Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts

04 March 2024

Too Soon?



Son of a Meech: The Best Brian Mulroney Jokes
Mark Breslin, ed.
Toronto: Ballantine, 1991
113 pages


News of Brian Mulroney's death last Thursday did not hit hard. I was no admirer. As a young man, I dismissed Mulroney as Ronald Reagan Lite. Simplistic, but not wrong. In 1984, the year he led his party to the second greatest electoral victory in this country's history, I was distrustful and skeptical. It came as no surprise when his government began selling off Crown assets at Fire Sale prices.

The Mulroney government spanned the better part of my twenties. He hung onto power, forcing the game into overtime, only to leave the political arena when it became clear he could not score a third victory. Mulroney all but destroyed the Progressive Conservative Party, leaving Kim Campbell and Peter Mackay to ensure its end. 

Nostalgia.

As I say, I was no admirer, though I've come to recognize the man's achievements. He somehow managed to convince Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher that Apartheid was wrong, which was no small feat. He wasn't quite as successful in pushing Reagan on acid rain, but he did get a treaty through with the first President Bush. Mulroney really was our "greenest prime minister," a title included in most of the obituaries.

That he holds it still, three decades after he stepped down as PM, is a sad commentary on his successors.

Son of a Meech
Andy Donato
Toronto: Key Porter, 1990
Son of a Meech is so obvious a pun that Breslin's book is the second to use it as a title. The Meech Lake Accord was Mulroney's greatest gambit, and his greatest defeat. I was against it at the time but have since changed my position. I won't go into my reasoning as it would add five thousand words to this post. I'd much rather focus on this collection of "The Best Brian Mulroney Jokes" because it anticipates the hate, homophobia, and misogyny spread by Ezra Levant, Jeff Ballingall's Proud pages, and the Conservative Party itself.

And so, a warning to the reader, I will be quoting from this book.


Let's begin with stand-up comedian Mark Breslin's brief introduction, in which he describes how Son of a Meech was born:
After each show, members of the audience would approach me with jokes about [Mulroney] – vicious, mean, brutal – my kind of jokes. They weren't, as my literary sensei Jack Kapiica observed, the usual anti-government barbs, but personal ad hominem attacks on the man's most private self. These jokes stepped over the line of good taste, and I got interested.
Are these amongst the jokes he collected? 
Canadians no longer believe in the theory of trickle-down economics.
   Mulroney's trickled down on them long enough.

Not that the prime minister is crooked...
   But last week he swallowed a nail and it came out a corkscrew.
Perhaps not. They don't step over the line.

Variations of the trickle-down economics joke can be traced back to Reagan's first term. The corkscrew joke has iits origins in an insult General Sir Gerald Templer delivered to Lord Mountbatten.

The most interesting part of Breslin's introduction suggests that the jokes provided by his fans weren't quite so numerous as he claims:
The collection got bigger, so I turned to Martin Waxman for help. He researched volumes of comedy material of all eras for jokes about despots and cruel or incompetent leaders. Sad to say, they fit.
And so, we get these:
Did you hear the new Mulroney stamp has had to be recalled?
   People kept spitting on the wrong side.

What's the difference between the prime minister and yogurt?
   Yogurt has culture.

Why would Mulroney never be eaten by cannibals?
   Because he's too hard to swallow.

What do you call an Irish Canadian with half a brain?
   Mr. Prime Minister.
Take a tired old joke, insert a reference to Mulroney, and you're pretty much done, but not always. This one was made contemporary with a reference to yuppies:
What's the only mediocre product yuppies will buy?
   Brian Mulroney.
This one proved too difficult to update:
What's the difference between Howdy Doody and Prime Minister Mulroney?
   You can't see Mulroney's strings.
There are even a couple of blonde jokes:
How do you make Brian Mulroney laugh on Monday?
   Tell him a joke on Friday.

Looking to bolster his stodgy image, the P.M. spent the night at a rock club. And not wanting to be perceived as a square, he even snorted Sweet and Low. 
   He thought it was Diet Coke.

Tame stuff, lame stuff, these can't be the "vicious, mean, brutal jokes" Breslin says he likes.

I've given an imprecise depiction of this book's content, choosing to not share jokes involving bestiality or golden showers. There's also a fair amount of racist and homophobic writing, the most extreme being a joke that combines the two and involves the PM receiving a black coffee enema. I won't be sharing it either, but because I feel there should be at least one example of Breslin's vicious, mean, brutal jokes, I present this:
What's the difference between Rock Hudson and Brian Mulroney?
   Brian's aides have not killed him yet.
Mark Breslin's book is unlike earlier Canadian political humour books. It has little in common with Sex and the Single Prime Minister, The Naked Prime Minister, I Never Promised You a Rose GardenP.E.T., or even Andrew Donato's Son of a Meech, which seem gentle ribbing in comparison. Nowhere is this more apparent than in its treatment of the prime minister's wife, Mila Mulroney, to whom Breslin dedicates the book.


Of the dozens of jokes in which she figures, this is the most tame:
Over dessert at 24 Sussex, Mulroney whispered to Mila, "Drinking makes you absolutely gorgeous."
   "I don't drink," Mila replied.
   "Yes, but I do."
The others feature fellatio, anal sex, adultery, and descriptions of a variety of sexual positions. Plumbers feature in four of them. 'The Unity Issue,' eighth of the book's ten sections, focusses exclusively on Brian and Mila Mulroney's sex life.

Mark Breslin was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada in 2017.

Was Brian Mulroney Canada's worst prime minister as Breslin claims? Of course not. The most recent Maclean's ranking had him in eighth spot, just below Jean Chrétien, which seemed about right. But then I remembered that Mulroney accepted bribes and was a tax cheat. How about we place him in the very middle, just below eleventh place John Diefenbaker, but above Alexander Mackenzie.

Seems more than fair.

Is Breslin's Canada's worst joke book?

Beyond a doubt.

Martin Brian Mulroney
20 March 1939, Baie Comeau, Quebec
29 February 2024, Palm Beech, Florida

RIP

Object and Access: A slim mass market paperback, I found my copy two years ago in a Kemptville, Ontario thrift store. Price: $1.00.

Son of a Meech is held by seven Canadian libraries, the most surprising being the Legislative Library of British Columbia. St Francis-Xavier University, Brian Mulroney's alma mater, does not have a copy. 

Related posts:

06 July 2023

Lac-Mégantic: Ten Years



Ten years ago today, American multinational Rail World brought hell to this country. It's thought that the corporation killed forty-seven people; some were vaporized, so we can't know for certain. They died in an inferno caused by six million litres of oil that spilled onto the sidewalks, streets, and sewers of Lac-Mégantic.


I wrote this piece in the days that followed. It originally appeared on John Baglow's blog.
Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equaled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism? —Ayn Rand
Who is John Galt? The answer is Ed Berkhardt, Chairman of the Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway. Look to the Objectivists of the Atlas Society for confirmation. Hell, look to Berkhardt himself, a man who blamed government employees for the derailment in Lac-Mégantic: “I think the fire department played a role in this. That’s incontrovertible.”

Ed Berkhardt believes his thoughts are incontrovertible… which is why we haven’t heard him apologize for laying false blame.

I don’t think I’m being a shit in drawing attention to a fifteen-year-old article published in the Atlas Society’s magazine; after all, they’ve still got the thing up on their website. ‘A Better Way to Run a Railroad’ by Frank W. Bryan writes of Berkhardt and the group of unnamed investors “who mortgaged their homes, withdrew personal savings, and arranged additional financing” in building the multinational corporation known as Rail World Inc.

Okay, so they didn’t build it exactly – pretty much everything, including the track, the rolling stock, and the real estate, was sold cheap by governments hell-bent on privatization – but they did have some late nights.

Bryan gives a good account of Berkhardt’s story, including his struggles to slash workers by introducing that contradiction in terms known as the “one-man train crew."

“Inevitably, the success of Wisconsin Central attracted the animosity of those who resent achievement”, writes Bryan. He’s referring here to those who dared comment on the 1996 derailment of sixteen cars carrying liquefied petroleum gas, propane and sodium hydroxide. “One car exploded, but the heroic efforts of the train’s conductor minimized the extent of the fire”, writes Bryan. The conductor, of course, being the very same position that Berkhardt had been working to eliminate.

Avert your eyes, look instead toward government bureaucrats who evacuated 1700, and “in a power play impervious to any rational risk/benefit analysis, refused to allow the railroad to take steps that would have minimized the disruption to the public.” Yes, look at the “rational risk/benefit analysis” – there was a better than fifty percent chance that those people would’ve been fine if they’d stayed put. And, hey, that fire burnt for only fourteen days.

“In any case, all of this has a price”, writes Bryan. He’s referring here to the detrimental effect that the derailment had on fourth-quarter earnings.

Yes, all of this has a price. Wisconsin Central was sold to CN in 2001. As a retired guy who liked to play with model trains, convinced of the commercial viability of his plastic 1:48-scale corporation, Bryan knew value. He wrote only one other piece for the Atlas Society. It has just as much to do with trains, but even more to do with Atlas Shrugged. I’m certain he would recognize this John Galt quote:
“No one’s happiness but my own is in my power to achieve or destroy.”
Remember that one when you think of the people who sat in Musi-Café last week.

I’m betting Frank W. Bryan also knows these words of wisdom from fantasy man Galt: “I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

In those early hours of July 6, Lac-Mégantic’s volunteer firefighters risked their lives for the sake of others.

Suckers.
On this day, ten years after the tragedy, Ed Berkhardt remains Rail World's President and Chief Executive Officer. The Rail World website, informs that "its purpose is to promote rail industry privatization by bringing together government bodies wishing to sell their stakes with investment capital and management skills."

The Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway has been scrubbed from its pages.

It's one thing to take ownership of a company, and quite another to take ownership of its actions.

27 June 2022

E.T. Cash In



P.E.T: Pierre Elliott Trudeau and his unearthly adventures
Jude Waples
New York: Avon, 1983
93 pages

E.T. was the summer blockbuster of 1982. I saw it on my twentieth birthday.

Most embarrassing.

At twenty, Pierre Trudeau was very nearly the only prime minister I'd ever known. He assumed the office when I was in kindergarten and stepped down when I was in university, that long stretch being interrupted by 273 days of Joe Clark.

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden
Michelle Le Grand and Allison Fay
Don Mills: Greywood, 1972

P.E.T. followed Sex and the Single Prime MinisterThe Naked Prime Minister, and I Never Promised You a Rose Garden; laughs that paired photographs with imagined conversation. This being a jubilee year, I present this example:


P.E.T. is very much a departure in that it relies on illustrations and actual quotations. The concept is that Pierre Elliott Trudeau is an extra-terrestrial or perhaps one of a race of extra-terrestrials who has/have played havoc throughout the centuries. 




I read the last image as a nod to Stanley Burke and Roy Peterson. Those who were twenty or older in the summer of '82 will remember.

Frog Fables & Beaver Tales
Stanley Burke and Roy Peterson
Toronto: J Lewis & Samuel, 1973

The odd placement of Parliament Hill aside, most striking is the near-absence of humour; it's more mean-spirited than anything.


That's meant to be Margaret Trudeau to the right of Joe Clark.

According to the 26 May 1983 edition of the Ottawa Citizen, Jude Waples was provided the quotations, and found them "scary." "I was careful to make sure none of the quotations weren't used out of context," she told journalist Kathleen Walker.

I'm not convinced, though given current times, I found this one particularly interesting.


Well, the man did attend the London School of Economics.

Like Waples' monster, P.E.T. is an awkward thing. Not all the quotes Avon provided belong to Trudeau. Here Margaret Trudeau's words are given to a horse:


Nine years ago, I described P.E.T.: Pierre Elliott Trudeau and his unearthly adventures as the ugliest Canadian book cover of all time. The interior isn't any prettier, though I've experienced far uglier things between the covers.

Is it quibbling to point out that some of the quotations are inaccurate?

Perhaps.

There's no way P.E.T. wasn't a rush job. As exploitation product goes, I like it just as much as this strange Montreal MusicWorks single, which somehow went gold in Canada:


P.E.T. isn't quite so memorable, but is it easier on the ears.


Full disclosure: I voted Liberal in 1988. Not sure about 1997.

Object and Access: A slim, trade-sized paperback. Purchased last year for for US$12, the old World's Biggest Bookstore price sticker was a nice surprise. The five copies currently listed for sale online range in price from US$7.99 to US$115.00. Condition is not a factor. I recommend the copy going for US$7.99.

The Library of Parliament, Library and Archives Canada, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, and five of our university libraries hold copies.


19 April 2022

Ten Poems for National Poetry Month, Number 7: 'Dat's Laurier' by William Wilber MacCuaig


For the month, the seventh of ten poems
find interesting, amusing, and/or infuriating.

The second of two poems praising Wilfrid Laurier in William Wilber MacCuaig's Songs of a Shanty-Man and other "Dialect Poems" of French-Canadian Life (Toronto: Musson, 1913). The poet's only book, it's also dedicated to the great statesman.

"DAT'S LAURIER"
                    Who's dat raise h'all de row 'e can,
                    When 'e's small boy, h'also beeg man,
                    An' gets dere firs' mos' h'every tam?
                          Dat's Laurier.

                    Who's dat, when 'e's young lad at school,
                    Was at de top 'es class, no fool.
                    Can fight lak' mischief an' keep cool ?
                          Dat's Laurier.

                    Who's dat when partee Liberal
                    Was all bus' up on N.P. wall
                    'E save dat ship safe trou' it all?
                          Dat's Laurier.

                    When partee Conservateur was run,
                    An' on 'es side got all de fun,
                    Who's dat was firin' off 'es gun?
                          Dat's Laurier.

                    Who's dat, when Boer in h'Africa,
                    Raise beeg hurrah about some law,
                    'E feex 'im wid sodger from Canada?
                          Dat's Laurier.

                    Who's dat, when our good Queen she die,
                    Advise dem people fer to try,
                    Dat young fella—de Prince, so shy?
                          Dat's Laurier.

                    Who's dat, when in politique dey fight.
                    An' knock h'each oder out of sight,
                    Was settle h'everything all right ?
                          Dat's Laurier.

                    Who's dat, when 'e's gone far away,
                    De people's lonesome every day,
                    De crop 's bad, and dere's no hay?
                          Dat's Laurier.

                    Who's dat dey blame for h'everyting.
                    When dere's damp wedder and cole spring,
                    But 'e jus' smiles an' says, "By jing!"—
                          Dat's Laurier.

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16 February 2022

On Pierre Poilievre's Bookshelves



What with everything going on in Ottawa these days, my focus on things political has shifted from Parliament Hill to the hot tubs and bouncy castles on Wellington Street, and so it wasn't until yesterday that I found time to watch Pierre Poilievre's three-minute YouTube announcement of his run for Prime Minister the leadership of the Conservative Party.


Last go around, two years ago, the MP for Carleton surprised us all in announcing that he wouldn't be running. “I knew it would be hard on my family life to do this,” he said. 

That concern has passed.

Pundits posit Pierre Poilievre as the next party leader. I have no doubt he'll win, if only because there's no one else in the race.

"Governments have gotten big and bossy," begins Poilievre, who once served in the largest cabinet in Canadian history. The man who provided coffee, hot chocolate, and donuts to members of the "Freedom Convoy" goes on to criticise the Grits for exploiting Covid for political purposes.

Poilievre said more, but nothing so interesting or revealing as the collection of books behind his well-oiled hair.

Invite me into your home and I will cast an eye over your bookshelves. And I will judge. 

Beginning on the left uppermost shelf we have a copy of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward next to the Bodley Head edition of August 1914.

The only volume I recognise on the top centre shelf is Rupert Murdoch's HarperCollins Study Bible (sadly, lacking dust jacket).

The next shelf holds five Dickens novels belonging to the Penguin Clothbound Classics series: Bleak House, Hard Times, Oliver TwistA Tale of Two Cities, and Great Expectations. PenguinRandomHouse sells these volumes as part of a six-volume set. I wonder what it means that A Christmas Carol is missing.


Framed family photos dominate the second row of shelves, but look carefully and you'll see the second edition of Richard Rohmer's Patton's Gap (Toronto: Stoddart, 1998). I bought two thousand copies when working for a national book chain. Sixteen years passed before I read it. If interested, my thoughts on Patton's Gap can be found in this ageing Reading Richard Rohmer post.


There aren't many Canadian books on Pierre Poilievre's shelves. The Rohmer aside, the only others I see are Stephen Payne's Canadian Wings: A Remarkable Century of Flight and Mark Reid's 100 Photos That Changed Canada. The Americans dominate: Reagan: In His Own Hand, Henry Kissinger's Diplomacy, Karl Rove's Courage and Consequence, Thomas Maier's The Kennedys, and Peter Baker's Days of Fire: Bush and Chaney in the White House.


There are no books on Canadian politics.

What else have we got? A paperback copy of 1984 is followed by The Wicked Wit of Winston Churchill. A Regnery Gateway book is next. I thought at first it might be Ann Coulter's High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton, but now have my doubts.

All in all, it's a curious collection, arranged in a manner that can make sense only to Poilievre himself. Everything seems so neat, so orderly, so tidy, but look carefully and you'll find evidence of a more chaotic fourth row of shelves, all but blocked by his well-polished desktop. As with career politicians, some lean left, but most lean right.

20 September 2021

'The Modern Politician' by Archibald Lampman


Canadian Illustrated News
28 September 1878

On the day of the 44th Canadian general election, verse from The Poems of Archibald Lampman (Toronto: Morang, 1900). 

THE MODERN POLITICIAN

          What manner of soul is his to whom high truth
          Is but the plaything of a feverish hour,
          A dangling ladder to the ghost of power!
          Gone are the grandeurs of the world's iron youth,
          When kings were mighty, being made by swords.
          Now comes the transit age, the age of brass,
          When clowns into the vacant empires pass,
          Blinding the multitude with specious words.
          To them faith, kinship, truth and verity,
          Man's sacred rights and very holiest thing,
          Are but the counters at a desperate play,
          Flippant and reckless what the end may be,
          So that they glitter, each his little day,
          The little mimic of a vanished king.

16 September 2021

Robert Fife Discovers a Five-Year-Old Book


You'd think Robert Fife might know a thing or two about the publishing world. His first book, A Capital Scandal, co-authored by John Warren, was a lead title in Key Porter's fall 1991 catalogue. Fife went solo two years later with Kim Campbell: The Making of a Politician. A slight biography published by HarperCollins, it managed to land on bookstore shelves before her 132 days as prime minister were up. I consider this Fife's greatest accomplishment to date.


Bob hasn't published a book since, but he must surely remember something of his experiences with Key Porter and HarperCollins — which makes the front page of Tuesday's Globe & Mail so curious.


Written with Senior Parliamentary Reporter Steven Chase, the article concerns the 2016 Chinese translation of Justin Trudeau's memoir Common Ground. This in itself isn't much of a story — the memoir was also published in  Germany (Für eine bessere Zukunft), Spain (Todo aquello que nos une), Armenia (Ընդհանուր հայտարար), Vietnam (Nền tảng chung), and Thailand (ก้าวใหม่ที่แตกต่างบนทางเดียวกัน) — but should you be paying attention to these editions?


Fife and Chase don't. Their focus is on Yilin Press, the publisher of the Chinese edition, 传奇再续, and the fact that it's owned by the Chinese state.* This, they suggest, was meant to stroke Trudeau's ego, and was part of Beijing's campaign for a free-trade agreement.

Oh, and it also wanted Trudeau’s help tracking down Chinese dissidents.

Yilin has published other writing by Barack Obama and other Western leaders."China's book industry is controlled by the government, with 582 authorized publishers," they inform, which begs the question  which Chinese publisher they might find acceptable. 
   
I don't know about Fife, but most of the contracts I've signed have given publishers permission to sell foreign rights and translations of my writing. If successful, we both get a cut. Seems fair.

Liberal campaign spokesman Alexandre Deslongchamps says this was the case with HarperCollins adding that the prime minister's share, and all royalties, have been donated to the Canadian Red Cross.

Fife and Chase have no reason to doubt M Deslongchamps' statements, yet they do.
HarperCollins Canada would not discuss the deal for the Chinese publication of the book or whether any money went to Mr. Trudeau’s private holding company, which is in a blind trust. “I’m afraid these things are confidential business terms that are not typically discussed with third parties,” HarperCollins editor Jennifer Lambert said in an e-mail

And so, I know not to ask HarperCollins about the terms negotiated for Kim Campbell: The Making of a Politician.

The real question here is who brought 传奇再续 to Fife and Chase's attention? And why did they wait five years?

* HarperCollins is a subsidiary of News Corp. Yilin Press is distributed in the United States and Canada by Simon & Schuster, a subsidiary of ViacomCBS.
Related posts:




10 February 2020

Erin O'Toole's Proud Disgrace


Yo! Conservative guys and Conservative gals,
You wanna lead this party, you gotta be like our pals,
You gotta talk into the mike,
You gotta tell us what you're like.
– MP Arnold Viersen, "Conservative Rap" (2017)*
Jeff Ballingall's is not a household name, not even in households that follow his Ontario Proud, Canada Proud, and BC Proud Facebook pages.

My only interaction with the man came in June 2018. A few days after the Ontario general election, I asked how it was that Ontario Proud, a page dedicated to the defeat of Kathleen Wynne, a page that had raised funds with the expressed purpose of defeating Kathleen Wynne, had then spent that money on attack ads targeting Andrea Horwath.

There was no answer. My query was deleted. I was blocked from posting.

More recently, in response to a Canada Proud post that criticized the treatment of women and gays in Iran, I asked why Proud Facebook pages allowed misogynistic and homophobic comments.

There was no answer. My query was deleted. I was blocked from posting.

Thus far, questions addressed to BC Proud have gone unanswered.


A former Sun News and Conservative Research Group employee, Jeff Ballingall is a man of many hats. In 2016, he founded Mobilize Media Group, an organization not terribly keen on letting you know what they're all about. Ballingall co-owns and is Chief Marketing Officer of The Post Millennial, home to faux-journalists who rewrite news stories from legitimate sources so as to inflame right-wing snowflakes.

This past October, following the Conservative's electoral loss, Ballingall joined fellow Sun News evacuee Kory Teneycke in founding Conservative Victory, a group dedicated to ousting Andrew Scheer as leader. In November, Ballingall was afforded a full hour on the CBC – what his Proud followers refer to as the "Communist Broadcasting Corporation " – to speak out against Scheer. In December, Scheer stepped down. In January, it was announced that Ballingall had joined leadership candidate Erin O'Toole's team. According to the National Post, he has been tasked to "oversee digital strategy."

The effect of this new position on the Ontario Proud, Canada Proud, and BC Proud has been immediate. And I do mean immediate.


New posts on Erin O'Toole's Facebook page are shared within minutes on Proud pages, complete with links encouraging donations to the candidate's leadership campaign. Not one Proud page has shared a post from fellow front runner Peter MacKay, never mind any other leadership contender. This is not to say that there haven't been posts featuring MacKay.


Further examples will be provided upon request.

With Ballingall onboard, O'Toole's posts have taken on the look and character – half-truths, disinformation, disingenuous editing – of his Proud pages. That the comments they prompt are similar and in some cases identical to those left on those pages is explained by the aforementioned sharing and the use of Mobilize Media Group's database in micro-targetting Facebook ads.

The result is a cesspool made up of lunacy and conspiracy. The prime minister is referred to as both a communist and a Nazi,


ignorance of the human reproductive system and basic English is on display,


Islamophobia runs rampant,


and, as is habit within the Conservative Party of Canada, Justin Trudeau's murder is encouraged.


And on it goes.

Not four months ago, in a Toronto Life interview, Ballingall sniffed: "They stereotype us – they think we’re all bigoted, racist rednecks. We’re not."

Who is "they," I wonder.

Never mind.

I don't believe Proud followers are all bigoted racists, just as I don't believe Erin O'Toole's followers are all bigoted, racist rednecks, though I do recognize that bigoted, racist rednecks exist within their number.

Does Ballingall?

More importantly, does O'Toole?

Why, after all these years, does Ballingall allow these comments? How is it that Erin O'Toole has hired a man who allows these these comments? More to the point, how is it that Erin O'Toole allows these comments?

Last week, on his Facebook page, I accused Erin O'Toole of scaremongering. I went on to suggest that he was soiling his campaign and his reputation.

Erin O'Toole hasn't blocked me. It may be that he's leaving that decision to Jeff Ballingall.

* MP Arnold Viersen's "Conservative Rap", played at the 2017 Conservative leadership convention. Enjoy!

 

Related posts:



08 February 2020

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.

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21 October 2019

Number 43 in a Series



The 43rd Canadian general election takes place today. The first I remember was the twenty-ninth – October 30, 1972 – which Pierre Trudeau's Liberals won by all of two seats. We may see something similar befall son Justin... who happens to be the baby pictured above between Pierre and Margaret Trudeau.

My prediction is that Trudeau fils will do a little bit better, but I'm not prepared to put money on it. I don't recall an election with so many three-way races – and don't remember four-way races  at all. Will the NDP win sixteen seats or sixty? Eric Grénier won't commit.

Can you blame him?


Me? I'll be more than happy with a Liberal minority. Lester Pearson, the greatest prime minister of my lifetime, never once enjoyed a majority. I think of Pearson – and NDP leader Tommy Douglas – each time I speak medical care. I think of Pearson – and NDP leader Tommy Douglas – whenever I see our flag. I will think of Pearson – and NDP leader Tommy Douglas – when my Canada Pension Plan kicks in. My Quebec Pension Plan, too.

Polls close at 9:30 in my riding, which means this could be a very long night. Much of it will be spent dipping in and out of Hotter Than Hell, a 2005 political thriller penned by Mark Tushingham, Senior Advisor to Environment and Climate Change Canada.


Sound familiar?

It received little notice until Conservative Environment Minister Rona Ambrose forbade the author from speaking publicly. Though this made the news, I've yet to find anything by anyone who has actually read Tushingham's novel. Should be interesting – especially to we who make a habit of reading Richard Rohmer.


Does Dr Tushingham's novel give an indication of my vote?

It should.

Truth be told, at this late hour I'm torn between two candidates... neither of whom belongs to the People's Party.

Vote!

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19 August 2019

Bach to the Future, Part III: The Squeaking Wheel


Final words on A Voice is Calling and its author.
About eight years ago, I posted a piece on The Squeaking Wheel, an ugly, bigoted screed that was self-published in 1966 under the pseudonym "John Mercer." All I knew of its authorship came from the book itself, which claimed "John Mercer" to be two men, both English-speaking Montrealers, who worked in the fields of advertising and medicine.

That's not much to go on.

"Even today their identities are a mystery," I wrote in my review. I doubt anyone was on the case – and wasn't myself – so, it was unhappy coincidence that in researching A Voice is Calling I came upon the obituary of its author (Montreal Gazette, 5 December 2001). It includes this sentence:
As an author he wrote A Voice is Calling, published in 1945; Trespass Against None, published in 1950; Le Dernier Voyage with Martine Hebert-Duguay, published in 1951; The Squeaking Wheel as John Mercer, published in 1965; Against the Tide, published in 1989; and Focus and Middle Distance, two autobiographical novels published recently.
And so, the identity of one of the two men behind The Squeaking Wheel is revealed. I wouldn't have guessed it from reading A Voice is Calling. The Squeaking Wheel is an anti-francophone rant, yet the hero of A Voice is Calling, Andre Brousseau, is a sympathetic and talented French Canadian. The novel's few anglophones are pleasant and encouraging. Given that every other character is a francophone, I don't think anything can be read into the fact that their number includes the three villains.

Eric Cecil Morris was the ad man behind The Squeaking Wheel – he was working for Cockfield-Brown at the time – but who was the medical man?

As before, I can't be bothered.


My original post on The Squeaking Wheel was deleted and rewritten for publication in The Dusty  Bookcase. Because I feel so strongly about the "John Mercer" book, I'm reposting my review as it first appeared on this blog on 27 December 2011:

The Squeaking Wheel;
     Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying About the French
and Love the Bomb
John Mercer [Eric Cecil Morris]
n.p.: Rubicon, 1966

Let's get rid of this so as to not track it into the New Year.

I came upon The Squeaking Wheel in an Ontario thrift shop; its bold, if inept declaration—"4TH. [sic] PRINTING OF THE BEST-SELLING BOOK ALL CANADA'S TALKING ABOUT!"—did attract.


I don't remember talk of this book; but then I was only just learning to speak when The Squeaking Wheel was first published. Sure looks like it was popular. The copyright page records four printings in three months! Two in February 1966 alone! In the foreword, author John Mercer tells us that the first two printings amounted to "many thousands" of copies. So why is this the only one I've ever seen? And why was there no fifth printing?

I'd ask John Mercer, but he's a fabrication, a pseudonym for two men to hide behind. "English-speaking Montrealers who have a curious desire not to be blown sky-high to a Protestant Heaven by a few well-placed sticks of dynamite," they reveal nothing more about themselves than that they work in the fields of advertising and medicine. Even today their identities are a mystery.

More furious than funny, those familiar with Rebel Media comment pages will recognize the John Mercer style. Irrational anger and uncontrolled ranting accompany fantastical statistics presented without citation. Quotations, even those pitching the book, lack attribution. It's all here, including that old saw about Quebecers being horrible drivers: “It has often been said by opponents of French-Canada that one way to solve the problem of Quebec is to give every inhabitant a car and turn all the traffic lights green for one day.”

Take care now. Those words come not from the authors, but the "opponents of French-Canada." Or so the John Mercer men would have you believe. The reader will soon recognize that they too are opponents.

The Quiet Revolution is five years old, the Bi and Bi Commission is just beginning, and already the authors, who "have lived all their adult lives in Quebec," are fed up. Their message is clear: "Quebec is a conquered country and its people are a conquered people"... and somewhat inferior:
We are a little tired of hearing about biculturalism and French-Canadian culture. We don’t quite agree with a noted politician who recently said the only thing French-Canadian culture has produced is strip-teaser Lily St. Cyr and hockey-player “Rocket” Richard.
Again, don't you be pinning this on John Mercer. That stuff about the stripper and the hockey player comes from some politician. Who? Who knows. The men behind the pseudonym are only repeating what they've heard, and they don't quite agree.

Not quite.

The Squeaking Wheel was never talked about by "everyone in Canada"; not even Montreal's English- and French-language presses gave it much attention. Serious discussion of the book is limited to a few sentences in journalist Solange Chaput-Rolland's Reflections (1968):
The pens of these English-speaking compatriots are certainly not very brave. Of course it is true that, when one describes unpleasant reality, one receives in return unpleasant insult. But liberty of speech demands the dignity and courage of that speech. And those who hurl invective at their compatriots, while keeping themselves well hidden, are not really respectable citizens.
Though I can’t top that, I’ll add that I don't think the cowards hiding behind the pseudonym were Montrealers. Real Montrealers know it's Lili, not "Lily"; and they know she was not French-Canadian, but American.


I'll add that we Canadians know not to hyphenate "hockey player."

There, sweet Virginia, I've scraped the shit right off my shoe.

Lili St. Cyr [née Willis Marie Van Schaack]
1918  - 1999
RIP
Maurice "Rocket"  Richard
1921 - 2000
RIP

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