the descendants of early 19th-century Irish immigrants in Ontario and 20th-century Ukrainian immigrants in Saskatchewan to imagine a shared past.

The rise of bilingualism, multiculturalism, the welfare state, urbanization, and increased Indigenous and Quebecois activism in the post-World War II era gave heartburn to Canadians who viewed themselves as inherently white and British. According to historian Daniel Francis, “until at least World War II the worship of the monarchy and the British Empire enjoyed almost cult status in Canadian society.” Massive cultural and demographic shifts were weathering British cultural pillars, causing a sense of existential crisis among traditionalists. Writing to the Globe and Mail in 1959, Ottawa resident Majorie Le Lacheur decried the “shocking mutilation” of Canadian history occurring in “the schools.” Five years later, columnist J. Bascom St. John wrote an article for the Globe and Mail titled “Teaching the History of Freedom,” arguing that “it is the British forms of law and liberty which underlie the whole Canadian political and legal structure, and without them we would be an enslaved people. It is the heritage and birthright of every child to know these things.” In a time of social and political fragmentation, many Canadians demanded that their history entrench their identity.

What emerged was a mythical golden age intended to motivate contemporary Canadians. Pioneer and living history museums in Canada are among the most effective purveyors of a mythical past, a vision of Canada defined by stability, compromise, and consent. In the 1950s and ’60s, many Canadian community museums began to establish themselves as pioneer history museums. Common among these museums were nostalgic and anti-modern interpretations of the past that downplayed dissent, and celebrations of ahistorical ideals like the existence of a unified folk. While reviewing Upper Canada Village, journalist Wilfred List describes how “the moment the visitor enters the village he leaves behind the hurry and tension of modern life for the tranquility of a pioneer community that is a living legacy of our past”—a past that was apparently nothing but hoop skirts, barn raisings, stern school mistresses, wagon rides, quilt festivals, and village-made souvenirs and historic ale tastings.

Much in the way that Gone with the Wind’s audience is encouraged to admire Scarlet O’Hara’s resilience while overlooking her status as a slave owner, pioneer museum attendees are told of the settler’s effort and ingenuity, typically exemplified by the life stories of local “self-made men.” Discussions of political and ethnic violence, racial discrimination, displacement, genocide, child labour, infant mortality, urban slums, and workhouses are omitted for the sake of wool shearing, period-dance demonstrations, and cookie consumption. At a meeting of museum curators in 1954, former Ontario Historical Society president Louis Blake Duff described the pioneer period as a time “in which men and women had purpose, perseverance, thrift, and sincerity, qualities not as prevalent in our own age.” By presenting their British past as pure, wholesome, and constructive, advocates drew a tacit, invisible line that separated the true inheritors of Canadian culture from the new existentially threatening interlopers and pretenders.

Why do Canadians identify as a hardy, northern people? Why do we use certain ideas, language, and motifs to define our land as worked and protected? Why is it so easy for some Canadians to envision Gerald Stanley’s rosy homestead on the modern frontier under attack?

Although the pioneer today may seem like a cultural relic of past anxieties, his ideas continue to shape how Canadians view progress and history. In 2011, the University of Manitoba attempted to differentiate itself from other universities across the country by launching an advertising campaign that emphasized its output of pioneers, adventurers, and trailblazers. The York Pioneer and Historical Society continues to display their log cabin at the Canadian National Exhibition, while the Canadian Encyclopedia article on pioneer life uncritically states that “persistence, optimism, thrift, resourcefulness, and the acceptance of unremitting hard work became character traits valued by succeeding generations long after pioneer conditions had passed.” At Butter Tarts and Buggies, a tourist experience in Ontario, visitors can “explore the simple life.” In 2014 the National Post ran an article about “modern settlers” in the Yukon, where “pioneers” are able to “carve their livelihood out of the wilderness.” Perhaps the most nakedly colonial, Pioneers Canada sends volunteers to preach the good word abroad “among peoples who are confused about what they actually believe—those who are steeped in folk religions.”

***

While such language and beliefs may seem innocuous, they shelter unresolved legacies of colonialism, providing ammunition to those who uphold the status quo. Attacks on the pioneer tend to elicit hostile reactions from those who draw their identity from these ancestral stump-pullers. This can range from coded comments—those you’d see your uncle making on Facebook—to avowed, explicit racism. Last year, Windsor Star columnist Gord Henderson wrote that “pillars of correctness” have caused Canadians to go from being hardy pioneers to a country “consumed by self-loathing.” On the more extreme end of the spectrum, in a 2016 article University of New Brunswick professor Ricardo Duchesne argues that “almost all the men and women who came to Canada from the British Isles and elsewhere in Europe, and, if you like, from British America, before 1914, were pioneers, not immigrants.” Elsewhere, Duchesne has described Canada as being in “decay,” claiming that multiculturalism is a covert plot to wipe out the white race by the globalist left. The sense of entitlement and hostility to the “Other” articulated by Henderson and Duchesne makes playing hoop rolling on the minister’s lawn seem a little less quaint.

Why do Canadians identify as a hardy, northern people? Why do we use certain ideas, language, and motifs to define our land as worked and protected? Why is it so easy for some Canadians to envision Gerald Stanley’s rosy homestead on the modern frontier under attack?

Because we are conditioned to think of Canada’s colonial history as an idyllic morality play. According to a 2003 survey by The Pasts Collective, museums are Canadians’ most trusted source of historical information. Pioneer history museums continue to be a mainstay of Canadian field trips and family outings, and are considered a rite of passage in many areas. The silence on difficult history muddies the origins of problems facing contemporary Canadians, allowing contented visitors to imagine that they live in a just society with wholesome, didactic roots. That makes pioneer history and its purveyors not just complicit, but active in reinforcing a vision of our colonial society that values settler and Indigenous life differently.

Protesters at Barriere Lake turned away election officers from the Indian Affairs Department in July. Photo courtesy Defenders of the Land.

The path forward, if the futures of First Nations and the rest of Canada are to reconcile, begins with two steps. Repeal the Indian Act, and abolish the department that delivers it. Bluntly put, the legislation that governs how status Indians are treated—and defines who holds that status—was racist and wrong in its conception 135 years ago, and has been in its implementation ever since.

Adopted explicitly for the purpose of assimilating Indians and eliminating “the Indian problem,” the devastation wrought against First Nations is today undeniable. Moreover, the social disharmony and economic cost to Canada as a whole remain ongoing challenges of this legacy. Change is desperately needed, but as that change will mold the future relationship between First Nations and Canada, it is essential that we get it right this time. And getting it right won’t be easy.

In a speech at July’s Assembly of First Nations, National Chief Shawn A-in-chut Atleo rekindled a debate that has been going on for quite some time over how to replace the Indian Act and the department that delivers it. When the Government of Canada floated the notion of repealing the Act in its infamous 1969 White Paper, it was surprised by a strong and effective negative response from the very people who suffered most from the legislation. Trudeau and his Indian Affairs Minister, Jean Chrétien, thought that simply wiping out any differentiation between Indians and other Canadians would bring equality and be welcomed by everyone. But for First Nations, that approach to the repeal of the Act and abolition of the department is incomplete.

As First Nations leader Harold Cardinal said at the time:

We do not want the Indian Act retained because it is a good piece of legislation. It isn’t. It is discriminatory from start to finish … but we would rather continue to live in bondage under the inequitable Indian Act than surrender our sacred rights. Any time the government wants to honour its obligations to us we are more than ready to devise new Indian legislation.

Therein lies the debate. Formal equality—undifferentiated treatment under the law— has the appeal of simplicity and superficial fairness. That’s why some people support repeal today: They like the idea of ending “special rights.” But equality under the law starting today means that the inequity enforced since before Canada was a country remains unaddressed. In particular, the laws under which everyone would theoretically be equal were created by and for those who have perpetrated that inequity, without regard to the rights and interests of First Nations. This approach simply continues the policy of assimilation.

What National Chief Atleo and others are proposing is something more complex and nuanced than wiping out all historic and legal distinctions in one fell swoop. They are suggesting that the rights First Nations hold in law—treaty and aboriginal rights recognized both under international law and under section 35 of the Constitution Act of 1982—be respected. From this perspective, upholding legal difference is, in fact, essential to equality. The failure to respect historic legal rights and interests would only continue the injustice.

Atleo is also suggesting that a responsible and methodical approach be taken toward the ultimate objective of repeal and abolition. This includes rapidly increasing the number of completed self-government agreements and accelerating the conclusion of the claims processes, vesting responsibility and accountability with First Nations governments and facilitating economic, social and political progress. On the bureaucratic side, it means creating two entities in the federal government to replace the 34 that currently administer aboriginal programs and services. One would occupy itself with the intergovernmental relationship between Canada and First Nations, establishing the foundation for reconciliation of the rights and interests of all. The other entity would continue in a diminishing role as service provider for those First Nation communities that continue to move toward selfgovernance, carefully winding down the traditionally paternalistic role played by the federal bureaucracy in Indian country.

This proposal is neither radical nor new. It is consistent with recommendations in a 1983 submission from a House of Commons committee known as the Penner Report and the report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples released in 1996. Unfortunately, whether for practical or ideological reasons, no government has been willing to act on the idea until now. Interestingly, this proposal was part of the aboriginal issues platform of the New Democratic Party in the most recent federal election, but it is not popular within the Harper government. In response to the National Chief’s speech, a spokesperson for Minister John Duncan of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada dismissively responded, “Our government is strongly committed to addressing challenges within the Indian Act” (emphasis added).

Ironically, in June of 2009, Prime Minister Harper apologized for Canada’s residential schools policy by saying, “Today, we recognize that this policy of assimilation was wrong, has caused great harm, and has no place in our country.” But more than two years later, his government insists on retaining the central vehicle for assimilation—the Indian Act itself—albeit with some tinkering around the edges. It wants to keep the department as it is, as though having renamed it from “Indian and Northern Affairs Canada” to “Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada” resolved the dysfunction there. In short, the Prime Minister either misunderstood the lessons he claimed to have learned in his apology, or he never really meant what he said.

Throughout the history of this country, government after government has pursued only one policy toward First Nations — assimilation — and it hasn’t worked. It hasn’t accomplished assimilation as its proponents wanted, and it certainly hasn’t worked for First Nations. At a time when First Nations are ready to identify both an alternative vision and a way to get there, it is up to all Canadians to reject failure, show respect for First Nations and finally set the country down the path of reconciliation.

Getting it right won’t be easy, but it is worth the trouble.

Daniel Wilson is a freelance writer and consultant on human rights and aboriginal policy. He is a former diplomat and advisor to the Assembly of First Nations.

Dany Laferrière. Photo by Karen Bambonye.

It seems strange to be given the task of “introducing” a man who has written more than 10 books and recently won major literary prizes in France and Quebec, but there it is: I, and presumably many in English Canada, had forgotten about Dany Laferrière.

I’d been a big fan of his a decade ago. I’d read all his books. I’d included a section from his autobiographical novel A Drifting Year—a wondrously sparse book about a Haitian immigrant’s first long cold year in Montreal—in Concrete Forest, the anthology of urban Canadian fiction I edited in 1998. But since then, nothing. Between 1997 and 2009, there were no new English translations of Dany Laferrière’s books and, consequently, I forgot all about him.

What happened to Laferrière? I didn’t realize how productive he’d been until just recently, when I came across some mention of his work and looked him up. And there he was—living in Montreal after a stint in Miami, enjoying, at 58, an impressive resurgence. While most of us weren’t watching, Laferrière had written seven more books, including one that was turned into a 2005 feature film starring Charlotte Rampling (the film shares a title with his provocative novel Heading South). In 2009, without most of us even noticing, Laferrière won the major French literary award the Prix Médicis for his part-novel, part-memoir L’énigme du retour, in which the death of an author’s father prompts a return to Haiti 30-plus years after he left the country of his birth.

I’m anxious to read the book but my French is pathetic. And, two years later, there is still no translation, a state of affairs to be parsed at length some other time. Right now, I’m here to (re)introduce you to the works of Laferrière. I recently pored over the two new books that publisher Douglas & McIntyre released in translation. One was the previously mentioned Heading South, a book set in Baby Doc’s Haiti that looks at the lives of middle-aged Western women and the Haitian rent boys who service them. The other is the 2010 release I Am A Japanese Writer.

Both are classic Laferrière. Written in sparse yet poetic prose, sly and earnest at the same time, they parse the mixed messages of post-modern identity with lustful exuberance. I recommend both, but Japanese Writer is the better book and the better example of why Laferrière is so worth reading. In this restrained novel, told in short chapters of three or four pages each, the author creates an alter-ego who has, based solely on the title of his proposed book—“I Am a Japanese Writer”—scored himself an advance. Word spreads about this non-existent book and controversy grips Laferrière’s imagined Japan, a country at once provoked and obsessed with the idea of a black man who had never even set foot on their soil daring to proclaim himself one of them. This is what Laferrière does. He writes movingly and cleverly about race, nationality, and, ultimately, the multiple conflicting ways we form our identities. His prose, in this case ably translated by his longtime translator David Homel, is deadpan and devious.

It drives us forward into narratives that defy us to come to easy conclusions. “I don’t give a shit about identity,” our protagonist tells the woman sent to his apartment to photograph him for a Japanese magazine. “Look me in the eye: there is no book.”

Lucky for us, after a decade-long absence, there is a book. Look me in the eye and tell me there’s another Canadian writer with as deviously delicate a take on the post-colonial diaspora and the perils and potentials of multiculturalism.

Indigenous Day of Action against the G20 in Toronto, June 2010. Photo by Velcrow Ripper.

I am glad This has decided to celebrate this wonderful anniversary by looking at the organizations and individuals who are pointing the way to future change. It is time to stop talking about what went wrong with the left that was so effective in the 20th century and identify the forces who are leading change in the 21st century. Primary among these, in my view, are indigenous peoples and movements.

In Canada, the most important new group is one that many readers of This may not even have heard of: Defenders of the Land. I will let them tell you who they are, as they explain on their website:

“Defenders of the Land, a network of indigenous communities and activists in land struggle across Canada, including elders and youth, women and men, was founded at a historic meeting in Winnipeg from November 12–14, 2008. Defenders is the only organization of its kind in the territory known as Canada—indigenous-led, free of government or corporate funding, and dedicated to building a fundamental movement for indigenous rights.

“We reject the extinguishment of Aboriginal title through treaty, and any interpretations of historical treaties which falsely claim, against the united voices of our elders and ancestors, that we have extinguished title to our traditional territories. We reject any policy or process which aims at extinguishing Aboriginal title, including contemporary treaty and comprehensive land claims processes.

“The Indian Act is a fundamental injustice and the product of racism and colonialism. It has no basis in any treaty and has been imposed on our peoples by Canada without our consent. It imposes on us a foreign system of government in which accountability is to masters in Ottawa and not to our peoples. It denies us our freedom to define for ourselves who we are and who are the members of our nations. Only indigenous peoples have the right to make these determinations.

“We have the right to choose and practice our own systems of government, in accordance with our customs.”

While you may not know their name, you probably know some of their leadership, like veteran activist Arthur Manuel and youth leader Ben Powless. You will certainly know some of the 41 communities actively working together, including Barrière Lake, Ardoch Algonquin, Grassy Narrows, Haida, and Lubicon.

Defenders were also the central actors in the powerful Indigenous Day of Action against the G20 in June 2010. They also organize Indigenous Sovereignty Week, which was held in more than 10 cities across Canada in November 2010. At the sessions I attended, the majority of the audience were indigenous and they were discussing and debating strategies. I learned a lot.

Defenders are working across the numerous divisions created by colonialist structures to build strategies and solidarity among all indigenous peoples, using their wisdom and strength rather than trying to fit into a colonial system—whether it is created by corporations, government or left activists. They hold a gathering every year, bringing together indigenous leaders of land struggles from across Canada, including traditional and elected leaders, elders, women, youth, and non-native supporters. It is the only gathering of its kind in this country.

Defenders of the Land are slowly and carefully building a powerful grassroots movement of indigenous peoples to work together in defending their land and promoting their sovereignty. The primary work involved is indigenous-to-indigenous education on issues, movement strategy, and organizing skills. They are developing a very ambitious plan that needs lots of funding.

One of the central weaknesses of the left in Canada has been our failure to support indigenous struggles and our ignorance of their history and culture. As settlers on this land, we have responsibility to learn and offer support. Because they don’t take government or corporate money, Defenders need financial aid from those of us who support their approach.

But it is not a guilt trip. Canada is a key strategic place in the global ecosystem because of our wilderness, almost all of which is on indigenous lands. Not only is the indigenous struggle key to saving the planet, I cannot see how we have a true democracy in this country based on the exploitation and marginalization of indigenous peoples. For me, indigenous sovereignty is central to progressive politics in Canada.

Defenders of the Land is thus the most exciting organization in the country right now.

Illustration by Matt Daley.

When Google, citing concerns over security and censorship, pulled their operations out of China in March this year, they were widely praised for taking a stand for democracy. But Google’s move wasn’t the first time a Western entity had taken the moral high road in regard to China.

In fact, almost 200 years ago, the British government also stood up for its beliefs. After they had expended countless resources developing an opium industry, China shut down its borders to the drug, claiming that addiction was taking its toll on Chinese society. The Raj, seeing not only its business threatened, but also its ideals of free trade and capitalism, twice sent its navy to war to force China to open its borders. Britain won, and China had to relent.

Of course, comparing an enforced opium trade with online free speech may slip into exaggeration. But when Google indignantly left China, an important point was lost in the sanctimonious chatter: to many in China, the difference between the Google of today and the Empire of yesterday isn’t as clear as we might like to think. And as the web increasingly becomes a battleground for cultural and political exchange, it’s worth remembering that history is never as far in the past as we might hope.

In the aftermath of Google’s departure, the chorus of satisfied approval was overwhelming. Though Google itself treaded with the kind of care any profit-minded company might, the press was less tactful. When Google launched a chart that tracked which services China had blocked, prominent tech journalist Steven Levy called it an “Evil Meter.” Vanity Fair’s Michael Wolff suggested that China was simply a bully, and that Google had “beat an honourable retreat.” Meanwhile, the National Post and the Globe and Mail did their best to cast the decision in moral rather than economic terms. The complexities of geopolitics and culture were reduced to a tired old approach: “Western values good; China bad.”

One might say “fair enough”: we are talking about a totalitarian regime here. But a few hundred years of Western global domination means there’s just no way to get around the optics of a massive American multinational saying its moral views are the right ones. In light of history, that kind of ideological dogmatism comes off as more than a little paternalistic.

But Google is not a parent and places like China, with their own histories, cultures and practices, are not children. To make matters worse, Google’s business model is essentially a paragon of Western democratic capitalism: disseminate information without restriction and then find a way to make money off the ways people access it. This may seem neutral, but it isn’t. It relies on the idea that spreading knowledge and information is an inherent good because an effective social system empowers individuals to find out things for themselves, and change their lives accordingly. For us, the sovereign individual is everything.

By contrast, even in contemporary Chinese thought, what still reigns is the idea that the community gives people their place in life, and the structures of ritual and authority give life order. The individualism that underpins Google’s business model is frequently seen as both arrogance and selfishness because it seems to prioritize the individual over the knowledge of the state and its rulers. The questions Google raised in China weren’t simply a matter of “repression,” but of how people locate themselves in reality. This fact seemed to be lost on most Western journalists. (About the only dissent in the technology press came from Gizmodo’s Brian Lam, himself the son of immigrants from Hong Kong, who wrote a piece titled “Google Would Remind My Grandpa of the Arrogant White Invaders.”)

Is it a noble goal to try to spread values and ideals that seem to have benefited the societies that have adopted them? Sure. But principles like democracy and freedom of speech don’t simply float down from the sky into open arms below. They are borne out of centuries-long processes rooted in social, material, and intellectual change. To assume their universal good—as Google and the Western press seemed to—is to deny their historical and cultural specificity. And at a certain point, it ceases to matter what is “objectively” right when such presumptuousness and arrogance only serve to galvanize people against you.

For all that, it’s worth noting that when Google did leave China, many there weren’t too affected. They had Baidu—a Chinese search engine, albeit heavily censored, that is the sixth most-visited website in the world and is still growing. And this is the thing, really: a Western navy can no longer force “our” way of thinking on the world, because power is no longer centralized in the West.

But history rattles noisily still, and the values of an open, democratic web aren’t universal or even necessarily right. And some, presented with the image of Google getting up on its moral high horse, find it hard to forget an armada of ships, their holds stocked with opium, barging their way into the Canton harbour.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the “Year of Africa,” when 16 African countries successfully achieved independence from their European colonizers.

Since then, the graduates of the 1960 decolonization movement have gone on to do some great—and some not-so-great—things. Below we highlight five of these countries and their current statuses.

SOMALIA
Most Depressing
This Horn of Africa country has not had a functioning government since 1991 and instead is run by warlords and terrorists. One of these groups, al-Shabab, maintains connections with al- Qaeda, making Somalia a place of interest in the United States’ War on Terror. Oxfam International has called Somalia Africa’s worst humanitarian crisis and no wonder: About three million of its residents depend on foreign food aid.

CONGO (KINSHASA)
Most Influential (but not in a good way)
Africa is in the grips of its own world war and this central African state was at the middle of it. For five years (from 1998-2003), Angola, Namibia, and Zimbabwe had been fighting against Uganda and Rwanda over the Democratic Republic of the Congo and its mineral wealth. Over 500,000 have been driven from their homes by soldiers, and about 5.5 million have died from war-related causes since 1998.

GABON
Most Stable (though not necessarily for the right reason)
Since it’s home to 40 ethnic groups, one might reasonably expect this West African state to have experienced some conflicts. But no, Gabon is stable and, thanks to oil reserves, relatively prosperous. But while stable, the country is anything but democratic: there have only been two presidential administrations since independence, a family dynasty of one leader followed by his son.

NIGERIA
Most Uncertain
This African powerhouse is both the diplomatic centre of West Africa and the continent’s leading oil producer. It’s also internationally recognized for its freedom of the press. However, economic inequality brought about by unequal access to the fruits of oil production is bringing Nigeria to the brink of division along ethnic lines. A corruption-prone government doesn’t help matters.

BENIN
Most Hopeful
First the bad news: Benin has the alarming title of the least developed country out of the 16 who gained independence in 1960. But on the positive side, this small West African nation has a fairly robust civil society and, unlike Gabon, boasts a number of established political parties the people can choose from.

In today’s Verbatim, we’ve got a transcript of my interview with Alisa Palmer, director of Cloud 9, currently playing in Toronto at the Panasonic Theatre. Cloud 9 is British playwright Caryl Churchill’s 1979 play that masks a scathing critique of English colonialist notions of sex, gender, and race beneath a fast-talking and often absurd family comedy.

I talked with Alisa Palmer, director of this latest remount, about what’s changed in the 30 years since Cloud 9 debuted—and what still has the power to shock.

Q&A

Graham F. Scott: Cloud 9 is 30 years old now. When it debuted it was very much of its time. So what appealed to you about it today?

Alisa Palmer: Well, as we were just chatting, I’m a student of the philosophy of history, but what the past holds for us is sometimes it’s easier to see what the truth of a story is when there’s an arm’s length on it. And I think when it debuted, a lot of the reputation of the play was how theatrically experimental it was, or how politically and sexually sensational it was. And so the shock value was part of its reputation. And now that 30 years have passed, the shock value has abated because we’re more explicit culturally about what goes on in people’s bedrooms. So that effect has kind of been diffused with time and I think it allows the heart of the story to come through more easily.

And that’s really what was interesting to me, is that essentially I find it’s kind of a family drama told in a very unusual way. And the core of the family story is how raising children and different values that travel through generations affect people when they become adults. And so, in the first act we see this kind of archetypal, satirical version of a family—a 1950’s family—and she sets in it colonial Africa as kind of a poetic license. And then the children in that act grow up and we see them in the second act in their proper time and place—in 1980’s London—and their choices for how they conduct their relationships and their personal lives seem to be informed intensely by how their raised as children, and the gender expectations and the emotional expectations, and repressions –all those things. And that to me is an essential story.

I think Northrop Frye, he talks about how there’s only really one story, and that’s, who am I? How do I become who I am? And it’s a story of identity. And you can go across all the great plays, you know “to be or not to be” and King Lear, how do I fulfill who I am in whatever age of life I’m living? And this goes back to Cloud 9 as well. How do I fulfill who I am? How do I become a full person without stepping on someone else’s toes while making authentic choices? So that’s what drew me to it. I thought, 30 years of time, now we can actually hear the story which is more about relationships and finding out who you are, fulfilling who you are. And the other wild stuff about the style or the content will take a back step. It’s the fun part of the play, but it’s not the heart of the matter.

Graham F. Scott: And yet, apparently it still does have the ability to shock because you said in the director’s notes in the program that you got e-mails objecting to this play even being staged. What were the objections you heard?

Alisa Palmer: There are people who are concerned about Anne of Green Gables. (Laughs)

Graham F. Scott: How so?

Alisa Palmer: This is so fascinating because we all know that actors are actors and they play different roles, but there’s also some part of us, or some part of the population, that really suspends disbelief. So when an actor takes on a role you identify with that role. So Megan Follows was in the play, and she’s done so many different films and TV shows and stage pieces, but she’s most famous for being Anne of Green Gables when she was a teenager, or a young child. So she has a fan base that was dedicated to her, and some of them can’t make the distinction between Megan Follows and Anne of Green Gables. There’s a lot of dismay about Megan Follows selling the reputation of Anne of Green Gables by playing a lesbian. (Laughs)

Graham F. Scott: That’s bizarre.

Alisa Palmer: It is bizarre, and I think that would be the main point, the most articulate outcry. The experience that I have often is, I look at a play and I think, well this speaks to me I feel right at home with this, and then I think, am I a freak because other people think it’s so wild? And I go back to my childhood to my parents’ faces and reactions to things I would do that I think are perfectly normal, whether it’s dating a woman and then dating a man and then dating a woman, and their jaws would drop and I would think, am I a freak? And I remember my mother saying, why do you behave this way? Why do you live this way? And I said, well because you’ve raised me to believe that people are equal. You’ve done such a good job at raising me. And she was stumped! (Laughs) She was stumped and she said, you should go into law. But theatre’s kind of like law. You make an argument and other people can make their decisions about it.

Graham F. Scott: This is the second Caryl Churchill play that you’ve directed inside a year with Top Girls for Soulpepper [correction: this production was actually 2007], so there’s also the Caryl Churchill festival that’s going on right now in Manitoba and then the Shaw Festival’s going to be remounting Serious Money this summer. It seems like there’s a Churchill moment happening right now. So why two plays for you, and then why do you think that Caryl Churchill is so on the radar right now?

Alisa Palmer: I actually have done four plays of hers, technically, although one was with the University of Toronto theatre program and I did a dream play. That was something that premiered an adaptation of the Strindberg play that Caryl did. And I did a workshop production of The Skriker, I think it was almost about nine years ago with the World Stage Festival, a Night with Theatre. And we did this in-house workshop production and Caryl Churchill came over and I worked with her on it. That play was brought to me by an actor, Claire Coulter, and it has an amazing part for a woman actor in it. And I had heard of Caryl Churchill a great deal, but I wasn’t familiar with her work because I didn’t study theatre in university. So if you don’t study theatre, you often don’t get to read a lot of the pioneering writers, because they’re usually part of the curriculum and they don’t get produced professionally. So The Skriker was brought to me and I started to read the play. I found her voice formidable and amazing, and she was still writing and she was, at the time, in her mid-60’s, and I thought, this is incredible.

So I worked on that play, and at the same time I started to realize that the time was right to do her masterpieces, which are Cloud 9 and Top Girls. They had been done in Canada 30 years before with ensembles, really significant actors who went on to have these great careers and they were always landmark productions. And I thought the time was right to do this so I started – and this was eight years ago – I started talking to people about producing either of those plays, and the response I got was, again, I must be crazy. People were saying, they’re dated pieces, they’re feminist pieces, they’re topical, the issues have all been dealt with; which cracked me up, because it’s like, how do you finish human rights? How have you finished them? It didn’t make any sense to me and I thought, there’s a gender bias going on, there’s something at work that is preventing this woman’s writing from being recognized the way Pinter’s plays are, Sam Shephard’s plays are, other people who are writing in the ‘60s and ‘70s and who’s work is not being considered “dated”. Or a special lobby interest group of people who want to do it, like women or something.

So it took me a long time to find creative partnerships and Soulpepper was one of the first people that picked up Top Girls and I was convinced that it would sell from working at Nightwood [Theatre] and from being able to have financial success with shows that are feminist. I know there’s an audience out there for people who want material that’s really savvy and sophisticated. I think a lot of times people underestimate the theatre audience and it’s got itself in some kind of ivory tower and it’s formidably frumpy on a bad day. And there’s a whole bunch of circumstances why that happens, and a lot of it has to do not with theatre practitioners, but with the general perception of media and culture and where it’s going, and that’s a whole other conversation. But in any case, when Soulpepper agreed to produce this I thought, that’s great. I was excited about that because it would draw attention to Caryl Churchill as a writer of classics and it would sort of authorize her work because Soulpepper’s known for doing classics. And it was one of the most successful productions that I’ve done and there was an audience for it, which was no accident in my eyes, and I encouraged them to consider doing Cloud 9. And as it turned out, the Mirvish’s were first off the mark to really go for it.

But I think that the production of Top Girls, my experience is that it took the curse off of a play that had been considered dated and experimental, all those misconceptions of this play about women. I think it took the curse off of it, and other people started realizing that you can do a play that is artistically and politically challenging. People actually like it and they’re interested and they’re game?. And at Soulpepper, Top Girls was the first production of a play by a woman that they had ever produced. After eight years or nine years, to have had eight seasons of work without a single play done by a woman, I mean you actually have to make an effort to do that. But they’ve changed their course now, and they have more shows by women. I think they have more shows in the season now than they’ve had in the last decade, so I guess they’re catching on to the rockin’ trend of women being functioning artists. (Laughs)

So I think the success of Top Girls took the curse off of Churchill and actually excited people about it. And there are tons of people who were always interested in her work but there’s nothing more reassuring than seeing audiences getting excited about it, and let people go forward with what they knew in their hearts anyway a lot of time.

Graham F. Scott: Now, in terms of the success of women in theatre, in terms of writing and directing, do you see improvement? I mean, you are yourself, kind of an example of someone who’s doing well, but are you the exception to the rule?

Alisa Palmer: I’m happy to say, you know I’ve had recent successes, like East of Berlin has been this phenomenal experience of touring for three years and being remounted three times, and it written by this woman writer. And I’ve made an effort to get work by women out there, and that’s what I did when I was running Nightwood, it’s like, get it into the mainstream. So there’s a lot of really good things that I’ve experienced myself and the changes at Shaw Festival with Jackie Maxwell being in charge and her inclusivity has just been sublime. And she’s sort of normalizing women as artists in that sphere of the festivals and that level.

But, all that being said, I moved here about 18 years ago, and I think in the ‘80s, when I was in university, my impression was that there were a lot more artistic directors who were women, and there was an acknowledged excitement about work that talked about women’s experiences. And I had one person say it was a fad. (Laughs) I can’t really say that I’m willing to say that, but every 50 years or so there seems to be this acknowledgement that women’s work has suffered from gender bias and sexism and it hasn’t had the same authority in the mainstream and culture that men’s work has, and people sort of say, yeah, that’s right, that’s true, there is sort of this old patriarchy, and let’s address it and make some changes.

And then there’s this reaction the other way, like a company like Soulpepper emerged 10 years ago and they were lauded by a lot of the media for doing work that hasn’t been done on Toronto stages. But that fact was that they were doing international work of a classical canon, which means there were no plays by women, there were no plays by artists of colour, and there were no Canadian plays. And so I thought it was interesting that 10 years ago, for the media to say, wow, we really needed this. When, in fact, it had only been 30 years before that that people like Paul Thompson were arguing for Canadian content. And the Canada Council was developed in the ‘50s to make it possible to do Canadian content and not colonial work, so for the media to say 10 years ago, well, we really need this colonial work again, as if it hasn’t been done. That seemed to be a revisionism. And sometimes it keeps happening with the media’s perception of art—like wow, we really need to do some of these plays that have been so neglected, like Shakespeare. (Laughs) So all of that is to say, without trying to denigrate the efforts of anybody who’s doing art, like Soulpepper’s, or anybody at all, it’s all legitimate. The wider the spectrum of art that gets done; the better. But it seems like in spite of my good experience as a woman artist, it’s not as rocking and developed for women artists as it was 20 to almost 30 years ago in the ‘80s and so on, so it’s been a downside. But now I think the nose is coming up again. We’re moving ahead and moving forward and people are realizing that it should be more integrated.

When Cloud 9 debuted in 1979, these topics were more radical than they now seem to modern audiences, but the core of the play, a single bewildered family, each member trying to figure out their true desires and roles, is still sharp, vibrant, and very funny.

It started as the sound of rustling underbrush behind the heavily wooded Salt Spring Island hillside where I live. It’s not a deer, I thought. It’s not a cougar. Way too noisy. It must be people. Now it’s highly unusual, you understand, to hear people in this neck of the woods. There are miles of uninhabited bush behind our cabin; I refer to it as supernatural nowhere BC. If Walden had a bush, this would be it.

Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, located 35 minutes by ferry from Vancouver Island and three hours from Vancouver, has a population of 10,000 people spread out among 182 square kilometres of lakes and woods with most of the population concentrated near the bustling town of Ganges. The South End, where I live with my sweetie and son, is far from Ganges and “the last of lawless Salt Spring,” as a friend of mine puts it. For me it symbolizes what west coast life ultimately represents: freedom, a chance to live off the grid as I have done all my adult life, grow vegetables in a Mediterranean climate—and now, continue to do so with my family and create a home.

So when I looked out from the cabin we have rented for three years and saw two men in bright orange work vests pounding stakes into the ground, I was surprised to say the least. A “rich American” had bought the property adjoining our place, one explained, sight unseen, online. These surveyors had been hired to drive a stake into the ground every five feet across five acres of land to mark Mr. Cyber-American’s property line.

The next day I came back, ripped out every single stake and chopped it up for kindling. I left the ones painted white and pounded them deep into mother earth with my sledge.

Salt Spring Island was originally claimed as Coast Salish territory, and still is. Property lines have no place here—it’s all stolen land. No, really. First Nations here never signed treaties surrendering land. Any pacts the natives signed were friendship pacts. To the colonizers they were legally binding documents, and often land deeds.

At the top of Cyber-American’s place is a midden, a garbage dump of bones and shells indicating habitation by First Nations. The Cowichan people have been coming here for more than 5,000 years, collecting oysters and clams, harvesting plants and hunting wildlife. In the 19th century, African Americans came to Salt Spring escaping slavery, and a little later Hawaiians travelled here as shipmates with the Hudson Bay Company and decided to stay. Now I’m adding to the midden heap.

During the early years of transition, nobody questioned citizenship. Even today what does it really matter—we’re all global citizens right? But to understand here, you have to live here in relationship to the land and its people, develop an understanding of its ecology and the effect it has on you. It’s what makes us so damn weird out west. We love the land. A case of nimbyism? Hardly. I don’t own this backyard.

So, yes, ripping out those stakes was incredibly therapeutic. It also, I discovered later, placed me within an intriguing subset of public opinion. It’s the subject of Environics cofounder and social scientist Michael Adams’s Fire and Ice: The United States, Canada and the Myth of Converging Values (Penguin Canada). Canadians are actually becoming ever more different than Americans. The book is based on interviews with 14,000 Canadians and Americans over a 10-year period and two years’ worth of analysis of trends in more than 100 key indicators of social and cultural values.

Nowhere are these differences more apparent than in British Columbia. Of 16 North American geographic regions, British Columbia is the least driven with consumerism, and the most interested in life’s nonmaterial rewards. The United States, Adams points out, is “lacking in ecological values,” which indicates a detachment from the land. Ecological fatalism is up in the US, he adds, while empathy for your neighbour is way down.

“The whole island is being bought by Americans,” the surveyor working on the property next door—a longtime Salt Spring resident—points out. He should know, they are employing him. Finding out the numbers to support such a comment, however, is a lot more difficult. As of January 1, new provisions in the Privacy Act make it impossible to find out the nationalities of landowners in Canada.

But after talking to a number of real estate agents, one gets a pretty good idea about who is buying property—not only on Salt Spring Island, but on the rest of the Gulf Islands and Vancouver Island as well. One Salt Spring realtor told me that one-third of all waterfront property on Salt Spring is owned by Americans, and there are areas of Salt Spring that are 50 percent American-owned.

On neighbouring Mayne Island, one sale out of 40 went to an American three years ago. Over the past year, one in five properties that sold went to an American. On Salt Spring Island, the buyers are the big-money kind. Goldie Hawn, Al Pacino and Robin Williams own places but don’t live in them. People who don’t have to think twice about the price of a home are driving up land prices. In the past three years housing prices on Salt Spring have increased by half.

There are three types of US real estate refugees: those who immigrate here and gain citizenship, those who seek citizenship but are denied it, and those who simply want real estate holdings here. It is the latter that make up the bulk of purchasers here. “They disapprove of American foreign policy and the current Bush administration, they fear that in America they will be under terrorist attack and they want to have Canada as a safe place to retreat to in the event of such an attack,” says Jan MacPherson, another Salt Spring realtor.

A few days before the border-stake incident, I saw a Humvee with Oregon license plates at the recycling depot. So I was in a certain frame of mind, let’s say, when I chopped up the stakes. While considering my feelings and discussing them with friends, an intriguing bumper sticker started showing up on vans, island beaters, road signs and hydro poles: “USA Out of Iraq and The Gulf Islands.” Apparently I wasn’t alone in my thoughts.

To be fair, the American migration is part of a larger trend of gentrification on the islands. In the 1960s and ‘70s, young people moved here searching for a simpler way of life. The hippie dream was alive and well and the growing conditions for marijuana perfect for a down payment. Today, back-to-the-land has been replaced by back-to-the-bland, comfortable middle-aged city-dwellers investing in country property (preferably on the waterfront) where they can develop estates for weekends and holiday retreats. Here it isn’t often a case of trying to live off the land; more often it’s living off stock options in an expensive second home with a hobby garden and an electric fence.

“I’d like to see an economy where people who are investing their lives here have the opportunity to buy property,” says Ellen Garvie, a community development consultant. Garvie suggests that back to nature at $500-per-square-foot properties such as the one built by Randy Bachman of BTO and the Guess Who (which reportedly employed 400 people) are not sustainable. The effect of
the value of the house outweighs the short-term employment opportunities it provides. And the people who work on the house won’t be able to afford to buy property here.

The island has a zero vacancy rate for renters, and as Garvie notes (and I have experienced) there’s a shocking decrepitude to places available for rent. The last place we rented was 400 square feet, with no tub, for $750 a month and the landlord and his barking dog Bubba adding to the midden pile outside our door.

In the 1996 federal census, 17 percent of locals reported earning gross personal incomes below the federal low-income cut-off level of $14,473 for a single person and $27,235 for a four-person household. Almost half the households on Salt Spring enjoy an income of less than $30,000, with 30 percent of households surviving on less than $20,000. Can one experience “the good life” under such conditions?

To make sure the good life remains accessible to longtime residents, a few have gathered together to form the Salt Spring Island Coalition, whose goal is to develop an independent political entity—an Island State—to ensure a sustainable community. According to Eric Booth, who was born and raised on Salt Spring Island and has raised two children here, chances are that only one or two percent of the 100 children graduating from high school each year on Salt Spring today will be able to remain here and raise their own kids.

Booth, who worked as a real estate agent on the island for close to a decade, bases this statement on the fact that there are only 6,500 subdividable lots on Salt Spring Island, which can support a population of 15,000 to 18,000 people. “After that, the population of Salt Spring will have maxed out,” he says. “There will be no more land available to build. Once that happens the price of real estate here will go through the roof.”

But you can’t stop people from wanting to come here, can you?

“Oh but you can,” says Booth. “What is the current immigration criteria for coming to Salt Spring now? If you have the money you can come. What definition of citizenship is that? If Salt Spring were to become an Island Nation like the Isle of Mann or the Channel Islands we could define what criteria make for a citizen. In the future the people who contribute to the uniqueness of Salt Spring, the artists and craftspersons, the musicians and farmers, won’t be able to afford to live here. Then the Island will be only for the rich. We can insure that there will always be room for a culturally diverse population if we define it by our citizenship.”

Prince Edward Island has taken one small step in that direction. Property owners who were born outside its boundaries pay double the property tax of the indigenous population.

“People who come here from out of country don’t make the same connections to community in most cases,” says Garvie, “If you are younger and raise your children here, you can put a face to the community and invest energy into it. It is in your best interest.”

Four cedars, each at least 500 years old, have already been chopped down on my neighbour’s property. Cedars my two-year-old son and I have placed our hands upon countless times, But it cuts deeper than that. There is now a daily assault of chainsaws outside our rented home. It truly does feel like an American invasion. In just weeks the ecosystem here has been reduced from a relatively undisturbed 10,000 years of post-glacial forest life to a redneck mud pit of man conquering trees. (I have a chainsaw; I cut down four trees a year for firewood. This is not about raving environmentalism.)

The bush is abuzz with the sounds of building another weekend retreat for Americans. And with the silence goes the idea of living on the land and raising your kids here. And, of course, for my sweetie, son and I the question remains where to go next? With all the US immigration headed this way I hear there are some great real estate bargains just south of the border.

Grant Shilling is the author of The Cedar Surf: An Informal History of Surfing in British Columbia. Shilling was the editor and publisher of The GIG, an eclectic news-paper that served the coastal communities of BC. His surf drama “Tough City” is to be produced by True West Films. Shilling surfs a longboard dubbed “The Muff.” He is a lot of fun at parties.