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Literary Review of Canada - 10 2020 PDF

44 Pages·2020·13.76 MB·English
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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 Massey College 4 Devonshire Place Toronto, ON M5S 2E1

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