John Vaillant knocks it out of the park, and it hurts
Friday Feb. 14
It’s Valentine’s Day and my hostess Linda’s 83rd birthday, so we’re going out for breakfast at her friend Emilio’s restaurant – sourdough bread and cappuccino. Not very Mexican, but why not?
Yesterday, another very full day, although I had the morning off so was more relaxed. We started with the lunch for Canadian writers; I sat with Marsha Barber, a poet who teaches at TMU, and Howard Shrier, a fiction writer who teaches like me at U of T. Our Canuck superstar John Vaillant was there, as well as Elana Rabinovitch with a Giller Prize nominee, and Merilyn Simonds and Wayne Grady. Much tech talk. I met Shilpi Gowda, a writer of Indian origin who worked in finance, wrote a novel just to see if she could, and had tremendous success with it and her subsequent novels. Tried not to be jealous.
After John Vaillant’s keynote at 2.15, about which more anon, was the Canada Reads event, with six of the Canadian instructors here. Our stories had to be seven minutes or less; I read an excerpt from Midlife, “Mother and Son #1,” about Sam at age eleven. The event was outside under the trees, a full audience of rapt listeners, good stories and poems.
Annie and Jim were there, so we went out for a drink and a bite at a nearby Peruvian restaurant where we had guacamole and margaritas, of course, and then, yes, half-price Thursday sushi. And then I came back for the Ruth Reichl keynote. More about her at the end.
One of the most thrilling and disturbing talks I’ve ever heard came from John Vaillant, who has written a number of superb books, including Fire Weather, a multi-prizewinning book that took him seven years to research and write, about the devastating wildfire in Fort McMurray, Alberta. He’s a natural, vivid and passionate, as he outlines just how dire the climate crisis is on our planet. He spoke about fire as if it’s human — eager, greedy, heedless. We are a fire culture, he said; our society is built on fire, on our ability to turn fossil fuels into energy that fuels our forward momentum. But, he said, we are like the Three Little Pigs: we have built our house with 20th century straw, but climate change is the 21stcentury wolf that threatens to blow it all down.
He examined in terrifying detail how the Fort McMurray fire began and how it grew; how one woman whom he interviewed stopped in the midst of the conflagration to drop off her dry-cleaning. We are all her, he said; we cannot comprehend the scope of the problem. We suffer from “discontinuity,” he said, which means “an event wherein past experience ceases to a useful guide to future problem-solving.” He gave as an example of how fast things are changing that the Canadian Red Cross used to focus almost all its efforts on overseas disasters; now, 80% of its work is inside Canada.
“In nature,” he quoted, “there are neither rewards nor punishments, only consequences.” He told us the earth wants to thrive, showing an amazing picture of a burned out garden in Fort McMurray where only a few months after the fire, tulips pushed up through the ash. But we are in denial. “We believe nature is a bottomless trust fund and we are in charge. But the natural world is in charge.”
Degrowth is key. Less is more. Our society is organized around capital. We’re selective in what we believe from scientists; we honour science only when it serves capital. People have known for many decades how fossil fuels are affecting the planet. The petroleum industry has known in detail for at least 70 years, but have chosen “predatory delay.” Choosing profit over people and the planet.
What to do? “Revirescence” – he said – regrow, revitalize, regroup. We need to decouple from fossil fuels. We need to vote strategically. We need to call out greenwashing.
How to give hope to young people? “Remember, our ancestors saw drought, flood, fires, war. They lived through it. We are the descendants of the survivors. We cannot bail!”
By the end, we were all chastened. Thank you, John, for this most important message.
Ruth Reichl was something completely different; she has a great sense of humour. Her talk was centred on her The Paris Novel, and about what Paris has meant through her life: food Paris, she said, fashion Paris, art Paris. She spoke about watching George Whitman of Shakespeare and Company, who founded a bookstore where “tumbleweeds” could sleep if they helped out. “Be a citizen, not a tourist,” she advised. Eat in the cheap places, walk in unexpected corners. “Paris is a city of possibilities,” she said. And “When you watch someone eat, you discover who they are.” Hmmm.
So that was boring, event-less Thursday. A cab home, and now I know where it is on the street and how to find Linda’s condo at night. Which was lucky, because just after I got in, the power went out – apparently, all over the city – and was out for a good fifteen minutes, pitch black everywhere. Thank heavens for cell phones. Again, I was buzzing for a long time in bed.
Pictures to follow later. Today – two more keynotes, one in Spanish with English translation, and at 8 p.m., a fiesta. Arriba y adelante!
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