Decisions, Decisions

We have a new car. Buying it was a difficult decision, one a long time in the making. We decided for no real reason, or rather, for "squishy" reasons. We still need two cars. One of ours was 17 years old (the other is 8). Roy and I connected with a particular sales person who sold a particular kind of car we already knew we wanted. Et cetera.

Similarly, I will no longer be blogging here. Quitting was a difficult decision, one a long time in the making. The reasons are similarly squishy. Nothing horrible has happened. It's just time.

So of course I will now squish about those reasons.

One reason for quitting is that I sometimes feel, walking into a bookstore or surfing along the dewy strands of the Interwebs (to mix metaphors), as if people are clutching at my lapels (more mixture, more metaphors!), begging me to listen to their stories.

I am suffering a surfeit of memoir, a plethora of personal essay.

Actually, that last isn't quite right. I do like to read personal essays. But I am ready for them to be less personal and more essay. I'm very happy for a personal thread to guide me through a topic. I just want more emphasis on the topic and less on the feelings and impressions of the writer.

All of which is a tad hypocritical, since I have written very personal essays and can't promise I'll stop. Someday, a subject will capture my attention, and when I'm ready to consider it in the light of learning, I will. However, given that blogs are a form of personal essay, I can at least stop writing this one, which is more personal and less essay. As it happens, my writing for the foreseeable future will be less essay-ish and more fict-ish (and work-ish).

So the bigger reason for quitting is that others have far more learned things to say than I do about Canada as seen through the eyes of the U.S. and/or Americans (and sometimes vice versa). In the next month or so, I expect to be tidying up in here a little, and I'll include links to some of those people who are doing those "real" things, like collecting and analyzing accents and doing real research into the nuances of that relationship.

It's been an interesting adventure. I am aware that some semi-public mock has been made of me and my opinions. That's unsurprising, given that putting an opinion into a public space like a blog invites responses, of which mock is one form.

But it's also completely surprising, because really, who cares what I think? In the words of The West Wing's Toby Ziegler, "I'm just the guy who does the thing." (Another metaphor: I have apparently run out of pie!)

The point: I am not an expert. Not even a representative opinion. Just a writer. A sometimes cranky fly on the wall. (Stopping with the metaphors now.)

Far more important than all that is this: I am most grateful for those who have engaged me (in real life, given that I am the kind of person who doesn't allow comments here) in discussions about everything from "Of course it's pronounced "ash-phalt"; what are you talking about?" to the wistful "Really? they don't think about us? Not even a little bit?"

I am still find-able. I have a website. I am on Facebook.

In closing: Thank you, everyone. See you across the border.

Welcome, Here's Your Test

A recent story in the Globe and Mail, by the gifted and talented Joe Friesen, reports on a European survey of immigration policies. Thanks to new efforts to recognize immigrants' professional credentials, Canada now ranks "just short of the best in the world." How very Canadian (pre-podium-owning, of course).

According to the story, one area in which Canada could improve is in political engagement of immigrants--an odd area for Canada's political systems to overlook, because the story indicates that immigrants are known to be politically active.

While cruising around on the Citizenship and Immigration Canada site, I recently discovered that immigrants aged 55 and over are NOT required to take a citizenship test.

I've written before about citizenship and citizenship tests. And yes, I am on record as saying the discussion of the citizenship test on The Agenda was "yawn-inducing," and yes, I now wish I had paid closer attention to the issues. (Sorry, TVO!)

Because here's the real question about citizenship tests. What is the point?

Is it to ensure basic literacy about cultural and political customs and traditions? Okay: who needs this basic literacy--only immigrants, or everyone? Then why are only immigrants tested? You can say that people who grow up in Canada are tested as part of their experience in the school system, but not all participation in school is equal. (Some 48% of Canadians over the age of 16 don't demonstrate "desired" literacy levels for navigating life.)

Yet testing people before allowing them to enter polling booths is discriminatory, according to the US Voting Rights Act; tests kept African-Americans from voting for 100 years. But how far before an election is it OK to test people? Non-citizens are not allowed to vote in this country, so any test immigrants take will be, technically, before a vote.

A second question: Who gets to decide which cultural and political customs and traditions are tested? Are Canadians tested on persians as well as poutine and donair?

And are these tests educationally valid? Do these tests conform to known "best practices"? Can a kinesthetic learner choreograph and perform a dance to demonstrate the hundreds of federal ridings? Are visual learners encouraged to submit dioramas demonstrating their understanding of the role of the Queen in Canadian foreign policy?

Stepping back from the abyss of absurdity, it's still valid to recap this basic question from two years ago: How many current Canadian citizens can pass their test? (This goes for you, too, Americans.)

And now, the new wrinkle: new citizens over the age of 55 don't need to be tested. Why not? According to the Canadian Business online life expectancy calculator, if I were 55 (which I am NOT), all things remaining equal, I'll live to 85. (Note that none of the questions asked where I was born, which demonstrates either that immigrants can be expected to live about as long as Canadians born here, or that the magazine's test is limited.)

So, if I were to become a citizen at 55, I'd have 30 years of voting ahead of me. It would be good for Canada if I, too, had some basic understanding of this country I'm moving to.

If people over 55 are exempt from testing because of potential language difficulties and/or because learning new material is "hard"--well, what favours are you doing these people to expect less of them because they've lived X years? In fact, mental stimulation is still cited by the U.S. NIH as one way to stave off memory loss.

So wouldn't it make the most sense to require all Canadians over the age of 55 to to continue learning? But then we're back to testing everyone before voting.

Worst of all, I'm afraid I have only questions, no solutions. I do think people entering a country should demonstrate a basic knowledge of the country they're entering--but I believe those who live there should have that same basic knowledge. Yet it's discriminatory to deny citizens the right to vote based on the results of any kind of test.

I am also not convinced that citizenship tests are the best way for immigrants to demonstrate the desired understanding of their new country.

And I don't think that something magical happens in a brain at the age of 55 that should exempt people that age from having the basic knowledge required for citizenship.

So...what is the role of the citizenship test again? Never mind. I'll start studying.

Disservice to the Discourse

I've already tipped my hand about What Is America, by Ronald Wright.* (To recap: I'm not a fan.) But after hearing comments about this book at a book club meeting over the weekend--a book club that contains perfectly lovely, educated people--I want to explain why I think this book does a disservice to American-Canadian political discourse.

For those of you who haven't read the book, here's what you're missing. The author, born in Britain and now a writer and lecturer in Canadian universities, puts forth the following argument: “[T]he New World made the modern world and now threatens to undo it” (p. 1). After a short introductory chapter, he chronicles the various waves of European contact, colonization, and/or settlement of North America through the centuries. Written before Barak Obama won the Democratic presidential nomination and published before he won the 2008 election, the book ends with the suggestion that the best hope for real leadership now comes from the European Union.

Wright tells an ugly story. The continent's history is one of greed, conquest, and relentless domination of the indigenous people. It is a story of people--Europeans, some Spanish but mostly British who become Americans--who use and abuse natural resources until they are spent, and then move on to take advantage of the next resource. It is, in short, a story of people. And it's a story that can't continue in this way. There are precious few “new resources” left on this planet.

I don't dispute the story Wright tells, even as he moves into recent events. I agree that George W. Bush was a disastrous leader and that his “war on terror” has been terrifying indeed. Two years after Wright finished his book, we're watching President Obama struggle with an obscene tangle of economic, political, and social consequences of the Bush administration.

But I still say that this book does not provide any benefits to the political discourse in Canada about the U.S. and the Canadian-American relationship. I think this book, and others written on this same pattern, in fact harms that discourse, for four reasons.

1. Readers deserve a book based on scholarship they can see and trust. This book doesn't make its case. It is set up to look like a carefully researched history--but it's not. The subtitle, “A short history of the new world order,” also suggests history. The book includes 226 pages of text and 142 pages of notes and bibliography. It has all the earmarks of a history, but not the substance. On close inspection, the book doesn't add to the base of knowledge. The information in the text itself was part of the university courses I took in 1982 and before. The notes show that many of Wright's “sources” are not original; they're quoted in someone else's analysis of empire in the U.S. (for example). That's not good, convincing scholarship. Other notes fail to provide a source for the statement in the text. Many contain information of only distant relevance to the material it's supposedly supporting. Many statements of statistics have no footnote at all.

Therefore, it's not a book that can be taken seriously for its scholarly approach to its material, even though the information in the book may well be new or shocking to Canadians. In fact, because the information may be new to Canadians, it should be available in an academically rigorous (yet, ideally, readable) book. Canadians readers would do better to take Wright out of the loop completely and read a few of the books cited in the bibliography.

2. Readers deserve to be told the truth about themselves. The kind of “history” in this book just allows Canadians to feel smug--mistakenly so--about their own past. Although Wright says “the America of my title has two meanings: the great republic most of the world simply calls 'America' and the American landmass as a whole” (p. 12), he focuses mostly on the “great republic,” and secondarily on ancient civilizations in what are now Central and South America. Precious little of his attention goes to Canada--though comments at the book club discussion suggest that perhaps it should have.

One comment at the meeting: “I've always been proud that my ancestors came from England to North America in the 1600s....and now [after reading this book] I'm so glad I don't have dual citizenship.” But until 1815 (or arguably 1776), Canadians and Americans were all British (except for those who were Native or from another European country). In fact, you could argue that Canadians weren't truly Canadians until 1867, by which time the pattern Wright describes--killing off or exploiting Native peoples and taking their wealth and land--had been in full force for nearly 400 years. The 140 to 200 years in which the two countries have had decidedly different histories total only two-fifths to one-fourth of the total time Europeans have been taking advantage of this continent.

Another comment: “I don't know how they [Americans] live with themselves.” The context for this statement was the treatment of native Hawaiians, particularly the last monarchy in the 1880s. Nowhere in the book does Wright mention Canada's 20th-century residential schools for Natives. And he dispatches Canada's history of western expansion and its relationships with Native peoples, including the war against Louis Riel, in two sentences with the remark that the processes in both countries “were all quite similar,” although there was “less fighting” in what is now Canada (p. 166).

Although Canadians are apparently Wright's intended audience (given the Canadian publisher), Wright does not effectively address his Canadian readers. He doesn't actively engage them in reflecting on their own history as part of the North American continent. Canadians could perhaps learn about their own history from the new biography series at Penguin Canada, Extraordinary Canadians.

3. Readers deserve a thorough, useful discussion of the major themes in a work. Yet Wright is ignorant of the history of religion in North America, beyond reading about (not direct reading of) the Puritans and beyond extensive quotation from Jon Krakauer's recent book about Mormonism.** Although Wright correctly identifies religion as a major cultural force in the U.S., he allows for no nuance in religious belief. “One in two Americans rejects the evidence for evolution; the rest of Christendom gave up fighting Darwin a century ago” (p. 16). I suspect this statistic comes from a general survey about religious belief, not specifically about evolution, but it's impossible to know--Wright gives no source for this statistic. (It's not even footnoted.) Wright seems not to understand that it is possible for (North) Americans to identify themselves as BOTH Christians AND scientists. He doesn't even acknowledge, much less explore, the deep divisions in mainstream Christian denominations in the U.S. For the past 150 years, progressive believers have struggled with fundamentalists, like those whose views Wright dismisses as archaic, over issues such as racial equality and marriage rights. These struggles form an important part of the culture and politics of the U.S.--but to Wright, they don't exist.

Another comment at the discussion: “What scares me is that someone who believes in an afterlife has his finger on the trigger of a nuclear device.” Wright's dismissal of nuance in religion lets his readers conclude (or continue to believe) that anyone who believes in an afterlife necessarily holds Earthly life less dear and is thus on the verge of annihilating the planet. Wright, like anyone else who writes about culture, politics, or society, had the opportunity to challenge the fundamentalist atheism of this comment, yet he didn't. Instead, he limits his consideration of the religious history of the North American continent to those aspects of Christianity that he seems to find puzzling or frightening.

Without a more complete picture of the role religion plays in the U.S., across faiths and denominations, and considering how each intersects with political and social perspectives, readers can't fully understand North America's present, much less engage in its future.

4. Which brings us to the future. Readers deserve a book that goes beyond fingerpointing. But in this book, Wright offers no real solutions--he doesn't even offer questions. Yes, Bush's administration was a nightmare for Iraqis, Afghans, and uninsured Americans, for starters. Yes, the North American continent has a long and sordid history. To which I ask: Now what?

Wright offers very little in response. The positive alternative he cites as the next possibility for “the world's best hope,” the European Union, is “discussed” in less than three full pages (pp 223 – 226).

The sad thing is, Wright missed a golden opportunity to speak meaningfully about the future to Canadians--who live in one of the countries that still has, arguably, a “frontier.” Canada's economy depends largely on its natural resources. Technology will continue to make it easier to extract oil from tar sands and to find and extract natural gas and minerals from previously inaccessible regions. In the next half-century, climate change could drastically alter the Canadian landscape, expanding the amount of arable land and triggering an influx of settlers from the south.

What if Wright had, from his expertise on the perils of colonial expansion, considered explicitly how Canada could create a different future? How could Canadians apply his accumulated knowledge, and the knowledge he draws on, and avoid perpetrating the mistakes of the past? Would it be possible for Canada to be the next “world's best hope”? Wright apparently didn't even entertain the notion.

Another comment from the discussion: “Why should we read books like this, that just offer apocalyptic views of the past and no hope for the future?”

My answer: we shouldn't. Instead, we should demand rigor from our writers, avoid national smugness, embrace nuance, and look for solutions instead of endless analysis. We should should read original sources, learn our own history, reject fundamentalist beliefs in whatever guise they come, and apply what we learn from the past to the future.

That's the biggest disservice Wright did to the Canadian-American discourse: He had the opportunity to write that book. And he squandered it.
~~

* Wright, Ronald. What is America? Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 2008. Page references are to the hardcover edition.

** Krakauer, Jon. Under the Banner of Heaven. Rev. Ed. New York: Anchor, 2004.

Juxtapositions

Lots of back and forth, this week--the cultural equivalent of the weather this February. One day the temperature is above freezing and everything in sight is melting; twelve hours later the temp is 11 below C or 11 above F, the winds are howling, and it's snowing again. Go figure.

So here are three other pairings.

High tech: In Canada, several federal agencies--Finance, Treasury Board, and Defense Research and Development Canada--are under cyberattack. The attackers are sophisticated enough to make it look like they're working for China. Employees of those agencies who require internet access have been authorized to work in cafes and from home (because those internet connections are so much more secure??). This has been going on for some six weeks but came to light only recently (did a cloaking device fail?).

Low tech: Minister Oda hand-drawing a caret (like this ^ ) and writing "not" to deny funding to an NGO. Here's a picture. My earlier take is here (hey, the "not" jokes used to be funny). Political commentators, and not especially left-leaning ones, either, are still talking about this, with ever-heightening rhetoric.

Haves: In the U.S., the Obama administration extended the Bush tax cuts for those whose income is more than $250,000 (for a couple, $200K for a single). Reason: people who pay taxes in the U.S. (and those of us U.S. citizens who legally DON'T because we PAY PAY PAY in another country but are still forced by U.S. tax law to justify EVERY SINGLE YEAR why we don't pay in the U.S. TOO, not that I'm bitter) are still voters. In the U.S., voters hate "tax increases," even if they are technically just cuts that are expiring, and even if they apply only to people who make a whackload more than you.

Have-nots: The new budget in the U.S. includes a $5.50 (Canadian? The loonie is worth more these days!) surcharge on people entering the U.S. from Canada by air and sea. This will net $100 million or so in revenue, a tiny blip on the screen of their need for revenue, especially compared to what they could have made had they reversed those tax cuts on the wealthy, but like whatever. Reason: Few paying the $5.50 vote in U.S. elections. I say "few" because Americans travel from Canada into the U.S. at times, too. However, I won't be paying this surcharge because flying from Minneapolis cuts the cost of travel significantly, even with gas/hotel/time factored in.

If you like shouting: read What is America, by Ronald Wright (Alfred A. Knopf Canada). Written in 2008 before the election, it's full of sloppy scholarship and polemic. In fact, the title could use a caret: What Is ^ America; at the caret, insert Wrong With. His thesis seems to be that "America," a term that changes meaning several times in the book, is and has always been a horrible, exploitive place and that the neoconservative fundamentalist approach to life and the world is wrong. I don't necessarily disagree with him. I just don't think shouting is the same thing as making an effective case. Also, he's lazy in his research and writing, and he has no solutions. (Yes, some of the shouting related to this book came from me as I read.)

If you like muttering: read Doing the Continental, by David Dyment (Dundurn Press, Toronto). Full disclosure: I have only been able to dip into this book. However, I heard him speak, and he claims his book was aimed at the regular, nonspecialist person riding the ferry or the subway. If that's true, his editors should have had him try another pass, especially at sentences like this one: "The Americans are so much a part of our reality that they contextualize us" (p. 16). However, what I appreciate about this book and the writer is that 1. he claims a new type of relationship between the two countries is possible and 2. that Canada holds the power to effect this change.

That's enough whiplash for one week, eh.

Countries Behaving Badly

Of all the bad timing in the world...

I have to renew my permanent residence card. My residence status isn't changing at all. I just need a card to prove my status when I cross the border using a commercial form of transportation. Renewing it requires filling out bazoodles of paperwork and then waiting a year and a day (well, 2/3 of a year), all of which is a blog topic for another day.

Because today I'm heartsick. Like Canadian officials, I've been ignoring Omar Khadr. Yesterday, the 24-year-old, who has spent 1/3 of his life locked up in Guantanamo and the other 2/3 growing up brainwashed by his family into becoming an American-hating future terrorist, entered a guilty plea in front of a U.S. military tribunal.

The "gold standard" evidence, crowed the U.S. military officials, was a confession that he threw a grenade that killed an American soldier and wounded others. The part that they didn't brag about was that they tortured him, a teenager, to get it.

It is believed--certainly by Khadr--that he will serve one year of his sentence at Guantanamo Bay, and "the rest of his sentence" in Canada.

Or, more properly, he will serve one MORE year at Guantanamo Bay. That's one MORE year, after some 8 years already. And the Harper government here is making no promises about taking him back after that.

In fact, CBC reports that more and more often, Canada is refusing to allow Canadians serving time in the U.S. to transfer to Canada, where they have access to rehabilitation and are closer to their families. Instead, Canadian officials leave them in the U.S., where they are denied access to rehabilitative services (because they're foreign nationals) and leave prison without any information about their offenses on their Canadian record. How exactly is this helping anyone? The offender gets no help and no support from family to re-enter the general population to live in a more constructive way. And Canadian officials don't know that s/he's just done time in the U.S.

Safety? Security? How does the treatment of Omar Khadr by either country, and the Harper government's so-called "tough on crime" attitude, help anyone? How many future terrorists were inflamed into action, not intimidated or prevented from action, by the way Omar Khadr has been treated?

So it is again time for me to choose to live in Canada. It is with a heavy heart that I collect documents and fill out paperwork proving that I am who I say I am.

I'm committed to my life in Canada. I am not ready to cut ties to the U.S., where I was born and where I also have family. But today, I am not particularly proud of the official actions of either country.

The only bright spot in all of this is that I have the ability to say so. At least for now.

(And oh by the way, here's hoping that the reason I am allowed to exercise this right to speak freely has everything to do with my citizenship and my immigration status, and nothing to do with the fact that I am a white, nominally Christian person.)