The Poetry of Arnold Viersen

Earlier this week, during a House of Commons debate, Conservative Member of Parliament Arnold Viersen (Peace River–Westlock) asked fellow MP Laurel Collins (Victoria) whether she'd ever considered sex work. It was his most newsworthy act to date, though longtime Viersen watchers like myself hold aloft this untitled poem, which he recited in the House on May 6, 2016 (as recorded in Hansard):

    Springtime is here; our farmers are in their fields
    Assessing the moisture, gauging their yields.
    When rain is sparse and times are tough
    And the price of hay is especially rough,
    As Conservatives we understand
    It takes hard work to till the land.
    Alberta NDP passed a law for working on prairie farms:
    More expensive food – don't care who it harms.
    They said, “John dear, we want your food
    But only feed your cows when we're in the mood;
    No overtime or you'll pay the price”.
    Beef and pork will cost more than twice
    We're standing up for farmers, feeding cows 'till nine.
    We're standing up for farmers, working overtime.
    You eat their beef, you sit on leather,
    Your feet are shoed in stormy weather.
    Without their food, life would be grim
    Unless you plan to be awfully thin
    Family farms are getting fewer.
    Once they're gone, we're in deep manure.
    Don't egg me on, the yolk's on you.
    If farmers leave, what will we do?
    Bottom line – You want to eat?
    Support our farmers – Buy their wheat.

In his 1977 essay "The Poet as Performer Debases His Art," John Glassco puts it that few are able to do justice to verse in public recitation. But then, he didn't live on enough to witness something such as this:

Elected to the House of Commons in 2015, Mr Viersen is a graduate of Alberta's Canadian Covenant School in Neerlandia, situated at the intersection of Highway 769 and Township Road 615A between Mellowdale and Vega.

I'm saving Arnold Viersen's masterpiece, "Conservative Rap," for a future post.

Related posts:

In Search of George Pepki, Poet
Erin O'Toole's Proud Disgrace

Arnold Viersen Has a Rhyme for Manure

                    Your lights are on, but you're not home.
                    Your mind is not your own.

The week Arnold Viersen was born, Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love" topped the Billboard Hot 100. Who dares call it coincidence?

Like Preston Manning George Pepki before him, the rookie MP for Peace River-Westlock has a rhyming dictionary and knows how to use it. Anyone requiring evidence need look no further than his most recent speech in the House of Commons.

The poet first captured my attention this past May, when he presented this at the Conservative Party Convention:

Straight outta Barrhead, Alberta (pop. 4,432).

Viersen is a seer. Leadership no-shows like Tony Clement were included only because lines like this are to good to let slide:

                        I've got the chops,
                        Like to drink hops.
                        Even on twitter
                        I'm a heavy hitter.
                        In Cabinet for ten years,
                        Leave the Libs in tears.
                        The man from Muskoka,
                        I'm our party's Lee Iococa.

I'll allow that Viersen's not much good at reading prose,

but when it comes to verse he really shines. Consider "Farmers: Heart of Rural Canada," which the MP performed in the House on 6 May 2016:

     Springtime is here; our farmers are in their fields
     Assessing the moisture, gauging their yields.
     When rain is sparse and times are tough
     And the price of hay is especially rough,
     As Conservatives we understand
     It takes hard work to till the land.
     Alberta NDP passed a law for working on prairie farms:
     More expensive food – don’t care who it harms.
     They said, “John dear, we want your food
     But only feed your cows when we’re in the mood;
     No overtime or you pay the price.”
     Beef and pork will cost more than twice.
     We’re standing up for farmers, feeding cows ’till nine.
     We’re standing up for farmers, working overtime.
     You eat their beef, you sit on leather,
     Your feet are shoed in stormy weather.
     Without their food, life would be grim
     Unless you plan to be awfully thin
     Family farms are getting fewer.
     Once they’re gone, we’re in deep manure.
     Don’t egg me on, the yolk’s on you.
     If farmers leave, what will we do?
     Bottom line – You want to eat?
     Support our farmers – Buy their wheat.

"Don't egg me on, the yolk's on you." That line alone is worth every cent of the $170,400 the MP will earn this year.

To think it has been immortalized in Hansard.

Related post:

In Search of George Pepki, Poet

Ignatieff's Ink and Harper's Hockey Book

Election day in Canada. Unless the pollsters are way off, it looks like we'll be passing on the opportunity to have a Booker Prize nominee as prime minister... for now. Yann Martel, perhaps.

It's been pretty interesting having a critically acclaimed, award-winning author as Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, in part because his writing was so often used against him. Ezra Levant, for example, thumbed repeatedly through the Liberal leader's 1987 book, The Russian Album, in search of Ignatieff family riches and misdeeds. Time and again, the columnist told us how Ignatieff's great-grandfather, Nicholas, persecuted Jews in nineteenth-century Russia.

From where did Mr Levant acquire this information? Why from The Russian Album, of course. And who shares in Mr Levant's condemnation of Nicholas Ignatieff? Great-grandson Michael.

Levant was at least familiar with his material. Others not so much. Here's something from Blogging Tory co-founder Stephen Taylor:

And here's a partial list of those seventeen books:

The Russian Album (winner of the Governor General's Award for Non-fiction)

Blood and Belonging (winner of the Lionel Gelber Award)

Scar Tissue (shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Novel Award)

The Rights Revolution (the 1997 Massey Lecture)

Isaiah Berlin: A Life (winner of the UBC Medal for Canadian Biography)

Virtual War (winner of the George Orwell Prize)

This distance from the world of books might just explain the confusion concerning the roles of author and publisher experienced by other Conservatives. On 23 April 2010, MP Chris Warkentin rose to report this "case of deceitfulness" to the House of Commons:

The Liberal leader claims on the inside of the front cover of his book [True Patriot Love] that the National Post, when reviewing his book, called it “well-written”. But that is not entirely true. What the National Post called it was “a well-written disappointment." This is the type of dishonesty that not even a first-year university student could get away with.

A graduate of the unaccredited Peace River Bible Institute, you wouldn't think the MP would know what a first-year university student could get away with – but then, these words, which appear in Hansard under Mr Warkentin's name, aren't his. He was merely reading from a Conservative Party press release.

"I'll take the blame from what's between the covers, not for the cover blurbs," Mr Ignatieff responded .

We've heard nothing further from Mr Warkentin – you see, the Conservative Party issued no follow-up press release.

While the monkeys at the keyboards of the Conservative Party have thrown feces at Michael Ignatieff's books, they've ignored titles by the other leaders. There's been no staining of Jack Layton's Homelessness and Speaking Out. Whether the subject is democracy or the environment, they've left the half-dozen books by Elizabeth May alone. Couldn't be bothered? Or is it that they simply "haven't heard of a single one of them"?

And Prime Minister Stephen Harper? He remains the only national leader without a book to his credit. His debut, a history of professional hockey's early days, has been long in the making. Five years ago, he published a 700-word teaser. No original research – nothing that isn't out there on the net – but it's a start. When might we expect to see this tome? In April 2006, Mr Harper told the CBC that he'd planned to finish it within the year. In September 2008, during the last election, the PM informed The Globe and Mail that he needed just three months of uninterrupted time. The two prorogations since, it seems, have not helped in moving the long-promised project along.

That said, if Mr Harper fails to deliver a Conservative majority government today – in his fourth attempt – that uninterrupted time might come sooner than he would like.

Related posts:

Harper Hockey Book Watch (Updated!)

Harper Hockey Book Watch, Year Eight, Day 253

Harper Hockey Book Watch: Year Nine, Day 39
Harper Hockey Book Watch: Year Nine, Day 222
Harper Hockey Book Watch: Year Nine, Day 236
Harper Hockey Book Watch: Year Nine, Day 237
Harper Hockey Book Watch: Year Ten, Day 27
Harper Hockey Book Watch: Year Ten, Day 77
Harper Hockey Book Watch: Fin (et raison d'être)

In Search of George Pepki, Poet

Yesterday's Globe and Mail featured a short work of fiction by Preston Manning. Titled "2018: The new health care", it's of a particular, peculiar, unnamed genre in which political types imagine a future where their greatest fantasy is realized.

I don't know... let's call it porn.

What Mr Manning does – what all who write these pieces do – is set up a row of carefully chosen dominos, each in itself a fantasy, which when set in motion culminate in the greatest fantasy of all.

Call it a climax.

Here Mr Manning imagines the election in Quebec of a "reform-minded government", the death of the Bloc Québécois, a Wikileak that exposes "media executives, editorialists, journalists and television personalities" as health care hypocrites and a "Nobel Prize-winner [sic]" who has Liberals and New Democrats eating crow. And the greatest fantasy of all? The abolition of medicare, of course:

The House, now enlightened by science and buoyed with Christmas cheer, unanimously approved a motion endorsing the "mixed systems" approach to health care and commending it to all provinces and territories. The motion specifically affirmed that such a system was completely compatible with the Canadian way, since, as all members had always known in their hearts, "mixed systems are the very essence of Canada’s national identity."

God bless us, every one!

As I say, one man's fantasy... but what interests me is the domino that Mr Manning calls "The Pepki Case":

George Pepki was a retired Alberta farmer who suffered from a kidney ailment and was referred by his family doctor to a specialist. While waiting for over four months to see the specialist, George's condition became critical and his family rushed him to the emergency ward of an Edmonton hospital. After waiting there for more than six hours and receiving no help, the family in desperation flew George to the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Ariz., where he was diagnosed, treated and released within 72 hours. The family sought to recover the entire cost of the unauthorized trip and treatment from Alberta Health Services, which refused to pay. The Pepkis then took Alberta to court, the case eventually reaching the Supreme Court of Canada about the same time as Quebec was instituting its health-care reforms.

George Pepki is one of only two names featured in "2018: The new health care". The other, Nobel Prize winner Dr Lars Aalborg, is a figment of Mr Manning's imagination, but George Pepki is very much a real person. How do I know? Because Mr Manning has mentioned George Pepki before – from the floor of the House of Commons, no less. Here's Mr Manning on 2 October 1996 debating Bill C-45:

Thinking of the ineffectiveness of bureaucratic action in these areas, the inability of bureaucratic measures and institutions to protect people or to rehabilitate criminals, I am reminded of a poem by the Canadian poet George Pepki, inspired by the children's nursery rhyme "Humpty-Dumpty'':

Humpty-Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty-Dumpty had a great fall;
All the king's horses and all the King's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.

And what is the moral to this little rhyme?
A moral with meaning for men in our time?
The moral is this, and its lesson is true:
There are certain things that the state cannot do.

If all the King's horses and all the King's men
Cannot put an egg together again,
Is it not a false hope, an illusion, a sin,
To ask civil servants to reconstruct men?

Now, we don't hear much poetry recited in the House of Commons, so you'll understand why this particular poem and the proud Pepki name have stayed with me. But here's the thing: in the fourteen years since, I've not seen another poem by "Canadian poet George Pepki". Not only have there been no volumes of verse and nothing in our little magazines, no more than this morsel from Hansard has made its way onto the web.

When yesterday's Globe and Mail hit the stands I'd all but forgotten George Pepki, but he's now very much front of mind. Has the poet actually suffered a kidney ailment? Did his family fly him down to the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Arizona? Was he really diagnosed, treated and released within 72 hours? Is there a case now winding its way to the Supreme Court? Or is Mr Manning simply imagining a future in which these trials will be visited upon George Pepki?

I've written the former Reform leader about the poet George Pepki, but have yet to receive a response.

Update: On 4 January I received a very generous email from Preston Manning in answer to my queries. Mystery solved... for me, at least; Mr Manning has asked that I keep the contents confidential. It's my hope that one day he'll share the secret of George Pepki with the public at large.