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Robert Kennedy and Mỹ Lai; A Coincidence That Matters

/ John Boyko / Leave a comment

Talented Canadian singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette enjoyed a hit song a few years ago listing a number of things she found ironic. Actually, the things about which she sang were not ironic at all but merely unfortunate or at best coincidences. Coincidences are fun. Sometimes they matter. Let’s consider one that resonates today.

The Coincidence of March 16, 1968.

The Americanized portion of the Vietnam War had been grinding on for nearly four years. Despite President Johnson’s repeated assurances, there was no end in sight. The people trying to carry on with their lives in tiny, rural villages were regularly terrorized by men fighting for one or the other of the war’s many sides. The horrors felt by the men doing the terrorizing were overwhelming. By the spring of 1968 it was clear to everyone but the willfully blind that the war would have victims but no victors.

One afternoon a group of Americans walked into two small hamlets and went insane. They ceased to be soldiers. They ceased to be human. They murdered between 350 and 500 unarmed men, women, and children. It took a long time. Many were shot and some were hacked the death; many were tortured. Children watched their mothers being gang-raped. A few soldiers laughed as one of their comrades took three shots to kill a baby who was lying on the ground. It became known as the Mỹ Lai Massacre.

On that same day, Robert F. Kennedy announced his candidacy for the presidency of the United States. Everyone knew him because he had been his brother’s attorney general and in many ways the co-president. While John Kennedy was a realist disguised as a dreamer, Robert was a true romantic with a realist’s understanding of how to get things done. After the assassination in Dallas, he became a New York senator. He led a number of initiatives including the reconstruction of Brooklyn’s tough Bedford-Stuyvesant neighbourhood through partnerships with three levels of government, banks, corporations, and community organizers. He got things done.

As he stood before a bank of microphones that March afternoon he didn’t know about the massacre. But he knew that Vietnam was among many things that were wrong as he announced that he would run to be president in an effort to end the war and make some of those other things right. He said, “I run to seek new policies – policies to end the bloodshed in Vietnam and in our cities, policies to close the gaps that now exist between black and white, between rich and poor, between young and old, in this country and around the rest of the world.  I run for the presidency because I want the Democratic Party and the United States of America to stand for hope instead of despair, for reconciliation of men instead of the growing risk of world war. I run because it is now unmistakably clear that we can change these disastrous, divisive policies only by changing the men who are now making them.”

RFK

As he campaigned he spoke to Black audiences about taking more responsibility for their families. He spoke to university students about the unfairness of their draft deferments. He spoke to business leaders about being responsible to more than just their bottom lines. He made people mad. He made people think.

Consider his beliefs regarding how we measure wealth: “Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that…counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities.  It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”

On the same day that some men were visiting unspeakable horror on people they did not know, another man was pledging himself to help people he would never meet. It was not ironic. It was a coincidence. It is a coincidence that matters because it enabled Americans then and us today to consider the dark side that lurks within us all and right alongside it our yearning to do better; to be better, to do good.

The March 16, 1968 coincidence challenges us to ask whether we can accept horrors that make us cringe without losing faith. Can we remain idealistic without being naïve? Can we remain realistic without being cynical? Today we are inundated by images of hatred and despair and there are plenty that match Mỹ Lai’s power. Can we reject those who use the images to sell themselves and their divisive views and instead remain convinced that our public discourse is a place for respect, for alternate opinions, the telling of hard truths, calm determination, and for hope and even for love?

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Who Are We and Who Do We Aspire to Be?

/ John Boyko / Leave a comment

The bread and circuses of patriotism thrives on songs and slogans. It swaps history’s complexity for misty-eyed nostalgia. Defining, unifying, inspiring state nationalism, on the other hand, is harder. Patriotism is about celebration but nationalism is about identity. While patriotism loves songs, nationalism demands sovereignty. After all, if your identity is up for sale to the highest bidder then you have no identity at all and might as well grab a funny hat and enjoy patriotism’s parade.

Two Canadian leaders whose parties and personalities were miles apart were quite similar in asking Canadians to look beyond the balm of patriotism to the challenge of nationalism. They asked Canadians to consider who they were and who they aspired to be: John Diefenbaker and Pierre Trudeau.

The Trudeau campaign in 1968 was reminiscent of John Diefenbaker’s in 1958. Both raised a number of concerns and ideas but quickly became less about issues than a vague vision and more about charisma than anything. In 1958, reporters did not know what to make of Diefenbaker’s evangelical appeal. Ten years later, with the Beatles craze fresh in their minds, they wrote of Trudeaumania.

Once in office Trudeau channelled many of the old Chief’s strategic goals. Trudeau was inspired to enter public life by a desire to fight Quebec’s ethnic nationalism that he saw as dangerous to the country and an insult to Quebecers. Diefenbaker’s 1960 Bill of Rights had similarly sought to combat Canada’s ethnic and racial divisions by protecting the rights of all as individuals – as citizens. Trudeau took that vision a step further with the creation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and its insertion in the constitution. Trudeau’s Canada was Diefenbaker’s “One Canada”. Both reflected a belief in a vibrant pan-Canadian identity.

Trudeua and Diefenbaker

Trudeau, Pearson and Diefenbaker

Diefenbaker and Trudeau’s state nationalism also reflected their understanding that Canada needed to be constantly vigilant in guarding against a chipping away at the frail and fragile walls protecting its sovereignty. This involved standing up to the United States. Trudeau spoke before the Washington Press Club in 1969 and famously quipped: “Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No mattered how friendly and even tempered the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.”

It was an apt metaphor describing the asymmetrical nature of the Canadian-American relationship that Diefenbaker and Lester Pearson accepted and upon which President Kennedy had based his bullying ways. At that point and for years, after all, Canada had a tenth of the American population, its economy was about was a tenth as large and a comparison of military clout was not worth making.

Trudeau’s Foreign Investment Review Agency and the crown corporation Petro-Canada were not attempts to reduce Canadian-American trade and investment but rather to manage it while diversifying Canadian markets. They and other initiatives sought to render Canada less dependent upon the United States by increasing Canada’s economic autonomy. The old adage is that when the American economy gets a cold, Canada gets pneumonia. Diefenbaker and Trudeau both sought to strengthen Canada’s immune system. Part of that infusion of antibodies involved taking steps that Kennedy had warned Diefenbaker not to dare but he did anyway; he continued Canada’s trade with Cuba and China. Trudeau went a step further. He created even more trade links with both and even visited Castro and Mao.

After a long and complex review, Trudeau’s government published six booklets entitled Foreign Policy for Canadians. They presented recommendations that Diefenbaker’s government would have championed and a rejection of nearly everything to which Pearson had dedicated his diplomatic and political career. It insisted that foreign and defence policies should narrow its focus to reflect and advance Canada’s national interests. It should not, Trudeau said in an obvious slight to Pearson, involve Canada’s acting as a “helpful fixer” to the world.

It took a few years but by 1984 Trudeau had returned all the American nuclear weapons that Diefenbaker had said he did not want but that Pearson had welcomed into Canada. As Diefenbaker had during his tenure, Trudeau advocated and supported a number of initiatives to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world and to halt nuclear proliferation.

When an American oil company’s ice breaker called the Manhattan planned to move through Canada’s arctic waters, Diefenbaker rose in the House to demand Trudeau protect Canada’s sovereignty. Trudeau shared Dief’s hopes for the North’s potential and knew that potential would be dashed if Canada did not demonstrate its ownership of all its land and waters. Consequently, Trudeau managed the issue carefully and ensured that a Canadian ice breaker – the Sir John A. Macdonald, no less – escorted the American vessel. He also had Canadians put on the Manhattan’s bridge. Diefenbaker had promised to open the North by building roads to resources. Trudeau recognized that another of those roads was the North West passage.

As had happened with Diefenbaker, Trudeau’s standing up to the Americans and pushing where he could to promote and protect Canadian sovereignty was not well received by America. Echoing President Kennedy’s thoughts on Diefenbaker, President Nixon’s Secretary of State Henry Kissinger noted, “It cannot be said that Nixon and Trudeau were ideally suited for each other…he tended to consider him soft on defence and in his general attitude toward the east.” In fact, in private Kennedy often called Diefenbaker a host of derogatory names and the Watergate tapes revealed Nixon calling Trudeau a ‘son of a bitch’ and an ‘asshole’. When told of the slurs, Trudeau responded that he’d been called worse things by better people.

Despite these personality problems, when in 1971 Nixon implemented a tax policy that threatened to damage all of its trading partners, Trudeau was able to sit in the Oval Office and negotiate a Canadian exemption. Once again, just as Diefenbaker had proven when there was a run on the Canadian dollar and Kennedy had helped; personal differences do not have to stand in the way of policy solutions.

Trudeau’s actions and intentions garnered criticism from the same groups of Canadians that had turned on Diefenbaker. Provincial premiers, business people and political elites who stood to lose profits, power and tax revenue objected to attempts to increase Canada’s autonomy.  A politician without enemies is a politician doing nothing and worthless.

In 1965 George Grant published an important book entitled Lament for a Nation. It lamented the end of Canadian nationalism and the surrendering of Canada’s sovereignty to the United States. He wrote that Diefenbaker represented the last gasp of Canadian nationalism. He was wrong.  Pearson gave Canada its flag and Expo ’67 but they represented merely shallow, transitory patriotism. Diefenbaker had gone further by challenging Canadians to think not as patriots but as nationalists. Three years after Grant bemoaned nationalism’s death, a new political leader took up Diefenbaker’s legacy and challenged Canadians all over again.

Like all political leaders, Diefenbaker and Trudeau sometimes lost their way and traded strategic goals for tactical victories; but both did the best they could. While addressing the myriad decisions and crises that came their way they asked Canadians to raise themselves from the muck of the everyday. Diefenbaker and Trudeau challenged Canadians to consider, if even for a moment, if Canada is a country worth fighting for.

Lessons Learned from Fear, Vision and Tradition

/ John Boyko / Leave a comment

On a cool September afternoon a group of Canadians aboard a luxury ship arrived at the picturesque Charlottetown harbour. They dressed in their best finery and awaited a grand welcome. It didn’t come. Instead, a lone man appeared in a row boat far below and shouted up an invitation to dinner. It was an unexpected beginning to a week that for many would have an unexpected end. Within nine days, most of it spent dining, drinking, and dancing, a new country would be born.

The men assembled embarked on an audacious experiment that remains underway. In the shadow of a brutal war and the demands of an unforgiving clock they attempted to improve on what the British had bequeathed and the Americans seemed intent on burning. We can better understand today by considering what they created then.

Wily politician and political survivor John A. Macdonald led the Canadian delegation. At that moment – September 1, 1864, 150 years ago – Canada was a dysfunctional amalgam of what are now the southern bits of Ontario and Quebec. They were crashing a previously arranged meeting of delegates from New Brunswick, PEI, and Nova Scotia who were gathering to discuss a possible Maritime union.

photo

 

Author with Sir John A. and George Brown (OK, not really)

 
Confederation had been discussed and dismissed for years. But changes in the United States and Britain meant that to save itself Canada had to create itself. America had fallen into Civil War. It left cities burned and families destroyed. If we extrapolated the population then for now it would claim the equivalent of over six million lives.

Canada and the Maritimes were officially neutral but most newspapers were pro-South, Halifax and Saint John ports sold goods to both sides, factories ran weapons to the South, an anti-Lincoln political party operated from Windsor, and a Confederate spy ring organized raids from Toronto and Montreal. American newspapers and generals threatened and Lincoln hinted that when the war ended, the Northern army would turn north.

Britain had dispatched 11,000 troops to the border but a powerful group of British politicians were questioning the cost of that defence and of imperialism itself. They wanted the expensive and troublesome British North American colonies to find their own way.

Canada resembled a teenager whose parents were kicking her out of the house. She wouldn’t move in with the neighbours because their house was on fire. She needed to build a new house. The architects met in Charlottetown. They were government and opposition members who had pledged to surrender partisanship for the greater good.

The United States was the world’s first and most successful manifestation of John Locke’s 18th century Enlightenment ideas. But the men (and they were all men) in Charlottetown believed that while the sentiments were noble, the Civil War was demonstrating that America’s attempt to create an enlightened republic was a blazing failure. They channelled Irish nationalist and British Member of Parliament Edmund Burke. He believed that governments should not be based upon temporary popularity which he equated to shouts from a mob, but on tested and respected tradition. Facts and the circumstances of the day should dictate reasonable solutions; decisions should never be based on blind adherence to an ideology. With admiration for Burke and Britain and America as their negative example they envisioned Canada.

Power, they said, should not rest with the executive – they derided the American president as a four-year dictator – but with parliament. Through free elections, they argued, the people should not pick a prime minister or even a government. Rather, voters should create a House and the House would choose the government according to which group could earn support. Members of parliament must not be delegates merely echoing the views of their constituents but thoughtful free thinkers unencumbered by the often un- or ill-informed electorate or partisan newspapers. The Senate must be appointed to keep it illegitimate so that real power remained where it belonged – in the House. The struggle for State’s rights had led to the Civil War so they insisted that the federal government alone speak for Canada. They saw provinces as municipal in nature and restricted their power to areas on a short, proscriptive list. The British monarch should oversee it all as Head of State.

Anniversaries, and a 150th is one of significance, are invitations to reflect on the past and ponder the future. Canada was born of fear, vision and tradition. What of the old fear? The Americans may not be ready to bomb us anymore but have they bought us? What of the old vision? A democratic state locates power to best serve the nation but are we happy with where power has been relocated? What of the old tradition? Should we pursue our sovereignty by eschewing the sovereign? What would Sir John say? More importantly, on our collective anniversary, what do you say?

An edited version of this article appeared last week in the Ottawa Citizen, Montreal Gazette and Vancouver Sun. To discover more about Canada’s birth in the shadow of the American Civil War and about Canada’s involvement in that war please see “Blood and Daring: How Canada Fought the American Civil War and Forged a Nation”.

http://www.amazon.ca/Blood-Daring-Canada-Fought-American/dp/0307361462/ref=sr_1_1_title_2_pap?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1410174613&sr=1-1

Honour in the Worst Jobs

/ John Boyko / Leave a comment

All work is honourable but some jobs are awful. The luckiest among us marry jobs and passion and often have smaller houses but broader smiles. The saddest folks labour only for money and many end up struggling to fill holes in their soul with stuff. There is something to be learned from all work and perhaps the best lessons are offered by the worst jobs.

My worst job was not the winter I laboured as an Esso gas station attendant. Besides cleaning the bathrooms, sweeping the place and occasionally swiping stale chocolate bars, I would have made Pavlov grin when at the ping of the ding I jumped into coat and hat to leap to the pumps outside. With the temperature often far south of zero, I became quite adept at yawning hoods and checking oil in mere seconds and at kicking the frozen pail of ostensibly un-freezable blue goop to squeegee windshields. I had a cold all that cold winter. I received one tip – fifty cents.

My worst job was not the two summers with the Peterborough parks department. I enjoyed one morning each week when I drove the golf cart to ball diamonds around town to drag the angle iron in circles and then chalk baselines. But I also pierced garbage with a broken hockey stick with a bent nail in the end. In a hard hat and steel-toed boots, I ignored my allergy to freshly cut grass while pushing a lawn mower in circles around trees and up and down hills and other places the big tractors couldn’t go. I nodded obediently when my suggestion for punctuation was ignored and then dutifully erected thirty signs that read: No Golf Playing Motorized Vehicles. They were certainly effective because after that I didn’t see a single motorized vehicle playing golf.

When it rained, the three crews of university students were gathered under the Hunter Street Bridge where we sat in a large bunker-like room on makeshift seats with traffic rumbling above and covering us with dust. Against one dank and filthy wall lay a mountain of tulip bulbs. For several chilly, soggy days, hour after excruciating hour, we peeled each bulb and placed it in the correct bushel baskets: large, medium, small, and rotten. There were bulb wars and songs and jokes and one afternoon a guy entertained us with Penthouse letters; he inserted the word blank for the nasty bits, making each depraved offering seem even nastier still.

My worst job lasted only one night. My friend Chris and I were fifteen when we saw the ad in the paper and showed up at the Towers Department store parking lot that night at 9:00. At the yelp of the crew-boss, we boarded the ancient yellow school bus, gasped at the smell, and tried not to make eye contact with any of the scary looking people around us. We bounced in silence beyond the city’s lights to a rural golf course that in the inky darkness was as creepy as our workmates. Given no instructions, we followed the others and secured miner’s lights to our foreheads. Using big elastic bands we fastened empty juice cans to our ankles and scooped a handful of sawdust into the left one. We began following the safest looking man but in a truly impressive demonstration of the manner in which the “F” bomb can be noun, verb and adjective in a single, complex sentence he suggested that we find our own spot. It took a while, but we finally wandered to an empty fairway.

We had been promised a cent a worm. Chris had calculated how much we could make in only one night and all afternoon we couldn’t wait to begin. But now that we were there, stumbling through the chill and darkness, we couldn’t wait to earn our first penny.

We couldn’t find a worm anywhere. It was nearly thirty minutes before I lunged at my first victim. I missed him. It was another thirty before we mastered the plunge and yank needed to can one, as we began calling it. We jumped and ran when the automatic sprinklers clicked to life but then smiled when worms began appearing on the wet grass that glistened black under the August moon. We learned to time the rotations. We’d run in, can a couple, and then scamper back without getting too wet. The sawdust on our fingers kept the slippery buggers from sliding away and we learned to be quick. With a slip on the wet grass I lost nearly half my catch but we kept going.

Honour in the Worst Jobs

(Photo: www.oregonlive.com)

We worked hard all night and at the horn’s blast returned to the bus. We were stiff and dog tired but stood proudly in line to present our haul to the crew-boss who sat behind a long beat-up wooden table. Some of our work mates had earned the money that we had dreamed about but I had managed to pick only one full can – 250 worms. The tough looking women with the Ukrainian accent counted out two dollars and fifty cents. Chris earned just a little bit more.

We napped on the dirty bus and stumbled out bleary-eyed and filthy. The city was shaking itself awake with cars piercing the morning mist as we shuffled across the street to the neon glare of the donut shop. We bought donuts and chocolate milk until our night’s pay was gone. Later that afternoon, Chris called and we agreed that one night of worm-picking was plenty.

Over the years, I’ve written a number of resumes but I never listed worm picker. Perhaps I should have. This evening, when I slide between clean sheets, I’ll afford a thought for folks who will spend the night standing guard, serving coffee, buffing floors, dumping garbage, and yes, even hunting worms. There is honour in all work. Perhaps there is even more in work that needs to be done but most of us would rather not do and when we would rather not do it and all for wages we would rather not accept.  Maybe it is in that work, at three in morning, with folks doing the best they can for the families they love, that lies the most honour of all.

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Top Ten Ways that Canada Fought the American Civil War

/ John Boyko / Leave a comment

The American Civil War was America’s third civil war. The first occurred within the Revolutionary war when about a third of the people were neutral and another third were loyal to the British king. Many loyalists were harassed and killed and thousands fled to the safety of what would become Canada. The second American civil war began in 1812 under pretences so rickety they would blush the chalky cheeks of Dick Cheney. Because so many of those dying in Canadian border towns were the same un-American Americans who had fled the Revolution, the War of 1812 was really a cousin’s war.

We are as wrong to consider the 1861-1865 American Civil War the country’s first and only civil war as we are to consider it only an American war. France, Britain, Russia and what was becoming Germany were all active participants. More than any other country, however, Canada fought the American Civil War.

At the time, of course, Canada was not yet a country but a group of British colonies lying on America’s porous border. The colony called Canada was a squabbling and politically dysfunctional amalgam of Canada West (Ontario) and Canada East (Quebec). Most Americans also called New Brunswick and Nova Scotia Canada but such name-calling would spark a fight in any Halifax or Moncton bar.

Many Americans made no secret of coveting Canada with newspapers and politicians regularly reporting plans to buy, bomb or annex it. America had invaded Canada in the Revolution and again in 1812. The new civil war had Canadians steeling themselves to fight again.

Canada was involved in the Civil War’s cause, course and consequences. It affected when Canada was created and the nature of that creation. Here are the top ten ways that Canada fought the American Civil War:

  1. Slavery – Canada abolished slavery in 1833. About 30,000 racial refugees followed the North Star to forge lives of dignified freedom. Southerners were enraged because ex-slaves living happy, productive lives challenged everything they were saying about Black people’s desires and potential and the foundation upon which their society rested. The Canadian examples inspired Northern abolitionists. The Underground Railroad grew along with the animosities between North and South. Harriet Beecher Stowe based Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the book that Lincoln said caused the war, on an escaped slave living in Canada.
  2. Self-Defence – With war on the horizon, Lincoln’s newly appointed Secretary of State William H. Seward secretly advocated reuniting America by instigating a war with Britain by capturing Canada. The attack, he said, would lead Southerners to rally around the flag and forget secession and Britain would negotiate an end to the war by ceding Canada to America. Lincoln considered the idea but said no – for now. British and Canadian officials took Seward’s public threats quite seriously. Canadians helping the South through arms sales and other means led many American newspapers, politicians and generals to call for invasion. Over eleven thousand British soldiers were dispatched to the border. The Royal Navy was redeployed. Canadian militia were trained and armed. Border fortifications were enhanced and artillery stood ready.
  3. Soldiers – About 40,000 Canadians donned the blue and gray. Nearly all fought in Northern regiments. Most volunteered, some were tricked, and others, even children, were kidnapped and forced into uniform. Canadians fought in every major battle and 29 earned the Congressional Medal of Honor. Canadians swept down from Gettysburg’s Little Round Top, stood with Grant at Lee’s surrender and a Canadian led the troops that captured Lincoln’s assassin.
  4. Spies – When the war began turning south for the South, Confederate President Jefferson Davis created a spy network in Canada. Stationed in fancy Toronto and Montreal hotels, spy leader Jacob Thompson organized Confederates and their Canadian sympathisers to run communications for and weapons to the South. In Halifax, money was made selling supplies and information to Southern blockade runners and then to the Northern ships pursuing them.
  5. Sorties – Jacob Thompson disturbed and distracted Northern military operations with raids to free Confederate prisoners. He had yellow-fever infected clothing distributed in northern cities. He organized the plot that saw theatres and hotels simultaneously burst into flame along Manhattan’s Broadway. The raid on St. Albans, Vermont led to deaths, an incursion of American troops into Canada and Congressional reprisals designed to punish Canada.
  6. Separation – The Copperheads hated Lincoln. They were Northerners who wanted the war stopped with slavery and the Confederacy preserved and, failing that, the formation a new country comprised of several mid-west states. Lincoln called the Copperhead movement “the fire in the rear” and said that he feared its power as much as the Southern armies. The Copperhead’s chief spokesman was Clement Vallandigham who inspired Copperheads and campaigned to be governor of Ohio from his headquarters in Windsor, Canada West.
  7. Salvation – Joining Canada with the Maritime colonies in a new political arrangement through a process called Confederation had been discussed since the 1850s. When it appeared that Lincoln would win the war and then feared that he would then turn his massive army northward, the notion became a necessity. Canada needed to be bigger, stronger, richer and more efficient and the civil war meant that it needed it all now rather than some dreamy someday. Canada had to create itself to save itself. Former Reform Party leader and owner and editor of the powerful Globe newspaper George Brown got bickering politicians from both parties in a room, Macdonald kept them talking, Cartier forced federalism, and Tupper and Tilley brought in the Maritimes. The talks began in the fall of 1864 in the shadow of war and led to the birth of nation forged in war.
  8. Suspicion – Days after the guns fell silent there was a shot in Ford’s Theatre. Even while Lincoln lay dying in a boarding house across the street, investigators turned to Canada’s involvement in the president’s shooting and the attempted assassination of Seward. The border was shut. Agents were dispatched to Montreal. Weeks later, the very first question asked in the trial of the conspirators was about their links to Canada. It was proven that John Wilkes Booth had spent time planning the assassination while with Jacob Thompson’s Confederate conspirators and spies in Montreal.      
  9. Sanctuary – With the war over, many Confederate leaders faced either prosecution or life under the military occupation of their enemy. Many fled to Canada. Among them was General Pickett who led Gettysburg’s tragic final charge. President Jefferson Davis’ family had been in Quebec for some time and after his release from prison he joined them. Cheering crowds welcomed his appearance in Kingston, Toronto and Niagara Falls. The haggard, sick man lived peacefully in Canada until an amnesty allowed him and his compatriots to return home.
  10. Self-Preservation – Britain had helped the Confederacy by allowing ships to built in Britain and sold to the small Southern navy. One of the most deadly was the Alabama that roamed the seas sinking Northern supply ships and even a military vessel. After the war President Johnson and then President Grant demanded an inordinate sum from Britain as reparation – it was called the Alabama claim. American and British officials discussed erasing the debt owed in exchange for Britain ceding Canada to the United States. In 1871, Prime Minister Macdonald ventured to Washington to negotiate Canada’s survival in what became the Civil War’s final battle.

Canada played a role in causing the war, 40,000 Canadians fought in the war, and its border, streets and harbours were involved in the war. Those who created the country used the United States as an example of how not to organize a society; after all, they invented Canada while the war was demonstrating the American model’s abject failure. Canadians today are children of those who were inspired by the fear of one country and the vision of another.

An edited version of this article appeared in this week’s Macleans magazine. To learn more, check out Blood and Daring: How Canada Fought the American Civil War and Forged a Nation available through Amazon, Chapters and sensible book stores everywhere.

Gordie Howe and the Importance of Heroes

/ John Boyko / Leave a comment

Hockey was my world. Road hockey, table-top hockey and most of all ice hockey filled my eight-year-old mind with fun and possibility. My bedroom walls were festooned with pictures of NHL hockey players. Most had been carefully snipped from the magazine that arrived every Saturday with my Dad’s Hamilton Spectator. Every week I mailed away the little paper ring from a Bee Hive Corn Syrup container and the good people at the St. Lawrence Starch Company of Port Credit, Ontario rewarded my gorging on the gooey stuff with another picture. Some were even autographed.

So there on my wall was Bobby Hull, Frank Mahovlich, Terry Sawchuk, Stan Mikita and more. They were all handsome but scarred. They posed as gladiators, armed and with the power and violence of savage youth just behind their eyes. There were a lot of pictures but one player had a shrine – my hero – Gordie Howe.  When I was eight, Gordie Howe was playing for the Detroit Red Wings and he was the best there was and the greatest there had ever been.

beehive1 gordie howe

Bee Hive Corn Syrup Picture of Gordie Howe

Every winter my Dad flooded our backyard. The huge rink had nets, boards, benches and even a penalty box. For night games he hung floodlights. Every winter afternoon I would rush home from school, suit up, and hit the rink. All the neighbourhood kids were there but we did not just play hockey; we became the players on our trading cards and bedroom walls. I was always Gordie Howe. We were living Roch Carrier’s The Hockey Sweater a generation later and a province over but with the same passionate imaginations.

My shameless whining earned me a complete Gordie Howe uniform. You can see by the picture below that I’m on the rink with my mitts and hat to stay warm but still safe in my helmet. The two slabs of thin, brown leather front and back is a galaxy removed from the storm trooper helmets of today. Plus, and this is something my Dad can still not explain, he had bought me a helmet that placed on my forehead a large bull’s eye embossed with the word TARGET. Amazing! Perhaps it was too many pre-pubescents availing themselves of the invitation to practice their aim that turned that cute face into the one that now haunts my cruel shaving mirror.
me as Gordie Howe

The author as Gordie Howe

Gordie Howe was my hero because he had attained excellence. He won the NHL’s MVP 6 times and 29 times he was chosen for the All-Star team. He won nearly every trophy and award for which he was eligible. He was the Red Wings number one goal scorer year after year and in the league’s top five for 20 consecutive seasons. Upon retirement he had amassed an astronomical 1,071 goals and most of those in the era of low scoring games and against Hall of Fame goalies.

He was tough. Gordie Howe was his own enforcer. To create a little more room and time he would hit, elbow and fight. Players understood that he would exact a price for every slash or slight. Current players still speak of a Gordie Howe hat trick: one game with a goal, assist and a fight.

Howe had natural athletic gifts but he didn’t rest on them. Rather, he worked endlessly to hone them. He would arrive at practices a half hour early. Alone, in a silent Olympia Stadium, driven by nothing but his conscience and determination to be the best he could be, he would improve his puck-handling, footwork and prowess with shooting right or left with equal speed and accuracy. He was the hardest worker at every practice and when his team mates hit the showers he would work some more.

Howe also had a sense of community. He leant his name and presence to a variety of charitable causes. When on the road he often left other players relaxing or partying and took sticks and pucks to hospitals where he visited sick children to sign autographs and pose for pictures. There was no publicity. He did not do it because it would look good; he did it because it was good.

One day my Dad told me that a nearby Golf Club was hosting a charity tournament that would be attended by a number of NHL hockey players. I sat up. Among the players, he said, was Gordie Howe. I was on my feet. And then, when I was about to explode with excitement, he said that he had purchased tickets.

I dressed up in my chino pants, desert boots, golf shirt buttoned right to the top, and my favourite cardigan sweater; the one with the diamonds. We arrived at the course and wandered a bit until…there he was. I could barely believe it. And then, with wide and disbelieving eyes, I saw my Dad actually approach and then speak with him. And then, my God, he waved me over. I looked up, way up at Mr. Howe and….well the rest I don’t remember.

My Dad told me later that Mr. Howe rubbed the top of my head as adults often do with little kids and said, “So son, do you play hockey?” I apparently looked up and said…..nothing. Not a word. Not a syllable. My Dad said, “Yes sir, he does.” Mr. Howe then reportedly asked, “What position do you play son?” I swallowed hard and I guess my lips moved but I said…again…nothing.  My Dad asked if Mr. Howe would pose for a picture. He grinned gently as my fists clenched with the excitement of an eight-year-old who had, for him, just met the equivalent of God, the Son, and Holy Ghost all in one man.
Gordie Howe and I

Gordie Howe and the author.

I was privileged to meet Mr. Howe again at a taping of Don Cherry’s Grapevine – a short-lived TV show set in a phony bar. This time I was an adult and so while still in awe, I managed to enjoy a brief conversation. I told him of my speechlessness at our first meeting and he assured me that it happened all the time. He was humble and kind. I was thrilled but also relieved that my childhood hero was a nice guy.

It is a revealing and worthwhile exercise to consider whether you had or have a hero and who a society celebrates as heroic. A hero is not just a celebrity. Fame, after all, can often be transitory, tawdry and earned for the wrong reasons or won but not really earned at all. On the other hand, a hero is one whose character and deeds epitomize that which you value. A hero inspires and guides with genuine and unique talent, industry, generosity, and humility. Heroes are usually famous and often powerful but they needn’t be. My grandfather was another of my heroes and he was neither. But if, like Gordie Howe, more people were more like him then the world would be a little better place.

A few years ago a CBC radio host asked Ken Dryden to name hockey’s best era. He said, “Figure out what year it was when you were ten years old. That was hockey’s best era.” He’s right. Hockey players no longer decorate my bedroom. I have other heroes now and none of them are athletes but Gordie Howe remains deep in my heart. It’s sad that he is now fighting the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease; that mean, long goodbye. But to me Gordie Howe will always be young, strong and important. I will always recall that skinny kid skating alone under the lights on a frigid Canadian winter night and begging Mom for just a little while longer; just a few more minutes to imagine himself bigger, stronger, and better; just a few more minutes to be Gordie Howe.

We Always Recall the First

/ John Boyko / Leave a comment

George Washington was America’s first president but who was the second? Can’t recall? It’s a rare Canadian that couldn’t name Sir John A. Macdonald as their first prime minister but how many know their second? We seldom remember the second of anything. Because the purpose of History is to recall our past without prejudice in order to better understand our present with clarity our natural predilection to focus only on the first is a shame.

Canada’s second prime minister, like America’s second president, was a man whose character was sound, ambitions restrained, and accomplishments significant. Are those not qualities that we value in leaders and celebrate in those who helped shaped our story? It is with this perspective that we should recall and understand Canada’s second prime minister, Alexander Mackenzie.

Those who work with stone must be patient. To rush is to risk crumbling what to an untrained eye seems indestructible but to the skilled mason can be carefully shaped to stand and serve forever. Imagine a stone carver bringing that sensibility to the leadership of a nation.

Mackenzie learned to work with stone while a boy in his native Scotland. He was born in 1822 to a large and poor family. By the age of 16 he had mastered his craft and was helping with expenses. The Mackenzie family was one of thousands who fled poverty for the hope of a better life in Canada. Mackenzie’s skills acquitted him well and he soon secured contracts to build houses, churches, canals and public buildings. He eventually settled in Sarnia, Canada West.

A dour man, Mackenzie was slow to smile, joked only to jibe, drank very little for those hard-drinking days, and believed sports a waste of energy. He was none the less a popular figure in Sarnia and became active in public affairs including serving on the fire brigade and school board. He was attracted to the Reform Party (a precursor to the current Liberals) which reflected his belief in free markets and rewards based on merit and effort. He won a seat in the legislature in 1861, just as the American Civil War was seeing the butchering of brothers and the increasingly belligerent neighbour was leading Canadian political leaders to sense the urgent need to protect the country by growing the country.

alexander mackenzie Mackenzie

At first Mackenzie opposed his party’s joining with the hated Conservatives to bring about Confederation. He was not convinced that the scheme was a good idea and he had little respect for John A. Macdonald who he considered politically duplicitous and personally unsavory. The Great Coalition government nonetheless created the skeleton that would become Canada.

The Confederation negotiations led to Reform leader George Brown’s resignation in 1865 and a party crisis. Too many men of too little talent vied to succeed him. Mackenzie watched the leadership competition with disdain while continuing to work hard at his craft and in both the provincial and federal legislatures. His talents and diligence were rewarded when in March, 1873 he won the party’s leadership. He had little time to celebrate, however, for within a month the Pacific Scandal rocked the Macdonald government. In November it fell.

Mackenzie was asked to form a government and shortly afterwards he called for an election. Few outside of south western Ontario knew him. Although disgraced, Macdonald remained a giant. To Canadians he was a rogue but he was their rogue and they had grown used to forgiving his mistakes and foibles. The scandal, however, had been too much. Canadians turned on him and handed Mackenzie a handsome 60-seat majority.

Mackenzie faced a number of problems going forward and the first was the knives in his back. The Reformers/Liberals were at war with each other and the worst of the lot was the conniving and ambitious Edward Blake. He believed he should be party leader and even had the temerity to ask Mackenzie to step aside so that he could become prime minister. Of greater importance to Canadians was that the country had slid into a deep recession. Contracts were cancelled, trade declined, and unemployment climbed. Absent today’s social programs, the suffering was devastating. Another leader may have panicked or taken rash action but the stone carver weighed options and moved slowly.

Plummeting tax revenue met demands for more funds to continue the massive railway project that Macdonald had begun. Mackenzie was forced to slow construction and even ask the people of British Columbia who had been promised the line to entice them to join Canada to wait a little longer. Railway construction continued but at a much slower, more affordable pace.

Canada was less than a decade old. While Mackenzie needed to address current issues he also recognized his responsibility to build the infant country. In 1875, he created the Supreme Court of Canada. It was designed to wrest power from Britain’s Judicial Committee of the Privy Council which at that point was Canada’s court of last resort. It would not be until 1949 that Canada’s Supreme Court would be truly supreme but Mackenzie’s action was an important step in Canada’s march toward judicial independence.

Mackenzie had been a militia major and respected the military’s role in securing Canada’s defence and establishing its sovereignty. He undertook a complete overhaul of the Department of Militia and Defence. He also established Canada’s first military training college in Kingston.

He completely revamped Canadian democracy. Mackenzie introduced the secret ballot. He passed laws that led to elections being held in all ridings on the same day. He removed property as a qualification for candidates for public office. To protect the people from unscrupulous politicians he created the office of the Auditor General and had it report not to the prime minister but to parliament.

The sprawling country was linked with three bold new laws. The Post Office Act created door-to-door delivery to cities across Canada. The Weights and Measures Act said that everyone had to begin using the same systems. The Collection of Criminal Statistics Act modernized police services across the country through the gathering, filing and sharing of information.

Mackenzie’s government had accomplished a great deal but the people cared more about the government’s addressing immediate needs and those needs had become desperate. There were even food riots in Montreal. While all of this was going on Sir John was reinventing campaigning by creating the political BBQ. He travelled the country attending outdoor picnics where he worked his inimitable charm and slowly earned forgiveness. In the election of September, 1878 Canadians returned the old chieftain to power.

Alexander Mackenzie’s service as Canada’s second prime minister was one of significant accomplishment. He acted with the stone carver’s patience and precision. He slowly did what could be done, left what should be left alone, and carefully moved the project along – the Canada project – the sculpture that to this day remains, as it should, under construction.

(And by the way, the second American president was John Adams.)

A version of this column appeared originally on the excellent site Leaders and Legacies. Find it at http://leadersandlegacies.com/2014/06/26/building-a-nation-brick-by-brick-canadas-forgotten-prime-minister/

Bullwinkle and Seven Lessons about Russia

/ John Boyko / Leave a comment

Maybe Bullwinkle J. Moose taught me everything I need to know about Russia. I was a child when Khrushchev and Kennedy nearly blew me up and I didn’t understand the air raid sirens that were regularly tested in my hometown. But I understood that Bullwinkle and Rocky were the good guys and that Boris and Natasha, those nasty Russian spies, were no good at all.

We were good and they were bad and that is all we needed to know. But then, as always happens and always will, things changed. In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev, the son of poor peasant farmers, became Russia’s leader. He realized that a country can have guns or butter but not both. The Americans are still trying, by the way, but ask them about their debt and deficit.

His revolution began with glasnost – openness. He slowly ended the brutal totalitarian control that had been created by Lenin and cemented in place by Stalin. The media was afforded more freedom and the arts encouraged to embrace criticism and satire and to, oh my goodness, have fun for fun’s sake.

gorbachev

Mikhail Gorbachev

It continued with perestroika – restructuring. Multi-candidate, secret ballot elections were held for the first time in history in municipalities and then to create a new parliament. The party and the state began surrendering its iron grip on the economy as Gorbachev introduced free market and land reforms.

The Cold War warmed as Gorbachev scrapped hundreds of nuclear weapons. Rather than dispatching tanks as his predecessors had done in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, he allowed Polish protests to play out. He ended Russia’s withering Afghanistan war and began withdrawing troops from Eastern European satellites.

It was about then that I arrived in Moscow. I was among a group of teachers escorting 96 teenagers for a week in March, 1989. These are the seven lessons I learned:

Bureaucracy Can Be Crazy: On our bus from the airport I asked Svetlana, our guide, about the soldiers perched in glass fishbowl stations at major intersections. I was told they worked the traffic lights. When I quipped that it must be a boring job at three in the morning she said that at night the lights are switched to work automatically. Before I could ask the next and obvious question Svetlana whispered, “In Russia, everybody works.”

People Are Resilient: I waited in a long, silent line to purchase a ticket, then in another line to present the ticket, and then in a third line to finally pick up a half dozen bagels. There were long lines everywhere and for everything. People lined up to buy the red rubber boots that we saw on every child. They lined up for meat, for clothes, and for toilet paper. At the giant GUM department store across Red Square from the Kremlin we found empty shelves and empty stores. But people carried on. Nearly all had a look – a Russian look. It was in the eyes. The eyes betrayed people who had been worked too hard for too long for too little; people who were too tired for too long and had been too long lied to and lied about. But there they were every day lining up, going to school and to work, families together in parks, teenagers in love, old folks holding hands, and all just carrying on as best they could.

Arts Should Be Accessible: We attended a performance of the Bolshoi ballet. Established in 1776, the company is world renowned and performs regularly in an enormous and gorgeous theatre. The place was packed. A ticket cost the equivalent of about 25 cents. The circus was cheap. Theatre was cheap. Like Washington’s Smithsonians, the museums were free. Even as the government struggled to reform a sputtering economy it funnelled tax dollars into the arts – the voice and spirit of the nation – to keep them accessible in both senses of the word not just for the privileged few but for all.

There is Such a Thing as Evil: The siege of Leningrad began in 1941 and lasted for 900 horrifying days. Over 600,000 Russians died with 4000 starving to death. You can still see bullet and shell marks in many buildings. No one can visit Piskariovskoye Cemetery without tears. We walked past the monument of a grieving mother to stand in awe before the 186 mounds vanishing beyond our view, beneath which lay over half a million people in mass graves. Not one of them deserved to die. Not one of us should forget the price Russians paid while living within one evil, to defeat another that was visited upon them.

There is Beauty Everywhere: It is not called Red Square because of the bricks or communist party but rather because the Russian word krasnaya can mean either red or beautiful. The square witnessed too many testosterone-riddled displays of phallic missiles but it remains beautiful indeed. St. Basil’s Cathedral at one end and Kazan Cathedral at the other are stunning. The Hermitage Museum’s artifacts and architecture are breathtaking. But there was also beauty in the little boy who stood alone beneath a Leningrad bridge with his fishing pole and a look of patient concentration but who smiled for my camera. There was beauty in the young mother who gently picked up her crying baby and rocked him to sleep amid the bustle of the city and her busy day. Like at all airports, there was beauty in the Russian families welcoming tired travellers with hugs and smiles.

Hermitage

Hermitage

We Can Never Judge a People by Their Government: As we toured and wandered and met more people, I thought of the many Canadians who at that moment were disavowing everything Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was back home doing and saying. He was not me and I would have shuddered to be judged according to everything he said and did, or by everything Mr. Trudeau said and did before him.  We know this about ourselves and others. We know that it is especially true when considering people whose governments are not democratic; but we sometimes forget.

There Are Good People Everywhere: Another teacher and I were enjoying some free time by exploring the justifiably famous Moscow subway. A gentleman in a business suit noticed our Canadian flag pins and through heavily accented English offered to show us some of the more celebrated stations. We saw spotless, gleaming subway platforms that more closely resembled churches, museums, galleries or shrines.  We toured for over an hour and a half with our new friend waving off his afternoon appointments. With our goodbyes we gave him some Canada pins and he said, “When I thought of Canada I always thought of hockey but now I’ll think of Paul and John.” I replied, “And from now on when I think of Russia, I’ll think of Pavel.”

Today, for the first time in a long while, I again thought of Pavel. I had read about those who thought Gorbachev was going too fast and others who insisted he was moving too slowly. I had read of the coup and sadly followed the years of Yeltsin’s chaos.  I had thought of Pavel when former KGB chief Vladimir Putin began reversing Gorbachev’s reforms by closing all that had been opening. I thought of Svetlana who said that we could measure Russia’s progress by the degree to which Lenin became accepted as a bad leader. I wonder what she thinks now that Mr. Putin has clearly established himself as an heir not to Gorbachev but Lenin.

Today, as Russia moves forward by moving backward in its application of history’s wrong lessons, I wonder about Pavel and Svetlana, and the little fisherman and the young mother. I wonder if the Russian look is returning to too many eyes.

Roman Was a Russian

/ John Boyko / Leave a comment

Roman was Russian or maybe Ukrainian. The folks of his town went from one to the other with each shift of the restless border. From the bitter cold of the 1905 winter came a worker’s revolt. Tsar Nicholas reacted first with concessions but soldiers were soon attacking trouble-makers, including those with books deemed dangerous. Roman’s uncle imperiled his family for reading, among other things, the poetry of Ukrainian nationalist Taras Shevchenko whose words inspired the oppressed to feel power and the shamed to know pride.

With rumours of soldiers on the way Roman’s parents told him to run. The eighteen-year-old hitched rides and jumped trains until finding the coast. He snuck aboard the first lackadaisically secured ship he could find and hid beneath a lifeboat’s thick tarp. After two days at sea he emerged dirty and hungry and agreed to work for his fare.

 A long and roiling journey took him to Rio de Janeiro. For nearly two years he hacked roads to resources through the Amazonian rain forest. One steaming afternoon a workmate rhapsodized of a place with more high-paying jobs than people – Canada.

Roman bought a ticket for the first northbound ship but was tricked. Declared a stowaway, he was forced into back-breaking labour as the hulking cargo vessel steamed around the world. After nearly a year of depredation he gazed longingly at the Statue of Liberty.  Excited for his first leave in months, he and two friends signed for their meagre pay but then were grabbed, lashed, and thrown onto their bunks; they’d been duped into re-upping for another year.

Just before dawn a sympathetic crewmate cut the ropes and helped them sneak to the deck where they leapt into the cold, dark water. Three unkempt young sailors shuffled through the Battery’s morning mist. A gentleman with an expensive suit and friendly smile said they looked lost. In his best but broken English Roman explained that they were on their way to Canada. The man laughed and said they must be the luckiest boys alive because he worked at the Canadian consulate. The sorry little gang were given train tickets to Montreal.

Montreal was a French city run by the English, and all on the backs of those speaking a hundred tongues. Roman found a job in a large and dirty iron works and happiness in the city’s thriving Ukrainian community. After a particularly trying shift he was told that steel factories offered safer work and better pay and that an American had just started a new steel company in Ontario. Within days he was on a train to Ontario.

Hamilton was a tough, hard-hat town. Factories hugged Burlington Bay, shady bosses held sway in the multi-ethnic east side, and everyone called the towering Niagara escarpment that watched over it all the mountain.  The place brimmed with the power and potential of the industrial age. Roman was among the first employees at Hamilton’s Dominion Steel and Casting Company that became Dofasco.  Roman was a molder. He created castings into which molten metal was poured to make machines, the bank vault now part of the Hockey Hall of Fame, and even the Hoover Dam’s turbines. He built weapons for the First World War and in the Second his three daughters were among the women who traded dresses for overalls to defeat Hitler. 

Upon retirement, Roman purchased a farm near Port Dover. He grew corn and every year turned 11 acres of grapes into sweet wine. His grandson worked the farm each summer. He walked his great-grandson among what to the little boy were towering corn stalks and he tried but failed to reassure him that chickens were not terrifying.

Today, above my piano, is a painting of my great-grand father’s Port Dover farm. It is more ideal than real; perhaps like elements of his adventurous escape. But that’s okay. Societies need myths that define and inspire and so do families. Like the tenacious Ukraine, my family is a little dysfunctional at the edges but rock-solid at its core. In the New Year, we’ll welcome a baby. The child will embody an audacious confidence in tomorrow, 1905’s legacy, and Roman’s latest gift.

Meanwhile, Russia is back fighting for imaginary lines and Shevchenko’s poems are again on Ukrainian lips.  As we watch egos and power and money at war let’s pause to consider the people in those border towns who wake up each day and do their best. I know, as do thousands of others living in Canada today that their struggle will echo for generations and in ways we can’t imagine.

The Slave Who Helped Create Two Countries and Wreck a Third

/ John Boyko / Leave a comment

John Anderson was born property. At 29 he was a prisoner. He was seated in Toronto’s Osgood Hall while outside on the chilly morning of December 15, 1860 stood fifty armed police officers. A company of the Royal Canadian Rifles stood with muskets ready and bayonets menacingly attached. All were prepared for the demonstration promised and the riot expected should the court decision go as the crowd of two hundred or so Anderson supporters feared. Stretchers were piled against a wall, ready to haul away the injured and killed.

His adventure had begun seven years before. He had run when life as a Missouri slave had become too much. It was too much to watch his mother being beaten and then sold. It was too much to lose his name. It was too much to be kept from living with his wife and child. It was too much to be denied opportunity; to be denied his very humanity. And so he ran. In running he had committed a crime for he robbed his owner by stealing himself.

On the third day of his flight, Anderson accidently stumbled upon a White farmer named Seneca Digges and four of his slaves. They gave chase and for thirty minutes ran through woods and fields until Anderson encountered Digges. Digges raised either a cane or a tree branch and they fell together. Anderson’s knife plunged three times into Digges’ chest and back.

Dirty, exhausted and starving, Anderson slowly snuck his way north. When he encountered a White man who offered a meal and bed for the night Anderson boarded the Underground Railroad. A few weeks later he was over the Detroit River and in Windsor, Canada West. With the help of a thriving Black community he learned to read and do sums and within a few years he had learned masonry, begun his own business and purchased a house.

Anderson confided to a friend that he had stabbed a man while fleeing. He was betrayed and arrested. A judge informed Missouri officials that Anderson was in a Brantford jail. Soon, officials from the Missouri governor to the American Secretary of State were writing to Canadian and British leaders demanding his extradition.

Anderson had moved from slave to symbol. Southerners had grown enraged with the Canadian Black communities and the abolitionists that enabled them. For generations they had insisted that slaves were unable and unwilling to work, read, or succeed on their own. And yet, up in Canada, ex-slaves were illuminating the lie that was the foundation of their economic, political and social ethos. The Underground Railroad, Northern abolitionists, and Canada had in this way become part of the Southern impetus to insist on State Rights and contemplate a divorce from the American state.

If Anderson could be extradited then the Canadian Black communities and the Underground Railroad itself could be destroyed with slave catchers able to grab prey in Canadian cities as easily and legally as if they were Boston or New York. A New Orleans attorney wrote, “We are going to have Anderson by hook or by crook; we will have him by fair means or foul; the South is determined to have that man.”

John Anderson

At that time, Canadians were debating their future as a British colony, a new country, or perhaps an American state. Meanwhile, a growing number of influential British leaders were advocating cutting ties with the increasingly expensive and bothersome Canada. The Anderson case led other Brits to argue that there was a moral issue at stake that trumped political concerns. They advocated intervening in the case even if it kept Canada colonial and threatened war with the United States.

The court decided that Anderson must be returned to Missouri but there was an appeal. American Secretary of State Lewis Cass wrote a letter insisting that Anderson be immediately sent south. British Prime Minister Palmerston demanded that Anderson be dispatched to Britain. Canada’s Attorney General summoned the temerity to say no to both. His name was John A. Macdonald, soon afterwards, an independent Canada’s first prime minister. He quietly covered all Anderson’s legal bills.

Sir John A Macdonald

John A. Macdonald

Finally, after weeks of legal wrangling and insults across the ocean, over the Canadian border and back and forth across the Mason-Dixon Line, the time had come for a final decision. British, American and Canadian reporters were huddled in the imposing courtroom as police and soldiers outside nervously held their weapons. Three justices argued that the Missouri writ had charged Anderson with killing and that there was no such crime – the only charge available was murder. On a technicality, Anderson was free to go.

Anderson rose unsteadily to his feet and beamed a huge smile. In a quiet voice he whispered, “Thank you, gentlemen—thank you, your lordships.” The gavel fell and there was a roar of shouting and applause from those in the courtroom and from the crowd shivering outside in the snow.

Canadian reaction was ecstatic for it was a three-way victory. Anderson was free. Canada had told the United States to forget its designs its Black citizens and to respect its borders. It told Britain to mind its own business. Macdonald pushed and in March 1862 the British government passed the Habeas Corpus Act rendering it illegal for Britain to issue writs in Canada. A major step toward Canadian nationhood had been taken.

Canadian and American abolitionists quickly had Anderson delivering speeches to educate and raise funds. By June, he was in England delivering more speeches. His largest audience was at Exeter Hall, where the newly formed John Anderson Society welcomed six thousand to see him.

Meanwhile, Fort Sumter had been pummelled and Bull Run bullets had screamed. By 1862, the American Civil War was grinding into its second year. Anderson was no longer needed to make a point or further a cause. Without consulting him, British abolitionists arranged for him to be given land in and passage to Liberia.

On December 22, 1862, Anderson delivered his last speech. As always, he ended with the mournful hope that he might again see his family. The next day he was aboard a steamer bound for Cape Palmas. There are no records of him in Liberia, nor of his wife Maria or their child in Missouri. They became as lost to history as they were to each other. However, John Anderson’s legacy lives on in the America that was torn in two and Confederacy and Canada he had inadvertently, with his primal desire to be free, helped to create.

To discover more about John Anderson and Canada’s role in the American Civil War please check out Blood and Daring: How Canada Fought the American Civil War and Forged a Nation, available online and, if you can still find one, book stores everywhere. http://www.amazon.ca/Blood-Daring-Canada-Fought-American/dp/0307361446

 

A Man You Need to Know More Than Ever Before: Mistahimaskwa

/ John Boyko / Leave a comment

On June 26, 2014 Canada changed. The Supreme Court rendered a decision that remade the relationship between Native nations and the Canadian state by dictating that Native land and related concerns must be respected even if absent a treaty. We need to begin adjusting to the new reality and perhaps a good place to start is bringing Native heroes to the centre of Canada’s story. The effort must afford them respect as individuals with agency and not simply victims or foils or important only as they hindered or helped the country’s development. Let’s begin with someone we should all know – Big Bear, whose real name was Mistahimaskwa.

He was born around 1825 near what is now Port Carlton, Saskatchewan. Home was a predominately Cree community that included a number of Ojibwa people. His father was Black Powder, his people’s respected Chief. Young Mistahimaskwa internalized the freedom of the plains, moving south with his community every summer to hunt buffalo and back to winter along the North Saskatchewan River. By the early 1870s he was Chief of the 500 or so people living well according to ancient ways. But things were changing.

God, gold or the gumption to start life anew brought the Hudson’s Bay Company, the police and then more and more White settlers. The aftermath of the 1869-1870 Manitoba uprising introduced a Metis community. More people meant fewer buffalo and less freedom of movement. Metis buffalo hunter Gabriel Dumont began practices that affected traditional migration routes and there was a clash but Mistahimaskwa and Dumont met and arranged a compromise.

Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald was Canada’s indispensable man but with respect to Native nations his tactics and goals reflected the racism of his time. He wanted the semi-nomadic plains nations immobilized and farming or gone. In 1874, he sent a Hudson’s Bay commissioner to bring them to treaty. Some nations accepted the proffered blankets, tobacco and trinkets but Mistahimaskwa said no. He explained that he meant no disrespect but he would not be bought and would not sign.

A Methodist Minister arrived the next year promising more gifts including that of God’s blessing. Mistahimaskwa again declined saying, “When we set a fox-trap we scatter pieces of meat all round, but when the fox gets into the trap we knock him on the head; we want no bait; let your chiefs come like men and talk to us.” The Minister reported that while several Native leaders were friendly and had signed, Big Bear was a trouble maker.

A year later, Macdonald sent another delegation, this time led by Lieutenant Governor Alexander Morris. Morris convened a large conference at Fort Carlton and with Treaty No. 6 offered reserves, money, and farm implements. A number of Chiefs signed. Mistahimaskwa arrived just as the conference was wrapping up. He carefully considered all that was on offer but again rejected it. In an impassioned speech he equated trading the 120,000 square miles of prairie for reserves to slipping a rope around the necks of his people. He had become the leader of the defiant Chiefs and a thorn in Macdonald’s side.

With buffalo herds continuing to shrink Mistahimaskwa and others invented new ways to trap and hunt. In the fall of 1878 he was asked to help Chief Minahikosis who had found White surveyors on land that had been ceded to his people near present-day Medicine Hat, Alberta. Mistahimaskwa met with the surveyors and police and had the work stopped. The incident afforded him even more prestige and power.

By the winter of 1878–79 the buffalo were all but gone. For the first time in their long histories, many Native communities suffered starvation. Mistahimaskwa convened a remarkable gathering of Chiefs and other leaders from the Blackfoot, Bloods, Sioux, Saulteaux, Sarcees, Stoney, Assiniboine, Metis and Cree Nations. Dumont was there as was Sitting Bull. Nations who had based their cultures on the buffalo and the freedom of the plains understood that everything they treasured was disappearing. He encouraged them to learn new ways, to share what they had, and to avoid fighting one another while keeping peace with the growing White communities.

Another spring saw more Native Chiefs taking treaty to secure food for their hungry children. Mistahimaskwa led his people and any who wished to follow to Montana where it was rumoured that the buffalo still roamed. The plan failed as the American herds were gone too. Mistahimaskwa returned and tried several ways to renew prosperity but by the winter of 1882 the 250 people that remained in his community were reduced to eating gophers. On December 8, Mistahimaskwa travelled to Fort Walsh and traded his signature on Treaty No. 6 for food.

The next summer, his people moved north to their assigned reservation near Fort Pitt. The land was terrible. He toured other reserves and found similar conditions. He repeatedly contacted Ottawa’s officials with demands that treaty obligations be observed and asked that his people and all others that wanted it be awarded new land that was more like they needed and had been promised. His requests were answered by his people’s rations being cut and then ended.

Mistahimaskwa organized another large meeting of Chiefs. In the spring of 1884 he led around 500 men and women from his community and rode to Poundmaker’s reserve near Battleford, Saskatchewan. The gathering began with songs, drums and, in honour of Mistahimaskwa, a special Thirst Dance. About 2000 people from several nations negotiated things they could do together to improve the lot of them all.

Image

 Mistahimaskwa

While negotiations proceeded, a young Cree man left to purchase food and beat up a White government official who refused him. News of the incident spread quickly and soon about 90 police stood glaring at a line of 400 armed Native men. With guns cocked, the two lines strode toward each other when suddenly Mistahimaskwa and Poundmaker galloped between them yelling, “Peace! Peace!” Both sides retreated and the two Chiefs negotiated a supply of food to placate their angry young men. A massacre and perhaps a war had been averted.

Mistahimaskwa met with Metis leader Louis Riel but refused to support or join his planned resistance. His rejection of Riel and constant talk of peace alienated a number of angry young men in his community who wanted quick action and quicker results. Near the end of March they heard of Metis fighters having won a victory against Canadian soldiers at Duck Lake and were inspired to attack the White settlement at Frog Lake. Mistahimaskwa rushed to the scene and arrived yelling, “Stop! Stop!” But this time he was too late. A church service had been interrupted and the unarmed and terrified people forced outside. An Indian agent, two priests and seven other men were killed. The settlement was destroyed.

A growing number of young Cree men who rejected Mistahimaskwa’s leadership were now led by Āyimisīs and Wandering Spirit. Two weeks later, on April 13, they surrounded Fort Pitt with 250 men. Mistahimaskwa got a note to those trapped inside advising them to escape and forget thoughts of negotiation as the young men were wild and beyond his control. A number of soldiers managed to get out but the Fort was taken, ransacked and burned.

Mistahimaskwa saved the twenty-eight civilians captured at Fort Pitt by returning them to his village. Meanwhile, Poundmaker led an attack at Battleford and Riel’s forces clashed with soldiers at Batoche. Canadian troops and militia won both contests and near the end of May, more troops defeated Wandering Spirit’s men near Frenchman Butte. During each of the battles, Mistahimaskwa had been home protecting the White captives and his equally frightened people.

When soldiers began arresting Native leaders, Mistahimaskwa rode to Fort Carlton and on July 2, 1885, he surrendered. He was charged with treason-felony and in September stood trial in Regina. A number of witnesses swore that he had not been present or in any way participated in any of the battles and had, in fact, tried to stop them. Judge Richardson told the six White men of the jury that he could be found guilty only if he had left his reservation and participated in or led the insurrection. It didn’t matter. After only 15 minutes the jury returned a verdict of guilty.

Mistahimaskwa was then allowed to speak for the first time. He asked for nothing for himself, saying only, “Many of my band are hiding in the woods, paralyzed with terror. . . . I plead again, to you, the chiefs of the white men’s laws, for pity and help to the outcasts of my band!” Richardson sentenced him to three years in Stony Mountain Penitentiary.

Locked behind walls and bars the free man of the plains grew weak and ill. In March, 1887 he was released. His family and people had been scattered among various reserves. He made his way to Poundmaker’s reserve where on January 17, 1888 he died. Mistahimaskwa’s body was consigned to the prairie he loved, near the spot where the Thirst Dance had honoured his courage and celebrated his spirit. In this new country in which we now live, may we do the same.

A Man Even His Friends Don’t Like: Seeking Stephen Harper

/ John Boyko / Leave a comment

At the funeral of a colleague Stephen Harper joked that even his friends don’t like him. Few seem to know him. The public personae is apparently very different from the man. Despite his having been prime minister for nearly a decade, for many Canadians, Mr. Harper remains an enigma. As Canadians enter their longest campaign since the 19th century, it is perhaps an appropriate time to pause and consider how the country’s most public person can remain such a mystery. Maybe the best way to seek an understanding of our inscrutable prime minister and the road down which he is leading the country is to recall three former prime ministers with whom he shares policies, principles and personalities.

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper

Mr. Harper’s control of his cabinet, caucus and senior bureaucrats knows few bounds. All appearances, speeches and press releases are vetted to ensure that the government speaks with one voice – his voice. Even the prime minister’s own remarks are seldom extemporaneous while reporters’ questions are always limited and often ignored.

In this way, Mr. Harper reminds one of R. B. Bennett. Bennett was prime minister in the worst days of the Great Depression. Like Harper, he was an easterner who represented a Calgary riding. Like Mr. Harper, Bennett enjoyed a reputation as a skilled political strategist and nearly every member of his caucus rode to Ottawa on his coat tails. Bennett held a similar lock on his colleagues, disdain for the press and a reputation for running a one-man show. A popular joke had a Parliament Hill tourist query a guide about the well-dressed man walking alone and talking to himself and being told that it was the prime minister conducting a cabinet meeting. Bennett used to speak of “his” government like the current PMO refers not to the Canadian but the Harper government. Bennett’s iron control, like Mr. Harper’s, rendered all errors his and all opposition personal.

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Prime Minister R. B. Bennett

Mr. Harper also reminds one of Joe Clark. Like Mr. Harper, Clark called Alberta home and was a career politician who entered the profession quite young. They both earned reputations as astute policy wonks. While they both exude obvious intelligence and political acumen both men also often appear uncomfortable in their own skin, walk to podiums as if to gallows and read speeches like they can’t wait for them to end. Many Canadians grew uncomfortable with both, perhaps because they seemed uncomfortable with themselves. This unease could explain why so many people were surprised and bemused when Clark made self-referential jokes about his lack of charisma or when Mr. Harper performed a Beatles tune at Ottawa’s National Arts Center or was seen in a leaked YouTube clip doing clever imitations of past leaders.

The ice in Clark’s manner seemed even colder when contrasted with the fire of Pierre Trudeau for whom magnetism came as naturally as breathing. Alas, another Trudeau is now radiating heat around a man who, like Clark, appears to be an introvert in an extrovert’s game.

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Prime Minister Joe Clark

The Prime Minister that is most like Mr. Harper is John Diefenbaker. Like Harper, Diefenbaker was born in Ontario but became a transplanted westerner who made a name for himself by giving voice to the yearning and alienation of a region believing, with some justification, to have been underappreciated and ill-treated. Also like Harper, Diefenbaker behaved like an outsider even when he became the ultimate insider. Both seemed to perceive politics as a contest waged with enemies.

There are other similarities. One of Diefenbaker’s goals was to open the north. Mr. Harper has sought to protect Canada’s Arctic sovereignty while spurring economic development in the vast part of the country that, with climate change changing everything, holds more potential than Diefenbaker could have imagined. Diefenbaker also fought for imperial ties long after the empire was gone, including keeping the Red Ensign as our flag. He would salute Mr. Harper’s re-hanging pictures of the Queen and putting the Royal back into our military while reviving old ranks and insignia.

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Prime Minister John Diefenbaker

Diefenbaker spoke of nationalist unity and sought to end hyphenated Canadianism. He called his vision One Canada. Harper holds a similar view of the country. While Diefenbaker rejected and largely ignored Quebec’s ethnic-nationalism, Harper emasculated it by having a bill passed that recognized “the Québécois” as forming a nation within a united Canada. That is, Quebec is not a nation, just those French-speaking people who self-identify as Québécois. The Harper bill channelled Diefenbaker’s pan-Canadian, One Canada nationalism.

Harper’s relationship with the United States was as tricky as Diefenbaker’s but their motivating ideas were similar. Throughout the difficult 1963 campaign in which he was accused of being anti-American, Diefenbaker said that his fight was for Canada and not against the United States. He repeated the point in his memoirs: “It was simple logic that Canada could not maintain its independence if we continued existing Liberal policies. Recognition of this implied no hostility to the United States. It was a case, as it was for many of my government’s policies, of being pro-Canadian, not anti-American.”

Two generations later, on November 19, 2012, Prime Minister Harper answered questions before the Canadian-American Business Council. He echoed Diefenbaker by offering, “We are strong Canadian nationalists who value what is distinctive and unique about this country and think in our own modest way that this is actually a better country. What we’ve tried to do and tried to tell Canadians is there’s no need for true Canadian nationalism to have any sense of anti-Americanism.”

Robert Kennedy once said that of all the leaders with whom his brother interacted, Diefenbaker was the only one he hated. That sour relationship negatively affected cross border relations. President Obama surely harbours no such feelings for Mr. Harper but they are certainly not close and they disagree on many fundamental issues, most importantly, at the moment, is the environment and related issue of the Keystone XL pipeline.

Diefenbaker would not have agreed with everything Harper has done or how he is doing it. Diefenbaker was a man of the House and so would have risen in outrageous anger at the prorogations and other parliamentary parlor tricks through which Harper has bent the rules. Further, like Bennett and Clark, Diefenbaker was a Red Tory and so would have been orphaned in Harper’s party that purged the word Progressive and had the Conservatives become more conservative.

The similarities nonetheless remain. That Harper recognizes his link to Diefenbaker has been seen in the ways he has saluted him. Harper’s government has provided money to update and upscale Saskatoon’s Diefenbaker Centre. When Ottawa’s old city hall building was renovated to house government departments it was renamed the John G. Diefenbaker Building. A new Coast Guard icebreaker will be called the John G. Diefenbaker.

Considering the leaders and ideas of yesterday allows a deeper context within which we can comprehend today and, through seeking our unreadable prime minister, perhaps to better understand tomorrow. Prime Ministers Bennett, Clark and Diefenbaker continue to serve Canada by inviting us to glimpse the road ahead not by peering through the windshield but glancing in the rear view mirror.

KISS is Cute But Keeps Us Stupid: Consider an Example

/ John Boyko / Leave a comment

The KISS principle (Keep It Simple Stupid) is cute but keeping anything simple keeps us stupid. While I contend that this idea is true in every aspect of our lives let’s test its validity by looking at one event in History that we know about, or think we know about – the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln’s freeing of the slaves. The document is far too often simplified beyond recognition. In so doing, in robbing it of its complexity, History itself is deprived of its ability to do what it exists to do, to act as a wise teacher invoking yesterday in an invitation to better understand today. So let’s test the idea with a consideration of the lessons offered by Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation.

Abraham_Lincoln_November_1863

Lincoln was a visionary but he was also a pragmatist and hard-nosed realist. The American Civil War began with the shelling of Fort Sumter in April, 1861 and for a year Lincoln’s Northern armies lost nearly every major battle. With each bloody month the costs mounted, the astounding number of casualties tore families, support for Lincoln and the war waned, and Britain threatened to tip the balance by entering on the side of the Confederate South.

In the summer of 1862, with everything falling in tatters about him, the president told his incredulous cabinet that he wanted to free slaves in states still in rebellion. The notion met with unanimous opposition. Lincoln swayed them by arguing that he was motivated not by a moral imperative but by military expediency. His stated goal in going to war in the first place, after all, had not been to end slavery but to preserve the union. Freeing slaves now, he told his dubious cabinet, would help pursue that goal by helping to crush the South. The act would allow for the creation of so-called ‘coloured’ regiments to bolster the North’s faltering recruitment efforts. It would stir havoc in the South as even more slaves were inspired to escape. After all, the Proclamation would mean nothing if the North lost the war. Further, the Proclamation would dissuade Britain from offering aid or diplomatic recognition to the Confederacy. Having banned slavery decades before, he reasoned, Britain could hardly be seen supporting the peculiar institution in a war now redrawn as about good versus an evil.

The cabinet relented but persuaded Lincoln to postpone announcing the Emancipation Proclamation until a Union victory was won so that it would not appear to be an act of military desperation. When Lee’s Confederates were not really defeated but at least repulsed at Antietam in September 1862, Lincoln claimed the battle as the victory he needed. He publicly announced that he would sign the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863.

The Proclamation freed some but not all the slaves. It allowed slavery to remain in the Border States of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri. To end slavery there, Lincoln believed, would possibly end their neutrality and spur them to join the South. The act also exempted parts of the South that had already come under Northern control for those areas were chaotic enough without adding the crush of runaway slaves seeking the protection of the Northern army. Also limiting Lincoln’s action was that it was not a constitutional amendment or even a law for he could not have won or waited to win those victories. It was merely a Proclamation that could be more easily ignored at the time or later.

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Despite its limitations, the Proclamation changed everything. It meant that with the Civil War’s costs and casualties mounting and Lincoln’s fragile alliance of Republicans, abolitionists and northern Democrats fraying, the struggle was suddenly about something greater than the preservation of a political state. From that point forward the war would be about an idea. It would be about freedom. It would be about the very concept of humanity. The Declaration of Independence had insisted that all men are created equal but the Emancipation Proclamation stated an intention to transform that aspiration to a fact. Millions of people who for over 200 years had been property could become human.

Northern abolitionists and radical Republicans applauded the Proclamation. Britain initially reacted with skepticism but then responded as Lincoln had hoped. Gone was talk of Britain entering the war on behalf of the South or of its recognizing the Confederate government. “Colored Regiments” were formed beginning with enlistment to Boston’s famous Massachusetts 54th. Eventually about 200,000 African Americans donned the blue uniform. Lincoln said their contributions and numbers represented a turning point in the war that could have been lost without them.

But all were not happy. Not surprisingly, the South was outraged. From the Southern point of view the Proclamation was useless as it was merely an act by a foreign leader with no jurisdiction in what it insisted was a newly formed and sovereign state. It was another example of what many were fighting about – a far-away federal government insulting the Southern way of life and attacking the economic foundation of their society. There was more rage when, as Lincoln had predicted, the number of slaves escaping from Southern plantations rose.

There was also consternation among many in the North. Editorials attacked Lincoln for changing the aim of the war arguing, quite rightly, that it had never been about abolition. The Copperheads, a loose amalgam of northerners who wanted peace at any price, said that even though the war was now about freeing slaves that the cost was still too high. They increased their efforts to defeat Lincoln in 1864 and to negotiate an end to the war with slavery in place. Hundreds of Union soldiers deserted. They claimed that they had not signed up to free slaves. Lincoln’s commanding General George McClellan was advised to stage a coup. McClellan refused to do so but a year later he accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination to run against Lincoln for the presidency.

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Signing of the Emancipation Proclamation

The Proclamation also affected Canada. Britain had declared itself neutral in the war and so Canada and the Maritime colonies were automatically neutral as well. But then as now Canadians were a cantankerous lot who considered dictates as merely suggestions. Many were disappointed when Lincoln did not immediately free the slaves upon becoming president and so supported the South. The majority of Canadian newspapers were pro-Confederate. Many Quebecers identified with Southern interests fighting a government that seemed unsympathetic to their beliefs about a threatened culture. Many Canadians and Maritimers saw business advantages and believed that Canada would be more militarily secure with a shattered United States and so supported the South. Two members of parliament who ran into the Canadian legislature shouting that the South had won the war’s first battle at Bull Run were welcomed with a loud cheer.

However, even given all of this, newspaper editorials throughout Canada and the Maritimes were unanimous in their praise for the Emancipation Proclamation. It spurred a new wave of Canadians and Maritimers to cross the border and join the thousands of their countrymen who had already enlisted. The vast majority, ironically given pro-Southern sentiment in official circles, fought with the Union. Among those heading south to fight for the North were hundreds who had escaped as slaves but were returning as men. Approximately 40,000 Canadians and Maritimers served in the Civil War. They fought in every major battle and 29 won Congressional Medals of honour.

The legitimate fear of American attack or annexation grew more acute with the Emancipation Proclamation because it was, as Lincoln expected, a boon to his cause. Six months after its enactment, the Confederacy was broke and nearly broken. Union victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg altered the war’s trajectory as surely as the Proclamation had recalibrated its moral imperative. With the Union victory more certain than ever and many Canadian leaders sure that once the South had been dispatched that Lincoln would march his armies north, the impulse to act became acute. Confederation had been talked about for years but it was suddenly a necessity. Canada needed to invent itself to save itself. Plans were made to meet in Charlottetown in September, 1864 to forge a new country.

Abraham Lincoln understood the enormity of what he had done. Upon affixing his signature to the Emancipation Proclamation he said, “If my name ever goes into history it will be for this act.” We owe it to ourselves to pause and reflect upon the Proclamation for the milestone it represents in the evolution of mankind’s freedom. But in considering what it was we should also accept what it was not. We should consider the role it played not just in the re-imagination of America but also in the birth of Canada.

We should also consider the Emancipation Proclamation as an example of how we must invite History to teach us lessons that resonate today and that in order to properly learn those lessons we must dismiss the balm of simplicity and welcome, in fact, demand complexity. Complexity, after all, is History’s highway to the truth. In fact, complexity and truth are reliant upon each other in every sphere of our lives.

Our Forgotten Father

/ John Boyko / Leave a comment

Next year will be a great party. Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s founder, builder and savior turns 200. Already ahead of the game, Prime Minister Harper, historians, pundits and even twitter trolls have started the celebration. A group called Sir John A 2015 has organized narrated walks in his home town of Kingston and a play and more. On June 6, I will be at his Kingston gravesite as the keynote speaker at a ceremony commemorating his passing.

It is fitting and proper that we take the time to celebrate Sir John because without him there would be no Canada. Without Sir John Canadians today would all be Americans. I am certain that part of the commemoration will note that there is a great deal of darkness in his legacy. His attitudes regarding Chinese immigrants and Native People were of his time but rightfully make us cringe. His drinking would make Toronto’s Mayor Ford look responsible and we cannot forget that he was once pushed from office by an inexcusable election spending scandal. We must remember, of course, that none of us are perfect people nor is there such a thing as perfect prime minister.

Our remembering Sir John, warts and all, will allow us recall that history’s greatest gift is a better understanding of today. To honour the gift we must fully understand the lessons offered; history, after all, is not an ideological weapon or a nostalgic crutch. History is a teacher and like any good teacher it makes you work. In this case, we must concede that Sir John had to be dragged into Confederation. The man who did that deed was George Brown – our forgotten father.

Image George Brown

Everybody knew Brown. He founded and edited the Globe. It was Canada’s most respected and widely-read newspaper at a time when papers were the sole source of news and when all were unfair and unbalanced voices of a particular party. Brown led the Reform Party; not Preston Manning’s party but a precursor of our current Liberals. As such, he and the Globe never tired of criticizing Macdonald and his Tories, at that time called the Liberal-Conservatives. (I know, it’s odd.)

Brown and Macdonald were more than opponents – they were enemies. They first clashed over an issue involving the Kingston penitentiary. Macdonald later outfoxed Brown in a dirty but legal trick called the double-shuffle. Brown became prime minister for two days only to be unseated by the wily Macdonald. They grew to despise each other.  Brown was intelligent and hard working but never seemed able to best him. Macdonald was once heckled about his drinking and quipped that Canadians seemed to prefer him drunk to Brown sober.

Like everyone else, Brown knew that the current Canadian political structure was a wreck. Pushed together into one colonial state, the largely English Canada West (Ontario) and the largely French Canada East (Quebec) was so dysfunctional that decisions could not be made, the economy was collapsing and opportunities to expand could not be exploited. Brown tried for years to reform or split the colony in two but it was rejected over and over again. Finally, he cajoled his party into a meeting at Toronto’s St. Lawrence Market. Beneath the golden glow of the gas lights and the stares of hideous gargoyles, he shook hands, slapped backs and twisted arms until the convention adopted Confederation as part of its platform. The party would support a new government based on a federal scheme where the two provinces could handle municipal matters and the central or federal government could handle larger affairs that demanded broader, more strategic thinking and legislation. He then returned to the House and tried in vain to bring the idea forward. Every attempt was blocked by Macdonald, Cartier and the Tories.

While Canadians refused to entertain change, the United States changed everything. In 1861 it fell into a Civil War that would lead to the death of over 600,000 Americans. Because of Canadian and British reactions to the war and involvement in it, a very real threat arose that when the shooting stopped the Union army would be turned north to take Canada. After the 1863 battles of Gettysburg and Vicksburg it became apparent to all that the North would win. At the same time, influential British leaders, called Little Englanders, were saying that they were through supporting Canada. Confederation had thus gone from a good idea to a necessity. If Canadians wanted to stay Canadian they would need to form a bigger, richer, and more efficient Canada. Canada had to invent itself to save itself.

Brown had left politics for a while but returned determined to put partisanship and personal enmity aside to advance the national interest. He single-handedly revived the idea of Confederation. He bullied forward a motion to form a committee to investigate Confederation. They met in a small room and they were all there – Macdonald, Cartier and many others we all know as Canada’s founders, the Fathers of Confederation. Brown stood, locked the door, and dramatically slid the key into his vest pocket. He glared at his startled colleagues and said, “Now gentleman. You must talk about this matter, as you cannot leave this room without coming to me.” He forced them to talk. He forced them to keep talking. The committee eventually developed a proposal for Confederation.

But before the committee could report, the government fell yet again. Its fall proved the point Brown was making – the system was broken. He called Cartier and Macdonald to his hotel room and a shocking deal was struck. Macdonald rose in the House the next day and surprised all when he announced not that yet another election would be held but rather that a coalition government would be formed. Brown, his well-known and well-connected enemy, would join the cabinet. There were cheers and a line formed to shake Brown’s hand. A diminutive Quebec member hugged Brown and loudly exclaimed that he had saved the country while for a moment hanging ludicrously from Brown’s neck.

The Great Coalition, as it was called, persuaded Nova Scotia, PEI and New Brunswick to invite the Canadians to a conference they had already scheduled to consider their political future. Brown and the Canadians arrived and soon the Maritimers forgot their idea for union and began discussing a broader Canada. Brown led the discussion of the intricacies of a new, federal-based constitution.  In the brilliant sunshine of tiny Charlottetown and the incessant rain of bustling Quebec City and all in the shadow of the bloody Civil War, a unique and unlikely new country was born.

Brown is important today for the example he offers. Politicians can look beyond the next election and beyond personal and political differences and the scoring of partisan points. We can accept coalition governments as valid expressions of democracy. We can see compromise as a sign of strength and not a surrender of principal. Let us celebrate Sir John but let us not forget George Brown.

Sir John the Saviour

/ John Boyko / 1 Comment

Part of the joy of being an author is the privilege of travelling the country and meeting people who share a passion for books and ideas. Interviews are fascinating too because questions reveal the issues that are stirring interest. The questions are sometimes surprising.

Last January I was speaking with an American journalist from Louisiana about my book dealing with Canada and the American Civil War. She said, “I read your book and admit I had never heard of John Macdonald. It seems like he was quite was a big deal.” “Yes,” I offered politely, “He was and is quite a big deal.”  She continued, “So how would you explain Macdonald to our American readers in one sentence?” “Well,” I said, drawing a breath, “Macdonald is like America’s James Madison in that he led the writing of our constitution, and he is like your Thomas Jefferson in that he provided the ideological basis and political justification for the creation of our country, and he is like your George Washington in that he was our first chief executive that put flesh on the country’s skeleton while his every decision provided a precedent that resonates to this day; so our Macdonald was your Madison, Jefferson and Washington rolled into one man.”

I could have said much more. We can’t escape Macdonald. Every time we discuss the Senate, or the power of the prime minister, or the role of an MP, or government’s power we are revisiting his vision. We know that he created and built Canada. Less well known, however, is how he saved Canada.

Image Sir John A. Macdonald

In 1871, Canada was four years old. The American Civil War that had affected how and when the country had been created had been over for six years; but it was not really over. When the war began, Britain had declared itself neutral. That made Canada neutral too but still about 40,000 Canadians and Maritimers broke the law to don the blue and gray and fight. Canadians sold weapons to both sides and housed a Confederate spy ring that organized raids from Toronto and Montreal. John Wilkes Booth visited Montreal to organize Lincoln’s assassination. All of this and more led a great many Americans to call for revenge; generals, newspapers and politicians called for invasion and annexation.

Throughout the war, Britain had ignored its neutrality law and allowed ships to be bought or built then sold to dummy companies that turned them over to the Confederate navy. One such ship was called the Enrica. The Americans knew about it even while she was under construction at the Laird Yards in Liverpool in the fall of 1861. The British government allowed it to be built and then snuck down the Mersey to the Azores where it was refitted for war and rechristened the CSS Alabama.

The Alabama roamed the seas and eventually sank 64 American commercial vessels and a warship. Lincoln ordered it destroyed and the global hunt was on. In July, 1864, the Alabama was sunk outside a French port.

Image CSS Alabama

At the war’s conclusion, the United States continued its Manifest Destiny driven desire to have Canada. Annexationist Secretary of State William Henry Seward purchased Alaska in 1867. He explained that the purchase was merely a step in driving Britain out of British Columbia and eventually all of North America. But Macdonald stopped him by persuading those in Vancouver and Victoria to join Canada. Seward negotiated with Britain to purchase Rupert’s Land from the Hudson’s Bay Company – nearly all of what is now northern Ontario and the prairies. But Macdonald stopped him again by negotiating around the United States and buying it for Canada.

Seward had one card left to play. He argued that by allowing ships such as the Alabama to be built and bought that Britain had prolonged the Civil War and cost America money and lives. He added up everything from lost ships to increased maritime insurance rates and presented Britain with a bill totalling an astronomical 125 million dollars.

Britain would not, and in fact simply could not pay. Its economy would be crushed. Plus it needed what money it had to build its defence in light of growing troubles in Europe. It reacted to what became known as the Alabama claims by playing the diplomatic game of deny and delay.

By 1871, Ulysses S. Grant had become president. Like Seward, Grant hated the roles Canada and Britain had played in the war. He told his cabinet, “If not for our debt, I wish Congress would declare war on Great Britain, then we could take Canada and wipe out her Commerce as she has done ours, then we would start fair.” Grant’s Secretary of State Hamilton Fish spoke with the British minister to Washington Edward Thornton. He said that Grant would waive the entire Alabama reparation payment if Britain would simply hand over Canada. Thornton said the Canadians would probably not like it but that he would inform his government. Shortly afterwards, a conference was convened to settle the matter. Grant was pleased and said that if Canada was annexed then the Alabama claims could be settled in five minutes.

Image President Grant

In February, 1871 five Americans, including Secretary of State Fish, welcomed five Brits to Washington. As a courtesy, the British allowed Sir John to be a part of their delegation. Macdonald knew that the future of his infant country was at stake. He took the proceedings so seriously that he even abstained from drink for the entire conference!

Macdonald maneuvered the agenda so that they began negotiating the American abuse of rules regarding inland fishing rights. It was an enormously important issue for Canada and he refused to budge an inch. But focussing on fishing was also a brilliant strategy for no matter how many other matters were raised Macdonald kept coming back to fishing. Every time anyone brought up the main question at hand – the Alabama claims – Macdonald talked to Fish about fish.

The Americans badgered him during the day. The British delegates badgered him every night. The Brits threatened him with a withdrawal of British military support. He was unmoved. They tried to bribe him with an appointment to Her Majesty’s Privy Council. He laughed them off. When cornered, Macdonald delayed by saying he needed to write home for advice. It was later discovered that his cables to the cabinet and governor general were being boomeranged back to Washington by Governor General Lisgar who had more loyalty to Britain than Canada. The backstabbing double-cross meant that British delegates knew exactly what Macdonald was doing and all of his fall back positions; but they could still not best him.

The conference ended after 9 weeks and 37 meetings. Macdonald won everything he had wanted. Fishing rights were settled in Canada’s favour. Because the Americans refused, Britain would pay Canada 4 million pounds in compensation for losses incurred in the Fenian Raids; Macdonald would use the money for railway construction. Free access to the American market for a number of Canadian products was guaranteed while Canadian tariffs could remain. Two concessions were more important than these and others. First, the Alabama claims would be settled by an international tribunal and it was agreed that the reparations for Canada swap was off the table. Second, it had been established that the ratification of the Washington Treaty would need approval by the American Congress, British parliament and by the Canadian parliament.

The Washington Treaty was the final battle of the American Civil War. It was the final episode of the American Manifest Destiny dream of Canadian annexation. Macdonald ensured that Canada could thrive because it would survive.

When he arrived back in Ottawa Macdonald delivered a four hour speech in the House. He did not strut. He did not gloat. Rather, he acted as a responsible statesman who respected Canadians sufficiently to explain what had been at stake and what had happened in all of its complex detail. He then went home and for the first time in over two months enjoyed a drink; perhaps more than one. He deserved it, he had saved his country, and that was quite a big deal.