When the women’s Olympic hockey final was on, CBC showed packed bars in Canada, teachers rolling TVs into classrooms, and people staying home from to watch. Canada stood still and breathless at the prospect of maybe finally this year getting one over on the Americans in the sport we are most likely to beat them in.
We lost in overtime and the nation mourned. Meanwhile south of the border, most of my friends didn’t even know there was a game on.
We are a small country, one tenth the population of the United States. We are in many ways the closest two nations in the world. But right now we are in a tough time and the appreciation of it is asymmetrical.
For the past year Canadians have been confronting existential questions about whether our country will have a future. The current US administration is a bully and a chaos merchant and seems comfortable ignoring well held norms of behaviour, partnership and legality. They are now openly declaring that law doesn’t matter at home or in international relations. This is terrifying.
The domestic chaos wrought by this state of affairs perhaps clouds Americans’ perception of what we are going through. Like the women’s Olympic hockey final what matters deeply to us seems like a mere passing thought to most.
Today in the Walrus, the headline writer went full bore: Canada is Already at War with the US — We Just Don’t Know It Yet
If we step outside the twenty-four-hour news cycle and try to make sense of the pattern in the longue durée, there is something more sinister that we appear to be missing.
At the level of rhetoric, Trump and his administration will continue to belittle us by calling us the fifty-first state, mocking our sovereignty (claiming Canada “lives because of the United States”), making false claims about the extent to which communist China holds influence over the federal government, even claiming they are going to somehow put an end to hockey. These insults and threats are designed to normalize a condition of enmity between the US and Canada. They are designed to delegitimize the idea of Canada. They are an absurdist denial of our independent statehood—on repeat—until it begins to ring true.
The rhetorical psy-ops have combined with a very real and targeted form of trade warfare designed to destabilize and ultimately cripple critical sectors of our economy, like auto manufacturing, aluminum, steel, and softwood lumber. This is the weaponization of interdependence. As the subordinate state in the continental hierarchy, Canada now finds itself in a very precarious position. We have been forced to rapidly attempt to eliminate our interprovincial trade barriers and diversify our global trading partnerships in order to unwind decades of increasing trade and investment interdependence with the US.
Beyond overt trade actions, the Trump administration has engaged in discussions with members of the Alberta Prosperity Project in an ongoing effort to coordinate the breakup of Confederation.
I’m just returning home from a week in the States working with kind, tired and frustrated people. My people. And still it seems very lonely. There is very little understanding and appreciation of what is happening north of the border. That’s understandable when a new secret police force is ransacking cities and disappearing people.
But spare us a thought. And if it might help, Have a word with your Congress members. There are many ways the US administration can, and is, setting back some of the great gains of history in the service of peace between nations. Throwing Canada-US relations on the dung heap would rank up there as among the dumbest.
I feel like we are not at war with Americans. But we might already be at war with the worst one ever to occupy the highest office.
I’m increasingly thinking about the theory of stability ideas that I’ve developed over the years on this blog. Before last weekend I would often say that a theory of change could involve just blowing everything up, but it is nothing without the theory of stability for that which follows. I’ll write more on that later because the present moment has made it relevant.
The present moment also demands a response.
The United States and Israel have committed to a course of action against Iran that has a clear theory of change. But they have refused to even consider what stability might look like in the other side. During the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan at least the western belligerents declared that “nation building” was a thing. That policy was a failure in Afghanistan and was really only ever intended to deliver oil wealth into western hands in Iraq. but at least it had a ring of nobility to it. And it was half-way to a purpose that people could get behind, no matter how wrong the basic premise was. It’s easy to go to war illegally against bad people. But we used to window dress a bit more.
This war has begun without even a pretence to supporting any kind of stability later. Israel under Netanyahu has become emboldened with the idea that an atrocity committed against itself can be met with the wholesale annihilation of a people or a nation with no regard whatsoever for what comes later. Netanyahu’s policy to his nearest neighbour in Palestine seems to be total colonization. Likewise the current US administration seems enchanted with the images of performative war but although they declared something about regime change last weekend they have now clearly walked that back. They are bombing Iran for peace now, justified by an anticipated need to defend itself against relation from a pre-emotive attack from another country. That’s how you know they lost the plot. They are earnestly arguing for justification by second level pre-emptive self-defense as if that was always a part of the law of war.
The regime in Iran is awful. And it is institutionally embedded in the country because it was smart enough to know in 1979 that a one-off revolution was not going to create a lasting platform for the Ayatollah’s brand of Shiite hegemony to flourish in the region. so it developed institutions to secure itself from ever being toppled from within. Those institutions survive. With successor ship plans and enough cultural support that it will probably take a civil war to upend them.
The last 75 years of American military misadventure in the world has proven beyond a doubt that, as Maral Karima says in this article from the The Walrus, “Democratic transition cannot be airdropped.” Not by pamphlets and not by bombs. The transition to democracy in Eastern Europe in the 1990s was internally driven by people who had prepared for decades to overthrow their Soviet occupiers or puppets. Elsewhere in the world where the USA tried to bomb places into democracies, disasters followed.
We now have the spectre of a US government who is devoted to isolationism while also enjoying a lawless romp around the world picking off the heads of countries without doing anything to support the people who all bear the consequences of chaos and instability. For what reason? The seizing of other people’s natural resources. The distraction from a global criminal scandal in which many of powerful financial and political leaders of the western world seem to have been compromised by their taste for sex with children. The pandering to a base of cultists who are the remaining loyalists in a political movement that is decaying in the fields.
The USA used to at least provide the gloss of supporting freedom of people around the world even when it was actively involved in killing or suppressing them. It did so with the “softer” power of liberalized trade, aid and development programs, and immigration policies that welcomed the world to the bastion of liberty. At least it did all those things when they aligned to American interests.
And who holds the torch now? For the last six weeks we might have believed it was the middle powers led by our own Canadian government that would step into the vacuum and provide a a network of nations committed to democracy.
But now we have just thrown our lot in with the Americans again as we usually do. We are standing beside them scolding a little but ultimately accepting the fact that, with no evidence or even the slightest attempt to appeal to the standards of international law, the Americans are just going to do what they want.
America is not strong at the moment. It is deeply divided and neither pole in this partisan world has much of a vision about what this country can become. Two hundred years after its founding, politics now is about money and numbers and communications strategies and not the immediate concerns of people in need. People run for office to occupy positions of authority and then refuse to use the tools to liberate wealth and enable justice and care and prosperity. They leave it up to the market, or more properly the mechanics of patronage that enrich the few and the expense of the vast majority. they out checks and balances on their executive and legislative power while unleashing corporate agendas on their own people.
The most inspiring folks around here (I am in the US at the moment) are engaging in resistance. In this they join the masses of people around the world like the women of Iran and the children of Palestine and the Indigenous peoples of the Americas and may others besides who have been robbed of their wealth and dignity and self-determination by those that concentrate it in the service of cruelty and self-aggrandizement.
There is no theory of stability anymore. There is only the concentration of power so a few can do what they like to bodies, countries, and planets.
Who with power is calling for the world to be a better place? Who is calling for a future of care and support and human beings developing and polishing their brilliance? Who is pointing to a way to sustain the structures that will sustain dignity and joy and well-being? Who is prepared to do it?
Remember when we had those conversations? Remember when leaders appealed to our sense of justice and moral courage to look beyond our self-interest and build something better for all of us?
I was raised in that world of spoken hope, even as the Reagans and Thatchers and Mugabes and Ayatollahs were fixated on stripping it away. I believed in the one and clearly saw the other.
For me, nothing has changed, except the world has become a place that paints me as a naive fool for still believing in the one. I ask for better from those of us with power in hand, for those who put themselves in a place where they control the fates of millions of people. I ask for accountability and responsibility for people in those positions to wield their authority with care and deliberation. We are all asking people to just be serious.
This year is a nadir. The optimist in me says there is nowhere to go but up. The pessimist in me thinks that my biggest offering now might be to just make the most beautiful music I can. To count the birds. To love my neighbours. To find joy in the everyday cracks in community and organizational life where life can be made a little better in little ways. To celebrate young people who find their calling. To sustain heart in a heartbreaking moment. That all seems incredibly worthy and I’ll keep doing it.
How about you?
The story of six Tongan boys who were stranded on a desert island and thrived for more than a year. No, it wasn’t a real life version of Lord of the Flies. The complete opposite, in fact. This is hopeful.
Here in Canada, populist provincial governments are using the notwithstanding clause in our Constitution on a regular basis to suspend the rights of their citizens. Recently it has been used to de y the rights of children and youth freedom of expression and to deny workers their right to practice their freedom of association. These are the same governments that champion individual rights when it suits them. As a result, for the better part of the next five years some citizens in these provinces will have fewer rights than others. Don’t take your eyes off of it and be sure to understand what the use of this clause means. Yes it’s a (shitty) legal mechanism. And yes it suspends Charter protected rights.
Don Schafer provides some context for the vote in BC Legislature denying the introduction of a bill to repeal the BC Human Rights Code Act.
And if shit like this makes you angry, Peter Rukavina is willing to provide you with a creative container – The Books of Anger – in which you can explore the emotions of resentment, irritation, exasperation, frustration, and fury.
Good labour policy supports a vibrant business sector. Today rabble.ca reports on a bunch of good ideas that could easily be implemented to support the massive sector of the economy that are self-employed entrepreneurs. Government tends to define “entrepreneur” as a person who creates employment, but 80 percent of women in business are self-employed. It’s time we recognized this sector of the labour market and provided equitable supports and security for these workers.
I don’t quite know what it will take to unhook politics from polling and money. In this week’s New Yorker, the editorialist dissects the Democratic Party’s election strategy and it all sounds like how to do things that will shift numbers. The cynics will tell me that’s how you win elections and there is nothing more important than winning. But my brain and heart tells me that current electoral politics is more about who has the saviest consulting firm than whether the electeds can a) actually understand what needs to happen in our societies and b) have the capability to govern with the courage and smarts to do it. We’re failing. Badly. This is not hopeful.
Also from the current New Yorker issue from a profile of composer Stephen Spencer:
You’re in the sandbox playing,” he said. “Let’s postpone the judgment or appraisal and feel free to make music joyfully and in an unfiltered way. My students make fun of me, because they’ll say something like ‘How do I practice this?’ And I’ll be, like, ‘You have to love yourself.’
The man is not wrong.
I appreciate Don Schaffer directly marking this point in time in British Columbia. Last week 37 members of the legislative assembly, all of them members of the BC Conservative Party, voted to repeal the law that protects the human rights of British Columbians.
In an extraordinary move in British Columbia’s legislative history, a member of the legislative assembly proposed a bill to repeal the province’s entire Human Rights Code. Thirty-six other MLAs voted to support it.
There are moments in politics that pass quickly — buried in procedure, softened by language, diluted by distraction. And then there are moments that deserve to be marked clearly, because they reveal something fundamental about where we are.
The bill was introduced by Tara Armstrong, the MLA for Kelowna–Lake Country–Coldstream.
Her legislation — titled the Human Rights Code Repeal Act — did not propose reform.
It proposed repeal.
Full repeal.
If it had passed, British Columbia would have lost its provincial framework protecting people from discrimination in employment, housing, public services, and business access.
The vote was 50 against. 37 in favour.
The bill failed.
Don names it, in plain language. We should not forget them, especially when election time rolls around and we get to ask them if they still think people should not be protected from discrimination.
Carmina Bowena warming up before our concert on Monday
I sing in a choir here on Bowen Island called Carmina Bowena. We focus our attention on Rennaisence European music, singing sacred music, madrigals and modern inspirations of the same. We also sing folk music and more traditional music from Italy, France, Spain and the British Isles. We are an impressively eclectic group of people, under under the leadership and joy of our director, Nicole Thomas Zyczynsky.
We like to craft an atmosphere with the music we sing. It’s already transcendent music to begin with but when we perform we want to make it less about a concert and more of an immersive experience. We usually perform in small theatres or churches with good acoustics, from a stage, to an audience.
Monday night though was the first of what I hope will be a series of contemplative experiences that we co-created with the congregation of Cates Hill Chapel here on Bowen Island. We sat in a circle in the centre of the room, which has phenomenal reverb, and around us were a couple of circles of chairs. Candles lit the room and the participants were invited to be in silence for an hour as we sang four sets of music interspersed with poems about light and dark. It was not explicitly a religious experience, but for a contemplative person like me, it was a very good way to be in Lent.
The program began with a couple of Gregorian chants and went through songs by Byrd, Palestrina, Duruffle, Rossi, Lauridsen and Gjello. There was no applause between pieces, just a transition from one to the next, as we stood and sang in candlelit darkness. My friend Kathy played a beautiful clarinet solo a set of variations on a theme by Kodlay. I played a slow air one my flute from the Irish tradition called “The Fire in the Hearth” from an album by John Skelton.
The experience was co-created. Asking the audience to hold silence throughout the hour or so, in a resonant room light by candles, created an atmosphere of deep compilation. More importantly it was an atmosphere that was held by all of us, the choir, the readers, the hosts and the “audience.” It doesn’t;t even feel right to call them an audience.
To me this is the high art of participatory container work: when people all have a role in creating something together. To paraphrase Christina Baldwin, it is not one person’s job to create a container, but a group creates a dialogic container together. And when there is some coherence in that group – perhaps some shared experience, or a shared aspiration or even a shared curiosity – the container can be one in which transcendent experiences happen, where beauty emerges, or novelty, or flow. When we get out of our own way, feeling that it is our job solely to host and create, something else becomes possible. These are communal experiences can be full of beauty, like our concert, or of intense emotional joy like I have experienced when my teams have won important matches. They can be collectively healing, as my friend Linda Tran has begun to discover in her sound bath practice. Today we were talking about the way in which a sound bath session – where she plays crystal bowls and offers gentle meditative and awareness guidance – becomes a powerful collective experience when the participants have all done it before and have set aside their anxieties and worries and deeply rest in the experience. Something else is possible.
We live in a world of performance and consumption. Being an audience member in most places assumes a detachment from the experience. The fourth wall is intact. We passively consume what is put in front of us. We forget that we are also participants. It is becoming more and more clear to me that we NEED to find places of the participatory and collective practice of beauty, even in what is traditionally thought of as as an audience-performer context. May we never lose that ability.