I think that it means that separatism has been losing support, which shatters the old binary lock that that the PQs and Liberals had for the past fifty years, where you were either a separatist/sovereigntist or a federalist. That opens things up for a more traditional rightist - leftist alignment, where sovereignty is a factor in your personal politics, but not the single decisive factor.
Legault is looking like a right-wing sovereigntist/autonomist, in the mould of Daniel Johnson père and Duplessis; so we may be seeing a return to the political alignments that were in place prior to the Quiet Revolution.
I don’t think “riding the populist wave” is enough by itself to characterise what happened; populism can be pretty left of centre in some cases, and the PQ in the 70s sure seemed like a populist movement.
An interesting experience from Winnipeg, in 2001. I was there for about a month, doing ‘The Magic Flute’ with Manitoba Opera. It’s about as close as I’ll ever get to performing opera in my home town of Brandon…
Anyway, one of the ladies in the chorus is a music teacher at one of the French schools in St. Boniface - she’s originally from Montréal, and this was her first year teaching in Manitoba. We’re conversing in French (she’s francophone, I’m anglo, but she’s forgiving…) and I suggested that I could do a concert of French repertoire for some of her students. I had just done the Fauré “La bonne chanson”, I’m always ready to do the Ravel “Trois chansons de Don Quichotte”, and I had the Poulenc “Banalités” in my repertoire as well. She thought it was a great idea!
Next day, she says to me that the principal had completely shot her down on the idea. “If it isn’t voyageur music, he doesn’t want to hear about it!” Apparently, her meeting with him had been brutal; “What could she possibly have been thinking?”, he had said. Over the next couple of weeks of the show, she and I talked extensively of the difference in self-image between the Québécois, who saw themselves in a context of world wide francophonie, versus the Manitobains, who had no interest in the greater world of French culture, be it music, literature, theatre, opera… If it wasn’t fiddle tunes (which I love!), they didn’t want anything to do with it.
Came back from a grocery run. Had a 10 lb bag of potatoes. Tried to fit them into our potato bin in the kitchen, but it was still full of mini-potatoes from this summer.
So I had to store them in the onion bin, which is now full to overflowing with potatoes, onions and big bulbs of garlic.
And I thought how lucky I am, that Clan Piper’s problem of the day is making room to store food.
And I thought how lucky we are as Canadians to live in a country where there are safe, abundant and reliable food supplies, unlike so many countries in the world.
And then I sat down and wrote out two cheques, one to the Food Bank and one to the local homeless shelter that regularly provides meals for those in need, even in a country as prosperous as Canada.
Chez nous, we call this game “Fridge Tetris”. It’s an astonishing privilege to be in a position to have so much food that it’s difficult to find room for it all.
I wrote my cheque to the Peter Longworth scholarship fund at the Royal Conservatory - a dear friend who left us too soon, but also left an astonishing legacy of friends and music. I just came home from singing at a memorial concert for him…
Pumpkin pie and tray of brownies is done. Turkey in the oven. Just starting the cranberries and whipped cream, since the Riders don’t seem to be doing very much against the Esks.
It is almost impossible for us to comprehend the centrality the search for food has had in the human experience for probably 99.99% of all the people who’ve ever lived. It’s not just that we have lots of food, though of course we do; it’'s that acquiring it is almost effortless, representing a fraction of our efforts. Even for Canadians who lack food, it’s usually a transitional state and almost never something that actually presents a risk of literal starvation (which is not to say we should not help those in need.)
For most of human history, the majority of people were engaged in trying to find and make food. Even in good times, having a lot of food was a product of a lot of blood, sweat and tears, and the emphasis on food production meant people didn’t have a lot of other things. It changed how people interacted with one another - I mean, today if you read a story about someone hanged 600 years ago for stealing food you can’t even understand it, but in a day when a few loaves of bread meant your family did or did not eat, and you weren’t super sure about next week at all, that kind of stuff was life and death. For a person like me in Canada, how that felt, to not know for sure where one’'s food was coming from, to be constantly preoccupied by it, is incomprehensible.
Today, well, obviously, we aren’t even physically equipped for how much food we have. It’s one of the greatest achievements of all human history. It is impossible to exaggerate how lucky we are.
It can change fast, though. In 1945 my grandfather, an RCAF fighter pilot, was shot down in the Netherlands, and served with the Dutch resistance until war’s end. There was no food; the people were starving, eating grass. The Netherlands had been one of the richest countries that had ever existed and in a few years, war was starving them to death. Vigilance is the price of luck, I guess.
Winter’s early here in western Canada. It was a day of snow, and temps just cold enough to freeze. Brush off the car, scrape the windshield; and do it all over again when you leave wherever it was you were.
Thankfully, I wasn’t in the weather-related multi-car pileup I saw on my way home tonight.
Yes, we were not expecting this. Regular temps for this time of year are about 15-20 degrees higher. It’s depressing–this time last year, I was still playing golf!
The SCC has drawn a clear line in the sand: the duty to consult applies to the executive branch, but not the legislative branch.
It’s a decision that is well worth reading. It gets into the relationship between the executive’s duty to consult v. the much broader Honour of the Crown from which it arises (see Haida First Nation). I can’t imagine the Mikisew decision going over well with people who have been screwed over by the government for generations.
The Mikisew decision supports the legislature’s unfettered ability to make laws, including having full control over the process that it uses to make laws. (Note that that an unfettered ability to make a law does not necessarily prevent that law being struck down by the judiciary once it has been enacted).
I will be interested to see how this plays out in the next decade or or two, for the devil is in the details. Will majority governments make an end-run around Haida by micromanaging the executive via legislation? Will courts “read in” consultation when interpreting and enforcing specific treaties via s. 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982?
This is a societal issue that the courts are unable to solve. We need to listen to each other and reach out to each other so as to better understand each other and find common ground.
I checked my postal mailbox today and even though it’s marked for no junk mail, I got two cards from the BC government about cannabis. One card is bilingual French/English, the other is English only. The bilingual card is quite plain and serious, and I can appreciate that the government would send such an informational card to all, since this legalization is a big step for the country.
The second card is the one I have an issue with. It’s loaded with pretty graphics and photos of five faces that have no relation to the new law, just models I assume. The whole thing looks too much like an advertising, and the cynic in me says that’s what it is exactly, “did you know pot’s legal now? Look at the pretty faces and pretty graphics on our pamphlet, that should convince you to come and try it out TODAY and make us some moneys!”
This weekend I watched the NFB documentary “The Devil At Your Heels”, about a daredevil attempting a mile-long jump across the St. Lawrence in a rocket car. It kind of reminded me of “Project Grizzly”, with an oddball protagonist who won’t let common sense stand in the way of his dream. As a bonus, the seventies fashions were delightful and Ken Carter looked like a cross between John C. Reilly and Reveen.
