Rod McQueen's Blog, page 24

The quiet of the crowd

I recently attended a lunch at a downtown Toronto location, one of those events with a quick chicken plate followed by a speaker. All the usual niceties were observed including the rhythmic clapping to welcome the arrival of the head table.There also was an acknowledgement – that has become essential at any public gathering – of the specific indigenous nations who once lived on the site. We even had grace and toasted the Queen. How often do those latter elements feature in a program?

And then, a mezzo-soprano was introduced to sing O Canada. I joined in, as I always do. I knew the latest change to the words and was also able to press on in English even while the soloist belted out the French lines. Then I realized I was the only one singing at my table. I stopped singing momentarily and concluded that no one was singing as far as the ear could hear. I continued anyway, just another soloist, to the last “stand on guard.”

What is the matter with Canadians that we don’t sing our national anthem? To be sure, there aren’t many opportunities other than such luncheons and sporting events. Maybe they feel rusty and out of practice. I sing every chance I can get, but my poor efforts do not seem to rouse any nearby converts.

Wars have been fought, immigrant families welcomed, service clubs do good works, and candles are lit when there’s a tragedy. But are we so tight-assed we can’t even open our mouths to celebrate our nationhood in song? Shame on us.

Vignettes of summer

Everywhere around there are delightful, unusual and a few sad-making things to see, if only you look. A man is standing under a tree with a Longo’s bag of breadcrumbs. Pigeons feed from both of his outstretched hands and on the ground around. A pigeon rests on each of his shoulders, another perches on his hat. He seems becalmed. He could be in Piazza San Marco in Venice.

In front of a stone building the flowers of August abound. The hosta and hollyhocks are pretty much over but remaining in full bloom are rudbeckia, begonia and anemone. A woman in a pink jump suit zips by on a pink Vespa-like scooter. In the handlebar carrier is a dog. Another dog lies at her feet. A third one is housed in a latticed carrier on the back of the bike. If there are dog walkers, I guess there can be dog riders, too.

The Big Smoke Big Band entertains on a street corner with drums, horns and saxophones. Their plastic pail fills quickly with coins and bills, they are that good. Thirty people sit doing nothing on a pleasant, shaded lawn. They appear to be movie production types, endlessly waiting for some director to get creative and set the camera rolling. Your tax dollars at work.

A panhandler squats listening to music on earbuds, singing along tunelessly. Does he need the money for more batteries? His sign says he’s prepared to give verbal abuse if requested. Maybe he’s received some. Another panhandler has three hand-lettered cardboard signs all referring to his special status as a vet. One of the signs gives the name of his regiment for those who might disbelieve. Saddest of all is the young woman whose sign reads: “Homeless, hungry and pregnant. Anything helps.”

The Tao of Pooh

I was lucky as a lad. My father read to me every bedtime. By the time I was four I could read aloud myself although I can remember mispronouncing “gnaw” in the The Adventures of Danny Meadow Mouse by Thornton W. Burgess as “g-naw” with a hard “g” rather than silent. But of all the books that I read in my young life, I would put A. A. Milne’s work at the top of the list for lyrics and characters.

Who else could write a poem about a boy called “James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree who took great care of his mother though he was only three.” Or “They’re changing guard at Buckingham Palace. Christopher Robin went down with Alice. We saw a guard in a sentry-box. One of the sergeants looks after their socks, says Alice.”

All those memories came flooding back while watching Christopher Robin, a new movie in summer release. Ewan McGregor plays a grown-up Christopher Robin who is so trapped by his work that he has forgotten the real meaning of life. The inhabitants of the 100-acre wood, Eeyore, Piglet, Owl and the rest, guide him back to what matters: friends and family. Sound schmaltzy, I know, but it works.

Among all the characters, Winnie-the-Pooh has a philosophy that is both simple and insightful. “People say ‘nothing is impossible,’ but I do nothing every day.” And, “Doing nothing often leads to the very best of something.” Best of all, “Today is my favourite day. Yesterday, when it was tomorrow, it was too much day for me.”

One piece of advice. Go to the movie with a young person. Their laughter will tune you into what you’re missing and get you giggling so you think you can be six for ever and ever.

By my so potent art

Martha Henry is spectacular in The Tempest, my favourite Shakespearean play, at Stratford this summer. Prospero was written as a male role, but a few words changed here and there and it suits an actress of Henry’s breadth just fine. It’s also a role that many thespians take on later in life, but at 80 Henry looks as if she has many great years left. As a side note, the first time she was on the Stratford stage was in 1962 – playing Miranda, Prospero’s daughter.

The Tempest is a busy play with multiple subplots, but among all of Shakespeare’s works, it is one of the more accessible. There are fewer words that are a struggle for a modern-day audience to translate. I don’t know why that is. This is the Bard’s last solo work, but I can’t imagine the language changed that much in Elizabethan England during the two decades he wrote plays.

In addition to the stellar performance from Martha Henry, others who stand out include Mamie Zwettler who plays Miranda and André Morin as Ariel. Staging is exemplary. As part of Prospero’s wizardry, lights magically appear on the stage floor, Juno at the wedding is magnificent, the gremlins truly scary and the giant bird above the stage is an amazing piece of animated theatrics. Did Shakespeare have all of this foo-for-ah in mind? Probably not, but in this interpretation everything works well.

The one sour note was the fact that the Festival Theatre was only two-thirds full. If that’s the turnout for a weekend matinee of a major show in late July, then attendance this year must be an overall problem. Where are the American tourists with their dollar worth one-third more? They’re missing a magnificent show.

Second thoughts

Previously when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke, if only briefly, about his alleged groping eighteen years ago, it didn’t seem as if he remembered it. He talked about the day, and the music festival, but the incident? Nothing, nada, rien. Today, following his meeting with Ontario Premier Doug Ford, Trudeau was more responsive and answered several questions from the media on the touchy topic.

Correct me if I got the wrong impression, but didn’t it seem that his selective amnesia had abated somewhat? Upon reflection, he now appeared to recall an interaction but concluded that it was not untoward. He even admitted that what a man saw as benign might be viewed differently by the woman involved. And that, he said, was part of the process society was currently going through with the #MeToo movement. Who knows, the way his mind is unfolding, maybe Trudeau will awake tomorrow and call for an investigation into his actions during which he will confess all.

But, you know what? I for one am getting a little fed up. This poor vintner from Ontario’s Prince Edward County has had his livelihood and reputation shattered by allegations of attempted kisses and fumbled advances. His purported acts were nothing like Charlie Rose locking his office door so he could have his way with every young female intern over the years. But the outcome is the same; a professional life is finished.

The problem is that there’s no due process, the axe automatically falls on the man. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty? Don’t get me wrong, I think obnoxious men should have their comeuppance, but let’s weigh both sides carefully, and not come down so hard on some guy we never heard of before. That’s a #MeToo movement I could support.

Anything to declare?

It’s alright for Donald Trump to call Justin Trudeau “weak” and “dishonest.” It’s even OK for the president to threaten that there will be no NAFTA. But to claim that Canadians smuggle shoes into Canada that they’ve bought in the U.S., now that’s really hitting close to home. Because it’s true. It is our metier.

You can always tell the Canadians in the shopping mall parking lot. They take everything out of the J.C. Penney bags and dump the empty bags in the garbage can. Next, they clip off the price tags, scuff the shoes, and stuff the other purchases into the trunk just as if they’d been there since spring break.

I have to confess to a bit of smuggling myself in the distant past. I’d gone over the border at Niagara Falls for a few hours with my late wife and her shopping friend. It was a hot summer’s day. On the return trip, we stopped to report to Canada Customs. I was sitting in the back seat of the car wearing three new golf shirts, one on top of the other, and sweating profusely. I listened carefully as the officer asked the others if they’d bought anything. “No, no, we were just visiting the Albright-Knox Art Gallery,” they said, flashing their best smiles. Then, he gave me the evil eye, and said, “Citizenship?” It was a question I was not expecting. I guess my guilt got the better of me, because I blurted “Presbyterian.” He looked so baffled that he just waved us through.

If Trump thinks we’re smugglers now, just wait until the Canadian dollar gets back somewhere near par again. We’ll smuggle him blind. And not just shoes, either.

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign

The first sign what a Doug Ford administration would look like came when the premier-elect decided he would forgo protocol and speak first after polls closed on election night. Rather than be gracious and allow Kathleen Wynne and Andrea Horwath to thank supporters and concede defeat, he played Bigfoot, and launched into his televised remarks less than a minute after Wynne had begun hers. He knew exactly what he was doing; it was a graceless gesture.

The second scary thought is that a key advisor to the Ford administration will be former premier Mike Harris. When Harris was in power, he treated Toronto like it was the “revenge of the rubes.” I guess it played well in Shelburne and Coboconk and probably will again. Now that the NDP dominates downtown Toronto ridings, I fear those bad old days returning.

Angry voters have pushed Ontario into the global movement away from liberal democracies. The cult of the leader is king. I don’t in the least like the direction we’re taking. It is narcissistic, mean-spirited, and not at all how this country was built.

Moreover, no female prime minister or premier has ever been re-elected in Canada. The answer has to be plain old misogyny – and in the case of Wynne – add homophobia to the mix. How else to explain the depths to which her personal popularity sank. Disdained policies can only drive numbers down so far. The veneer of civilization is very thin. Every once in a while, it gets scratched and shows its true self underneath. This election was one of those times.

Lessons from ancient lore

Few could pull it off. Stephen Fry’s one-man performance in Mythos at the Shaw Festival is beyond entertaining, it is spell-binding. In this world premiere of a trilogy based on his book Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold, published last year, we saw Heroes. The other two offerings are Gods and Men.

Alone on the stage, sitting in an arm chair, speaking without notes for two hours, Fry manages – for the most part – to keep the audience’s rapt attention. In the opening half-hour when Fry demonstrated his encyclopedic knowledge of Greek myths, I have to admit I got a bit of a brain cramp trying to follow the dozens of names of gods and goddesses, their progeny and their relationships to each other. The second half, when he was thoroughly into storytelling about Odysseus making his years-long voyage home to Ithaca, was far better.

Fry is best known for his comic roles such as Jeeves, the valet in Jeeves and Wooster, with Hugh Laurie as the hapless Bertie Wooster. Fry is also a novelist and the voice of the audiobooks in the Harry Potter series. In Niagara-on-the-Lake he made abundantly clear why Greek myths have inspired so many authors and artists over the centuries as he spoke about the wanderings of Odysseus and his encounters with Circe, Cyclops and Calypso. It’s because the topics represent such eternal verities: triumph and tragedy, humour and hubris, life and love.

To my mind, the onstage jim-crackery that include a game show parody and shouted responses from the audience, didn’t help. But they did not get in the way of the message: The Greek myths are not dead. Concluded Fry, “The gods are still with us.” During the performance, we could not help but believe him.

Statues and a bust

At this time of year, the portion of the University of Toronto campus near me is a beautiful place to walk. Beds of daffodils and tulips bloomed in abundance followed by pungent lilacs, flowering crab and the tall candles of horse chestnut trees. Amid the floral splendour around St. Michael’s and Victoria College are representations and remembrances of people from the university’s past who were global figures in their fields.

Here one finds the coachhouse that beginning in 1968 served as the centre for Marshall McLuhan’s program in culture and technology. McLuhan’s foresight on so many topics was daunting. Nearby is one of those selfie-ready statues with literary critic Northrop Frye sitting on a bench. I heard Frye speak in 1966 when he came to Western where I took Honours English. His Fearful Symmetry remains by far the best study on poet and artist William Blake.

U of T has been home to other renowned scholars and scientists in the years since, like John Polanyi, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1986. But the best known faculty member these days is Jordan Peterson, who celebrates the 1960s – not out of any reverence for those above-mentioned greats – but because he’d like to return to that patriarchal time when men were men and women were simply vessels.

Such misogyny is neither bold nor brave. It is but the whimper of a little man who wants to ride on the backs of thick-headed social media yahoos who feel left out. Peterson is no McLuhan or Frye. His best-selling book, 12 Rules for Life, is just a melange of warmed over self-help ideas – such as “stand up straight” – that amount to nothing. I can only hope that no one ever decides to erect a statue to him. The future will think poorly of us for saluting such a social throw-back.

Healing the frazzled mind

You remember Yoko Ono? The one who broke up The Beatles? Or rode the death of John Lennon to fame? But what people forget is that Yoko Ono was an accomplished artist long before meeting Lennon in 1966. To paraphrase The Ballad of John and Yoko, “You know you didn’t even give her a chance.”

Yoko Ono’s exhibition at Toronto’s Gardiner Museum, The Riverbed, is fun, interactive, and makes you think. The room is divided into three parts. The first is a scree of rocks collected from the Colorado River, hundreds of them, weighing three tons in all. But they’re not just for regarding, you’re encouraged to pick one up and then sit on a black floor mat holding that rock until all your anger and sadness is gone. Twenty of the rocks have a word or a phrase written on them. We saw “forgive” and “count your blessings” among the possibilities.

Part two consists of tables and chairs with a supply of broken crockery accompanied by glue, twine and scissors to make something and mend yourself at the same time. Once done, you can hang your creation on the wall with a descriptive note. Mine says, “Pieces of a life lived.” Part three is all about connectivity with more hammering and stretching of string from one point to another to another, creating an intricate web built on the handiwork of many others who have been there before you. Self-portraits and other penciled artistry decorate the walls.

At the Gardiner, you can spend as long as you want being healed, mended or otherwise entertained. Five minutes or five hours, take your pick. To my mind, that’s way better than those crazy Infinity Mirrors at the Art Gallery of Ontario where they made you queue forever on the phone for tickets then rushed everybody through the rooms in a matter of mere seconds.