Literary Review of Canada - 10 2020

44 Pages·2020·13.76 MB·English

Literary Review of Canada

A J O UR NAL O F ID EAS

OCTOBER 2020

CECILY ROSS My Story Is Mine KATHERINE ASHENBURG Lesson Plans

KEITH GAREBIAN Tiff’s Life PETER MANSBRIDGE Who Is Alex Trebek?

$7.95

The Donner Canadian Foundation is pleased to announce the
outstanding book chosen for the 2019/2020 Donner Prize.

BREAKDOWN: The Pipeline Debate
and the Threat to Canada’s Future
by Dennis McConaghy (Dundurn Press)

Katherine Ashenburg will publish
Her Turn, a novel, next year.

Sheima Benembarek is a recent graduate of
the King’s College master of fine arts program.

Kelvin Browne is the executive director of
the Gardiner Museum, in Toronto.

David Cayley is the author of the forthcoming
Ivan Illich: An Intellectual Journey.

Keith Garebian just published Mini Musings:
Miniature Thoughts on Theatre and Poetry.

J. L. Granatstein writes on Canadian
political and military history.

Scott Griffin is the founder of the
annual Griffin Poetry Prize.

Ron Hikel has worked with political parties
in the United States, England, and Canada.

Alex Himelfarb was Canada’s ambassador
to Italy from 2006 to 2009.

Tom Jokinen is a frequent contributor to
the magazine. He lives in Winnipeg.

Kevin Keystone reads and writes in Toronto.

Chad Kohalyk is working on a book in Japan.

Sarah Wylie Krotz is a professor of Canadian
literature at the University of Alberta.

Gayatri Kumar is a freelance writer in Toronto.

Liam Lacey occasionally brushed with fame as the
long-time film critic for the Globe and Mail.

Matthew Lombardi recently co-founded
GroceryHero Canada, to support front-line workers.

Peter Mansbridge has a new book,
Extraordinary Canadians: Stories from
the Heart of Our Nation, due out in November.

Joe Martin is historian of the Albany Club,
the last private Conservative club in Canada.

Jennifer O’Connor is working on a master’s
in social and political thought.

Cecily Ross is author of the novel
The Lost Diaries of Susanna Moodie.

Bardia Sinaee is a poet in Toronto.
◆
Cover photograph by Robin Friend.

OUR CONTRIBUTORS

WITH THANKS TO OUR SUPPORTERS

Made possible with
the support of
Ontario Creates

A J O U R NA L OF ID E AS

OCTOBER 2020 ◆ VOLUME 28 ◆ NUMBER 8

FIRST WORD

A Divided Nation
Kyle Wyatt
3

FURTHERMORE

Thirteen readers of the magazine
5

NOTEBOOK

This Story Is Mine
Why I’m finally telling it
Cecily Ross
7

PANDEMIC

The Prognosis
Looking the consequences in the eye
David Cayley
10
At What Price?
The costs of an unfolding drama
Alex Himelfarb
14

THE ARTS

Lesson Plans
Adventures in rhyme with a boy of nine
Katherine Ashenburg
17
Migrations
Meanwhile, down below
Sarah Wylie Krotz
18

GADGETS AND GIZMOS

Shifting Gears
Toward a car-free future
Chad Kohalyk
20

POLITICKING

A Noble Departure
The lost art of standing down
Scott Griffin
21
Life of the Parties
A political history
Ron Hikel
22
Thank You, Next
The Conservatives’ commitment problem
Joe Martin
23

WHAT WE EAT

A Whole Different Animal
Transforming our food systems
Jennifer O’Connor
26

BYGONE DAYS

A Farewell to Arms
Where did all the junk go?
J. L. Granatstein
28
Farmyard Odyssey
A lofty subject
Kelvin Browne
29
Pier Review
Canada’s gateway by the sea
Matthew Lombardi
30

THIS AND THAT

Death Becomes Us
On the universal experience
Kevin Keystone
31

COMPELLING PEOPLE

Dear Prudence
A life of exuberance and eccentricity
Liam Lacey
32
Quiz Master
And now, here is the host of Jeopardy!
Peter Mansbridge
33
Personal Battlegrounds
The enigma of Timothy Findley
Keith Garebian
34

LITERATURE

The Quiet Canadian
Fictional encounters with
Leonard Cohen
Tom Jokinen
36
Found in Translation
The gender politics of South Korea
Sheima Benembarek
37
Kaleidoscope
Lisa Robertson’s first novel
Bardia Sinaee
38
Lean and Slender Forms
A haunting debut
Gayatri Kumar
39

BACKSTORY

Bricks without Straw
Pablo Strauss
40

George Elliott Clarke, p. 8 kerry rawlinson, p. 19 George Moore, p. 24 Jean Van Loon, p. 27

POETRY

www.biblioasis.com

/biblioasis

@biblioasis

@biblioasis_books

" These are stories that live under your skin
and force new colours into the spectrum.”

—CHERIE DIMALINE, KIRKUS PRIZE-WINNING

AUTHOR OF THE MARROW THEIVES

“Steven Heighton offers us an alternative
to armchair activism and outrage ... His
unforgettable
portraits
of
volunteers
and refugees remind us that politics are
inextricable from human lives.”

—IAN WILLIAMS, SCOTIABANK GILLER
PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF REPRODUCTION

"Uncanny and violent, this novel takes an
unflinching look at children’s processing
of sexuality, abuse, and misfortune."

NEW

CULTURAL CRITIQUE IN
REAL TIME.

I N T R O D U C I N G

F I E L D N OT E S

FORTHCOMING

ANDREW POTTER ON DECLINE
ANDRAY DOMISE ON KILLING A REVOLUTION
RINALDO WALCOTT ON PROPERTY

A GAY COMING-OF-AGE STORY—
WITH GHOSTS.

"All an apple should be: crisp, tart but
sweet, steeped in mysterious history and
tangled symbolism."

—MARGARET ATWOOD

AN INDISPENSABLE PIECE OF
FEMINIST HISTORY.

A POET’S FIRSTHAND ACCOUNT
OF VOLUNTEERING ON THE
FRONTLINES OF THE SYRIAN
REFUGEE CRISIS.

A LOVE STORY ABOUT FANDOM,
AN ODE TO MUSIC SNOBS, AND
A TIME-TRIPPING WORK OF
SPECULATIVE FICTION—IN
VERSE.

A SEA WITCH, A BOSSY VIRGIN MARY,
AND A LESBIAN WIDOW’S WIFE—IN
GHOST FORM—WALK INTO A SHORT
STORY COLLECION...

" A fascinating exploration of the women’s
movement from the 1970s to almost the
present day."

—LITERARY REVIEW OF CANADA

"Addictive, dazzling derailment of a book."

— TAMARA FAITH BERGER, BELIEVER BOOK
AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF MAIDENHEAD

“Twenty-volume folios will never make a
revolution. It’s the little pocket pamphlets
that are to be feared.”

—VOLTAIRE

FIRST WORD

I

WAS IN IQALUIT THE LAST TIME I WATCHED
a movie on VHS. It was mid-December
2014, and while I was a whiz at down-
loading and streaming content back
in Toronto, Nunavummiut didn’t have
access to broadband internet service. What they
did have was the local Northmart and a bin
of used videotapes. My hosts were on a Kevin
Costner kick at the time, and after a day of
dogsledding in Sylvia Grinnell Territorial Park,
we picked up a copy of Dances with Wolves for $1.
In tech time, six years is about as long as
Dances with Wolves is in movie time — an eternity.
But even that hasn’t been long enough to make
a material difference when it comes to internet
service for much of rural and northern Canada.
Consider Mumilaaq Qaqqaq, the lone MP for
the largest electoral district in the world. Despite
some modest upgrades for Nunavut’s twenty-five
communities in 2019, the NDP’s northern affairs
critic still found herself unable to load a simple
Wikipedia page this summer, and one of her
staff members couldn’t send an email. “We are in
the capital of Nunavut and this is a (bad) joke,”
Qaqqaq managed to write on Twitter. “How am I
to virtually connect to parliament.”
In 2016, when residents of many Nunavut
communities had internet speeds only up to
2.5 Mbps, the CRTC stated that all Canadians
should have access to download speeds of at
least 50 Mbps and upload speeds of at least
10 Mbps. Four years later, and after a string of
fawning press releases, Northwestel’s Tamarmik
Nunalitt service is no faster than 15 Mbps (and
often non-existent if it’s raining). In Manitoba,
Broadband Communications North has just
secured federal funding to offer upgraded ser-
vice — at a whopping 10 Mbps — in five northern
communities, while hundreds around Dawson
City, Yukon, will be entirely without internet
access when an aging Xplornet satellite is retired
sometime next year. And all throughout the
North, the data that is available is expensive
and capped.
There is a great divide in Canada, made all
the more apparent by the pandemic, which has
forced so many of us to work, learn, meet, and
even legislate remotely. When I join a Zoom
meeting from home, I do so with speeds that
regularly top 500 Mbps. But, as of 2018, 58 per-
cent of rural and 65 percent of First Nations
households in this country have no option for

high-speed internet; only 15 percent of remote
households can access the minimum CRTC
standards. True broadband still doesn’t exist
anywhere in Nunavut, which is the only juris-
diction in Canada without a direct fibre optic
connection (though one is at last in the works,
by way of Greenland).
The long-standing and growing gulf between
Canada’s digital haves and have-nots harms
health care, mental well-being, remote learning,
economic opportunities, tourism, and basic
democratic participation for far too many. It also
impacts enough federal ridings in every province
and territory that it could swing an election, if
only it were made a defining issue.
The presidential race between Donald Trump
and Joe Biden has sucked up a lot of oxygen,
with our news ecosystem giving plenty of atten-
tion to the gong show that is the debate over the
United States Postal Service. The USPS connects
Americans in a way no other institution can,
and it’s absurd that this connective tissue has
become a political lightning rod in the run-up to
November. But, outside of northern media out-
lets, far too little attention has been given to the
absurdity that is our own broken connection.
I am increasingly unconvinced the United
States can ever bridge its deep political divides,
but we are in a position to bring Canadians
together in a truly transformative way. The
issue of broadband service — whether delivered
through dedicated satellites or much-needed
fibre or something entirely new — deserves
debate here that is no less vigorous and public
than the controversy around the postal service
in Washington. Just imagine if “broadband” is
the word on every MP’s lips after the September
Throne Speech, whether they find themselves on
Parliament Hill or on the campaign trail.
In its final report, Canada’s Communications
Future: Time to Act, the Broadcasting and Tele-
communications Legislative Review called on
Ottawa to “foster innovation and investment
in high-quality, advanced connectivity in all
regions of Canada, including urban, rural, and
remote areas.” That was in late January, before
COVID-19 aggravated a pre- existing condi-
tion and made the recommendations of the
six- member panel all the more urgent. If we’re
going to spend our way out of this pandemic, as
it seems we might try, let’s at least spend what’s
necessary to finally connect us all.

A Divided Nation

Kyle Wyatt, Editor-in-Chief

OCTOBER 2020
3

Literary Review of Canada
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