Land and Water

It's all connected.

Most of what I write about, the stuff that pays the bills at least, concerns housing in one form or another. This wasn't true before 2006 but that year my main project was a paper for the International Housing Coalition and the Canadian Real Estate Association on the subject of Aboriginal Housing in Canada. Since then, it seems as though property rights, housing and the whole idea of land and property ownership have taken over my working life.

That's OK with me, these are important issues. I can be moved to tears pretty easily by the thought of someone feeling safe in a home where they had not had that opportunity before. I suppose, in part, that is due to the fact that we moved around a fair bit when I was very small and once we did settle in Victoria my parents divorced and my home life became so chaotic and at times so dangerous that for months at a time I would just up and leave.

I stayed with friends, I house sat, I went back and forth between my parents and eventually I just moved out and lived on my own. The idea of home never really got through to me and I think, in many ways, it slowed me down a lot. I went to university late and I still seem to have a hard time accepting that I might have a place in this world. I'm just not accustomed to thinking of myself as someone who belongs.

In a way, that's a strength for a writer. I'm an observer and while I can certainly see how people would get very attached to a community or even a house, those things have never assumed a larger role in my life than they should. I value happiness, peace of mind, independence and the people in my life - and maybe in that sentence the order is even correct. (ask me on another day and I'm sure I'll have a different answer, human beings are like that.)

Anyway, I am entering the final stretch of my nomadic phase, that seems pretty clear to me. And it is fitting that as I do, the area that seems to be building in strength in my professional and personal life is the idea of belonging somewhere. Housing is at the heart of that.

Three years ago, I spent some time analyzing the Canadian government's First Nations housing policy for a national organization. The thrust of their strategy was really smart if you're interested in politics and thoroughly lacking in compassion if you're interested in humanity.

The First Nations Market Housing Fund was sold as a solution to facilitate home ownership for First Nations families and individuals. (it still is - here's a link ) The fund works like this: A Band ("Tribe" or "Community", depending on your verbiage which depends on where you are on the map, in Canada "Tribe" is considered racist - not so in the U.S.) Anyway, a Band applies to the fund when they decide to start selling houses to people instead of holding all the land and housing collectively. They apply to say they are proceeding with this plan and granting mortgages to people through one of the banks involved. It is the responsibility of the individual who is buying the house to pay the mortgage, just like anywhere else. The difference is, Native land cannot be used as collateral for a debt to any non-native person. So the banks could not, under the old system, foreclose on a mortgage if they had to. This meant it was impossible to get a mortgage to buy a house. Under the present system, the banks will grant a mortgage to qualified individuals because the $300 million fund is there to pay the bank back if someone defaults on their mortgage.

Smart banking. But how does it help poor people who need houses? Short answer? It doesn't. If someone defaults, it becomes the responsibility of the Band to pay that mortgage off. If the Band can't pay then the fund kicks in and pays the bank back. The Band in default must then withdraw from the program until they have paid the fund back. Get it?

The First Nations Market Housing Fund makes it possible for people who could already buy a house off-reserve to buy one on-reserve. Now lots of people might say that's a good thing, for my part, I'm kind of indifferent to it but it is not a means of providing housing to those in need. It does not ameliorate the crowding problem or the mould problem that comes from crowding in most social housing on-reserve. It does not give anyone who is not already on their way to financial independence the means to get there. (I suppose I should be happy about the establishment of this fund, I'm told it was established partly as a response to the paper we presented at the U.N. but somehow I can't shake the feeling that they just missed the point.)

Perhaps most importantly, the capital in the fund, all $300 million of it, will never be touched. Paying that capital back is a priority for everyone involved - and as long as it remains on the books it is a positive entry on the government's ledger that need never actually exist. It generates interest and some of that interest goes into housing education programs but most of it goes to the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation. It has created some jobs, mostly for First Nations Individuals who were already pretty well employed but then again, that makes room for the unemployed to assume the jobs on the bottom of the ladder when everyone else moves up - so that's a benefit. But it has done nothing to improve life for the 80 per cent of people living on-reserve who have bad credit.

It has done nothing to fix the situation for the thousands of native women forced to leave their homes and move to urban centers every year; women who are essentially immigrants to their own country. It has done nothing to help solve the problem of adequate infrastructure on-reserve, it has not slowed down the boil-water advisories that are in place in hundreds of reserves, it has not helped to build one single road or school or medical center. It has given comfort to the comfortable and done very little else.

In the last few days it has been brought to my attention that this situation has not changed. I will be looking into it, this time for publication, and I expect this blog will be given over to those concerns for a while and to the concerns that are related to it.

Another little factoid that was recently brought to my attention is this: Canada is a net water importer from the United States.

I never thought about it but it is true that most of the fresh fruit and vegetables eaten by Canadians are grown in the U.S. As most people know, water shortages have become a real problem in the U.S. They are not, by contrast, a problem here. Not at all. We enjoy pretty cheap fruit and vegetables from California and Florida as a part of our daily diet. Because of the free trade agreement, we don't pay much in tariffs for them either and yet we are terribly concerned that someday Americans might want our water. We frame it as an environmental issue but it's not. We're eating the water they use to grow those crops and we're not giving much back in return.

I'm not exactly sure how just yet but all of this is coming together in my head right now the way the issues of housing and how it is a determinant of social success came together just before the U.N. World Urban Forum in Vancouver.

Even if you don't buy the one-world platitudes, we are one continent and I think we have our priorities completely out of whack in this corner of the continent.

The goal of governing a piece of land should be to prevent harm to the land, to the people and to provide a structure wherein everyone has a chance to prosper, preferably an equal chance. Right now the Canadian government seems to think somehow we are going to win something by ending up as the guys with the most money or control at the end of all this. It's small minded and anyway, it won't work.

I don't know how to address this except to write about where things are going right and wrong. In Canada right now there is an awful lot going wrong, we are going wrong on a meta-political level, not just one case at a time. In the U.S I do see some hope for real and positive change, of course there are all kinds of injustices there too and terrible messes all over the place but there seems to be more dialogue. People don't seem so complacent with the status quo. That appeals to me.

Then there is the fact of reconciling my own gain with all of this - I have always thought that we should not benefit from the suffering of others and because of that I have not made it a priority to further my own journalistic career but that's a weird way to think. If I'm not making money, I get quiet and my getting quiet has never done anything much positive in my own life or anyone else's.

Plenty of times I wish I could go back to writing book reviews and critiquing the arts but like everyone else, I would like to think I might make a small difference on this planet and this is where my role seems to be - housing, water, land, freedom, belonging.

Funny the places life takes you, isn't it?

A note on editing.

It's easy to assume nobody reads this but me. In fact, that's been my assumption since beginning this blog. Sure, a couple of my friends dip in from time to time but really? I figure in the great, sweeping ocean of the blogosphere, my few personal dribbles go completely unnoticed.

As a result, I've treated this space like a letter written to myself in the future. It's come to my attention that maybe that isn't the best way to go about this.

As a poet, I think my work gets stronger as I become more brutally honest. When you take the filter off in poetry and begin to touch the raw core of human experience your work becomes more real and more universal.

Life is always much messier than it appears to be on the surface. And this blog has been written almost entirely from under the surface, sometimes well under.

However - I am not only a poet and poetry is not the writing that produces my income stream or informs much of the work that propels the mechanism of my life along. I work in advocacy, as a journalist and, ironically for this space, as an advisor on how to manage a media presence.

Recently, it has come to my attention that the blog is actually getting read. (Thank you, google news alerts.) That has presented me with a dilemma. How do I keep the tone and ease-of-use of this blog while respecting the personal boundaries of the people in my life? It's a difficult question, one that Leonard Cohen has gone on record as saying can only be answered with "You don't." As a poet, that's true. As every other kind of writer and as a human being making difficult, life altering choices, probably not.

I've always said I'm a person first and journalist second, anything other than a person has to come second or life gets out of whack. In keeping with the spirit of this blog I want to tell you I am doing my best. If you are one of the people who has read the posts that divulge too much, well - that's done. I'm removing them now and I will make every effort, if you're one of the people in my life whom I love, to keep your interests and your feelings foremost in my mind.

When I forget, I hope you'll remind me just as I hope never to sacrifice compassion for honesty or vice versa.

Again with the advertising.

Today A friend posted a video on Facebook - here it is.

Now what do you think the purpose of that was? Do you think it has a purpose? Most of the people I've met think it does not. (If you watch the credits, it's obvious but the way it's structured, with commentary from the people who watched it tacked on the to the end of the thing itself, most people don't watch it all the way to the end.)

If you were one of those people, you should know this is an ad for Trident's latest product, a layered fruit gum that comes in flavors like pineapple/granny smith apple. If you thought that was a fun, spontaneous moment in a supermarket, you were supposed to think that but you were wrong. (Just like you were supposed to think Ikea Heights was a spontaneous theatre project.)

I'm not saying the ad is bad or wrong or even that the approach is wrong, I'm just saying, we need to be aware of the difference between advertising and "spontaneous creativity."

I suppose it could be argued that all art has an agenda but not all art is designed to provoke a smile and hopefully a purchase once you reach the checkout. That is the realm of commercial art, propaganda and public persuasion.

More importantly, art isn't so ashamed of its agenda that it tries to conceal it. Neither is it so determined to play on your sense of happy coincidence and personal enchantment.

So, should we start making art that persuades while pretending to merely amuse? Or should we maybe be aware of who writes the score, directs the video, pays the singer and ultimately cashes the check?

and just in case you wondered if I'm being a paranoid spoilsport....

this is an excerpt from the FAQ section of Improv Everywhere's website:

"I work for a brand / marketing firm / advertising agency, can we hire you?

Maybe. We do not stage official Improv Everywhere missions that advertise a brand. However, we have in the past worked with companies as creative consultants helping to develop campaigns and as video producers creating content for a brand. We have also staged pranks at internal meetings and conventions for corporate clients. We do this work independent of Improv Everywhere, and will not use this site or its resources to promote it.

We also take on sponsorship from time to time. If a company wants to hire us to simply do a mission we already want to do (with their brand having nothing to do with the content,) we would consider sponsorship. We think this video is a good example of a brand sponsoring a project.

Why would you ever work with a brand? Isn’t that against the spirit of IE?

Taking on occasional corporate gigs helps us continue to do what we do. Doing a small amount of corporate work (while keeping it separate from Improv Everywhere,) allows us to pay our New York City rents and fund future Improv Everywhere events. In terms of taking on a sponsor, we see it as no different than a television show being supported by commercials. So long as our content is not influenced by the sponsor, we think it is a smart way to fund our work."

And here is the original video to which they are referring. Remember this? People posted it all over the place, turns out it was for Stride Gum - just like the new one is for Trident Layers.

http://urbanprankster.com/2008/06/where-the-hell-is-matt/

This is the meat of their pitch btw. It bears remembering that the idea of posting a "frequently asked questions" section on your website is useful because it frees you from quoting a source. Anyone could be asking this question. If you're the owner of the website you could even be asking it to yourself, and because it's a "frequently asked question" you don't have to quote a source, there is no source - you're paraphrasing something that has come up any number of times. (good way to get your point across without sounding pushy or even assertive - it wasn't IE that asked this question after all, it's just out there in the ether - the question of How do we make money on this? You have to admit, it's a pretty important question since we all need money to live.

The thing is this, advertising is always going to take new forms and because we tend to think of advertising as a bad thing those forms are likely to be more disguised as the public becomes more adept at recognizing the old ones. Because once we see an ad for what it is, we tend to disregard it.

I'm interested in why we are so intent on preserving the illusion of spontaneous, creative expression even at the expense of awareness of how we are being persuaded to act.

I'm also interested in the response that will make most people who read this post - is anyone does, pissed off that I even mentioned it. Why does knowing this is a profit-based activity change your view of it?

Facebook itself is an advertising medium - and I'm not talking about those irritating little squares that line the top of your screen when you're playing a game or the side of your page when you're engaged in other things. I'm talking about the people you choose to friend and what you decide goes up on your page and why.

Facebook is a consensual, community advertising forum. In a way, it's a variation on Second Life. Where Second Life creates consensual geography, FB creates preferential demographics or aspirational demographics. We choose the organizations and individuals that appeal to our sense of who we are on FB and through that choice we end up cobbling together an advertising demographic that relies on interest and self-identification rather than the usual physical factors of age, income bracket, gender, geography, profession and education.

It's also an advertising demographic that provides an audience that is genuinely interested in what you have to say. And if you can disguise your content to appear to be a quirky, amusing video posted by a friend - well, why wouldn't you pick up that packet of gum that just happens to be squished together fruit flavors (pineapple apple) at the checkout counter? After all, it reminds you of your FB friend and their cute little video, you haven't tried it before and it only costs a couple of bucks, in a way, it's a reminder of a good, shared joke. And that makes it worth its weight in gum.

Once more with feeling

Yes, here I go again.

I noticed in the Montreal Gazette this morning there was a story about the City of Montreal offering incentives, actually pretty big ones, to families who choose to move there.

$12,500 in addition to the $7 a day child care and the all-round much better quality of cultural life in a city that everyone knows is lovely beyond compare (in the Canadian context,) is nothing to sneeze at. It's cheaper to live in Montreal than it is in most major Canadian cities, the food is better the art is spectacular and the people are hipper than Conan (even the dull people.)

So why are they losing between 15 and 20 thousand families a year? At this rate the city will be emptied out by mid-century. Well, speaking as a member of one of the earliest groups of Montreal ex-pats, I can sum it up for you in one word: French.

See, as much as we diligently try to pretend Canada is a bilingual country, it's not. And like it or not Canada is going to have to accept that we are part of the rest of the world pretty soon. French is the 16th most widely spoken language in the world, right after Marathi and just before Korean. French is well behind German, Bengali, Portuguese and yes, even behind Javanese. Personally, I didn't know there was such a language as Javanese so I was pretty surprised at that.

You learn to speak French if you want to work in France or work in a bistro, a haute-couture house or as a translator. For those of you unfamiliar with Canada's major industries, let me assure you, going to France, French bistros, haute couture fashion houses and translation services do not number in the top 20 contributors to the GDP.

If you live in Quebec, unless you go to elaborate lengths, your kids will be educated in French. The idea is that English is easy to pick up whereas French is hard, I suppose. But English, used and spoken well, is not easy. If you're in Ottawa, call the federal government - any branch, any level, and try to speak to one of the "bilingual" Canadians employed there; as they cough out the broken English that passes for fluency in Quebec, and you'll see how easy English is.

I'm glad I live in a country where learning a second language in the public school system is a common thing but it should be a useful language not one that has been legislated into life. Teach kids Russian, Arabic or Spanish, Chinese or Hindi and they'll have more skills to market globally than if you teach them French. Seriously, what are we thinking?

The thing is this - it's fine for a government to say, "we have two official languages in this country, learn to speak one or the other and you're ok. If you speak one OR the other we will make sure you can get all services in your language." It's wrong to force one on people and exclude the other and plenty of people will tell you, if you live in BC bilingual means you speak Mandarin and English and who is to say that shouldn't be the way things are there?

Here we are, 2010, and Quebec is still trying to force people to act as though it were 1700. It's not. And we're not going to fix a thing by using bait to lure people into a broken, culturally exclusive system.

My father was not a great guy. Anyone can tell you, I didn't idolize him, not even close, but he did instil in me the idea that no matter what anyone pretends is right - whether its because it's popular or because the government says it's right - I needed to think it through for myself and if it did not stand up to scrutiny, it was not right. Canadian linguistic policy does not stand up to scrutiny, it defies common sense, it's not politically correct to say so but it's still true; Trudeau was wrong, we got it wrong.

Boundaries and the artificial perpetuation of an elitist culture (especially one that is straining to evolve) aren't working. Especially those that are based on some outdated ideal of a "founding nation." Unless you are First Nations, you're not a member of a founding nation in Canada. I'm tired of pretending there's something edifying about protecting the obsolete at all costs.

Montreal, here's what I think; if you have to pay people to come to your dinner party then maybe you should rethink the menu.

Pictures

In no particular order - cause I can never figure out how this blog organizes photos here are;

My perfect Sunday morning breakfast. Eggs Ontario - thick-cut, 7 grain toast, baked ham, baby spinach, poached eggs and 5 year-old white cheddar cheese sauce with onion puree and red pepper flakes.

Lime flavored shaved ice with strawberries from a little hut next to a convenience store on Cesar Chavez in Austin TX

A pretty disturbing sign that caught the corner of my eye (and viewfinder) on the road out of Boston Mass.

A sun column in Ottawa ON

Terrain around Kamloops BC

Two graffiti murals in Austin TX.

One little corner of the big Texas sky

First real sunset of 2010 from my Ottawa balcony.

I am trying to find the best in Ottawa - miss Austin an awful lot.

Working and Functioning

Looking at the news, one can't help but wonder if we've lost our understanding of what it means to "work." The Canadian government is out on a prolonged Christmas break. For the most part our officials seem to think preparing the public for the next election (their election - I am not misusing a word here, Canadians don't vote on legislation) makes up the main part of their job description, meanwhile the country ends up being governed by clerical process.

Listening to the news, it is difficult not to notice the tendency of Canadian business to blend into the American economic landscape and it is increasingly difficult to make any coherent argument against it.

This is a country with a population the size of Texas located on a land mass larger than any other in the world except for China and Russia - that's right we're bigger than Australia, by quite a bit. (and honestly, I'm not sure about China)

If it were populated like any other country in the world then economic and military autonomy might make some sense but we're not. Canada's population is declining and we weren't all that populated to begin with.

I've thought a lot about this. It puzzles me that on one side of the border we have the world's superpower, bustling along making huge strides and huge mistakes but in general being followed by the rest of the world and on the other we have a huge pile of natural resources and a country that most of the world considers benignly irrelevant.

There's no question that Canadians are a bit different from Americans - for one thing cars are not as important here as they are in the states. You'd think, given the weather, that would be reversed but it isn't. I've been in plenty of cities in both countries and Canadians drive less, think less about their cars and seem, in general, to see a car more as a means to an end than as a part of their identity.

Canadians organize differently, think about health care differently - it would never occur to a Canadian to choose a job based on health benefits but in the U.S. that is common.

But when it comes to something like TV, Canadians seem to want and expect to be treated like Americans. Of course, this is not really possible and the cracks in the Canadian broadcast industry really underscore this fact.

The engine of TV is not viewers, it's advertising. If your market is the size of Texas but it has to be spread out over stations that cover the same land mass as the continental United States, and then some - you've got problems.

International advertisers aren't likely to show the same kind of enthusiasm for that market as they would for the ten times larger market in the states. And who can blame them? (And when I say international advertisers, I mean American advertisers which is really not the same since the Canadian film and TV market is widely considered to be one domestic market.)

So high-revenue generators like the Superbowl, tend not to have the same quality of ads in Canada as the do in the U.S. This means Canadian TV is not as well funded as American TV which in turn means there are less $$$$ to try to reach more territory (but fewer people) with.

All of that is fine by your basic Canadian since most of us watch more American TV than Canadian anyhow. But what does it mean from an economic standpoint? And in turn, what does that mean culturally?

Are we working? As a country, do we understand what it means to function? Or are we just focused on getting from one decade to the next with everything pretty much the same as it was the decade before? Do we know the difference between doing a job and just keeping it?

Sometimes I wonder.

Even more random than usual.

This blog is all over the place - a poem here, a few pictures, a story there, some political frustrations vented and a few ideas mixed in. I think there might even be some recipes.

Today, that's a fair description of me.

I'm unhappy with my status as a Canadian citizen on so many levels. Of course it's absurd to complain about being a citizen of a developed nation but on the other hand, how many countries deliberately remain under such a demeaning system as an actual Monarchy?

I'm watching the Hamster in Chief rule Canada like a king and of course he can. He appointed the Governor General and he can haul her ass right out of there and because Canada is what it is - what she says, ultimately, goes. What this means is a man who should have no more power than any other MP is actually and effectively an absolute ruler of what was supposed to be an augmented democracy.

Then there is that fact in and of itself.

We are closer to the United States than any other country. We share a land mass, culture, values, traditions, holidays and realistically - a language. Many of us, myself included, have our roots on both sides of the border. In my case the division is pretty extreme being both Revolutionary (I am descended from Charles Carroll of Carrollton on one branch of my mother's family) and United Empire Loyalist. (not surprisingly, a close relative of Carroll's - my family tends to be polarized.)

That mixed descent and my scrutiny of both systems and the laws that form the structure of our lives in the broadest sense has given me a perspective that is both deeply personal and at the same time completely objective on the issue of nationhood and borders.

I look at these two countries, so very close together and I see two siblings who have a deep and unresolved wound between them. Literally, Canada abandoned the U.S. in order to side with the idea of Monarchy. That division remains. Canadians are subjects of the Queen and that reality has much more of an impact on our daily lives than people understand. SH could not prorogue parliament if that were not so - and that is only one example. Try saying no to a mining company that wants to tear up your farm and you'll soon see another even more disastrous after effect of that decision.

In my view, there's no dignity in living like this. I listen to what people say, read the news, watch people's actions and it seems apparent to me that most of them don't even know what it means to be Canadian as opposed to being American. There is this prevailing view that Canada is a gentler, quieter, less warlike version of the United States. It's not true. Americans talk and argue and often end up in places where they should not be, perhaps but they discuss these things. The dialogue is always open. There is no power in the United States that can shut the government down for a breather - not even the President has that power. That power belongs only to the people.

Canada is the younger sibling who just has to be contrary even if it costs them every common-sense benefit in the book. Originally, Canada didn't feel secure enough or real enough to have equality, instead we knelt to the Crown just in case we should ever have to draw on those resources. It was cowardly then and it is damaging now.

Canada removed itself from the discussion over 200 years ago. The country chose servitude over being "rude" and I think they were fools to do it. Worse, we hang on to it as though there were any reason at all to be this way. And then we're baffled when the U.S, treats us as though we are a secondary nation. We shouldn't be - we are.

I'm pretty sure most Canadians don't realize this. From what I've heard we, as a group, seem to think the powers of the Crown are a formality. I can say with absolute certainty - they're not. Those powers are the determining force that decides the fate of the country and everyone living in it.

If there were two siblings and one chose to educate herself, work to be independent, make her own decisions and learn to live in the world on her own while the other chose to stay at home, refused an education, insisted on being cared for, refused to participate in life in any but the most rudimentary, functional ways. One was perhaps too brash, too noisy but always sunny. That one cared about life and lived it to the fullest, often getting into trouble, exploring new places, trying new things and failing as often as not but getting out there, making things, talking to people, caring. While the other went along with everyone in public but sourly hated most of them in private, did not speak her mind, stayed in her hometown, focused on her looks and what she could get from her mother, was angry and narrow and bitter and although she often talked about making things or doing things never actually did - which one would you say had a more vital outlook on the world? Which one would you want to know? Which one would you want to be?

For me the answer is not always pleasant because I live that truth on every level but it is simple. There's no contest. Sour, bitter, inward and tied to your mother for life is no way to live, not as a person, not as a country.

How the U.S. deals with Canada is sometimes beyond my ability to comprehend. Canada rejected every sensible thing the Americans ever came up with; including democracy. Yet Canada still expects to be treated as an equal and included in every discussion. It is a mark of how civilized the Americans are that they can put aside the absolute rejection of every American value and the subsequent pretence that such a rejection never occurred well to treat Canada like a valued sister nation. It is something to learn from. It is good manners on a global scale. Personally, if I were the U.S. and I had to deal with such a wrong-headed sibling always tugging at my coat sleeve, I would not be so kind.

So today, I try to look forward. Try to parcel my life out into the personal and the political, the present and the past. I try to enjoy what is here, exactly where I am but in that moment, cannot and do not forget to consider the future in everything I do. It's a hard balance to live without regret in this moment, carry along the lessons of the past without crying over them and embrace an uncertain future as though it had any promise. I am trying to write out my greater demons in order to get there. It's not an easy thing.