Justin Trudeau's pitch-perfect pratfall

For those that can't understand French - Justin tells how his father taught him how to take a tumble on purpose...just for giggles. The fun starts at 1:50 or so.

I think it's pretty great that a man with such lofty expectations placed upon him seems to be able to laugh at himself (I mean, just look at that Zorro/d'Artagnan moustache he's sporting for Movember!). Also, he sure seems to be able to speak a pretty decent joual - which is pretty unexpected.

Who knows if he'll ever fulfill those expectations placed on him, but I get the sense that if he doesn't he'll be just fine.

History of USSR for children

All history should be taught via stop-motion Lego animation.
"[Brezhnev] also had his moustaches. But growing above his eyes."


h/t Andrew Sullivan

"Structuralism v.Technological Determinism" or "How My Historiography Is Changing with the Times"

  I recently finished reading John Ralston Saul's biography of Baldwin and Lafontaine (another in the Extraordinary Canadians series - honestly, I cannot stress how amazing these books are. I fully intend on having a shelf full of them in the very near future). One small, almost throwaway point, has stuck with me. In his introduction Saul argues that the 1849 burning of Parliament in Montreal by Protestants angry with the Rebellion Losses Bill was Canada's equivalent to the 1848 revolutions that swept Europe. He offhandedly mentions that it was the advent of the telegraph that helped fuel the revolutions as they spread across the Continent. It was the brand new communication technology and it allowed local newspapers to report on the events in other countries almost instantaneously. While he doesn't come out and say that the telegraph was the 19th Century version of the Internet, he certainly implies it. Like the Internet (and the railroad), the telegraph effectively shrunk the distances between places and peoples. It's not something I had ever really thought of, the telegraph usually ranks pretty low on the list of revolutionary inventions of the 19th Century after the steam engine, the railroad, the breach loading rifle, the Gatling gun, mechanization, industrial uses for rubber and photographic film.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that I think I'm becoming a bit of a technological determinist.

  Generally speaking, I've always been sympathetic to the structuralist interpretation of history. That is, the way a society was structured, and which social structures were present, goes a long way to explaining why a society (or nation) developed as it did. (the theory gets more complex - far more complex for me to understand. I stick with this very simplified version, it's treated me well). This is why I look towards the New England town meetings and the Virginian House of Burgesses to explain why the American colonies sought independence from Great Britain in the 18th Century and Canada didn't - America had far more experience with local (and active) governance than Canada.

     If you think this sounds vaguely Marxist, you're right. Structuralism (or how I interpret it) is heavily influenced by the Marxist historians of the early 20th Century (although for them the defining structures naturally revolved around labour and production).

   Lately though, like I said, I'm finding much to agree with Thorstein Veblen about. Technology isn't just something that affects our daily lives, it is in a very real sense the prime mover of history.  This is why I look to the printing press and the explosion of the written word to explain why the Protestant Reformation spread as quickly as it did, and why I look at the ungodly military buildup in the late 19th/early 20th Century to explain why the First World War was inevitable (instead of the alliance system story we keep telling our high school students). I don't mean to imply that technological explanations of history haven't been present before, they absolutely have - the two examples I just gave are well known theories. What I mean to say is that when all things are considered equal, I tend to defer to the technological explanation.

     I suspect this personal shift is part of a larger narrative - the reason why structuralism has become less compelling as an historiographical lens and technological determinism has become moreso is that in contemporary, developed societies, social structures just don't have the same influence that they used to and technology has come to define every aspect of life at the beginning of the 21st Century.  Unions simply do not wield the influence they once did, and the days of Tammany Hall and the Orange Order deciding elections are a distant memory. On the other hand, one only needs to look at how significantly social media has influenced the election campaigns of Obama and Rob Ford (to a lesser extent) to see how technology is becoming the driving force in society.

   Put another way, I suspect that my historiography is being influenced by the times in which I live. This of course is not all that strange - the times in which a historian lives have a dramatic influence over his/her historical analyses (not that I'm a "historian" in any stretch of the imagination). What I think is interesting is how rapidly it is changing. Structuralism made more sense in a world where Communist and Fascist governments actually existed and really did structure their societies  along strict organizational lines (Mussolini called it "corporatism").  Perhaps it is here where I can concede that the Fukuyaman end-of-history thesis has some validity (I can't believe I just wrote that - I might have to shower :).  It hasn't taken very long to move away from binary worldview and towards a more amorphous one. Likewise, technological determinism is far less rigid a historiography than structuralism is.

    Anyways, this is what I've been thinking about for the last little while. Thoughts?

Trivium

Eugène-René Poubelle

     Baron Hausmann's wholesale renovation of Paris during Napoleon III's Second Empire was undertaken in part to allow fresh air to move throughout the city - the thinking was that "miasma", or "bad air" caused disease, ill-health and epidemics such as cholera.  (It also was a concerted effort to widen the boulevards within the city in order to make it more difficult for citizens to revolt and set up barricades...ah, the French :).

     Shortly afterward, the city of Paris named their first sanitation commissioner - the handsome chap you see above. M. Poubelle was charged with cleaning the streets of refuse (human and otherwise). Prior to the renovation the streets of Paris were angled towards the centre with a trough running down the middle. This trough was water-fed and created a never ending river of refuse running through the street. This reality (apparently) is the origin of the phrase "taking the high road" - walking on the incline to avoid the muck.  M. Poubelle's solution to this problem was to insist that all buildings provide three covered containers to hold all the household refuse from the building which would then be collected by city employees and brought to the outskirts of the city. Within a very short period of time, his rubbish bins became known colloquially as Boîtes Poubelle...

which is what they remain known as today.

Great Moments in Polticial History.

Parliament Building, Montreal, Canada -  1849.

On July 26th 1849, the Tories convened in Kingston (the recently vacated capital) and voted in favour of annexation into the United States. What caused them to consider such a drastic measure? They didn't want to pay damages to the innocent Quebecois bystanders whose farms were burned down by the British military during an intimidation campaign in the immediate aftermath of the 1837 Rebellion. A similar compensation package for Upper Canada had passed without controversy five years earlier.  The bill so enraged the entrenched Tories that they fomented a riot that culminated in the burning of Parliament in Montreal (the fire brigade, which was controlled by English Protestants, let it burn unimpeded).  This measure was so offensive to the Tories (which included a young John A. MacDonald), that they would rather Canada cease to exist altogether.

Something to keep in mind the next time Harper's Conservative government calls some Liberal's patriotism into question or implies that a certain politician isn't sufficiently Canadian.

Last North American Tory?

I just finished reading David Frum's latest article in the New York Times, and while I certainly disagree with much of what he says - at least I can understand it. Much of the rhetoric coming from the right (the Glen Becks in the United States and the Blogging Tories in Canada) is very bizarre to me, and on a fundamental level, I just don't understand.  Frum seems to be coming from a classic Tory background, something we haven't really seen in Canada since Joe Clark shuffled off the stage.

Anyways, Frum's latest is an interesting read...which is something I never imagined I'd ever say back when Frum was Bush's speechwriter and coining the phrase "axis of evil". You should check it out.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/magazine/14FOB-idealab-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Art Corner

 

Socle du Monde - Piero Manzoni 1961

    I've always liked my art to be a little bit humorous/witty. Which is probably why I gravitate towards art created in the latter half of the 20th Century - there seems to be more of a sense of ironic detachment in the works than there is in earlier eras. The conceptual artist Piero Manzoni has always been one of my favourites. He's probably best know for canning and selling 91 tins of his own excrement - which when you think about it, is a pretty devastating critique of the art industry (people were literally paying good money for the privilege of owning crap).

      My favourite piece of his is Socle du Monde, which translates into "Base of the World". The piece consists of a metal box with the words "socle du monde" written upside down. The viewer needs to picture flipping the piece right-side up - which would mean flipping the world upside down and would thus make the box literally the base/pedestal of the world. It's pretty clever, and makes Earth a work of art (sort of echoes Hamlet's "all the world's a stage" too).

    Anyways, this piece has always made me smile.

My Case for Riel's Pardon.

    I recently finished reading Joseph Boydon's excellent biography of Gabriel Dumont and Louis Riel, part of the "Extraordinary Canadians" series curated by John Ralston Saul. If you are at all interested in Canadian history, you should go out and buy some of these books - they're fantastic. I plan on writing a longer post about Louis Riel and how our perceptions of him probably says a lot more about us than it does about him, but for now I want to focus on one specific point.

     Every year, as the November 16th anniversary of Riel's hanging approaches, calls for his posthumous pardon increase. I suspect that this year, the 125th anniversary, we'll hear more about Riel than normal and the historical case for his pardon will be argued.  Whenever the topic comes up, his detractors often point out that Riel did in fact commit treason by setting up a provisional government at Fort Garry and he did in fact execute Thomas Scott; that regardless of his place in Métis/French Canadian history, he is a treasonous murderer and should be treated as such.  That is all well and fine, but the pardon discussed doesn't apply to that event. He was not hanged for his role in the Red River Rebellion of 1870, he was hanged for his role in the 1885 rebellion at Batoche Saskatchewan. For that earlier uprising (and the execution of Thomas Scott) his initial 1874 death penalty was subsequently reduced to a 2 year prison term for which he was granted amnesty in 1875 on the condition that he remain outside of Canada for 5 years. Riel remained in Montana until 1884, even taking the step of becoming an American citizen, so one can rightly surmise that he fulfilled the obligations of that amnesty.

   Riel didn't return to Canada until 1884 at the behest of Gabriel Dumont, the Métis chief who thought that the legendary Riel could help win the same concessions from the Canadian government that he so famously did in 1870. As Boyden and Chester Brown point out - Riel had very little to do with the armed insurrection that occurred at Batoche - by that time he was increasingly falling prey to the mental illnesses that had stalked him for most of his adult life. Upon his return to Canada, Riel was convinced that the Métis were the lost tribe of Israel and he was Louis 'David' Riel, the prophet who would lead his people from bondage. It is true that he formed another provisional government (this one really was treasonous as Canada had purchased Rupert's Land from the Hudson's Bay Co while Riel was exiled), but his aim was always for that government to be a temporary tool to force Sir John A. MacDonald to take their claims seriously and negotiate in good faith. History shows that MacDonald did not. Instead of negotiating, he sent 5,000 volunteer soldiers and a Gatling gun along the still-unfinished Trans Canada Railroad to deal with the "half-breed problem". Dumont was far more prepared to use violence to achieve his aims (which weren't full-blown independence but the legal title to the land that they had cleared as well as religious/linguistic protections), and at the battles of Duck Lake, Fish Creek and Batoche it was Dumont, and not Riel who led the hundred-odd Métis irregulars against the Canadian military.

     Needless to say, when a man rides into the middle of a gunfight on horseback with a golden cross held high and takes time out of negotiating with the Canadian government to change the names of the week (because using the old ones is akin to worshipping false idols), we're not dealing with quite the military genius the Orange Order tried to make us believe.

[For those interested, Riel's weekdays were: Christ Aurore, Vierge Aurore, Joseph Aube, Dieu Aurore, Deuil Aurore, Calme Aurore, and Vive Aurore. He also changed the Sabbath from Sunday to Saturday]

     Was Riel actually guilty of treason for his actions in 1885? Boydon compellingly argues that he wasn't. Riel, as much as he may not have wished to admit, really was suffering from pretty severe mental illness. Add to this the fact that he was an American citizen (at a time before the concept of dual citizenship), and the fact that his judge, who ignored the jury's recommendation of mercy, was a member of the Orange Order, and Dumont, who actually led all of the fighting, was not allowed to testify, and you have a pretty strong argument that Riel should be posthumously pardoned.

    Riel's execution was in a very real sense the culmination of a 15 year propaganda campaign by the Orange Order of Ontario who never forgave Riel for trying to keep them from taking the farmland they saw as their Protestant birthright, and executing one of their own: Thomas Scott.  History has scrubbed the image of Thomas Scott - far from being the innocent government bureaucrat he's often portrayed as, Scott was a virulent racist who tried to overthrow Riel's provisional government twice and spent his time in jail hurling racist epithets against his Catholic Métis captors. It's not a coincidence that Scott was the only prisoner held by the Provisional Government that was executed.

     Also, one should remember what Scott was doing in Red River - he wasn't simply surveying the land for informational purposes. Those surveyors were dividing land that the Canadian government was about to purchase from the Hudson's Bay Co and would then sell to English Protestant settlers - regardless of who was living on the land previously. The Métis were keenly aware of what land surveyors meant - their life's work would be stolen from them by a foreign government.

    When Riel was captured in 1885, he was essentially being retried for his actions 15 years earlier. Those who argue against his posthumous pardon are doing the same thing.

Marginalia

Province of Alberta "Prosperity Certificate" c. 1936

     In the early 1930s, Alberta radio evangelist "Bible" Bill Aberhart became a convert to the Social Credit monetary theory which stated that the cause of capitalism's ills was simply that people didn't have enough money to buy what they needed. The answer therefore was to simply print more money and give it to them. They'd then inject that money into the economy and the Great Depression would be vanquished - not with socialism but capitalism. In 1935, Aberhart's Social Credit Party won the Alberta Provincial election but when he tried issuing Prosperity Certificates like the one above, Ottawa immediately declared them illegal.

    I've always thought there was a strong similarity between Keynesian and Social Credit economics. The former depends on the government to infuse cash directly into the economy through infrastructure spending while the latter depends on the government to infuse cash indirectly into the economy by printing more. Now that I think about it, there seems to be very little difference between prosperity certificates and food stamps - which are one of the most effective forms of stimulus available.

   It's sort of strange then that these Conservatives, which grew out of the Preston Manning's Reform Party, seem to abhor stimulus, (only agreeing to a program when their government was threatened with non-confidence in January 2009). Especially when one considers how deeply the Social Credit Party of Alberta  (led by Manning's father Ernest after Aberhart) were informed by it.

The Enduring Myth of Invasion or Your tax Dollars Busy at Work

    By now everyone is familiar with the story of the bomb aboard the Yemeni cargo jet that was ably escorted through Canadian airspace to JFK airport in New York by our CF-18s. Canada's small role in this peculiar case of terrorism (apparently the bomb's intended target was a synagogue in Chicago) was just that - a small footnote in a story that will soon be forgotten by most, further proof that in the struggle with terrorism, we actually seem to be doing pretty well (shoe, underwear, and ink cartridge bombers notwithstanding).

   This minor event has, however, had the good fortune of occurring at the same time that Ottawa is debating the wisdom in spending at least $16 billion on 65 fighter jets to replace our 79 aging CF-18s. For those not following, the Conservative government has decided to go ahead and purchase these planes without going through a bid/tender process - that is, these planes are sole-sourced. The opposition parties have, rightly in my mind, been asking whether this is the most effective way to spend $16 billion - why was the bid process skipped when even the Department of National Defense fully anticipated having one? Are we getting the best value for our dollar?

   So what does the one have to do with the other? Well not much really - any airplane at all could have escorted the cargo jet, and there was really very little risk of anything happening over Canadian airspace (remember, the pilots weren't terrorists - there was a bomb aboard a plane). Of course this is not how the current government is portraying the event. Apparently following the old adage to never let a good crisis go to waste, Dmitri Soudas, the Prime Minister's director of communications, said in an email:

“Whether it is the CF-18s or the F-35s, Canada's air force needs the right equipment to protect Canadian airspace, Michael Ignatieff's Liberals and their coalition partners would rather use kites to defend Canada than fighter jets,”

 This is, obviously, absurd. Nobody is, as far as I can tell, arguing that we don't need to purchase new jets - but rather that we should be getting the best value possible, and sole-sourcing the purchase is unlikely to achieve this. In other words, this is ridiculous partisan sniping. The sort of thing that litters the online comments sections of our daily newspapers. Here's the thing though, this didn't come from some anonymous crank online, this came from the Prime Minister's Office. That's an important distinction to make. The PMO is not an appendage of the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC), it is a governmental department - much like the Ministry of Transport, Department of National Defence or the Department of Finance. In other words, it is paid for by you, the tax payer, and not through donations to the CPC. This sort of partisan chicanery should not be emanating from the PMO, and in the past, it didn't. It is only under this current government that the PMO has become so politicized (it also has seen its budget balloon to over $10m a year, this is not a coincidence). The current government is, in other words, getting their advertising (both positive and negative) for free - it's being done on your dime. I think this is an outrageous misappropriation of funds and should be highlighted whenever possible.

     The other aspect of Soudas' quote that sticks out is how we need these top of the line fighter jets to "defend Canada", as evidenced apparently by a bomb intended for Chicago and a couple of Russian jets recently flying near Canadian airspace. Do you know when was Canada last invaded? That would be the Fenian Raids of the 1860s. The Fenians were Irish Americans whose goal was to invade Canada and hold it hostage in order to force Britain to grant Ireland independence. Needless to say, the Fenian Raids were not successful. Canada, therefore, has had a long history of not being invaded by foreign forces. That hasn't stopped us from doing all sorts of nasty things in the name of national defence.  The first time the War Measures Act was invoked was in 1915 when Robert Borden used it to justify rounding up and deporting or jailing Germans, Ukranians, and various Slavic Canadians under the guise of national defence.  Remember, this was around the time that we changed the name of Berlin Ontario to Kitchener, and started calling sauerkraut "liberty cabbage", so maybe we weren't thinking so clearly.  The next time we felt the need to use the WMA was during WWII, when we used it to justify rounding up thousands of Japanese Canadians, throwing them in prison camps, and selling off their property for pennies on the dollar - all because we thought their ethnicity made them a threat to Canadian safety. It would seem that whenever we're told that we're doing something to protect/defend Canada, the reality is that we're about to do something less than savoury (not that I'm comparing wasting obscene amounts of money on cool fighter jets with suspending civil liberties of ethnic Canadians, just that this sort of "it's a scary world out there" rhetoric generally serves to obscure less than noble intentions).

    These planes aren't for "defence", they're to fulfill our international obligations with the UN and NATO. There's nothing wrong with these reasons. In fact they're perfectly cromulent reasons to have fighter jets. For some reason though, our politicians refuse to say so, instead we get this sort of rhetoric  - the kind that is designed to make Canadians fear for their safety. When the reality is, that if we were actually to be invaded, it would be by the Americans...and 65 fighter jets wouldn't quite cut it.