Harper Hockey Book Watch: Fin (et raison d'être)

Good things come to those who wait, but so do the bad and the ugly.

Nine years and 138 days after it was first reported, one year and 321 days after he announced its completion, the prime minister's hockey book was released yesterday. Given authorship, website and book trailer, the launch for A Great Game seems to have been rather muted. No copies were in evidence at the Conservatives' frightening Hallowe'en convention. Costco catalogue copy aside, the only advance notice I spotted came this past Saturday in the form of an ineptly worded, poorly punctuated "Suggested Post" on Facebook:

Pub date publicity – the best being this video of stumbling Leafs –  was by mid-morning overshadowed by a confession from Rob Ford, the prime minister's fishing buddy. The afternoon brought the "political executions" – John Ivison's words, not mine – of Brazeau, Duffy and Wallin. The prime minister's will be done.

Power & Politics passed without a single mention of our prime minister's hockey book. Nevertheless, A Great Game had risen to #16 at Amazon.ca by that point, 782,390 places higher than on Amazon.com. Its placing south of the border must have come as a disappointment to agent Michael Levine, for whom American distribution played an "extremely important" role in selecting a publisher.

I wish Simon & Schuster well, and very much look forward to reading the prime minister's book. While recognizing that Chris Selley, who has written the most thoughtful review thus far, dismisses A Great Game as "dry, dispassionate and detailed as to induce test anxiety," I spot some fun. For example, the first chapter begins with the prime minister cocking a snoot at the world of academe by quoting "The Life I Lead", an American song written for a 1964 Disney musical set in pre-Great War England, as a means of anchoring Edwardian Canada.

Such wonderful childhood memories.

I recognize that some correspondents may question my good wishes for the prime minister and his book. One follower of the Harper Hockey Book Watch has accused me of "picking on the Stephen Harper" (before warning that I best not set foot in Alberta). In fact, my criticism has naught to do with the prime minister, but the fourth estate (and I've visited Alberta without incident).

For nearly a decade, the press picked up and dropped the story of the prime minister's hockey book with the enthusiasm and attention span of a playful, inbred puppy. Back in April 2006, when BC boy Daniel Powter's "Bad Day" topped the charts, Mr Harper announced that he expected to finish the book within months. In the midst of the 2008 election – "I Kissed a Girl" by Katy Perry – he again told reporters that it was on the cusp of completion. In December 2011 – Rhianna's "We Found Love" – the prime minister revealed to Jane Taber and Tonda MacCharles that he'd actually finished his book, adding that a publisher was in place and that it would appear in 2012. Each pronouncement launched a flurry of news stories, but never a follow-up. Not a single news source commented when the promised hockey book failed to materialize last year.

Not one member of the press has pursued Heritage Canada's sudden, unexpected and unexplained decision – which I support! – to allow Simon & Schuster Canada to publish Canadian books.

Hockey is not the only great game.

And so, I close the Harper Hockey Book Watch with two related queries and a gentle suggestion.

Queries: Has the beneficiary of proceeds, the Military Family Fund, received an advance on royalties? If not, why not?

Suggestion: Those who are choosing to boycott A Great Game may wish to consider donating directly to the Military Families Fund.

Note to the Conservative Party of Canada: A website update is long overdue. Rumours are fuelled by things like this:

Related posts:

Ignatieff's Ink and Harper's Hockey Book
The 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

Pamela Wallin Issues a Challenge

Read over my morning coffee:

Despite all the motives attributed to us, journalists seldom set out to uncover human flaws or scandal just for the sake of creating pain, or embarrassment, or defeat. But we do quite deliberately look for contradictions and incompetence, which sometimes leads us to uncover the aforementioned. And I'll challenge those who would question our pursuits and our legitimate curiosity about those who seek to lead us to explain why, as citizens, the less we know the better we are able to make choices.

— Pamela Wallin, Since You Asked, p. 58

Related post:

Speaking of Pamela Wallin

The Conservative Authors Meet

The air is heavy with "Canadian" topics,
And Smith, Harper, Gingrich, Vitter, Beck,
Are measured for their faith in Reaganomics,
Their zeal for self and God, their unglued dreck.

With apologies to F.R. Scott

A few final thoughts on writer Sarah Palin's visit to Calgary. Organizers tinePublic Inc billed the event as the former governor's first talk outside the United States. This wasn't at all true – just last September she delivered an 80-minute speech at the CLSA Asia Pacific Markets Forum in Hong Kong. Nor was it right to advertise that Pamela Wallin would serve as the "moderator" of a "Q&A session". The senator was the only person accorded the privilege of asking questions. In short, she was an interviewer, not a moderator... and the "Q&A session" was what we sticklers refer to as an "interview".

Their little chat took place after Palin had delivered a rambling speech in which she'd played up the "special bond" between Alaskans and Canadians, including our shared "love of good hunting and good fishing". On a more personal note, she revealed that two great-grandfathers had been born in Canada and expressed heartfelt thanks to Calgary-based TransCanada for bidding on the Alaska Pipeline Project. In this effort to ingratiate, Palin stumbled only once, asking the audience of 1200 for a show of hands by "those of you who have helped secure this continent and served your country so honorably in uniform". Not one was raised. Never mind, this revelation did not prevent Palin from expressing her appreciation of Canada:

My first five years of life we spent in Skagway, Alaska, right there by Whitehorse. Believe it or not – this was in the 'sixties – we used to hustle on over the border for health care that we would receive in Whitehorse. I remember my brother, he burned his ankle in some little kid accident thing and my parents had to put him on a train and rush him over to Whitehorse and I think, isn’t that kind of ironic now. Zooming over the border, getting health care from Canada.

Palin's only reference to health care, it caught the attention of a number of journalists, but not the seasoned Pamela Wallin, who never thought to ask how the story fit in with the former governor's harsh dismissal of Canada's medical care. But then the senator is no longer a journalist; her role was to lob easy questions as Stockwell Day, Rob Anders and Lee Richardson looked on.

She has adapted well.

Update: Calgary Herald reporter Jason Markusoff has found a contradictory account of accident-prone brother Chuck Heath, Jr's treatment; this one involving a slow ferry to Juneau.

Related post: Speaking of Pamela Wallin

Speaking of Pamela Wallin

Speaking of Success: Collected Wisdom, Insights and

Reflections

Pamela Wallin

Toronto: Key Porter, 2001

The dark days of prorogation may have ended, but don't expect to see Pamela Wallin on the Hill today; the senator will be preparing for tomorrow's event with Sarah Palin. When announced last month, eyebrows were raised. Why would Wallin agree to host an evening for the disgraced and disgraceful former governor of Alaska? After all, Palin is considered something of a joke – albeit a dangerous one – by most of us living south and east of her state. More to the point, an overwhelming majority of Canadians don't like this woman. What is going on here?

There's little to read into Saturday's event. Pamela Wallin's gabfest with Sarah Palin represents nothing more than another few inches in her long, slow drift across the political spectrum, beginning with the New Left Waffle group in the early 'seventies. Give Wallin enough time and she'll become the Nationalist Party's first senator.

Those who say that appearing onstage with Palin is a bad move are reminded that Wallin has never demonstrated political savvy – after all, she's never had to. Sure, she's a senator, but the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? quizmistress never once ran for public office. Her greatest political move – inadvertent, surely – was that 1988 interview she had with John Turner. You know, the one in which she went on and on about suggestions of "a drinking problem", "long lunch hours", "a wrong decision", "a bad decision", "a drinking problem" and "drinking". Oh, and then there was that thing about his drinking. Several months later, Turner lost the federal election. He was replaced by rival Jean Chrétien, who subsequently named Wallin Canada's New York Consul General.

Observations? A rant? All serves as an introduction to this failed attempt at cracking the very lucrative self-help market. A "national bestseller" claims publisher Key Porter. Don't you believe it; Speaking of Success never shared the lists with John Gray, Richard Carlson and Dr Phil.

And do not be fooled by the cover. The wisdom, insights and reflections are not Wallin's, rather they come from those she's interviewed. Henry Kissinger is quoted, as are Nana Mouskouri, Jack Klugman, Linda Evans, Phil Collins and Ed McMahon. "Words are one thing. Actions are another", offers deep-thinker Sarah Ferguson.

Not that Wallin has no role in the book. She introduces each life-changing, ground-breaking theme – "Doing Your Homework", "Embracing Change", "Learning from Experience" – then provides bridges between quotes: "Neil Peart talked to me about the importance of keeping an open mind as time marches on:... Martha Stewart, a control freak after my own heart, made a similar point:... But that will be easier said than done, as author Ann-Marie MacDonald explained:..."

"I can only hope you've enjoyed your flight with the eagles", Wallin concludes, addressing the earthbound reader.

What words of wisdom will soaring eagle Sarah Palin offer, I wonder? What insight and reflections might she provide? To what heights will she take her audience? How much carrion will she consume? Seems that at some point there will be a Q & A session tomorrow night. Would that I could be there; I'd ask Senator Wallin about the presence of the Stars and Stripes in her homepage banner... and why it trumps our own flag.

Object and Access: A squarish book, 263 pages in length, it was published in hardcover and paperback. Unread copies of the first edition are listed online for one dollar. A common book in our public libraries.

Related posts:

Some Senators Write (or Say They Do)

The Conservative Authors Meet

Some Senators Write (or Say They Do)

News this morning of five more Tory senate appointments, including yet another published author. This time the honour goes to Pierre-Hughes Boisvenu, whose Survivre à l'innommable is, perhaps, the best book penned by a Harper appointee. Not to slight skier and Mars Bar pitch queen Nancy Greene, but her autobiography, published when she was 25, was a tad premature. For one, it contains nothing of her decades of battle against biologists, environmentalists and native groups.

(Honestly, all this fuss over watersheds and endangered species when our millionaires are suffering long lift lines.)

Of the authors the prime minister has sent to the upper chamber, Pamela Wallin is the most prolific. She's also a publicist's dream. Her link at the senate homepage is unique in that it leads away from things governmental to a commercial site: pamelawallin.com. There you can read all about the senator's career, including her three books. You'll remember the first, Since You Asked, which appeared in 1998, at about the time she and the CBC gave up on each other. It seems that a few years later, we were offered something called Speaking of Success: Collected Wisdom, Inspiration and Reflection.

Doesn't ring any bells?

Publisher Key Porter says the book was a bestseller. In fact, they trumpet the accomplishment on the cover of her 2003 The Comfort of Cats, which "explores the bond between Kitty, a creatively named Siamese cat, and the woman who lives with her, Pamela Wallin."

Interested?

The senator provides convenient links to amazon.ca and amazon.com.

(Senator, why do you snub Heather Reisman? After all, how much money has Jeff Bezos given to your party?)

Fellow author Linda Frum can learn a lot from her enterprising colleague. Frum's senate website has nothing about Linda Frum's Guide to Canadian Universities or Barbara Frum: A Daughter's Memoir, and nearly six months after her appointment, her pages seem such skeletal things. Sure, there's that strange speech she gave about her grandmother having been born at home, the recent "Grey Cup match" and other stuff, but the rest is nothing more than a bunch of links. That said, I was interested to see that she presents four that concern Parliament. In these dark days of prorogation, what reassuring words does Senator Frum recommend we read? Well, there's an intriguing sounding article titled "The Parliament of Canada — Democracy in action", but clicking on the link only takes you to this page:

Anyone looking to bring this to the senator's attention will find that her contact page says, simply, "Contact Us".

Us?

The senator offers no hint as to the identity of this mysterious group, but then she offers no address or phone number either.

Senator Frum may be reached by writing:

The Honourable Linda Frum Sokolowski

Senate of Canada
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A4