The Vengeful Heart Roberta Leigh [pseud Rita Lewin] Toronto: Harlequin, 1970
From the back cover:
His love would be her weapon.
"You were lucky to marry me, weren't you?" Julia mocked. "But you'll never possess me, Nigel!"
The knowledge should have filled her with a sense of power. Power over a man she hated! Nigel Farnham's ruthless prosecution of her father had sent him to prison, where he died alone.
Julia had vowed to make Nigel pay; to destroy the lawyer's life the way he had destroyed her parents. And now she had to carry out her plan for revenge – no matter what the cost...
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.
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,
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!
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.
Can it be? Not four weeks into the New Year and already a new Canadian Notes & Queries? A theme issue – "Writing in the Age of Unravelling" – it makes for some uncomfortable reading. Catherine Bush contributes an essay on representations of the climate crisis in fiction. Jacky Sawatzky writes on her memorial to the endangered giraffe. Jennifer Ilse Black and Waubgeshig Rice are interviewed. Andrew Forbes presents a cli-fi primer.
Credit goes to Guest Editors Patricia Robertson and Sharon English.
The issue's Dusty Bookcase concerns Hotter Than Hell, the 1974 Kiss album produced by Kenny Kenner and Richie Wise.
I jest. It's about the 2005 dystopian novel of the same title.
Political animals will remember Hotter Than Hell as the small press book the newly-elected Harper Conservatives made famous by silencing its author, government scientist Mark Tushington.
What intrigued me is that for all the coverage – The Globe & Mail, The New York Times,The Scientist, et al – no one appeared to have taken the time to read the damn thing.
Well, I've read it. And now you don't have to.
Here's a typical passage:
The Eighteenth Guard (Pennsylvania) and Eighth Guard (New York) divisions, supported by the 1st Marine and 57th Urban brigades were attacking, The First Guard Division was being badly defeated in every sector. The 28th and 29th regiments were quickly pushed out of Abany and up the length of the Mohawk Valley. It was only then that we retreated into Utica that my forces could hold. Because of the inactivity of the IV Corps, I took a supreme gamble and withdrew elements of the 6th Armored Brigade from covering Montreal.
You're welcome.
Other contributors include:
Madhur Anand
Peter Anson
Nicholas Bradley
Yuan Changming
Stephen Fowler
Lise Gaston
Roger Greenwald
Mahak Jain
Joanna Lilley
JF Martel
David Mason
Catherine Owen
Seth
Roz Spafford
Erika Thorkelson
RM Vaughan
Mary Lou Zeitown
The issue also features the annual Book Review supplement.
A writer, ghostwriter, écrivain public, literary historian and bibliophile, I'm the author of Character Parts: Who's Really Who in CanLit (Knopf, 2003), and A Gentleman of Pleasure: One Life of John Glassco, Poet, Translator, Memoirist and Pornographer (McGill-Queen's UP, 2011; shortlisted for the Gabrielle Roy Prize). I've edited over a dozen books, including The Heart Accepts It All: Selected Letters of John Glassco (Véhicule, 2013) and George Fetherling's The Writing Life: Journals 1975-2005 (McGill-Queen's UP, 2013). I currently serve as series editor for Ricochet Books and am a contributing editor for Canadian Notes & Queries. My most recent book is The Dusty Bookcase (Biblioasis, 2017), a collection of revised and expanded reviews first published here and elsewhere.
