Oh, Canada - Chapter 9 -

Dreams, they say, tell stories
To explain away our woes
And so we go on living.

If we didn’t do such dreadful things, we would have a better opinion of ourselves. If we had a better opinion of ourselves we wouldn’t do such dreadful things.

D.J. Enright – Injury Time

I have had to recuse myself for several weeks now from producing any critical commentary on the sad state of affairs in our “home and native land”. My therapy was to escape to a quiet spot by the sea and labour in my garden, avoid newspapers, television and radio and take time to observe the natural world around me.

I saw a hummingbird wander into my cottage, hover about for a few moments and somehow discern the open patio door through which it fled apace. I followed the ripples on the surface of the bay in those moments before sunset as grebes, wood ducks and seals glided on or near the surface and marveled at how the gulls all let out their loud squawks just as the last rays of sunlight hit the top of the pier piling.

Then I returned to the city, and the newspapers and CBC Newsworld and the Gomery Inquiry and Minister Volpe calling Conservatives Ku Klux Klaners, and I felt the need to share a few thoughts with you.

What does Mr. Martin dream about I wonder? Is he able to sleep at all? How does a fundamentally decent man deal with the reality that he has been caught out to be a hollow man, a shallow man, a man bereft of vision, a man whose dominant reason for becoming Prime Minister was to avenge the failure of his father to survive the juggernaut of Trudeau-mania and eventually suffer the ignominy of banishment from the front benches at the hand of getaway driver M. Chretien.

Is he able to sleep and dream and explain away his woes and waken ready to face another day of specious argumentation and bold faced mendacity? Or does he toss and turn and wrestle with his conscience? How is it he cannot muster the courage to do the right thing and step down?

Enright’s tautology on self concept struck a chord with me as I read it again today. He brilliantly captures the human condition. The Anglican liturgy does the same with its General Confession where the souls in the pews confess that “we have left undone those things we ought to have done, and we have done those things we ought not to have done, and there is no health in us”. What an unpopular message in today's culture.

As individual Canadians, even the most obtuse and disinterested amongst us must by now be aware there is something rotten in the corridors of power in our smug nation. Many of us seem to find various effective ways to explain away our nation's woes - the skill to do so seemingly more prevalent East of the Manitoba/Ontario border.

“All politicians are crooked, everybody does it, Harper is scary, wait till Gomery completes his investigation” – pick your palliative, but for goodness sake don’t make me stop and think about what my tolerance of systemic graft and corruption at the highest levels of government says about the opinion I have of myself as a Canadian and of my country.

As I brace myself for another federal election I am more and more attracted to another Enright witticism – “Used to read the newspaper…. Used to read the headlines…. Used to read the first two or three words of the headlines…Have given up reading.”