Rod McQueen's Blog, page 19

The world within

Six months into the pandemic, where do we stand? In Canada, 9,000 are dead; in the U.S. it’s 170,000. Did anyone really think it would hit this hard and last this long? Worse, no one knows how much more is to come. A friend remarked recently that we will be dealing with Covid-19 for the rest of our lives. It was a jarring thought.

I worry about students returning to school. Too many will be taught virtually. Anybody who suffered through online lectures during the spring term knows that method doesn’t work very well. Moreover, there isn’t the same socializing with friends, no school teams or choirs or after class dance lessons, language or heritage study. Personal growth will be stunted as a result. Business also suffers with huge organizations operating from thousands of individual homes. Many staffers like it; their day is their own. But what about productivity or maintaining a corporate culture?

Hundreds of retailers and restaurants are already gone, never to return. Bankruptcies grow apace. Government debt will hobble the economy for years to come. The one positive spot is real estate. With five-year mortgage rates available in the range of 2.5 percent, there is housing for those who can afford it. But, for retirees who don’t want the excitement of the stock market, the other investment choices offer pathetically weak returns.

None of us sees as many friends as we once did. Families are reduced to fewer visits with furtive hugs. Those with relatives in the U.S. or abroad can’t get together even under such constraints. We won’t be going to New York this fall to see opera at the Met, as we usually do. Maybe we’ll never fly again.

But through all the miasma, there is a bright side. Let’s use this extra time to understand ourselves better. Most people used to have whirlwind existences and made no effort to look within, to see who they really are, and what they ought to be doing with their lives. So, ask yourself: What can I do to contribute? Who can I help? The most important pursuit should be self knowledge: just exactly who am I?

Roots and wings

My daughter Alison and I recently spent a day visiting Guelph, my home town. We began on Wyndham Street, walking from the train station to the cenotaph and back. The main street still includes a few restored architectural gems such as the Petrie building with its unusual metal facade but all the retailers from my youth are long gone. No more Treanon, Vorvis or Peacock restaurants. No more Ryan’s or Budd’s department stores. No Marshall’s or Stewart’s drugs. Only the Big Five Banks still do business there, a sure sign of their eternal life.

Two places where I worked summers as a teenager, the Parkview Motel and the College Motor Inn, still exist, although the latter has a different name and is currently being demolished. At the Parkview, I started as a dishwasher and parfait maker, graduating to busboy. At the College Motor Inn I was gardener, waiter and night desk clerk, checking in ball players from the local team with that night’s after-game popsies. Of my two public schools, only King George remains, in a rebuilt state. A picnic lunch beside the Speed River in Riverside Park offered familiar surroundings.

But there is one important place that mattered most: St. George’s Park. As an only child, the park was crucial to my growing up. No matter the time of day or the season, from our home where I lived from birth to fourteen, I could walk out the door, cross Metcalfe street, plunge into the park and find something to do and someone to do it with. In winter, there was the rink where I learned to skate. In the other seasons the swings, baseball diamond and city-run summer program with its art projects and group games. I learned to co-exist with kids from all walks of life: the rich and the poor, the capable and the disabled. All were equal in my eyes.

As a youth I walked every inch of the park that covers an area three blocks by two blocks. Trees still stand today where they did when I was a boy. I owe my parents, whose grave we visited at Woodlawn Cemetery, my life. But St. George’s Park is also hallowed ground. Those environs made me a better man than I would otherwise have become.

 

 

Reads and re-reads

Like everyone these days, I’ve had more time to read than usual. I normally stick to nonfiction, but I did read a few fiction books, reread some old favourites, and enjoyed several new titles. Here’s part of my list, with brief comments.

Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens, is well told, full of twists and turns and the “marsh girl” is a compelling central character. Why are so many of the best fiction writers all from the Deep South? Another good read was one I should have already read long ago: In the Skin of a Lion. Michael Ondaatje spins a glorious tale that only disappoints at the very end.

Second, some re-readings of books I read twenty-five years ago. Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon, lived up to my recollections as he tours America for a year taking the roads less travelled, the secondary ones that show up blue on maps. His descriptions, exchanges with people, and voyage of self-discovery is a triumph. The Old Patagonian Express by Paul Theroux was less so. Theroux leaves Boston to travel only by train to the tip of South America. Trouble is, the trains are grotty and the cities decrepit. He seems to be going to places just to leave them. I gave up when he was in Ecuador. I can’t imagine why I previously liked this book.

Who-dun-its belong on every list and I’ve read two excellent tales: Bad Blood by John Carreyrou and The Billionaire Murders, by Kevin Donovan. The first is about a Silicon Valley scam that fooled even the high and mighty; the second details the still-unsolved killing in 2017 of Torontonians Barry and Honey Sherman. Another investigative work that kept my attention was Blood in the Water by Shirley Anne Thompson about the 1971 uprising at Attica prison.

Two other rereads stood the the test of time. First, is A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. To my mind, Meany is simply the best fictional character ever created. And Gentlemen, Players and Politicians by Dalton Camp, covering his career to 1957, remains the best Canadian political memoir. In conclusion, two quick recommendations: Ronald Reagan by Bob Spitz, and The Education of an Idealist, by Samantha Power, a foreign journalist in the former Yugoslavia who worked in the Obama White House and became U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.

My kingdom for a horse

I love equestrian statues. There, the secret’s out. Just about any equestrian statue will do, but I have a few favourites. In New York’s Grand Army Plaza, there’s the gilded bronze of William Tecumseh Sherman. Another gilded bronze is Joan of Arc in New Orleans and the Place des Pyramides in Paris. In fact, it you visit the cities and towns of France it’s amazing how many of them have a copy. Victor Emmanuel II, the first king of a united Italy, is on a horse in the centre of Ancient Rome. I don’t know if it’s the tallest equestrian statue in the world, but at 40 feet high plus pedestal, it must rank right up there.

In London, I admire the Duke of Wellington, on the north side of Hyde Park Corner. In Washington, D.C., Andrew Jackson rides a rearing horse in Lafayette Square. In 2015, when we were conducting research, we lived nearby. Most days, I’d spend a few minutes on a bench and pay my regards to Jackson, just a few feet away, with the Obama White House rising resolute beyond. When I go for walks in downtown Toronto, I often circle Edward VII in the middle of Queen’s Park, resplendent on horseback in an area that has just been refurbished with new paving stones.

These days, many such monuments are fending off or falling to protesters. Andrew Jackson is a particular target because he forced the relocation of 60,000 Indigenous people in what came to be called The Trail of Tears. Jackson has been roped by those who would pull him down, but I saw on the news two nights ago, that he still stands. While much of the ire is focused on Confederate icons, how long will it take for someone to target Sherman, the Union general who burned Atlanta and devastated a swath of Georgia?

A version in Mumbai of Toronto’s Edward VII was recently moved to the local zoo. Will my pal get shunted to Canada’s Wonderland on the grounds of colonialism? We need a national strategy to handle the newly viewed past. In Budapest, statues and plaques from the Communist era have been assembled in Memento Park, an open-air museum where you can go see Marx, Engels, Lenin and various Hungarian Communist leaders. We need something similar rather than one-off solutions from various citizens with grudges no matter how pertinent.

 

The China Shock

Sometimes you read newspaper articles, complete with studies and statistics, that seem far from reality. Such a commentary written by Andrew Sharpe and Myeongwan Kim ran yesterday in the Financial Post, (you can read it here) based on a study conducted by the Centre for the Study of Living Standards (CSLS).  The study sought to discover the impact on consumer prices in Canada and on inflation caused by an increase in goods imported from China, an effect known as “China Shock.”

First, the bad news. An earlier study by the CSLS estimated that Canada lost 113,500 manufacturing jobs in the period 2001 and 2011. These were good jobs that disappeared, paying an average of $58,464 in today’s dollars. But this new study claims to have found good news. As imports from China grew during the same period from 5 percent of all the goods in the Consumer Price Index to 14 percent a decade later, these imports dampened the rise of inflation. The average annual inflation for the total CPI was 2.1 percent from 2001 to 2011. Without the China Shock it would have been 2.2 percent. You read that right. The big impact amounted to an annual reduction of 0.1 percent. (You can read the full CSLS study here.)

While the study stuck to the 2001-2011 decade in order to be able to make a comparison to the early findings by CSLS about jobs, this latest study does offer some newer stats. For example, the Chinese share in total imports in Canada rose from 3.2 percent in 2000 to 12.6 percent in 2017. Does this relatively low number jibe with your own shopping experience? Walk into Canadian Tire or Dollarama and all you can smell is the plastic used to make goods in China.

There was a time in the 1950s when the designation “Made in Japan” meant shoddy items that didn’t last long. But within twenty years, Japan’s output in automotive and electronics was best-in-class. The Big Three American automakers had to make serious changes to their own design and manufacturing to stay abreast. I look forward to signs that China’s quality will improve in a similar manner, but I have my doubts. Meanwhile, the so-called positive result on inflation of the China Shock feels more like a shiver.

 

Shelter from the storm

Since mid-March, my partner and I have been sheltering at her farm 90 minutes north of Toronto. We make brief trips back into the city, but this is where we’ve spent most of our time. A stay of such duration allowed us to see spring arrive in all its splendour. For example, we could admire a wide variety of wildflowers that came and went during our daily walks in the woods, including trout lily, Dutchman’s breeches, and a carpet of trilliums.

Returning bird life included olive-sided flycatcher, Baltimore oriole, brown thrasher, red-eyed vireo, Eastern bluebird, and a pair of hooded mergansers that visited the pond. Alas, there was but one warbler. They were late this year so when you could hear them there were too many leaves on the trees to be able to see them. However, the one I did see was the common yellowthroat, my favourite, the one that says “wichety, wichety.”

We have also been treated to three types of mating rituals. The least enthusiastic were two Northern flickers that sat a metre apart on a fence taking turns looking at each other and hunching their shoulders, like Presbyterians trying to dance. The male ruby-throated hummingbird was the most spectacular. Imagine a skateboarder on a halfpipe going up one side, back down, and then up to the top of the other side, repeating numerous times. At the highest point the hummer was fifteen feet off the deck, trying to impress the female at the feeder with his prowess. Most recently, we sat quietly for some minutes watching out the window as fireflies in the darkness flashed their green lights. We were even able to stand among the bioluminescence without disturbing the process.

Of larger animals there have been plenty of comings and goings: the tracks in the snow of a moose and its calf as well as sightings of opossum, porcupine, raccoon, white-tailed deer and groundhog. In the early darkness, coyotes howl. But, most of all, there has been peace and quiet. Good health and happiness to all.

Lessons of history

In Italy, where coronavirus has hit the hardest among European nations, the country is all but shut down. Italy is used to such quarantines. In fact, the very word has its origin in Venice. During a plague in the 14th century the port city forced all ships to wait forty days – quaranta giorni – before passengers and crews could disembark.

Another Italian city followed with even broader precautions during the Middle Ages. The February 20 issue of the London Review of Books includes a review of a book by John Henderson called Florence Under Siege: Surviving the Plague in an Early Modern City. Published last July by Yale University Press, the book focuses on an epidemic that began in 1629 when Florence was burying the dead by the hundreds in pits outside the city walls. In response, meetings and team sports were forbidden, churches and schools were closed, taverns and inns shuttered.

The officials of the Sanita, the city’s health board, punished those who didn’t obey the shutdown, but they also took other action. They provided remedies – such as they were – and delivered firewood and food directly to the doors of households. There was bread and wine daily, meat three days a week, rice and cheese on three other days, and a salad on Friday. The city bore all costs.

When the plague finally ended in the summer of 1631, Florentines emerged en masse to participate in a Corpus Christi procession of thanks to God. About 12 percent of the population had died. But the death rate was far lower than in other Italian cities. In Venice it was 33 percent, Milan 46 percent, and Verona 61 percent. Asks the reviewer: “Was the disease less virulent in Florence or did the Sanita’s measures work?”

To my mind, the answer is obvious. The more sweeping the response, the better the outcome. These days, we seem to be leaving action mostly to the private sector as sports events and concerts are cancelled or curtailed and university classes ended in favour of online learning. As the pandemic worsens, governments of every level will have to intervene more powerfully in all activities, including care and feeding. The alternative, more deaths, is too severe to consider.

Nowhere man

Some men grow a beard on holiday, but think better of it when they get home, and shave it off. Not Justin Trudeau. He thinks a vacation beard can change him. In fact, the beard has rendered his life untenable. He no longer knows who he is.

Until now, Justin’s life has been ever-so-easy; he was Pierre Trudeau’s son. People praised him even when there was no reason. Being in the public eye so much, Justin became all about the performance arts. He was like Robert Redford playing the all-American boy in “The Way We Were” when Barbra Streisand asks, “Do you smile all the time?”

As a result of this privileged background, Justin never learned how to lead, how to attain goals by working with and through others. He can’t even seem to speak smoothly in public any more. At the mic, his sentences are punctuated with short, stuttering intakes of breath. Surely a former drama teacher should know that he has to breathe deep from his diaphragm. Even his wife, Sophie Grégoire, doesn’t seem to want to appear with him in public. When was the last time you saw her at his side?

What little gravitas he enjoyed left long ago with principal secretary Gerry Butts. Justin now has nothing to offer other than this quixotic mission to put Canada into a non-permanent seat on the UN security council. As for halted commerce across the land, hereditary chiefs who can talk forever because to them time is like a blanket with no end, it is becoming apparent that Justin will be a two-term prime minister. Come the next election, he will cede his job to Chrystia Freeland, and disappear from daily view.

The past is present

The problem with the blockades that have halted economic activity from Vancouver to Montreal is not the hereditary chiefs or the listless Ottawa crowd. No, the problem is that Canada is stuck in the nineteenth century. We have always been hewers of wood and drawers of water, shipping our birthright – usually to American buyers – rather than create as many jobs at home as we could. Instead of spending billions on pipelines to feed others, why not build a refinery in Alberta that uses Western oil and yields consumer products from synthetic fibres to plastics, tires to crayons?

To be sure, there have been a few shining lights along the way. BlackBerry looked like an international player for a while until it was toppled by the launch of the iPhone. But you can count on one hand the number of Canadian-based global manufacturing firms that have existed during the life of this country. With less than one-third of the population of Canada, Sweden has such powerhouse firms as Ericsson, Volvo, Electrolux and H&M, among others.

There have been too few cases of launching something new. The Medical and Related Sciences (MaRS) Discovery District in Toronto combusted after Dr. John Evans sold a company to a U.S. buyer that started shipping product back to Canada. In response, Evans and others invested seed money, won government funding and then bought the land and erected the building that now has numerous tenants seeking to be the next Big Thing.

MaRS has had financial issues, now solved, but we need more such forward-looking entrepreneurs who are willing to put their own money into an entity and stay the course. Otherwise, all we’ll ever do is ship our natural resources out of the country in their raw state. And foolishly waste time fighting amongst ourselves rather than building a better tomorrow.

Running on empty

Saturday’s Globe and Mail contained shocking details about an athletics coach who allegedly groomed Megan Brown for sex beginning when she was a 17-year-old high school student. The relationship continued after she enrolled at the University of Guelph and trained under his tutelage. In 2006, her father informed the university about what was going on; nothing happened. Once the details were published last weekend, the university suddenly found its voice and apologized on its website that same day for the “deeply troubling” article. The coach, Dave Scott-Thomas, has denied any wrongdoing.

On Monday, university president Franco Vaccarino emailed Brown with an apology. The school also issued one of those all-points-bulletins along the lines of “if anyone else suffered ….” Why not a personal visit to Brown ? Or a scholarship in her name? Anything to suggest that the University of Guelph will forever honour Brown and her travails.

I grew up in Guelph and I’m embarrassed about these circumstances even though I haven’t lived in the city since 1963 when I went off to the University of Western Ontario. Anybody with anything to do with the University of Guelph – students, faculty, alumni – all must feel ashamed on some level. And so it is that institutions lose their lustre, a sad situation that diminishes respect on a wide-ranging basis.

None of this marks the end of civilization as we know it, but it certainly represents the decline of civility in society today. Or have similar incidents been going on for centuries? The Roman orator Cicero repeatedly deplored what was happening in the world around when he said in speeches: “O tempora! O mores!” (Oh, the times! Oh, the customs!) But still, every once in a while a revelation comes along that troubles you on a deeper level. The blandishments of the misguided can all too often bring much misery to others.