The Games are Gone: Olympic Hindsight

One day later you're probably already sick of the Olympics, but here is my collection of parting thoughts--good and bad--on Vancouver's games.

1. It's not about you guys in suits. VANOC CEO John Furlong opened and closed the games with extremely long speeches that would've put a Red Bull addict to sleep, marked by some of the worst French I've heard since Stockwell Day ran for prime minister. I realize he poured his life into this venture, but, dude, ease off a little--we see ya. It ain't your show. As for IOC president Jacques Ragge, his egomaniacal need to appear anytime someone muttered the word "Olympics" like he invented the games is so petty I think he needs a lesson in humility from some of the athletes. Both of these gentlemen appear to need a reminder as to who these games are for.

2. Own the Podium. Call me ignorant, but I missed the fine print: I thought the goal of this program was to have our best Games ever, not to win it all. So when Chris Ridge--another camera-hog in Armani--threw in the towel half-way, I was pretty disgusted. Sure, maybe it worked as reverse-psychology, but it came off as a set of misplaced priorities. Fourteen gold, there, Chris. Even if I were to believe that winning is everything, I'd say that the Yanks may own the pode, but we've helped ourselves to the top tier.

3. The Weather. I was amused by an article I read that criticized the games early on: "If you're going to host the Winter Games, please ensure you get winter." Funny, but thankfully it improved. How are we going to perpetuate a stereotype if the igloos keep melting?

4. What it's all about. When North Vancouverite Maelle Ricker was set to mount the awards podium at Whistler, the Swiss bronze-medallist Olivia Nobs waved her hands to work the the hometown crowd into a roar for their girl-done-good. 100% class, kid. Somebody get Nobs to teach a course to Dale Begg-Smith.

5. Curling. I know how to curl--it's mandatory in Saskatchewan--but I've never really enjoyed it. I guess it's taken on a huge following this time out--the boys on Wall Street were hooked on it as soon as trading ended, riveted by the "chess on ice." I've always believed that curling is like golf: anything my grandpa can best me at shouldn't be a sport. And thanks to the Norwegian team's wardrobe, the two sports are that much more comparable.

6. He's everywhere! Yes he should be making an appearance, but did Stephen Harper really need a ticket to everything? Especially when he's under heavy criticism for his choice to prorogue Parliament for most of the winter? He made sure he was seen with Wayne Gretzky a lot, which to me looked like currying favour with sports-fan voters. Or maybe Gretzky's our next senator . . .

7. Jon Montgomery. Had I known there was a sport where you could be named after He-Man's nemesis, I never would've finished high school. Jon Montgomery's celebration--strutting out of the gondola to chug a pitcher of beer on the streets of Whistler--after winning the gold in skeleton earned from me the utterance: "Now that's Canadian."

8. Hockey. The rest of the world quipped: "It's just a hockey tournament to Canada." I cringed, because I am the first hockey fan to remind people about the other athletes, even the curlers. That being said, it's this country's favourite sport. Nobody knocks the Austrians for tuning in by the million for downhill skiing, or the Norwegians for skipping work to cheer on their super-human biathletes. We love hockey in Canada, and this tourney--both the men's and women's--was, as they say in cheesy sports lingo, "one for the ages." My friend Hayley was adorned with her fourth Olympic medal, her third straight gold--and even though I really haven't got much good to say about him, the PM had her jersey on at the game. According to CBC Radio this morning, 20 million of us will always remember where we were when Sidney Crosby scored in overtime. Me? Somewhere in the air between couch and coffee table.

9. CTV/TSN. I'm a CBC man, but the commentators--especially CBC-trained Brian Williams--held up admirably for seventeen days. The exceptions: the air-filling morning crews and the dunder-heads at TSN. Canada AM was rife with navel-gazing and celebrity-oogling, with comments like, "We need to cheer more like the Americans," and the treatment of Ben Mulroney as if he's a credible journalist. Shameful. And having the likes of Bob Mckenzie, Pierre McGuire and Nick Kypreos delivering commentary on the hockey tournament did a number to the Olympics' world-class credibility. C'mon, hire some decent journalists--it's the OLYMPICS!

10. Ceremonies. I liked the tongue-in-cheek closer the best, but I think the artistic display of these two ceremonies added veracity to the statement that these were "Canada's Games." People are still talking about K.D. Lang's performance, and that whole beaver/lumberjack/Mountie/Buble schmoozle was genius. I was most moved by my hero Neil Young's rendition of "Long May You Run"--NERD ALERT: it's a song about a dead car, played across the street from GM Place; there are no coincidences. Seeing the old hippie caused me--yet again--to ruminate on the trouble I've had being socially-conscious but an Olympic fan at the same time.

I became a bit of an Olympic junky, I'll admit. I'm glad they're over, and as a hockey fan I'm most looking forward to four years of "Yay!" rather than four years of so-called analysts debating what went wrong again. Yay, home.

The Games are Good

Though it does me no favours, I've always felt positive about my inability to see the world in black and white. The Vancouver Olympics have come at an appalling cost, they've seen a shady purging of the homeless from the city's downtown, and the province is going to be paying for it until Whistler's beach front.

But I'm glad they're happening.

If you're from that black and white world, you support one of the following views:

1) The Olympic Games are a peaceful gathering of athletes from nations around the world to glorify sport, human accomplishment and peaceful competition.

2) The Olympic Games are an overpriced dog and pony show that've lost any of their original merits to the corporate whoring we see in 2010.

Boring grey me, I agree with both, but when push comes to luge I'm coming down on #1's side.

COST. Yeah, they're expensive, and when you think about the funds allocated to the Games that could've been put to other uses, that's where the first dissenters speak up. Funny that you never hear about protests outside the Academy Awards, which will cost more in a single night than any non-ceremony night's going to cost at these Games. How about the gargantuan cash-suck that is the Superbowl? I mean, not one of these athletes--'cept maybe a first place Canadian in the luge--is walking away from the Olympics a millionaire. The male hockey players compete in a league that sees them play eighty-two times inside of about eight months at a cost of sometimes several millions per player per season. And these young kids with four years of training are the villains?

THE ATHLETES. Every one of us has a skill set, a place to employ it, and once in a while--hopefully--a chance to be praised for it. These young sports spend most of their lives training and competing for a chance to gain international praise one day in a two-week event. Movie stars, country singers, friggin' Paris Hilton, a couple of juvenile delinquents at a C-train station all steal headlines with a decidedly lesser (or altogether lacking) talent collection. Olympic competitors train, fundraise, train, study, train, compete, and train for one chance to showcase themselves to the world. Many are just kids, most have dayjobs, and few are going to spend more than a decade in competition--that's two Olympics at best.

CAMARADERIE. In the majority of the events, the competitors are a big family--they spend most of the years leading up to a Games together. Most sports featured in an Olympics--especially the Winter incarnation--can't get decent viewership (or even airtime) for any tournament other than the big O. They're each other's biggest fans. Yeah, they all want that gold, but before that they just love what they do, and they show their support for anyone doing well at it. Watch the end of someone's run, the first to throw that athlete a high-five are the people he's just beaten.

PRIDE. My wife can't ski--bum knee. And yet, tonight she watched the women's moguls event on the edge of her seat, her emotional wave cresting when Canadian Kristi Richards fell, gathered herself up, and then took ridiculous air in a what-the-hell gesture aimed at pleasing the hometown crowd. Last night, when a crew of Canuck celebrities handed the Olympic flag to a group of mounties, who inadvertently punned themselves by putting' flag to pole, Joelle confessed she was near tears at how the sight did her patriotic heart good--all the while ignoring my anti-Anne Murray mutterings. It may be only one aspect of what I love about this country, but it's an important aspect. When you high-five some dude in a bar because you just watched a countryman mount the podium to hear your national anthem, when that one moment has made you agree with the dude's drunken declaration that "Canada fuggin' ROCKS, man!", well, what the hell's wrong with that? In a world of cynics and critics, it's good to feel good about something.

That in mind: THE EVENT. What's so wrong with spectacle, when it's a positive thing, when it's for the young who've spent years basically doing what every motivational poster in every classroom has always told them to do? Yup, it's expensive to put on, but some of us need a show once in a while, and I'll take this one over an over-hyped football game that's really just about nigh-pornographic Budweiser commercials or watching a movie star with a Grade 9 education miss-pronounce "myriad" in a rambling, narcissistic mess of an acceptance speech. There's a lot of crap in this weary world. Haiti's bleeding, we're at war, the ice caps are melting; dammit, if we put on a show that's supposed to bring out the best in a certain group of people, forgive me if I want to give myself over to something that makes me feel positive for a change.

HAYLEY. The small town of Shaunavon, Saskatchewan swells with parental joy each time Hayley Wickenheiser takes the ice. She's a queen in that town, and has been since the early 1990s. That woman creates pride, camaraderie and events everywhere she goes. She gives that little town--and hundreds of clone burghs across this country--something to join in a cheer over. When Hayley spoke the athlete's oath at the opening ceremonies, I took a mental tally of her accomplishments; substantial for just over thirty years of life. She started as a girl in a boy's sport, hearing that there was nowhere this game could take her. Instead she took it to unimagined heights, even when she had to act as Atlas more than once for the game she's made matter to the world. Got a six year old wondering how one person can matter? Cite Hayley.

(More on why Hayley matters: www.cbc.ca/olympics/vancouvernow/2010/02/what-a-great-friend.html)

I am often accused of possessing innocent naivete. I'm actually kinda proud of it, but I'm not ignorant to the criticisms these Games have received. I do believe they matter. An event like this can bring out something good, something pure, in our nation after earthquakes and wars and politicians giving themselves three-month holidays. For two weeks, amateur athletes can shine and the world will cheer and the only guns being fired over it will be at the starting lines.

Let's try to keep in mind that the eighteen year old kid who's using his ability didn't remove the homeless, whore us out to RBC and Coke or spend six billion on this thing.

Neil Young and a minor Roald Dahl Character Can Tell You All You Need to Know About Writing

I just finished my sixth draft of a book I’ve been working on. That’s a lot for me, especially considering that the sixth draft was a re-write, an exhausting endeavour.

I’m not bragging, frankly it’s not that impressive. Some of the greatest writers in history wrote dozens of drafts. Then there’s the tweaking which many could spend their lives doing. Touching up a phrase here, conjugating a verb there. Add an adjective, delete an adverb—because they’re evil—move a word to the end of a sentence, then to the middle, then back, then delete it altogether. If you aren’t working on a deadline, and you understand that writing is organic, something that won’t be set in stone—until someone else sets it in press—you can play with words forever. But this is just polish—there are only two stages that matter in the life of a piece of writing, and the rest’s just icing.

You need to write like Neil Young records albums—quickly, viscerally, and frequently. Yes, those are all adverbs. Have I mentioned I’m a hypocrite, too?

Young’s mantra is: “If you think, you stink.” Some of the studio musicians he’s worked with have been shocked to learn that what they thought was a rehearsal is the take Young puts on the album. Young believes that there’s this groove, a pure form of music that can only be attained when it’s done by feel. Jamming away at a song is when he says it’s the most honest. He might take it and lay some overdubs on it—yuh-huh, he edits it—but the core of the song remains that first idea.

Step one is to write the damn thing. You can have a million good ideas but until you’ve got one on paper, written all the way to its conclusion, you’re no more a writer than the people who annoy Margaret Atwood at parties.

Writers write. They don’t say they do it, they do it.

Your idea might not be what you thought it was going to be when you start writing, and that might be when you first feel the urge to quit.

“It’s not such a good idea after all.”

WRONG! Ignore that urge, urges are stupid, you’re no monkey. Of course your idea isn’t the same once you’ve started writing it—you’ve taken the mess of images and concepts from the ether in your noggin and you’ve tried to express them in little black characters on the product of pulped tree. It’s not a logical process.

Don’t think about that, keep going. If you get the damn thing done then you’ve passed the first test. You’re a writer now because you’ve got something writ.

Whenever I get an idea, the first thing I decide is how to end it. You get yourself an ending, you’ve got something to write to, junior. You can drop in little bits of foreshadowing here and there, you know characters’ motivations—to dust of a cliché: it writes itself.

Think of it as going for a drive. You can get in your car with no place in mind—might be kind of fun. But after you drive around, stop at the 7-11, pick up a paper, you eventually run out of ideas, give up and go home. If you’re driving with a destination, you always have that in mind. It’s a journey now. Oh sure, you might go on side-trips, but that just adds to the tale.

Step two is my favourite. This is where the piece goes from writing to a “work.” I refer to it as the Mike Teavee Stage.

You remember Mike Teavee, either from the Roald Dahl novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or from the Gene Wilder film where Charlie is substituted for Willie Wonka in the title. God help you if your reference point is that Burton/Depp crap stew.

Anyway, what happens to good ol’ Mike? Well, he wants to be the first boy on television, actually living therem so he uses Willie’s machine to zap himself through the air in a million little pieces, appearing in 3D version on the set on the other side of the room. Unfortunately, he’s stuck that way forever.

Okay, it’s a tragic story meant to lecture you on watching too much boob tube, but from our perspective it’s crucial in understanding what that first real edit does to a draft. This edit can only be done to a concluded draft—the term “finished draft” is given by a publisher, not a writer. You take that junk you’ve poured out like Crazy Horse on cocaine and then you edit the hell outta it, ending up with a tight, succinct piece of work, 1/8 the original size. Or so.

“Murder your darlings.”

Any work you do after this point can be fabulous, but it’s all just polish. These two stages are writing, and the Mike Teavee stage is as—I’d argue more—important as the initial composition.

Draft, edit, re-write, re-draft, re-do to your heart's content . . . but it’s those first two steps that bring a story to life.

The Ironic Knight

Inspired by a lesson I taught my students regarding theme. I bet them that you could write on any work from Shakespeare to--they had to name the movie. At least it was one I liked.

The theme of Christopher Nolan’s 2008 film The Dark Knight is purportedly “escalation.” This follows in line with the use of thematic storytelling set out in the previous film, Batman Begins. This 2005 film rejuvenated the Batman franchise by never straying from its central concept of fear. In The Dark Knight, the introduction of the pure and noble character Harvey Dent, who shows at once how Batman inspires people and how bad things can become when that inspiration fails, is a symbol of this escalation. The Batman watches the reactions to his actions, and his attempts to inspire the good inspire the bad to become a “better class of criminal.” The Joker, present in every scene, whether it is physically or as a lingering threat, is the personification of the bad becoming worse. But in Batman and the Joker, and in all the supporting characters, it is irony that truly defines The Dark Knight.

As the film begins, Batman is still in the early stages of his career, still working on being a symbol of hope. He has seen his actions start to have an effect. Criminals are far more concerned for their safety and Lieutenant Gordon of the Major Crimes Unit has “malfunctioning equipment” to alert the populace when Batman is on the job. The spectre can be conjured. But, he doesn’t always inspire in the manner he would prefer. Batman is a fascist. He uses control, he has stepped outside the law—it is corrupt and his symbolism gives him a purity—to battle crime using whatever strong-arm methods he likes. He now has a host of imitators, couch-potatoes in hockey pads using shotguns, whose guerrilla attacks on the underworld he abhors. He apprehends them as readily as he does the criminals. Batman would have people rise up to follow him, but not with his same style of vigilantism. He wants to be the symbol outside the law that would have the people of Gotham adhere to the law. He seeks complete control of his world and lashes out violently when he loses his control.

Harvey Dent is the perfect follower of Batman’s ideal: the hero who operates within legal boundaries. As a result, he shows signs early on of being something more than Batman could ever hope to be. He is not a symbol, he is open. He also plays a fatally risky game because, unlike the Batman, Harvey is unable to hide behind a mask when threatened, or when those he cherishes are threatened. This is his eventual breaking point.

The Joker receives considerable focus in the film. The plot is driven by his actions—he dictates each new turn. At the end of Batman Begins, escalation is first alluded to as his methodology—leaving a Joker playing card at the scene of a crime—is introduced. James Gordon tells Batman that when the cops start using bullet-proof vests, the criminals get armour-piercing rounds; when a superhero shows up, super villains are bound to as well. Early in The Dark Knight, the police, Batman and the mob give Joker no more credit as a threat than they would any other small time hood. By the climax of the film, he has the entire population of Gotham City cowering in fear of his madness. Composer Hans Zimmer has given the character a musical cue, simple and frightening: whenever the Joker is about to strike, a single note begins to rise, like the buzzing of a fly that makes a sane man crazy, reaching its crescendo as the Joker strikes. The chaos that the Joker brings shows just how bad things can get, how much worse things have become since Batman first appeared in Gotham.

The Joker is also the greatest source of irony in the film. Besides being a clown that kills, he interacts with the other characters pleasantly, conversationally, at all times above the trivialities of life and death he brings to all who encounter him. He is amiable, only showing true rancour a few times, such as when he films the false Batman, telling the imposter to “Look at me!” before the Joker murders him. Most of the time, he thinks everything is just there for his own entertainment. He is an “agent of chaos,” he tells us, and in this chaos we find his only consistency. At first he is a greedy robber—killing off his co-conspirators in a sadistic elimination game—then he wants to kill the Batman. He later reneges on both, lighting his half of the mob’s money on fire—while still piled with their half—and he tells Batman he never wanted to kill the Caped Crusader. All he wants to do is “introduce a little anarchy.” His varied origin confessions and his constantly-shifting motivations convince the audience that seeking to understand the Joker, to place him in a stereotypical “Hollywood bad-guy” role, is like Batman’s attempts to control Gotham: it is trying to carry water in your hands.

The pinnacle of irony is when Batman finally thinks he’s defeated the Joker at the end of the film. He knocks the villain from a building and the Joker howls with glee as he plunges to his death. Batman uses his grappling line to rescue a man of whom the world would be much better off free. The catch of being Batman with a rule of never killing his foes means that he must be plagued by those foes over and over again. He and the Joker have their last tet-a-tet of the film, and Batman learns once again that he has lost control; he has been robbed of his victory, he has failed to wrestle control of his city, its crown, from this opponent. For this film is a tragedy, not a typical Hollywood superhero film. In the 1989 film Batman, a much campier version by 2008 standards—just as it was much darker than the 1966 film—the Joker is set to escape when the Batman, not plagued by morals in this incarnation, fires his line and affixes it to the Joker’s leg, tying him to a gargoyle. The Joker falls howling to his death. In The Dark Knight the Joker is saved by the very device that killed him in Batman.

Let us consider these two Jokers for a moment. Both threaten the city with claims of doing good, in a manner of speaking, for it. Heath Ledger’s Joker says “This city deserves a better class of criminal, and I’m going to give it to them.” Each uses the airwaves to send his message, to involve the public in the feud with Batman. And both have their origins in a reaction, of sorts, to Batman. Batman, in trying to do good, has created his own arch-foe, a disease that eats at the city he has intended to save. He suffers for this, and in The Dark Knight he is not the only victim the Joker claims, body and soul.

Of those the Joker murders, no one affects the plot, the protagonist or the principal supporting characters more than Rachel Dawes. When it is revealed that Harvey and Rachel are to be murdered, we fear the worst for Dent, for Batman chooses to save Rachel. But the Joker has anticipated this, and he intentionally sends the hero to the wrong victim. Harvey Dent is Two-Face in the comics, and he has also appeared as a villain in 1995’s Batman Forever, so the audience expects his tragic irony, they know it is imminent. But we are shocked to see Batman burst in on Dent, and appalled to watch Rachel die, quickly and brutally, in a fashion rarely displayed in the superhero genre. Rachel’s death is completely unexpected, and the audience has been duped. Her death ensures the permanency of Batman, and the breaking of Harvey Dent.

Harvey Dent begins as the White Knight to Batman’s Dark Knight. Harvey’s character is established early on as the sort of person Batman has longed to see: a regular citizen who has followed the Batman’s lead and is making a difference. Dent is publicly the Batman’s most vocal supporter, and he causes Bruce Wayne—prior to Rachel’s death—to toy with the idea of giving up his alter-ego now that Gotham has a hero who operates within the confines of the law. Dent is the “best of us” Batman tells Gordon. It’s tempting to view these three characters—Batman, Gordon and Dent—as a sort of unholy trinity. Gordon is the authority figure, the man of the old world, the god that needs remembering. The Batman is the spirit, the symbol seeking to unite Gordon’s people. Dent is the saviour, full of Batman’s spirit, reminding the people of their covenant with Gordon, with law and order; he even sacrifices himself for the cause. But the Dent that rises from the dead, Two-Face, is more defined by Janus than by Jesus. Harvey’s irony is simple: he doesn’t represent balance or equality, he is a victim of chance, and so becomes a prophet of it. His dedication to chance is as chaotic as the anarchy the Joker encourages Harvey to introduce. Harvey was once a pillar of Justice, who stands blindfolded, holding her scales. But his mind is as ravaged as his body, and in him is not the balance of good and evil, of right and wrong, of justice. In him is only chance. It’s also retribution, an eye for an eye. Evil is met with vengeance. Chance is fair, justice is not. Batman, fighting for justice above the law, watches with horror as this pure knight of the law gives himself over to chaos.

The Joker and Two-Face are defined by their scars, which they bear for all to see. Batman hides behind a mask to keep Bruce Wayne safe and to channel a symbolic totem. In The Dark Knight, those who expose their faces are evil, and he who hides his heroic. The Joker spends the first scene of the film in a mask, revealing his true face at the end, to our horror. Here is a man scarier revealed than hidden. He alludes to various possible origins for his facial scars, but we never learn which story is true, if any. Harvey embraces a nickname he was given while working with Internal Affairs: Two-Face. He refuses any medication so that the physical pain he feels runs parallel to his mental anguish; he is balance. As a symbol, Batman functions perfectly. Were Bruce Wayne to expose himself as the Batman—he almost does until thwarted by the truly heroic Harvey—he would be more at risk than the exposed villains. The Joker calls for Batman to remove his mask, to stand as exposed as the clown. Batman mocks the Joker at the end of the film for seeking proof that everyone is as crazy as himself—perhaps the closest thing we get to a motivation for the Joker that resonates. Earlier, Batman had unmasked the Scarecrow, not allowing a villain to remain hidden; interestingly, he leaves the mask on the false Batman sitting next to the Scarecrow. It is the Joker who chooses to unmask the doomed imposter. Gordon, the one other hero to survive the film, hides behind a false death, and wears a mask as they attempt to lure the Joker into a trap. To make himself a hero, Gordon must stand masked beside Batman. Harvey chooses not to unmask Batman, appreciating that he shares two sides with the hero now; this is balance. In the end, it is Batman’s mask that saves Harvey and defeats the Joker’s ultimate plan. Batman can hide Harvey’s crimes behind his own mask, he can take them on, he can be the Dark Knight Gotham needs to rescue it; the rescue comes in hiding the truth.

Escalation is the point that The Dark Knight conveys. It is meant, on certain levels, as a cautionary tale for those who would use their power to make the world suit them. There are repercussions to Batman’s fascism. However, the action hinges on the unpredictable characters, and so it is irony that dominates this film. In The Dark Knight, clowns are evil, masked men are good, servants of justice leave balance to chance, and those who work for the established order must embrace chaos to defeat it. The irony is, “You either die a hero or you see yourself live long enough to become the villain.” To win against one’s foes, one must become them.

Works Cited

Batman Begins. Dir. Christopher Nolan. Warner Bros. Pictures, 2005.

The Dark Knight. Dir. Christopher Nolan. Warner Bros. Pictures, 2008.

My Ayn Rand Experiment

I’ve been aware of Ayn Rand’s work for about ten years now; it amazes me that I went all the way through university without encountering her. I was compiling a list of the greatest novels of the 20^th century, comparing and cross-referencing various versions to come up with ten I’d never read before. An attempt to try to keep current with the modern classics. One novel, Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, I found singular because it would appear on the top of one list and then not even make the top one hundred of the next.

A brilliant artist I know then told me that reading that book had been a life-changing experience for him. Good enough for me, it made my list and I read it in the summer of 2006.

Since that time, I’ve read most of her literature, many of her philosophy texts, and quite a few of her essays. I have spent three and a half years reading her, thinking about her, and being challenged by her and I have settled on a verdict: this stuff isn’t for me.

Objectivism is tricky to nail down in a few words—Ms. Rand did nothing in a few words—but I will say that despite its appeal to capitalists and little C conservatives—neither of which I am—I went into my experiment with an open mind. I mean, you can’t pick up an 1100-page novel and say, “This is gonna suck the whole way.” No amount of bragging rights are worth that kind of masochism.

Objectivism is grey philosophy but it’s defined in definite terms; this makes it a a little slippery in the black and white world of liberals and conservatives that so many dummies insist on living in. She was pro-capitalism, yes, a conservative, yes, so then one would assume she was a supporter of the military and the religious right? No, she abhorred the use of force to get what you want (“Attila”) and saw religion as primitive nonsense (“The Witch Doctor”) barely given note in her fiction, as if it was below her to write about such mysticism.

She believed in progress, the ego, the individual, and though I view myself as someone who shifts between a little l liberal and a socialist, her interpretation of these three concepts had my interest and respect, at first. Progress, not as in being free of historical nostalgia, but as in advancing logically, not constantly looking back? Sounded good. Being confident and self-assured, happy with your role and life? An excellent lesson to learn. That it can be better to work on your own than in the slowness of a committee? Well, not always, but as I am a loner by reputation there are times this could suit me.

But when that progress means casting history to the floor, the city gobbling up more of nature, when one man by himself will always have better ideas than a group of minds together, that’s when I had a problem. To Rand, the intellectuals would become dictators because they had the self-love and vision needed to rule the rest of us.

My encounters with Rand’s work have been 75% literary, which is too bad because as a novelist, she made a hell of a philosopher. She chose novels as her vehicle because in the mid-20^th she was still figuring her philosophy out. She’d moved from the Soviet Union to the United States (wonder where the hatred for collectivism comes from, eh?) and as a young woman dedicated herself to showing how her philosophy should work through her storytelling. After Atlas Shrugged, she abandoned the creative form; however, her decades-old novels, especially The Fountainhead and Atlas, continue to draw readers. They did me.

They’re impressive novels, packed with characters she’s diligently crafted and plots that never lose their focus, though the advancement is glacial in pace. They’re not great books in strictly literary terms. They’re stiff, extremely verbose—anything your average author would say in a line she says in a chapter—and while these crafted characters may seem clear to her, only a few of them can be easily differentiated. Even while in the middle of reading a book I’d have to flip back to remember who this character was or that character was and why she’s dropping his name in a twenty-page bit of completely inhuman dialogue between two of the principle characters. It’s ironic that someone who so praised the importance of the individual caused this problem. The main characters, the ones we do recognize, are not even attempts at humanity—they’re shadows on the cave wall.

The concepts she feels are drawn from reality are the most unbelievable. That society would fall into chaos if all the intellectuals left is arguably true, but that all the intellectuals have the same sets of values, and are driven and focused workaholics (c’mon, how many “brilliant but lazy” people do you know?) just ain’t so. When two of these super-people meet they must automatically have some sort of unspoken understanding—like intelligence is a pheromone geniuses give off for other geniuses to detect—and there’s nothing that some geniuses abhor more than other geniuses.

All of her books point to a growing threat of socialism (she’d left a country where it had become a reality) which would eventually destroy society, stifling the capitalists and individuals. Anthem explores a world set after the crisis, where accomplishing anything is Herculean because it must be done by committees. Anthem is my favourite of her works, because it’s science fiction and it’s mercifully short. I think the past ten years have shown we’re moving in a much more selfish and materialistic direction, but Ms. Rand would have deplored it anyway because it’s devoid of much intelligence.

Her heroes, John Galt and Howard Roark, are the ideal men because they live in her created world where everything suits them, even the crises that befall them. Placed in our reality I’m not sure these infallible gods would have such a cushy go of it. She’s so in love with these ideals that she can’t help but attack them with challenges that only make them look better in the end. They glimmer.

Her heroines, Dagny Taggert and Dominique Francon, are magnetically attracted to men of power, sleeping their way up through the great-but-flawed stereotypes until they reach the ideal, Galt and Roark, respectively, to the applause of the past lovers who adore these men as much as the woman do. In what world would a guy get dumped, look at his replacement and say, “Yeah, he’s way better than me. In fact, I love him too, in a man’s way.” Women are possessions in these books, sex is a celebration of the Promethean nature of these men, and the men in turn show no tenderness to the women. They rape them, the command them, they ignore them, and the women trip all over themselves to please these men. It’s disgusting to think that in the 20^th century a female writer would write such derogatory female characters. I don’t mean to get Freudian, but it’s not far to stretch and say she’s basing these women loosely on herself, and that’s not saying too much about her.

When the right topic is broached, a character will lecture any unfortunate trapped in the scene with him for pages and pages as Rand pulls a thinly-veiled essay into the plot. The believability and literary quality dip here. I mean, they’re great essays, but as literature goes, even Shakespeare would roll his eyes and mutter, “Get to the point already.”

I’m a lover of fiction first, and I also enjoy philosophy. I was fascinated enough to read much of Rand’s work, but that’s because I like to feel challenged. There’s not enough literary quality to her novels, and that doesn’t do much for a philosophy I can’t buy into anyway. I think those who love her fiction must love her philosophy first. I believe that only when faced with adversity can humans (Rand would write only “men”) really grow. If you run away from ideas that make you question yourself then you are incapable of knowing yourself. I have gained that much from reading her, but little else.

Hopenhagen? Nottawa.

The UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen could be the defining failure of our generation’s leaders. It is certainly the defining failure of Canada in the eyes of the world. The Conference has been mired in pathetic finger-pointing, buck-passing, denial, and cynicism—“Nobody’s going to live up to these promises anyway, just like Kyoto.” Canada has been conspicuous in trying to appear to be doing something while doing nothing at all, save garnering more and more reasons for the rest of the world to find our climate control policies impotent and financially motivated.

I find it staggering that there are still people in this country who doubt climate change, who still question humanity’s contributions to global warming, who really will tell you that what David Suzuki and Al Gore and thousands of scientists and activists are telling us is a bunch of hooey. There are those who are willing to trump up their own scientists and activists who attempt to disprove climate change.

Do these people actually believe that limiting pollution is a bad idea?

Have they seen the smog in our skies, the filth in our rivers, the garbage in our ditches? Are they saying it’s not okay to do what we can to limit the putrefying of our world?

We Canadians are showing ourselves to be the most short-sighted of the pollutant nations because we’re too mired in our own partisanship and regional biases to look at the big picture. I get most of my news from the radio and the Internet, and I rely heavily on the CBC for that. Many people where I live see the CBC as a Liberal, Eastern machine. I don’t agree, but if nothing else it remains the best source of national news in this country. On CBC’s website, you can read a story, and then comment on it below. You can even choose to AGREE and DISAGREE with comments a la Facebook. Commentary turns nasty quickly, usually ending up in name-calling and petty region-bashing. The blogger is attacked rather than the idea. Oftentimes, intellectual disagreements turn into shouting matches over hockey teams.

Regarding the Copenhagen Conference, lines are being drawn in this country separating West from East, Conservative from Liberal, because people are so foolish they think “a vote for Blue is a vote for the West.” I swear, there are morons out here who would become Holocaust deniers if they were told the East said it happened. This country is full of dangerously, passionately uninformed voters.

People defend the tarsands in Alberta and Saskatchewan—while the rest of the world correctly condemns them—because of some spectre of the NEP looming again, of the East horning in on our cash bucks; other’s defend Canada’s right to do nothing in Copenhagen because up until today, nobody else has done anything either. It’s just been a lot of posturing and hot air.

“We’re waiting to see what the Americans do,” says Jim Prentice, “so we can harmonize with them.” Didn’t this country used to be one that showed a little initiative, hell, even a little spine?

I can’t believe the short-sightedness.

One comment made this week on CBC’s website by a user named Forwardpass brought me to a stop: “Just say no Canada! We can’t take anymore (sic) taxes. The world will not end.”

There it was, the financial angle. Worry about nothing but your own money. That’s the tarsands way, that’s the Canadian way. Do nothing, get paid. What if we are talking about the end of the world, at least as we have known it? To many, that’ll never matter more than revenue. How sad.

Many Canadians feel we shouldn’t have to change until the U.S. and China do. But, today when the U.S. and China were the first on a list of countries to actually try to draft a policy, Canada was out of the picture, sitting back, doing nothing, as we have been for the entire conference. The prime minister—in between tea with the queen of Denmark and going to see the Little Mermaid—claimed we’re doing nothing because we’ve done so much already. He failed to expand on that. When you’re in the back pocket of Big Oil, you’ve got to be careful about how much interest you show in limiting greenhouse gases.

Canada, a country of only 32 million, is one of the twelve worst world polluters, along with countries that have hundreds of millions of people, two with over a billion. Per capita, we are the worst nation on earth for usage/emissions.

Here in the West, the tarsands are vehemently defended. “Where else will we get our money?” “We need to support our growing energy needs.” Greed and gluttony. I’m no Christian, but when your two main worries are money and consumption, you need to go for a long walk and a think. If you can’t see that what we’re doing to our world is harmful, that something needs to be done, and that making money for money’s sake with no other concerns for the effect that has on the world is a pathetic form of life, well, you probably stopped reading when I didn’t write oilsands anyway. Next it’ll be cashsands or jobsands or bursarysands.

So, we have a policy in place, one that our country did nothing to help create. And it’s a pathetic policy that most countries will find it extremely easy to ignore—much to our government’s relief. Our prime minister and environment minister have both stated that they don’t see us going for any serious emissions caps, and that the tarsands would be given a break anyway. What’s the point if huge polluter’s like this go unchecked? It’s like banning firearms but letting people launch missiles.

The best the Canadian public could do was bicker, mock the protestors, refuse to challenge the polluters, and continue to consume, pollute and waste. Regional pettiness and greed have kept us from uniting and pressuring our incompetent leadership into actually leading.

You’d think with our army all over the world media for prisoner abuse, and with the Olympics coming to a transient-purged Vancouver, we’d be doing something to make ourselves look a little more appealing. I mean, damn, I see how China felt in the summer of ’08. “Why is everybody always picking on me? Oh, right, because of all that crap I’ve been doing lately.”

I am normally patriotic to a fault. I love this country as one loves a parent that has made mistakes, but in the end, has given you your life.

Today, I am ashamed to be a Canadian.

Loving Saskatchewan Living in Alberta

I’m from Saskatchewan and I live in Alberta.

And suddenly half of you are breaking out in guffaws. Now why is that?

Let me say, this is not about the Grey Cup. I’m writing this before the game, but it’ll be posted afterwards, and regardless of the outcome, this is not about the game. This is about what I’m hearing about people like myself, born in that beautiful near-rectangle to the east. For in the lead-up to the Grey Cup weekend in Calgary—possibly because our team beat their team—the nastiness that is here all year got turned up a notch. I’d like to address it.

But, I’m going to address it without the “I know you are what am I” attacks. So let’s get this out of the way: I like living in Alberta. Seriously.

Do I miss the province of my birth? Dearly.

Would I move back there? To the right place, say Saskatoon or Shaunavon, yeah.

“So if it’s so great, why do you live here?” Because I like it, and I have a very good job.

When I moved out here, I had two interviews lined up, one for in Alberta and one for in Regina; Alberta offered first. I stayed because within six months I had met my future wife.

What always gets me is this condescension I get whenever I tell somebody I’m from Saskatchewan, like I’m the slow little brother who demands pity. Too bad.

You know when you travel and you meet an American and they pull that attitude—y’know, that “you’re not from anywhere interesting” attitude—on you? That’s how it feels. Guess what, you know that mix of pity and contempt you feel for the Yank then? Yeah.

See, I’m proud of where I’m from. I grew up on a farm and in a small town and I loved the area. I love farming, I love the space, I love the neighbourly camaraderie.

There’s that laughter again.

“Isn’t everywhere in Saskatchewan small, isn’t everything a farm?”

Yep, there are lots of small towns. But I challenge you to find a place with more community pride than Shaunavon, the place with less than 2,000 people in which I spent my youth. I mean, Strathmore has 11,000 people and the only civic pride we see is when we all unite to criticize the mayor and town council. When they berate us and attack us for questioning them because the only public works they do is housing development, and the only green-spaces we have are a slough that they want to see turned into duplexes, you have to wonder. Community pride? Shaunavon has this ambitious I ♥ Shaunavon campaign that really has gone to a lot of work to promote the place, while Strathmore spent its centennial arguing whether or not town council should be allowed to build itself a new town hall on one of our ball diamonds. Swell.

Oh yeah, I’m a bit blinded by nostalgia, but I’m sad too. I mean, I used to love it when people mocked my home province’s Socialist government, its lack of over-crowded, sprawling cities, its open space. Urbanites didn’t get it. People who view Calgary as a metropolis and a heart of all things cosmopolitan didn’t get it. Suited me just fine. But after I left Saskatchewan they elected a Conservative government worse than the Reform Party, and they opened up their own tar sands monstrosity. Great, Saskatchewan would soon be appearing on the world stage for all the wrong reasons.

Point is, I was glad people in Alberta didn’t get it, because then they couldn’t ruin it with their golf courses and their ready-made acreage communities and their five-dollar-coffee shops. But then we went and ruined it on our own by letting the people who wanted it to be Alberta take over. Sigh. Alberta works in Alberta, not in Saskatchewan.

Alberta has farmers, Alberta has flat prairie, Alberta has backwards moralistic groups. But that all gets ignored when given the chance to trudge out an old cliché about hillbillies or dogs running away.

What saddens me most is people actually believe that those of us raised in the beautiful green province really are dumb and uncultured. My mother has spent four fifths of her life on a farm, and you won’t find a more worldly, learned woman anywhere. Same went for her own mother, who grew up before women’s liberation and was married to an old-fashioned Catholic, spending nearly forty years raising kids. Most of my best friends from home have their Masters degrees, some their Doctorates. And like me, many have done homework in a grain truck at some point in life. CEOs, doctors, school administrators, lawyers, the running joke in any professional setting in Alberta is to count the number of us who grew up in Saskatchewan. These are hardly the doofi of the labour force here in Alberta.

Culture? You’d be hard-pressed to find a pair of more culturally-active cities than Saskatoon and Regina. But, yes, that might have something to do with their socially-conscious citizens. Calgary is having trouble keeping its art galleries open because half the city’s population thinks “culture” is spending oil money on an expensive sushi dinner. But I said I wouldn’t get nasty. Edmonton rocks, at least. But then it reminds me of Saskatoon . . .

I love living here, but I’m bored of the patronizing from people who’ve never even been to Saskatchewan.

Here’s the reality: we’re not proud of where we’re from because of some underdog sense of survival when wide-eyed in the big city. We’re proud because it’s a good place. People underestimate it because of their own prejudices (and to deal with their own insecurity when compared with Vancouver, let’s face it). You won’t take that away from us, no matter how you belittle us. I feel that I had a sound, moral, irreligious upbringing in a gorgeous, peaceful province where beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and if an ocean of prairie, of unending sky and the whisper of summer wind is not for you, well, who asked you?

We’re friendly and we’re happy, and we’re treated like morons. But then, Newfies are the friendliest and happiest people in the country, and they’re treated like second-class citizens.

You’re right, we live in Alberta now. That’s because we’ve got good jobs and because it’s a nice province. Conservatives governments, the ultra-religious Right and tar-sand pollution aside, it’s fantastic. And I’d have all three if I was still in Saskatchewan. Those, and rats. That is, instead of the myth of a rat-free province (but don’t get me started on that silliness).

So thanks, Alberta. Like our grandparents generations ago who came to Canada from Europe, we who’ve moved to Alberta have to suffer the prejudices of those already here. We’ll bring our own culture and morals and intelligence and work ethic and we’ll be mocked for them. But the Newfies and us, we’re just going to smile, because where we’re from made us who we are, and we’ve brought that here. If this province is getting better, well, our influence has to be felt.

Don’t worry, we know we won’t hear it, we don’t need to. But we feel all the richer for being able to love mountains and prairie for what they are, different, but beautiful for all their own reasons.

Oh, and now and forever, Go Riders!