Politics for Joe: Municipal Election Notes

a disguised LBJ announces his candidacy for Mayor of Thunder Bay

In all likelihood, your home town is in the middle of a hot municipal election campaign. Lawn signs with bold phrases and eye-dazzling colours stand like proud, crisp soldiers lining the streets of your neighbourhoods. Of course, after the first good rain they turn into limp and ragged hobos, serving as markers for the dogs marking the streets of your neighbourhood.

Equal to that in likelihood is the probability that the hottest, headline-grabbing-est race is that for Mayor. As I write this in Thunder Bay, Ontario there’s an interesting enough race for the Big Gold Chain among incumbent Lynn Peterson, multiple times contender Councillor Frank Pullia and past President of the Thunder Bay Police Association Keith Hobbs, a political neophyte who seems to be carrying whatever momentum there is. (Thunder Bay wouldn’t know a properly run poll if it sat on one. I’m going by lawn signs and conversation.) That said, were I a betting man - and I am - I’d raise if I had Peterson as one of my hole cards. Pullia will run third, but he will draw enough votes to split the anti-incumbent chunk of the electorate.

That’s no brilliant piece of insight. Matter of fact, it may be the most basic rule of first past the post politics. It even works on higher levels than municipal politics. I remember that early Master, Bill davis the Tory Premier of Ontario would bat his eyes lovingly at the NDP’s Stephen Lewis in election run-ups to chop the knees off Bob Nixon or Stuart Smith’s Liberal Opposition.

Of course, the whole deal could still blow up in Peterson’s face. If there actually is a Transit strike that remains unsettled by the time the city goes to the polls on October 25, Thunder Bay is going to look for somebody to blame and like a scythe seeking the tallest wheat sheaf, it will take down the Mayor.

Politics truly is a narrative and a fairly simple one at that - it’s a story that seeks a happy ending and when it doesn’t find one it wants the villain destroyed. We look for Heroes. Sometimes we think we elect Heroes and when they or their times are unable to produce suitable heroic miracles they are re-cast as Villains. Obama is desperately fighting that role change leading in to the American mid-terms.

The irony is if there is a Transit strike or similar cataclysm that will shake public confidence past the tipping point, a majority of the returning 10 Councillors seeking re-election will in fact achieve that goal. Historically, the name recognition factor of incumbency trumps discontent.

Last note on Thunder Bay, as the reach of this column is greater than Thunder Bay. (That said, I’ve long held the theory that Thunder Bay is the absolute sweet spot microcosm of Canada. Yes we have two NDP MPs sitting against a pretty solid Tory minority; I’m talking mood.) This has been a terribly run campaign on the part of all contenders. It boggles my mind that here we are into October and there hasn’t been one householder pamphlet arrived in my mailbox. Lady and gentlemen, let me say this slowly to you - the internet ain’t the whole game. People have to seek you out on the internet. You have to seek them out. Plus, if you aren’t identifying your vote by a canvass, then I don’t know why you’re even running. The City is hoping - this is the optimistic number - for a 50% turnout. A candidate polling at 20%, who turns out that 20% to the polls on election day can turn that into a 40% plurality.

The question I really have is: why bother? Why bother running for Mayor? Allow me to quote from the Canadian Encyclopedia:

‘In contrast to the practice in some US cities in which duties such as budget formation and appointment of certain administration officers are the responsibility of the mayor, the significance of this office in Canada does not stem from the assignment of such powers but rather from its high profile, although a mayor with a forceful personality may also be a strong leader. Variously described as "the chief officer," "the chief executive officer" or "the head of council" in provincial statutes, the mayor has little power independent of the municipal council.’

So, to borrow Tom Wolfe’s wonderful phrase, in return for a potential MauMauing as a Flack Catcher by a vengeful public what does a Mayor really get? Bigger salary, travel, the Big Gold Chain and a supreme knowledge of the contents of every buffet table in the town. But as wonderful a thing as a ‘forceful personality’ may be that is not a particularly powerful weapon in this particular version of World of Warcraft. Essentially, that can only be effective if the Mayor is able to assemble and lead vote by vote coalitions, in the manner of a municipal Lyndon Johnson; and/or if the Mayor is able to convince reluctant Councillor that they will be turfed out on their ear if they don’t get onside ... in the manner of a municipal Lyndon Johnson.

But good for all of those who seek the office. Sincerely, 99.5% of the people who run for office sincerely do so in order to do Good. Their idea of Good may not be your idea of Good, but you know what? I am guilty as any other pundit of occasionally calling various elected representatives hyperactive power-grasping space iguanas waiting for the mother ship to arrive so they can finally shed their disguise of human skin. Hyperbole and mockery have been viable tools of political commentary since the Age of Pericles. Aristophanes was the Rick Mercer of the day. But none of the politicians, anyone short of Hitler, deserve hatred. They’re just doing what they do. It’s up to us to bring order to the herd. Be seeing you.

Mickie James

Inside Television 521

Publication date: 10-01-10

By: Hubert O’Hearn

This is a story that I hope turns into a continuing story for two reasons. The first reason - selfishly - is that it will fill many a column inch tracking a television show right from its absolute genesis as an idea. The second reason - unselfishly - is that I think the prospective star is someone that I think has earned her shot at possibly become a very big, very wealthy, star. Allow me to introduce you to Mickie James. And this is much more than a wrestling story.

Mickie James is a young woman who first came into televised view as a WWE Diva wrestler from 2005 until her release from that company earlier this year. I well remember her debut. Mickie played an unbelievably perky obsessed fan of Toronto’s own Trish Stratus. Mickie would run out to happy happy joy joy music, waving pompoms and cheering for Trish. She liked Trish. She liked Trish a whole lot. She liked Trish more than the increasingly-nervous Trish liked her. Complications arose. And for once a women’s wrestling angle was allowed to play out for more than, oh, about three weeks of Raw and three minutes of wrestling. We’ll get back to that.

It helped that among the WWE Divas, Mickie and Trish could actually wrestle. You might think that would be a prerequisite before being signed to Vince McMahon's gigantic promotion, but you’d be wrong. Very wrong. Vince casts his Divas for their swimsuit appeal, not for their ability to recreate the best moves of Lou Thesz.

But for five years, Mickie was the best of both worlds - cute as a button with a  massive army of loyal fans, good matches with any other Diva who could tell an armbar from a crowbar, and was rewarded as a five-time Champion. Being anointed as a  Champion by WWE (or any other company) really does mean something - it means Vince thinks you’re a star and can earn Vince money. Simple as that. And great as long as Vince likes you.

As sports commentator Jim Rome once said, ‘There’s no doubt about it. Vince McMahon is the bad seed.’ When Vince dislikes or grows bored with a wrestler, before the release inevitably containing the words ‘We wish (insert name) all the best in (his/her) future endeavors’, he attempts to destroy the wrestler’s appeal. What if they started earning money for TNA, or WCW back in the day? Can’t be having that! Vince would then appear to be - egad! - wrong. Vince doesn’t do wrong well.

So, the wrestler might be turned heel, so he or she won’t be welcomed by another promotion’s fans as a conquering hero. Or, they might be jobbed out - put on a long losing string so they lose their athletic appeal. Or Vince might just make fun of you in as demeaning a fashion as possible. That’s what he did to Mickie James. He had other Divas on Smackdown repeatedly say that Mickie was -

Fat.


Piggy James. Fat fat ickity ick. Now, I do invite the reader to look at the young woman in the accompanying picture. If that is fat, then I’m the Mighty Mouse balloon in the Macy’s Parade. So what Vince was doing made no sense, but in his mind the absolute cruelest thing he could happen to a woman was to be accused of losing her sex appeal. Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir and Queen Elizabeth the First might beg to differ, but none of them were wrestlers. Margaret Thatcher would have made one heck of a manager of a heel faction however. Eric Bischoff and Vince Russo might have saved WCW if they’d put Thatcher in the N.W.O. My apologies if this is getting too inside. We’re done with the wrestling part mostly.

Mickie had and has a second talent. She is a country singer and songwriter, mostly of the hard-playin’ James Gang style. Just after her release from WWE she released an album called Strangers & Angels, available on iTunes. So, as the late Stan Rogers used to say, it was time ‘to hit the highways and the byways, singing the songs of our land.’

As any musician will tell you (and tell you and tell you) life on the road is not easy - bars, fairs and shopping mall openings. Mickie being a known quantity with a fan base has an edge, but it’s an edge that is only as good as a letter of introduction. After that, it’s up to the singer and the songs to sell themselves.

Sounds like a reality series to me, as it does to Mickie and her manager. She still takes the occasional independent wrestling gig, has name recognition, a traveling story, and most importantly she has the character to draw a smile. People like to smile.

The idea is going to be pitched to various networks and I’m going to track it for you. Until then - Be seeing you.

(Mickie James' own website can be found here)

Politics for Joe: Sympathy for the Devil

Stephen Harper addresses the UN
 ... oh sorry, John C. Reilly singing Mr. Cellophane

You might think that a deliberative body comprised of the supposed crème de la crème of the world’s diplomatic corps would know better. On Thursday of this past week, Harper addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations regarding the failure to reach the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. The problem, was, not much of the Assembly chose to assemble. The last of thirteen leaders to speak on that day - Obama batted lead-off - the video evidence shows an audience of a dozen or two at best at the celebrated and massive hall. Unpopular people have better attended funerals. (Then again, as Red Skelton famously said upon the occasion of Columbia Pictures’ dictatorial Harry Cohn having a jam-packed funeral, ‘You give people what they want to see, they’ll show up.’)

It takes a lot for me to raise much sympathy for Harper. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had an easier time of it with the Devil. In this case though, my knee has jerked at the rubber hammer landing a blow to national pride. I’m sorry, but we deserve a little more than Rodney Dangerfield respect.

The undoubtedly hastily conceived cover line is that several of the earlier speeches had gone long. There were meetings to be held, negotiations to be negotiated, hearty cocktails to be mixed. All true. But surely diplomatic missions to the UN contain enough secretaries, assistants, stenographers, press officers and interpreters to fill seats while the Big Guy is toasting Cardinal Puff.

In case nobody is feeling either guilty or bothered about this, I quote from Harper’s apeech:

As a founding member of the UN, and the seventh-largest contributor to its finances, Canada has been a consistently reliable and responsible participant in UN initiatives around the world

This was so in the earliest days of the UN.

It was so during the difficult days of the Cold War, of de-colonization and of the struggle against apartheid. It is so today.

Canada continues to pay, for instance, a heavy price to fulfill our UN obligation to support the lawful government of Afghanistan.

We pay it in both the resources of Canadian taxpayers, but also with profound sorrow, in the priceless lives of our young men and women who serve there in the Canadian Armed Forces, as well as, sadly, civilians who have also given their sweat and their lives in the service of both our country, and of the people of Afghanistan.

Granted, Harper is unlikely to be mentioned in the same breath as Lester Pearson when it comes to a diplomatic legacy. It verges on the ironic that the Prime Minister had the chutzpah to speak on the Millennium Development Goals in the first place. Those goals were targeted at the Third World, aiming to eradicate hunger, poverty and gender equality. Well, the present Conservative government cut off aid to eight African nations, frozen aid to the continent as a whole, and the former president of the International AIDS Society Dr. Julian Montaner felt compelled to remark in July of this year, “I am ashamed to say that the government of Canada has punched well below its weight in funding universal access and supporting those affected by HIV and AIDS around the world.” Well, attaway to take an international goal and make it your own.

So, our hands and souls are not perfectly clean. Our support for Israel would warm the hearts of Arthur Balfour, if not T.E. Lawrence. For some reason we seem to be in the midst of a military build-up when the war we are fighting is unwinnable on the battlefield.

Nonetheless, we are fighting that war and for the reasons of loyalty to an idea that it is right and just to sacrifice in order to advance the march of justice and anti-terrorism into the very Heart of Darkness. No matter how one feels about that war, or any of the other policy decisions by Harper’s government, Canada has more to it as a nation than whomever the idiot living in subsidized housing on Sussex Drive is on a given day; just as the United States is more than Carter, Reagan, Clinton, Bush or Obama.

Yes, it is ironic that a nation small in population yet great in wealth such as Canada manages currently to expend more of the former than of the latter. But our history and much of our present is filled with honour. For that alone, the empty hall was an insult we did not deserve.

Be seeing you.

Hubert O’Hearn
for Lake Superior News
September 27 2010

A Mix of Sports and Strange Metaphors

Violence in footie? Whatever do you mean? Please ignore the cannon.

Inside Television 520
Publication date: 9-24-10
By: Hubert O’Hearn


After a series of fairly heavy columns over the past few weeks, I thought we’d relax a bit on the couch and join the potatoes. I honestly can’t remember who said this - if I was playing Final Jeopardy and had to guess I’d say Tom Wolfe, but I would not feel confident in the wager - but someone or other once said that the one thing every man in America bears in common is that they all used to ‘play a little ball.’ Granted this is Canada, but same difference. the ball can be dimpled, fuzzy yellow, seamed, oblong, palmable, bendable, or chopped melted frozen and renamed puck, but it has been played with. There - there is my ethical justification for doing a sports column this week.

Not that there isn’t industry justification to go with it. I looked up the latest Nielsen Ratings in the US for the week of Sept. 13-19 and there on top was Sunday Night Football with 23.1 million viewers. To find a non-sports, non-news (60 Minutes still running strong) or non-reality show you have to drop down to Number 8 fore NBC’s new courtroom drama Outlaw with 10.68 million viewers. So the hottest thing with actors and writers and things came in with less than half the interest than the Indianapolis Colts doing unspeakable acts of violence upon men who for some reason were wearing undoubtedly stolen New York Giants uniforms.

Then again, unspeakable acts of violence certainly are an entertainment draw. Ask any very old lion you happen to run across, he’ll tell you. ‘Rome. Rome was the days my friend. I was a draw. Emperors, generals, they all caught my act baby. You think that kid Bieber’s hot? I invented hot. Back then, The Mane was The Game...So you want fries with that?’

Granted, it is concerning about a trend I’m detecting towards what Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange called The Ultra-Violence. I’m already on the record opposing the licensing of MMA in Ontario. People will die or be turned into shambling wrecks. Don’t talk to me about ‘safety standards.’ Boxing commissions have ‘safety standards.’ Watch the ESPN 30 for 30 on YouTube about Muhammad Ali and Larry Holmes. Now tell me how great MMA is, with less hand padding than boxing and wrestling hooks that even WWE won’t use.

Ah, but how can one be a football fan then? How can one endorse a wide receiver being turned into a spinning broken bird by a strong safety aiming low? And you’re right. It is absolutely hypocritical. But I’m curious to see what the effect of the expansion of the NFL schedule to 18 games will be.

Bill James, who virtually invented baseball saber-metrics (all those strange little statistics running across the bottom of the screen), is also a very good, very funny writer. He once wrote a short essay about violence in baseball - Pete Rose mashing up catcher Ray Fosse in a home plate collision in an all-star game - and wondered how baseball would be played if it had football’s 16 game schedule and football played baseball’s 162.

James felt that the violence levels would flip-flop. The shorter the schedule, the more important each individual game and each individual moment of the game becomes. Theoretically, in baseball you might have some scrub with a fastball come in to pitch to A-Rod with the exact purpose of burying a baseball in the Yankee star’s earhole.

On the other hand, the longer the schedule the more important wear and tear on the stars becomes. If all of a sudden the Packers are drafting in burly bartenders from Fox River taverns because they’ve run out of linemen in Week 17, then it’s time to maybe ease back on the throttle.

The speculation, particularly Tony Kornheiser on Pardon the Interruption, is that injuries will mount when the schedule increases by two games, or 12.5%. I think that’s undoubtedly true for the first year or two, but either roster sizes will expand (again passim Kornheiser) or the players might get a little smaller with increased cardio fitness. In other words, everybody turns into the Denver Broncos, traditionally the smallest team in the league because of playing at altitude.

Anyway, there’s always footie to follow. It’s even easier to find than ever, with TSN, Sportsnet, Setanta, The Score, CBC, OLN and Fox Sports Canada all offering various professional leagues and competitions. If you’re new to it and want to get involved, please don’t start with the Champions League in Europe until the knockout stage begins after the Christmas break. Until then, it’ sharks eating minnows, lesser teams parking the team bus in front of the net (in Jose Mourinho’s classic phrase) or the giants sniffing at each other like a couple of prideful mountain goats.

I would have said start with Barcelona in Spain’s La Liga, but the best player in the world Leo Messi was carted off the pitch on the weekend, so maybe hold off on that one for awhile. Go with Arsenal in the Premier League. They make more passes than a Roman rogue, and have an almost snobbish disdain for taking a shot from a range greater than three yards. As such, they are a pleasure to watch, except when playing the Boltons Blackburns and Sunderlands who snap at Gunners’ ankles and Gunners’ knees like so ten hungry corgis.

Thanks for reading. I had fun. Be seeing you.

Lessons from Tony Blair

That all-important swing voter

I’m not a big fan of using extended quotes in columns. For one thing, it seems somehow like cheating off another boy’s exam paper; for another, it’s boring to type out someone else’s words. All that said, I’ve been reading Tony Blair’s autobiography A Journey: My Political Life and I was struck by the following passage concerning the 1997 election that swept Blair to power in the UK:

I believed the current prime minister John Major was much better than others thought. He had real appeal as a person. Fortunately, his party had gone off the rails, to a heavy, hard-right position, and over the seemingly interminable time I had spent as Leader of the Opposition - almost three years - I had learned how to play him and his party off against each other...
(The Tories’) hope was that we would trip up, I would suddenly lose my head, by some trick of fate or fortune the mood of the public would switch. It was never really going to happen.
Instead, and rather more predictably, the Tories fell apart. Every time Major tried to get them on the front foot, someone in his ranks resigned, said something stupid, got caught in a scandal and frequently all three at once and occasionally the same person...Amazing how a political party can go like that, though it is possible to tempt them into it if their opponents are smart enough; and by occupying the centre ground, make them foolishly go off to the side.

There are enough similarities between Britain 1997 and Canada 2010 to make for a comparative study. Equally, the differences between the two years and countries illustrate What Must Be Done by either the Canadian Tories or Liberals must do between now and election day to secure victory in insecure times.

Stephen Harper’s Tories have clearly gone the hard-right route. It actually amazes me that Harper is burning personal time and power in attempting to win a vote that now appears doomed - the long gun registry. The PM showed up in Thunder Bay this past Thursday, just coincidentally a few days before the registry vote; and just coincidentally the home base of two NDP members starting to waver away from voting with the Conservatives. He has been making red meat speeches and red meat answers to questions about the registry. And for what purpose?

This is not a vote-winning issue, but the government is being so bull-headed about it that clearly they must believe it is. Please don’t express any poppycock about opposition to the long gun registry being a matter of honour! ethics! cost savings! Rubbish. It’s about appealing to the Canadian version of Floyd R Turbo, the simple-minded hunter played by the late Johnny Carson. But isn’t that social subset already voting Tory? Granted the base must be served now and then, but a glance south of the border shows us a series of Republican Presidents starting with Ronald Reagan who campaigned against abortion with the fervour of a Catholic bishop, then shut the hell up about it once inaugurated. Harper is trading cities for sticks. Not a good deal.

There are more signs of the hard tack to starboard, seeking a favourable wind that may not be there. Building big new prisons is a classic hard right issue. So is sneering against ‘Toronto elites’ as Conservative House Leader John Baird did recently. Indeed, the sense that Baird is the only Tory allowed to speak without having every verb, noun, um, eh or burp vetted by the PMO also shows the rightward shift.

I’m not sure where the long form census debate fits into the left-right spectrum. The handling of it by the government has been atrocious. One is left thinking that not only does this government not seem to like people very much, it doesn’t even want to know them. Although it must be observed that along among the world’s peoples only Canadians would rise in protest at being denied the opportunity to do more paperwork.

So that parallel fits. I’m not so sure that Harper, like Major, runs ahead of his party in public favourability. Not that it really matters. The Orwellian PMO has ensured that no Cabinet Minister stands a chance of being seen as a viable successor to Harper. You could argue for Jim Flaherty I suppose. You could, but I won’t.

And those that are in Cabinet still manage to implode in public. Just for s***s and giggles I Googled ‘Canadian Tories saying stupid things.’ I found 312,000 results. There may be some duplication within that number. One has to wonder aloud about the seeming chauvinism of throwing Helena Guergis out of caucus and under a bus for allegations which were proven untrue, whereas Stockwell Day gets to flat out lie about crime statistics while announcing those new prisons - and he gets a free pass.

The long and the short of it is that there is a sufficient and growing weakness in the government that creates a golden opportunity for the Opposition Liberals. But is Michael Ignatieff a Tony Blair, and can the Liberals become New Liberals as Labour in the UK became New Labour?

Ironically, the counter-argument that there is no need for the Liberals to become “new” anything merely underlines the Grit problem. Labour had to transition into New Labour because there were a series of socialist positions that Labour had campaigned on over the years (severely high upper end tax rates and de-denuclearizing the armed forces being two examples) which had proven unpopular. Therefore, when Blair’s predecessor John Smith died, and Blair and Gordon Brown made their historic deal where Blair would be the leader for ten years, it was a necessity to change Labour into something more palatable, popular and electable.

The Canadian Liberals do not have that particular problem. Now, the arched eyebrow set would say that the Liberals do not have principles that require changing because the Liberals do not have principles. And yes, there is something to that jab. When the Liberal Party has had a visionary for a leader - Laurier, Trudeau - it is a visionary party that can cascade to massive victories. When it has a likable, yet non-visionary leader like Jean Chretien, it is just a cruel winning machine.

Chretien had no vision - we as a nation were not all going to shrink in size and move to Shawinigan - but he did have shrewd sense of history and knew how to sell the Liberal Party successes. He targeted the most unpopular Tory positions - the GST - and swore he would eliminate them - he didn’t.

So what is Michael Ignatieff, who like Blair became leader as a result of an entente with a rival, in Iggy’s case that being an entente imposed on Bob Rae? Is he a visionary? Is he a non-visionary? Has he staked out the middle as Blair did?

I’m willing to bet that you the reader had to think for a while before answering the previous paragraph’s questions. Ignatieff admitted this week in a televised interview with Peter Mansbridge on CBC TV that he had more work to do in order to reach the Canadian public.

Well, Iggy is rather wrong on that score. He has reached the Canadian people. He has high awareness, his every word on the issues of the day are sought out, he speaks well, he flips a mean burger. He is visible, but his words ... well, it’s rather like someone reading a comic book where all the speech and thought balloons have been erased with white out.

The Tories are doing everything they can to make the upcoming campaign season a tight race by consistently opening up then blowing leads in the public opinion polls. But can the Liberals take advantage? That’s the end of it I’m not so sure about. When I’m playing poker I never go all-in on a 50/50 hand. The Liberals seemingly are willing to play those cards. Good luck with that.

Hubert O’Hearn
for Lake Superior News

1967 Revisited

Come to think of it, Mister Peabody does resemble Paul Martin Sr.

Inside Television 519
Publication Date: 9-17-10
By: Hubert O’Hearn


I was reminded of something by a Facebook posting just a few minutes ago. It was time to write this column and I thought I’d just check the social networks to see what was new before going to the newswires to check the television networks. There was a link to a YouTube post of Bobby Gimby and the chorus singing Ca-Na-Da, the anthem of the 1967 Centennial. The comment was made on both Facebook and YouTube that this should be our national anthem.

Therefore Sherman, let’s you and I go with Mr. Peabody into the Wayback Machine and look at the past with a point to be made about the present.

That song was absolutely omnipresent that year, as was Centennial fever. Every community with half an idea did a Centennial public works project. In the city of Fort William, it was the Conservatory behind Chapples park. In Port Arthur it was - I guess you can guess - Centennial Park complete with the best toboggan run in the Lakehead (sic).

I remember that toboggan run well. I was nine, my grandfather took me to Centennial Park on a 1967 winter’s Sunday and we ran into people he knew. They had kids and a toboggan. I became a guest passenger on the voyage ... until the toboggan hit a lump and ascended into the air. Showing the agility of a Romanian Gymnast and the common sense of an anvil, I removed myself from the toboggan while in mid-flight only to find myself beneath said now descending object with an otherwise full load of screaming children. Who landed on my face. Whump. Therefore, my grandfather was left with the task of mopping up a bloody face - mine - and driving several laps around the cities while waiting for the child - still me - to stop screaming bloody murder before being returned to my mother.

So not all memories of that Centennial Year are positive ones. Although any event in life that doesn’t kill you or someone else and leaves you with a good story to tell is worth living. The point of all this is that as exhilarating and beautifully patriotic as the Vancouver Olympics proved to be, the giddy intoxication still runs second to the Centennial. The Centennial ran all year obviously, Expo 67 ran all spring through fall in Montreal, we were 100 years old, had a population of 20 million as the song reminded us, we were all grown up and for the first time felt kind of - cool.

Yes, it might have been Canada’s best year. We had a flag (okay, it was a compromise design that thrilled no one but, ehhhh, you get used to it), an anthem (which edged out The Maple Leaf Forever because of the latter’s reference to ‘Wolfe the dauntless hero’ which really didn’t play well in Quebec), and this Pierre Trudeau guy who had the swagger and style of a Kennedy but was very definitely a homegrown product.

We were building stuff: schools, infrastructures, industries. We stayed out of Vietnam and welcomed the draft dodgers. Our Prime Minister, Lester Pearson, had a deserved Nobel Peace Prize. The Leader of the Opposition, John Diefenbaker, while Prime Minister had passed an excellent Bill of Rights the equal of Trudeau’s later Charter of Rights although only binding on the Federal government. And Diefenbaker was a Tory. Can you imagine Stephen Harper doing that? me neither.

Even on television, every time you turned on the set you hit a classic. Chez Helene and The Friendly Giant for the kids, This Hour Has Seven Days for the intelligent, Tommy Hunter and Don Messer’s Jubilee for your toe-tapping family fun. And do not forget Wayne and Shuster. Never forget Wayne and Shuster.

But now? It’s not so much that no program, politician or presentation has truly captured the public imagination, it’s more that we seem to have lost an imagination to capture. We certainly had the fervour at the Winter Olympics but the follow-through seems as lost as a New Year’s Resolution.

It may well be that we’re just happy to be alive and somewhat thriving in the face of economic calamity all around us. But even the Great Depression left a legacy of the CBC, Air Canada and the origins of the modern social welfare state. We, well we play our cards very conservatively. In  television, is there a single Canadian show produced today that you can say with a straight face will have a 50 year shelf life? With CBC being slowly asphyxiated by financial strangling, and CTV with Global combining to form America Lite, it is not likely that there will be such a show in the near future.

Perhaps that is the lesson to take from 1967. It really was ground up, community first, all those projects and events and songs. Ottawa supplied chunky cheques, no doubt about it, but money really doesn’t create happiness. People create happiness within themselves and share it with others.

And yes, i think every hockey game, movie and school day ought to start with Ca-Na-Da. At least all beginnings would begin with smiles. Be seeing you.

Sharks, Stephen Harper and John Turner

Friday, September 10 - 2010
   What do a Shark, Stephen Harper and John Turner have in common?

Its never a good thing watching someone lose their touch in public. One moment, or many moments, you’re Big Johnny Swagger  able to make victory appear with a point of your finger; the next, you’re Brian Mulroney. Or Tiger Woods for that matter. This isn’t just a political thing.

I used to like using the ‘jump the shark’ phrase until everybody and their Aunt Mabel started using it and it became like 57 year old white guys with beer guts saying ‘word.’ But jump the shark was a good one while it lasted and deserves a one-time revival.

I am seriously starting to wonder if Stephen Harper has jumped the shark. Granted, I would be delighted if that proved in the affirmative. Equally though, there are all the signs of a politician who has been locked in the bubble too long and has lost his mojo, his karma, his ability to bend minds in order to obey his commands. Or in Tiger Woods’ case, reading eight foot putts. It’s the same thing. Doubt - doubt starts to enter the mind - and doubt is the dark child of fear and the loss of instinct.

It can come early or late in the career. Sometimes it may not even be your fault. Take John Turner for example. He was the Toronto Maple Leafs to Pierre Trudeau’s Montreal Canadiens when they both popped up in Lester Pearson’s last Cabinet. Trudeau’s star burnt brighter, quicker; yet Turner made a good run of it at the 1968 Liberal Convention that elected Trudeau. Surely, it was felt, his time would come.

It did. In 1984. Turner’s time had come but his era had passed. If Turner had been the road company version of a show called Kennedy, re-worked to fit a Canadian audience, the last Kennedy had run for the Presidency four years before and lost.

Mulroney, who trounced Turner in the greatest landslide in Canadian electoral history, was the perfect man for the mid-1980s. He smacked of New Money and the years dominated by Reagan and Thatcher was full of it. Dallas and Dynasty - let’s make it rich baby. then of course it came time to pay the bills for all this nonsense and in came Jean Chretien with Paul Martin to tight the economic ship in an election that reduced a majority Progressive Conservative government tio two seats. As you look back on it, that truly was stunning. The Tories were not only neither loved nor admired - their MPs weren’t even liked. There was not even a, ‘They’re a bunch of bastards but Charlie’s OK.’ Utter destruction.

I am starting to think that Harper’s era is passing and that the Prime Minister knows it. There are the signs of failing government that have existed since the dawn of the 20th century and the mass media era. Tightening of government secrecy. Control concentrated in the PMO (Prime Minister’s Office), a sudden push for a policy issue that is a pleasing and surprising sidebar that surely will change the public’s view.

Regarding the last, I’m reminded of things like Bush the Younger’s staunch and well-funded stance on AIDS in Africa, Trudeau travelling the world pressing for nuclear disarmament, or Paul Martin with economic development for native youth. Harper has taken a strong public stance on Northern sovereignty. It is admirable. But I think it may also be the signing of the will, a last attempt at leaving an honourable legacy.

The time of Harper - the time of Harper has been an accidental time to begin with. Paul Martin may have lacked focus, but there was no good economic or foreign policy reason to remove him - save for one’s opinion of the Afghanistan War and Canada’s involvement in it. The Sponsorship Scandal, as sleazy as it definitely was, was pretty clearly an outcome of Team Chretien, and not Team Martin. People were tired of it all, so it was time to send the Liberals to their corner for a timeout.

In that corner, however, the Liberals found the cabinet where Daddy keeps his liquor and in a fit of drunken madness elected Stephane Dion as their leader. That too only occurred because Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae fought like two old cheerleaders at a sorority reunion and neither could bear the other to be elected Alumni Prom Queen. And I do apologize for the overt sexism on the preceding metaphor, but I like the image so I’m keeping it.

So it’s not as though the public have ever truly been all googoo over Harper to begin with. He was there, he was plausible, he’ll do. Do you actually know anyone - seriously anyone - who walks around saying Harper is the greatest Prime Minister, like, ever dude? (And yes, I’m using the middle-aged white guy version of urban youth speak to make sure that absolutely no one has ever said precisely that.)  

But if there was a time of Harper, what was it and why do  I insist on putting it in the past tense? I believe it was the end of a longer era - that of the 1990s and solid economic health that had its mirror cracked from side to side by 9-11, crazed banking and financial crisis. Outside of crisis, this is where things would have logically sat, with a solid and stolid caretaker government. A St. Laurent ers redux. We wanted management over imagination.

I suspect that Canadians are aware that Things Are Not Right. One thing about a nation that has a keen sense of the weather and how it can quickly change is that I do believe that Canadians are running ahead of Ottawa in terms of a willingness to accept whatever it takes to hold the line on climate change (we can’t fix it - subject for a future column - but we can’t fix it). Similarly, I also believe that Canadians are ahead of Ottawa in sensing that the Western economic structure might crater any given Wednesday and there does not seem to be a level of activity or focus within the government that indicates there is crisis planning going on.

We’re scared about the future. We’d like to think our politicians were too.

And scared is all right. Politicians all too often go for the ‘calming voice’. Let’s sing together: Ohmmmmmmm. Frankly, if my elected representative admits that he’s scared into staining his St. Laurent, at least I know he’s going to be working mightily on the problem.

Tightened security and secrecy equally plays against public faith in a time of fear. The problem of any secret from Degrassi High up to the PMO is that people always think the secret is hotter/juicier/scarier than the reality really is. So not knowing the truth makes the public believe that the story which is withheld is even more horrifying than our worst fears. Not a real good recipe for trust.

But - will anyone capitalize? Can Harper re-shape a government in the nine months or so before the next Federal election? How’s this heavy re-work of Iggy into small-town Chretien (but with degrees!) going to play long-term? Who is going to see the growing new wave of public desire and going surfing like the Beach Boys? Stay tuned and ... be seeing you.

Hubert O’Hearn
For Lake Superior News   1