I greatly enjoyed Don Gillmor’s piece on the Liberal convention (“Once Upon a Country,” February). The writing quality and narrative sweep were both tremendous. They reminded me of the best work of Christina McCall and Ron Graham, whose perspectives on Canadian national politics probably did more than anything to attract me to working as a strategist. If, in twenty-five years, some backroomer says, “I got into this when I read a piece about the Liberals’ 2006 convention,” blame Don Gillmor.
Your cover and subhead “Have the Liberals found their Captain Canuck? ” invoked Richard Comely’s short-lived, independently released Captain Canuck comic book, first published in 1975. If I recall correctly, Captain Canuck was set in 1993, amid an opec-embargo-style oil crisis that has made resource-rich Canada a kind of superpower. Now, this all sounds somewhat like Stephen Harper’s current “energy superpower” narrative, which Gillmor followed up on assiduously throughout the piece. Yet The Walrus’s Captain Canuck cover visual was never linked to Gillmor’s musings about Harper’s energy vision. Was this a thread that Gillmor chased but got edited out of the piece? Or am I alone here, conflating my preadolescent memories with later ones fuelled by McCall, Graham, et al.?
Most importantly, did Stephen Harper read Captain Canuck when he was a kid in Etobicoke?
John Duffy
Toronto, Ontario
Ken Alexander responds:
While I’m not privy to the details of Stephen Harper’s childhood reading habits, it wouldn’t surprise me if his vision of Canada as a global energy superpower was inspired by Captain Canuck. After all, his ideological bedfellow, Mike Harris, has been influenced by some rather peculiar graphic reading material (e.g., Mr. Silly). As for the Captain Canuck cover image, that was a choice made by the magazine alone. It played no part in Don Gillmor’s trip through “the streets of the Liberal imagination.” Rather, it is the accompanying art inside and its reference to the existential Canadian “everyman” that elucidates the narrative.
Back to the Drawing Board
Larry Krotz (“Separate and Unequal,” February) paints an unflattering portrait of the native-run reserve-school system, suggesting that “without a change of course, there will be no real resolution to the problems faced by aboriginal people in this country.” With thirty-nine years of experience in aboriginal communities across Canada, allow me to present a case study at least as compelling as the school at Peepeekisis in Saskatchewan where, Krotz says, “underneath optimistic impulses . . . there is unease.”
Eel Ground School is a national leader in incorporating technology into education. We are one of the first schools in Canada to have computerized whiteboards in all of our classrooms. Our students have been trained in web design, Photoshop, and Flash. Among the school’s extracurricular activities are a media club, currently working with Apple’s GarageBand; a radio club, which broadcasts weekly on the Miramichi radio station cfan; and a podcasting club.
When we were named one of Canada’s most innovative schools by Allan Rock, the former industry minister, in 2003, elders expressed concern that phasing technology into the schools would undermine traditional aboriginal culture. It has been our mission to prevent this from happening. Last year, we brought an elder into the school for a month to talk to students about the importance of legends. The videos the children created to depict different legends are posted on our website and have been broadcast on the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network. It is perhaps also worth mentioning that seven of our ten teachers and two of three teaching assistants are First Nation. We are proud of our Mi’kmaq culture and promote it as much as possible.
Comments