Canadian History

Erasing Sir John

/ John Boyko / 2 Comments

Sir John A. Macdonald is no Robert E. Lee. But the 19th-century leaders are similar in that they are leading again.

This time, they are serving as the focus of Americans and Canadians squabbling about their history. In the United States, the fights have sparked riots, injuries, and deaths. The fight is gearing up in Canada with Montreal’s much-defaced Macdonald statue being torn down and broken.

Macdonald

(Photo: CBC News)

In the United States, memorials to Lee and other Confederate leaders have been attacked as symbols of white supremacy. The point is valid. Most Confederate statues were erected around 1910 to support Jim Crow segregationist laws with another wave of statues coming in the 1960s to combat the Civil Rights movement. The statues have always had less to do the Civil War and more to do with the war against racial equality.

Sir John A. Macdonald’s legacy is more nuanced and so the statues more complex. He created Canada as the indispensable leader who led the Confederation debates in Charlottetown, Quebec City, and London and guided the creation of our constitution. As our first prime minister, he built the country behind tariff walls and on steel rails with the National Policy and building of the transcontinental railway.

He saved Canada when he stopped Nova Scotia from seceding. He saved us again from threats of American annexation when he purchased Rupert’s Land, kept British Columbia from joining the United States, and then negotiated the Washington Treaty which stopped Britain from giving Canada to the Americans to avoid paying Civil War reparations.

While Macdonald created, built, and saved Canada he was a flawed leader. He ruthlessly exploited Chinese railway workers and later tried to expel them while imposing a prohibitively expensive tax on Chinese immigration. He negotiated with Métis leader Louis Riel to bring Manitoba into Confederation but 15-years later crushed Riel’s Saskatchewan rebellion. He refused to overturn a court’s death sentence and so let Riel hang.

Macdonald thought nothing of taking Indigenous land without consultation or ignoring treaties to take more. He withheld promised food and support from Indigenous nations to pressure them to surrender to reservations and so has been accused of attempted genocide. His government began the first residential schools.

Robert E. Lee and the other Confederate leaders fought for a horrible end. Despite all, Sir John worked for a glorious goal. Macdonald’s image on our money and public monuments and his name on our highways and schools represent our respect for that goal, and not for all he did to pursue it.

And that’s the difference.

We are constantly discussing who we are and who we aspire to be. History’s facts don’t change, but our interpretation of those facts does. History is not a shield to protect ideas, a sword to attack the ideas of others, or a wall to keep us from unpleasant things we’d rather not see. History is a teacher. It is there to teach us about ourselves and to intelligently inform our perpetual, existential, national conversation.

Ironically, that is the point being missed by many at the moment. Since Macdonald’s primary goals were overwhelmingly positive, he should remain celebrated. Because aspects of his means to achieve them were inexcusably appalling, he should be appropriately condemned but used to learn about the crimes that he, and we, committed. We should use him to critically examine how we have grown, atonements due, and the work remaining. What better place for those conversations than public places with monuments bearing plaques briefly explaining aspects of Sir John that both swell our chests and well our tears?

When Macdonald’s statue crashed to the ground in Montreal it represented not an invitation to heal but a demand to ignore – and down that road is not growth but regression.

What better place for our public conversations than public squares. So, let us not scrub Sir John from our public spaces. Instead, let those statues stand and allow history to do its job.

10 Minute Walk took 300 Years

/ John Boyko / 2 Comments

Canada is a large and diverse country and so someone who is well known in one region may be a stranger elsewhere. Such is the case with Wayne Adams. Mr. Adams is a Canadian we should all know.

Adams was born in Halifax. His father died when he was 13. His teen years were shaped by a number of positive role models including his mother, uncles, and church and community leader Reverend W. P. Oliver. All inspired him to be industrious, consider others, and work hard to achieve his goals.

Adams’s first full-time employment was at a Halifax Chevrolet dealership. His diligence and initiative led to his becoming the service sales manager and then Halifax’s first African-Canadian new car salesman and, later, used car manager. He then became the manager of the province’s first indoor service station. With the opening of his Shell station in Lower Sackville, Adams became Nova Scotia’s first African-Canadian service station owner-operator.

Always interested in the news and current affairs, Adams became a broadcast journalist. He became widely known in 1969 for his reporting on Canada’s first Summer Games, held on the campus of Halifax’s Saint Mary’s University. Adams created the Black Journal in 1972 which, until its demise in 1978, reported on news and ideas from an African-Canadian perspective.

Politics

Adams had shown an interest in politics when he was elected to the Student’s Council at Halifax Vocational High School. In 1979, his concern with environmental and economic issues and the manner in which the needs of Halifax’s African-Canadians were being ignored led to his running for municipal office. He understood the challenges facing an African-Canadian in local politics because the city had elected its first African-Nova Scotian, Graham Downey, only five years before. He won a seat on the municipal council of what was then Halifax County. His popularity and hard work led to his being re-elected five times and serving for fifteen years. From 1982 to 1983, Adams was Halifax’s, Deputy Mayor.

In late 1992, Adams announced his intention to run for a seat in the Nova Scotia legislature as a member of the Liberal Party. He was enthusiastically supported by many people but he also confronted blatantly racist insults and incidents. He later said, “That kind of negative reaction just exhilarated my efforts to go on and run and win.”

On May 25, 1993, Wayne Adams was elected to represent the overwhelmingly Black riding of Preston and became the first African-Canadian elected to the Nova Scotia legislature. He received letters of congratulations from across Canada. Premier John Savage understood the significance of his election. He quipped that Adams lived only a ten-minute walk from the legislature building but it had taken him 300 years to get here. Adams became the first African-Canadian in Nova Scotia’s cabinet when he was appointed the minister responsible for the Emergency Measures Act, the minister responsible for the Nova Scotia Boxing Authority, and, his most challenging and rewarding portfolio, minister of the environment.

Among his accomplishments was the development of Canada’s first Solid Waste Management Strategy. Implemented in 1995, within five years it had diverted 50% of waste from landfills through a number of initiatives including a recycling program that banned landfills from accepting items such as tin and glass food and beverage containers, corrugated cardboard, compostable organics, and hazardous materials. The strategy also created the Resource Recovery Fund Board, waste management regions, enviro-depots, and a centralized composting system. Related legislation reduced the number of landfills by 75% and introduced stricter guidelines for those remaining that significantly reduced the pollution of adjacent rivers and streams.

Adams also introduced important amendments to the Protected Spaces Act that preserved nearly 8,000 acres of environmentally significant land by bringing it under public control. He also led the reengagement of old trade agreements between Nova Scotia and Caribbean island nations that led to delegations from Canadian environmental industries making deals in Trinidad, Port of Spain, and Barbados.

While Adams was accomplishing a great deal, the government became increasingly unpopular. As a result, many Liberals lost their seats in the 1998 provincial election, including Adams.

Continuing Community Engagement

Adams remained active and influential in the Halifax Board of Trade and Lions Club. He served as an elder in his church, an executive member of the Atlantic Baptist Convention, and was active with the Nova Scotia African Baptist Association. He served as the director of the Halifax Citadel Amateur Boxing club and chair of the Nova Scotia Home for Coloured Children. In 2011, he was invited to the first United Nations’ International Decade for People of African Descent. He told reporters, “There’s strength when you come together…There has to be a mass education, and that comes when you have policy in the corporate sector, as well as the government.”

Wayne Adams

Adams’ ongoing dedication to environmental issues was demonstrated by his becoming the founding president of Chebucto Windfields; a company focusing on creating power through wind generation. Adams also became president of the Nova Scotia Environmental Industries Association. The not-for-profit organization promotes environmental services and products while linking the federal and provincial governments, universities, and businesses to promote progress in matters such as hazardous materials management, fish and wildlife habitat preservation, and environmental research.

In 2003, Adam founded and became CEO of the Adams Consulting and Management Group. It brings together governments, businesses, and interested parties to advance initiatives that address community economic development, renewable energy systems, and product development while promoting business opportunities for Atlantic-Canadian entrepreneurs. Adams is also the Special Project Coordinator with Perennia Food and Agriculture Inc. where he oversees the inventory of agriculture and fishery businesses owned by or located in Nova Scotia’s Black communities while advocating for entrepreneurs in those communities.

Among Adams’ many awards is the Order of Canada. At his May 2004 investure, it was stated, “As a volunteer, businessman, and politician, Wayne Adams has paved the way for generations of young people.” In a 2004 CBC Radio interview, Adams summed up the principle that guides his life, saying, “It is all of our tasks to make the world a better place. The 300-year walk was worth every step.

His Mouth Got Him Killed and His Death Changed History

/ John Boyko / 1 Comment

Thomas Scott grew up poor. His parents were Protestant Irish tenant farmers so he would have understood the history of Protestants struggling against the power and enmity of Ireland’s Catholic majority and of the famine, disease, and economic hardships that gripped the country during his childhood and teenage years. In 1863, at age 21, the six-foot-two, ruggedly handsome Scott joined the wave of those leaving Ireland. He arrived in Canada West, what is now Ontario, and settled near Belleville. Scott worked as a labourer and joined Sterling’s 49th Hastings Battalion of Rifles. He also joined the powerful anti-Catholic Orange Lodge.

Seeking greater opportunities, Scott travelled west. In the spring of 1869, he arrived by stagecoach in the Red River Settlement, at the junction of the Assiniboine and Red Rivers, at what is now Winnipeg, Manitoba. It was home to about 5,000 descendants of French explorers and fur traders who had wed Indigenous women. Most Métis were Catholic and French-speaking and many were Protestant and English speaking. A growing number of Protestant, English-speaking Canadians, like Scott, were also moving to Red River.

His Mouth Got Him Killed

Thomas Scott

The Red River Settlement was part of an expansive region called Rupert’s Land that had been owned by the Hudson Bay Company. In March 1869, just before Scott’s arrival, it had been sold to the British crown with the intent to sell it to the two-year-old Dominion of Canada. The Canadian purchase would not be official until December 1. That nine-month interval created confusion regarding who owned the land and governed its people and added to the resentment among those at Red River that they had not been consulted about the sale. Racial, religious, and ethnic tensions were made worse by the belief that the sale would spark an influx of even more English Protestants from Ontario. The settlement was further split because some people wanted to join Canada, others wanted independence, while others hoped Red River would become a British colony.

Upon his arrival, Scott joined a construction crew building the Dawson Road between Red River and Fort William. In August, it was discovered that the project’s superintendent and paymaster, John A. Snow, had been underpaying the workers. Scott led a gang that dragged Snow to the river and threatened to toss him in. In November, Scott was charged with assault, fined £4, and fired. Scott found work as a labourer and bartender and became known for fighting, drinking, and loudly stating his anti-Catholic, anti- Métis views.

While Scott was working on the Dawson Road, a Canadian survey crew had arrived near the Red River Settlement. They had ignored current land ownership titles and property lines. The Métis quite rightly insisted that until the December 1 ownership transfer, the crew had no official status and were simply trespassers. The Métis spokesperson was a 25-year-old charismatic, fluently bilingual, Louis Riel who had just returned home from Montreal where he had studied to become a priest. Supported by armed men, Riel dramatically placed his foot on the surveying chain and ordered the crew to leave. Its leader, William McDougal, retreated and took his men to nearby Pembina.

The Métis took Upper Fort Garry, the Hudson Bay Company’s post in Red River, and formed a provisional government called the Métis National Committee. Riel was its secretary. On December 1, a frustrated McDougall led his men back to the Red River Settlement but armed Métis, this time acting on behalf of their government, stopped him again.

Meanwhile, the trouble-making Scott had met the 29-year-old doctor and entrepreneur John Christian Shultz. Shultz led the Canadian Party which was a small group of English Protestants who wished to see Red River annexed by Canada and led by English Protestants. In early December, 67 Canadian Party adherents gathered at Shultz’s warehouse in Lower Fort Garry to plan an attack on the Métis government.

A newly constituted provisional government called the Provisional Government of the Métis Nation had been formed with Riel as president. On December 7, Riel had Shultz and his followers arrested and detained. Scott had not been at the warehouse but upon hearing of the arrests he met with Riel and demanded that the prisoners be freed. When the soft-spoken Riel refused, Scott became belligerent, yelled racist insults, and so was arrested. He continued his tirades while under confinement, threatening at one point to shoot Riel.

On January 9, Scott and twelve others escaped. He and fellow prisoner Charles Mair found snowshoes and somehow walked 103 km through a howling blizzard to Portage la Prairie. A month later, still suffering the effects of frostbite, Scott joined Canadian Major Charles Arkoll Boulton and about 60 others who marched through cold and snow, intent on capturing Upper Fort Garry, freeing the prisoners, and overthrowing Riel. They were joined along the way by another 100 men armed with muskets and clubs. Upon their arrival, they learned that Riel had already released the prisoners. While the news led many to turn back, Boulton, Scott, and 45 others continued to insist on Riel’s ouster. Riel had them arrested.

A military council determined that Boulton was guilty of treason and should be executed. After appeals from church leaders and Donald Smith, the commissioner from Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald’s government, Riel waived the sentence. The incident, and Riel’s mercy led to even broader support among Red River’s disparate groups for the provisional government.

 Meanwhile, the still imprisoned Thomas Scott had become a nuisance. He complained about conditions and constantly shouted violent threats and racist insults at his Métis guards. They chained his feet and hands but he persisted. On February 28, after striking a guard, two other guards dragged Scott outside and began beating him until a member of Riel’s government, who happened to be passing by, intervened. Riel visited Scott and, speaking through a hole in the door, tried to calm the man but Scott merely shouted insults.

Scott’s Execution

On March 3, Scott was brought before a six-man council and charged with insubordination and treason. He was not allowed a lawyer and, because he spoke no French, understood none of the evidence brought against him. Witnesses were not cross-examined. Only at the trial’s conclusion did Riel address Scott in English and summarize what had happened. One member of the council voted for acquittal and another for banishment but four declared Scott guilty and said he should be executed by firing squad.

A minister, a priest, and Donald Smith asked Riel to spare Scott’s life but he refused. Riel believed that the trial and Scott’s execution would demonstrate the legitimate power of his government to the people of Red River and, as he said to Smith, “We must make Canada respect us.”

At one o’clock the next day, March 4, 1870, Scott’s hands were tied behind his back and he was escorted from his cell to the courtyard outside. With Riel watching, Scott knelt in the snow and a white cloth was tied to cover his eyes. He shouted, “This is horrible. This is cold-blooded murder.” Six Métis men raised their muskets but upon hearing the order to fire only three shots rang out. Scott was hit twice and crumpled to the ground but was still alive. François Guillemette, a member of the firing squad, stepped forward, withdrew his revolver, and delivered the coup de grâce, ending Scott’s life.

His Mouth Got Him Killed

French-speaking Quebecers had rallied to Riel’s side as a protector of French-Catholic rights. But with Scott’s execution, many in Ontario, spurred by propaganda spread by Dr. Shultz, who had returned to his native province and was supported by the Orange Lodge, demanded that Riel be arrested for Scott’s murder. Prime Minister Macdonald had welcomed representatives from Red River and agreed with nearly all of Riel’s terms; that Manitoba should be created as a province, there be guaranteed protection for Métis land, the Catholic religion, and French language, and that treaties be negotiated with Indigenous nations. The raging controversy around Scott’s death did not change Macdonald’s mind about Manitoba’s creation but to assuage Ontario’s anger he dispatched 1,200 men to Red River, comprised of a British battalion and two Canadian militia battalions. By the time they arrived, Riel had fled to the United States.

Riel’s part in Scott’s execution had destroyed his ability to take a legal, leadership role in Canadian politics. In July 1870, Manitoba became a province largely under the terms he had proposed and the people of the new province elected him as their Member of Parliament three times. However, denounced as Scott’s murderer, Ontario Orangemen had placed a $5,000 bounty on his head and so a fear of arrest or assassination made him unable to take his seat.

His Mouth Got Him Killed.

Louis Riel

Fifteen years later, Riel returned from his American exile to lead Saskatchewan’s Métis in their fighting for fair treatment by the Canadian government. Riel’s return led Ontario’s Protestant majority to renew their demand that he be arrested for Scott’s murder. The 1885 Northwest Rebellion was crushed, Riel was arrested and charged with high treason. Scott’s execution played a significant part in the jury’s determination of Riel’s guilt, its death sentence, and in Macdonald’s allowing that sentence to be carried out.

Rumours persist over what happened to Scott’s body. Some claim it was thrown into the river and others that it was buried in an unmarked grave or under a building. It has never been found. More importantly, echoes of the gunfire that ended Scott’s life still reverberate through Canada’s culture as bitter and brittle emotions still inform many of our political debates.

  This was written for the Canadian Encyclopedia, on line resource that I highly recommend. If you enjoyed the column, please share it with others and consider checking my other work at http://www.johnboyko.com

The Audacious Power of No

/ John Boyko / 1 Comment

President Kennedy once said that most government decisions come down to choosing between two lousy options. Like all government leaders, Kennedy understood that as important as deciding to undertake certain steps is a decision to take no step at all. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, for example, Kennedy’s military leaders and the majority of his cabinet urged him to attack Cuba. But he said no. Instead, his diplomatic efforts led to the Soviet missiles being removed and the world avoiding a nuclear holocaust. Kennedy’s courageous decision demonstrated the power of no. Let’s consider a Canadian example.

The Power of No

In the 1990s, much of the western world was enthralled with the celebration of cowboy capitalism and the veneration of corporate leaders. Government was suspect. State regulations were rolled back as mega-mergers created mammoth corporations. In the United States, the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act that regulated bank mergers and separated savings and loans from investment institutions was rescinded. Elephantine financial institutions grew. They put peoples’ savings, pensions, and homes at risk to spur higher and higher profits through increasingly complex investment vehicles.

Canada’s prime minister at the time was Jean Chrétien. He had served as finance minister and so understood the issues at hand. Chretien’s finance minister was Paul Martin. As a successful businessman, he understood micro and macroeconomics. Chrétien and Martin knew what America and other nations had done with their banks and financial institutions and were under enormous pressure to do the same.

In January 1998, the Bank of Montreal announced its intention to merge with the Royal Bank. Shortly afterwards, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and Toronto-Dominion Bank announced that they too would merge. The banks demanded that the merger be approved and that the Canadian government do as other governments had done and end regulations that separated retail from investment banking. Chrétien and Martin knew that in the current political climate it would be politically popular to say yes.

MARTIN/CHRETIEN/BUDGET

Chrétien and Martin

But they said no. They argued that limited competition in the financial sector was dangerous. They worried that the mergers would create institutions that would be too big to fail, leading to a situation where trouble within them would render government bailouts essential. They insisted that the regulations in place were designed to protect Canadians, the Canadian economy, and even to protect the banks from themselves.

The mergers were not allowed to happen. In fact, the capital requirements for banks – the amount of money they must keep in reserve related to outstanding loans – was increased.

Within a decade, in the fall of 2008, the world economy collapsed. Enormous banks and financial institutions had caused it through sneaky undertakings that starved their customers and fed their greed. Around the world, bank after bank fell. Former American Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan quipped that when the tide went out, we saw who had been swimming naked. But Canadian banks were suitably suited. The disallowed mergers and maintained regulations meant that no Canadian banks went bankrupt, no big bailouts were necessary, and Canada rode the storm much better than nearly every other country due mostly to its banking and financial system remaining sound and stable.

Quebec and Nova Scotia leaders said no to Benjamin Franklin when he arrived, hat in hand, asking them to join the American revolution. Quebecers said no in 1980 and 1995, rejecting ethnic nationalism and remaining in Canada. Elijah Harper said no to allowing the Manitoba legislature to vote on the Meech Lake constitutional amendments which led to its failure and the inclusion of Indigenous nations in future negotiations. Canada would be a different place if in these and many other cases there had been a yes rather than a no.

We all know the power of no in our lives. We teach our children. As we age, we grow more willing to wield it without excuses. It is an essential concept for businesses, schools, and big and small organizations. Leaders must use it. Middle managers must sometimes employ its power to remind the powerful of vanishing values. As important as what a government does, is what it does not do, does not allow, and what it prevents. We must pay closer attention, and acknowledge and applaud the audacious power of no.

If you enjoyed this column, please consider sharing it with others and checking my others at http://www.johnboyko.com

My Shame and the Shameless Racist

/ John Boyko / 4 Comments

An interesting part of being an author is being invited to address groups about one’s books. You shake off the office, library, and archive dust and meet those who share an interest in books and ideas. Sometimes, though, you meet folks who are not curious but angry. They seek not to learn but profess. Last week, I encountered one such gentleman and wish I had handled him differently.

Last Wednesday I addressed a group of 60 or so folks about my book, Last Steps to Freedom, which addresses the history of racism in Canada. I said that at racism’s core is the belief that in creating some people, God made a mistake. I explained the book’s idea that racism is like a ladder we ascend, climbing the rungs of stereotype, prejudice, discrimination, state-sanctioned discrimination, and, finally, genocide. In Canada, I explained, we have been on every rung, including, with respect to Indigenous peoples, attempted cultural genocide. I illustrated the point with stories of Ukrainian-Canadians, thousands of whom were locked up during the First World War, and Black Canadians who endured slavery and then discrimination that persists today.

The two most important rules in public speaking are to be brief and be seated. I did both. Then came the question period which is always my favorite part. But last Wednesday was different.

He thrust his hand in the air. I nodded his way and he leaped to his feet. The slight man, in his late sixties, asked if I knew the meaning of a hate crime. I began to answer when he cut me off and said that it was hateful to attack another person’s opinions. He then said that according to Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam, all slave ship captains were Jews. There was a gasp in the audience. I began to respond when again he cut me off asking if I had heard of Ernst Zündel. Yes, I began to reply, when he said that, according to Zündel, the Holocaust never happened. How can I prove, he asked, that the Holocaust happened and that 6 million were killed?

A microphone is a good thing. You can pull it close to increase your volume while moving toward a speaker. All but the truly crazy usually fall silent. He did. I said that, yes, I had heard of both Farrakhan and Zündel and knew them both to have been rejected by all real historians. He began to speak again but I kept going. As for those men and you holding opinions, well, in my opinion, I am Robert Redford’s virtual twin. But no matter how fervently I believe it does not make it true.

Racism

He began to speak again but I said he had made his point and now it was time to allow others to pose their questions. I pointed to a gentleman in the back and as he started his question, our friend huffed from the room.

The questioner continued but I was only half listening, noticing the heads turning to watch our angry friend go, and seeing the nudges and whispers. With the question posed, I said thanks but paused. I said, now that was interesting. Opinions and facts are not the same and are seldom friends, I said. There were smiles and shoulders sank back down as people relaxed. I then answered the second question, well, really the first question.

There I was, having written a book about the horrors of racism and speaking about how we need to atone for our collective crimes and ignorance to work together in building an egalitarian, non-racist society and yet I had allowed an obvious racist to hold the floor for what I believe was too long. I should have challenged him sooner, harsher. I should have said more directly that his sources were known anti-Semites and that the bile he was spewing was anti-Semitic hooey. But I didn’t. Was I too polite? But then again, would my moving more aggressively have simply employed the same ugly weapons as his hate-based tribe? We must always confront racism and I should have done so quicker, firmer, perhaps ruder – polite be damned.

We are now enduring a moment in which too many people see political correctness as weakness, compromise as lacking principle, and critical thought as elitism. This challenge to the post-1960s liberal consensus has invited racist, sexist, homophobic, nativist, bigoted talk to be dragged from the shadows and waved like a flag. Those confused by complexity find solace and community in dividing the world into me and you, us and them. Facts can then not be sought to learn but cherry-picked to confirm. It’s sad and dangerous, but I sincerely believe we’ll be OK.

History used to evolve in spans but now leaps in spasms. This moment will pass. It will pass quickly. The racists and bigots will return to their shrinking circles of confusion and fear. Love will trump hate and that which gave rise to Trump will fall. The better angels of our nature will again sing.

I believe it. I have to. The alternative is too frightening. Next time, I’ll do better.

If you enjoyed this column, please share it with others through your social media of choice. If you wish to read the book that brought the folks together on a cold, snowy evening and made one gentleman so angry, you can find it here: https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/last-steps-to-freedom-the/9781896239408-item.html

 

 

Power, Wealth, and Responsibility –Enbridge

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On 13 February 1947, the Imperial Oil Company found crude oil at its Leduc #1 well, about 15 km west of Edmonton. The Leduc well began Alberta’s oil industry. However, finding crude oil was only the first step for it still needed to be transported to refineries to turn it into useable products.

Two years later, Imperial Oil created the Interprovincial Pipe Line Company (IPL). Its first pipeline cost $73 million to construct and, in October 1950, began transporting crude oil from Edmonton to Superior, Wisconsin. Within a year, the company had transported 30.6 million barrels of oil. In 1953, a new pipeline, Line 5, was constructed from Superior to refineries in Sarnia, Ontario, allowing Alberta oil to supply Ontario’s growing manufacturing base. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, IPL and its American subsidiary, the Lakehead Pipe Line Company, built more pipelines that connected additional American cities including Buffalo, Chicago and Detroit.

The company also expanded in Canada. In 1972, IPL pipelines were transporting an over 1 million barrels of crude oil per day across North America. In June 1976, after an expenditure of $247 million, a pipeline transported Alberta oil to Montréal. In April 1985, IPL pipelines connected the oilfields at Norman Wells, Northwest Territories, to its pipelines in Zama, Alberta, and, through that junction, across Canada and into the United States.

In 1988, IPL changed its name to Interhome Energy Inc. The company expanded in 1994 when it purchased Consumers’ Gas. It was soon transporting natural gas from its sources and distributing it directly to businesses and homes. About this time, the company’s name changed to IPL Energy Inc. The company’s operations expanded internationally with the acquisition of a pipeline in Colombia. By the summer of 1996, its 829 km OCENSA pipeline was transporting crude oil from the Cusiana and Cupiagua fields in central Colombia to its west coast.

Enbridge Created

In 1998, IPL changed its name to Enbridge Inc. The name refers to what the company does by linking the words energy and bridge. Shortly afterward, Enbridge became involved with the exploitation of the Athabasca oil sands in northern Alberta, near Fort McMurray. The difficult process of extracting crude oil from the area by processing it from the rock and soil in which it rests began in 1964. By the 1990s, the oil sands promised to be North America’s largest depository of crude oil. By 1999, Enbridge had built one long-haul pipeline connecting the oil sands to its existing pipelines in Edmonton and Hardisty, Alberta, and, through them, to other parts of Canada and to the United States.

Question of Power - Enbridge

In 1999, Enbridge developed a natural gas distribution network into New Brunswick. Its 2001 purchase of Houston’s Midcoast Energy Resources was followed by a further expansion of its American natural gas distribution network. In 2005, Enbridge acquired Shell Gas Transmission LLC, including ownership interests in 11 natural gas pipelines in 5 offshore Gulf of Mexico pipeline corridors.

Beginning in 2001, Enbridge began to invest in sources of renewable energy. It invested in Saskatchewan’s SunBridge wind power project and by 2012 was involved with 10 wind farms, 4 solar energy operations, 4 waste heat recovery programs, and a geothermal energy project — all representing a $5-billion investment. At the same time, Enbridge altered many of its practices with the goal of becoming more environmentally responsible. It was subsequently listed as one of the world’s most sustainable companies eight years in a row. In 2016, American magazine Newsweek ranked Enbridge the world’s 12th most sustainable corporation.

Controversy

While pipelines play an essential role in the transportation of crude oil and natural gas from their sources to refineries and then to customers, they are controversial because they sometimes break, resulting in leaks onto land and into water. Several Enbridge lines have suffered spills. In 2017, the Great Lakes Region of the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) stated that Enbridge’s aging Line 5 — linking Superior, Wisconsin, and Sarnia, Ontario — had experienced 29 leaks between 1968 and 2015, resulting in the spilling of over 1 million gallons of oil and gas liquids in 64 years. The NWF insisted that the leaks threatened the water supply of more than 40 million people.

In 2005, Enbridge signed a deal with PetroChina stipulating that it would purchase oil from Alberta’s oil sands. A 1,172 km pipeline would bring the crude from northern Alberta to the small, northern British Columbia port of Kitimat. The pipeline’s construction would cost $6.6 billion and be called the Northern Gateway. The project was immediately opposed by environmental groups who worried about spills along the route and in the harbour and along the coast. Several First Nations communities objected to the pipeline crossing their land.

Meanwhile, Enbridge initiated government approval processes to rebuild and expand its aging 1,659 km Line 3 that took crude oil from Hardisty, Alberta, to Superior, Wisconsin. The $7.5-billion project proposed to fix problems, render the pipeline safer and increase its volume to allow the transportation of 760,000 barrels a day. Objections were raised by environmental protection groups and communities through which the pipeline ran, including many Indigenous communities.

The Northern Gateway and Line 3 proposals led to fiery public hearings and long, complex submissions to the Canadian government’s National Energy Board, the body responsible for issuing the necessary licences to proceed. Enbridge admitted, with respect to both projects, that there is always “residual risk” but promised to take all necessary precautions to mitigate them. It pledged, for example, to use tethered tugboats to pull big oil tankers out of the Kitimat harbour and through the Douglas Channel, to employ new radar and other navigation aids, and to enforce strict rules about the quality of ships that would be allowed to transport the oil.

In July 2010, Enbridge’s pipeline in Marshall Township, Michigan, ruptured, dumping 20,000 barrels of oil in the Kalamazoo River watershed. The US National Transportation Safety Board investigated the spill and accused Enbridge of lax safety standards, made worse by the fact that the company’s monitoring stations had been between shifts when the rupture happened so that no one was watching the line. Enbridge promised to make changes, but the damage was done to the environment, to people of the area and to the company’s reputation.

In November 2016, the Canadian government announced that it would not approve the Northern Gateway project. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that he was approving a proposal put forth by Enbridge’s competitor, Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, to build a pipeline from Alberta to a bigger and more southern British Columbia port. Trudeau said of Enbridge’s Northern Gateway: “It has become clear that this project is not in the best interest of the local affected communities, including Indigenous peoples.” Trudeau also announced that the government approved Enbridge’s Line 3 rebuild.

Continued Growth 

In September 2016, Enbridge had purchased Spectra Energy Corporation of Houston, Texas, for $37 billion. The move increased Enbridge’s value to $166 billion and made it North America’s largest energy infrastructure company. Enbridge was restructured with its natural gas pipeline business run from Houston, its liquid pipeline business from Edmonton and its headquarters remaining in Calgary. The move also meant that Enbridge laid off about 1,000 employees. The layoffs, potential for tax savings, and capacity for more growth in Canada and the United States increased Enbridge’s stock price and dividends for investors.

In November 2017, Enbridge filed an application with the Ontario Energy Board to amalgamate with Union Gas. Enbridge stated that the merger of the two natural gas distribution companies would allow a more efficient distribution to customers. Critics said it would create a monopoly that would allow Enbridge too much power to control distribution and prices.

The questions surrounding the amalgamation were the same as had been asked for years regarding balancing a return on shareholder investment, consumer rights, the power of government to regulate, and environmental responsibility.

This column is my latest entry in the Canadian Encyclopedia which is a great source of information on all things Canadian.

The Important Canadian You Should Know

/ John Boyko / Leave a comment

Denham Jolly is a man we should know. He is a Canadian teacher, entrepreneur, publisher, broadcaster, philanthropist, civil rights activist, and community leader.

Family and Personal Life

Born in Negril, Jamaica, Jolly enjoyed an idyllic childhood, playing on his family’s 300 lush acres and long, natural beach. His father was a successful entrepreneur and his mother was the local justice of the peace. After graduating from secondary school in 1953, he became a clerk with the West Indies Sugar Company but agreed with his parents that a university education was essential for his future.

Jolly was accepted at the Ontario Agricultural College at the University of Guelph. Upon entering Canada, he was forced to sign a document pledging that he would leave the country the day that his student visa expired. He later learned that only Black students had to sign the pledge and so he became acquainted with Canada’s subtle, bureaucratic racism. He augmented his studies with two years at the Nova Scotia Agricultural College in Truro before completing his Science degree at McGill University. Jolly wanted to remain in Canada but, due to the immigration rules, he was forced to return to Jamaica.

In April 1961, he was finally able to secure the papers necessary to return to Canada. He worked for a few months as a City of Toronto air pollution researcher and then secured a position as a biology teacher at a secondary school in Sault Ste. Marie. In the spring of 1963, he met the young woman who would become his wife, Carol Casselman. After a year in the Soo, Jolly accepted a position teaching Physics and Chemistry at Toronto’s Forest Hill Collegiate. Carol moved to Toronto to pursue her nursing career, they were married in July 1965, and later had three children.

Entrepreneurship

While enjoying teaching, Jolly earned extra income through the purchase of a Toronto rooming house. He then bought a second one. In 1968, he opened the Donview Nursing Home and six months later the Tyndall Nursing Home. The success of his growing businesses led him to leave teaching and, in 1972, he built a state of the art nursing home that grew to 151 beds. His entrepreneurial spirit was seen when he discovered the astronomical sum spent each month for his residents’ laboratory work and reacted by arranging for the consolidation of two private labs and then the purchase of 51% of the new company. Then, in 1990, Jolly observed that family members visiting his residents had difficulty finding nearby accommodation and so he purchased land and built a 65-room hotel that he called the Jolly Inn. A year later he paid the fee to register the hotel as a Day’s Inn. His businesses became international when he purchased a 120-bed nursing home in Dallas, Texas and began a boat chartering company in Montego Bay, Jamaica. When after only two years the profits from neither justified the headaches of running them from afar he sold them both – for a handsome profit.

Community Engagement

While becoming an increasingly successful businessperson, Jolly never forgot the racist student visa document he been forced to sign and the racial segregation he had experienced in Nova Scotia where, because he was Black, he could not attend an all-white church or enjoy a meal in a whites-only restaurant. Later, Jolly met Toronto landlords who assured him on the phone that an apartment was available but then became suddenly unavailable when he arrived to see it. When Jolly arranged for a white friend to visit the landlord, the apartment was available again. When buying his first house, the unwritten rules about where Black people could live in Toronto forced him to have a white friend pose as the purchaser while he pretended to be a contractor. He also found that some banks had more stringent loan conditions for Black than for white entrepreneurs. Others bluntly refused loans for Black-owned businesses. Jolly believed it was his responsibility to do what he could to help fight for racial equality.

Jolly became the treasurer of the Jamaican Canadian Association (JCA). He learned more about racist organizations in Ontario such as the Western Guard Party that worked with the Canadian KKK to harass non-white people, spread racist propaganda, and urge the government to restrict non-white immigrants. The JCA’s headquarters was burned to the ground in a suspicious fire that all assumed but was never proven to be arson.

One of the targets of racist groups and individuals was Contrast, a Black newspaper that had been founded in 1969. Its articles reflected the kaleidoscope of the Black experience in Toronto from the perspective of long-time residents and more recent arrivals from Caribbean islands. In 1983, the paper was in financial trouble until Jolly saved it by infusing much-needed capital. He became its owner and publisher. The paper remained free to readers even as Jolly increased it from 16 to 24 pages, made it more professional looking with new computerized type-setting equipment, broadened its range of articles, and improved the quality of its writing. Under his leadership, Contrast became, according to the Toronto Star, the “eyes, ears, and voice of Canada’s Black community.” He ran the paper for three years before selling it to another Jamaican-born entrepreneur.

Jolly was angry when he saw Black Canadian athletes applauded for earning medals for their country in the 1982 Commonwealth Games but then having to endure racist discrimination when they returned home. He and some friends gathered leaders from Toronto’s diverse Black community and formed the Black Business and Professional Association. He was its founding president. It supported and publicized the success of Black businesspeople and professionals, partly through the annual Harry Jerome Awards and Scholarships. Meanwhile, he personally funded scholarships for even more aspiring young Black people.

In August 1988, Jolly became a founding member of the Black Action Defence Committee (BADC). Its goal was to stop the harassment of Black citizens and the frightening regularity of white police officers being exonerated after shooting young Black men. The BADC wrote articles, staged demonstrations, lobbied politicians, and helped victims’ families. The Ontario government responded to a May 1992 Toronto riot that followed a peaceful protest organized by the BADC with an investigation that revealed and confirmed the depth of Toronto’s systemic anti-Black racism.

Denham Jolly

Radio

Jolly observed that among the problems facing Black youth in Toronto were the divisions within the Black community and a feeling of isolation as a minority within a predominantly white city. Part of a response to the problems, he decided, might be the creation of a Black-themed radio station that would play a range of Black music while offering Black voices and perspectives. He gathered other Black leaders and businesspeople and became the founder, president, and chief executive officer of Milestone Radio Inc. He then led the effort to have the Canadian Radio and Television Commission (CRTC) grant Milestone the city’s one available radio frequency. The first question he was asked by the all-white commissioners was, “What is Black music?” He knew his group was in trouble. The license was granted to another group that proposed a country music station.

A few years later, another frequency came available and Jolly led another expensive and complex effort to earn it. The Canadian government sabotaged its own process by stating in advance that the frequency would go to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). Finally, twelve years after first applying to the CRTC, his third application bid was successful.

In February 2001, Jolly’s FLOW 93.5 began broadcasting an energetic mix of R&B, reggae, rap, and stories told by Black on-air personalities about the Black community. Instead of having to tune into American stations, Black youth heard themselves reflected and their tastes respected over the air in their own city. As the station became increasingly successful, Jolly increased the power of its range so that it reached six million listeners across southern Ontario.

While a financial success, the station maintained its broader mission by promoting emerging Black artists, such as Drake. It provided scholarships for Black youth, staged free concerts, and supported Caribana, the annual celebration of Black-island culture. Not surprisingly, given the racial makeup of the region, 60% of FLOW’s listeners were white. This meant that more than just Black listeners were learning of the presence and vibrancy of the diverse Black culture that was a part of the Canadian mosaic. Jolly happily helped other Black music stations to form, first in Calgary and then elsewhere. After five years on the air, FLOW 93.5 was chosen as Canada’s best contemporary radio station.

Legacy

In his 70s, and pleased with the impact the radio station had made and that Black music had become mainstream, in 2011 Jolly sold Flow 93.5. He also sold his nursing homes. Jolly’s first marriage had ended in divorce and he later married Janice Williams. They traveled extensively, including to South Africa, where he had made generous donations to Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress to support its actions that helped end the state-sanctioned discrimination of Apartheid.

Jolly’s business acumen and community engagement were recognized through numerous local and national awards. Each recognized his dedication to his community and country and to the idea that Canada and Canadians will be better when there is justice for all through and the creation of a more equitable, non-racial nation whose reality matches its international image and the principles for which it stands.

I was invited to write this piece as an entry to the Canadian Encyclopedia. If you enjoyed it, please share it with others through your social media of choice and consider leaving a comment.

 

Trudeau, Trump and the UN: Two Views for One World

/ John Boyko / Leave a comment

CTV News called to ask my view on various leaders and their thoughts on the United Nations. As we are dealing with so many issues that transcend national boundaries, it is an interesting time to pause to consider the internationalist viewpoint that led to the creation of bodies such as the UN in the first place.

Here is the September 20 interview:

: https://www.facebook.com/CTVNewsChannel/videos/1549973815063944/

Scrubbing History: Sir John and General Lee

/ John Boyko / 4 Comments

Sir John A. Macdonald is no Robert E. Lee. But the 19th-century leaders are similar in that they are leading again.

This time, they are serving as the focus of Americans and Canadians squabbling about their history. In the United States, the fights have sparked riots, injuries and a death. The fight is gearing up in Canada with an Ontario teacher’s union demanding that Sir John A. Macdonald Elementary School change its name.

Power and Sir John's Echo

In the United States, memorials to Lee and other Confederate leaders are being attacked as symbols of white supremacy – and the point is valid. Southern states seceded and fought the Civil War primarily to maintain slavery.

Most of the Confederate statues erected and most of what’s named after Confederate leaders were done to celebrate the legitimacy of that reprehensible goal; they appeared around 1910 to support Jim Crow segregationist laws and in the 1960s to combat the civil rights movement.

The statues should come down. The names should be changed.

Sir John A. Macdonald’s legacy is more nuanced. He was the indispensable leader who led the Confederation debates in Charlottetown, Quebec City, and London and guided the creation of our constitution. He was our first prime minister and built the country behind tariff walls and on steel rails with the National Policy and building of the transcontinental railway.

He saved Canada when he stopped Nova Scotia from seceding. He saved us from threats of American annexation when he purchased Rupert’s Land, kept British Columbia from joining the United States and negotiated the Washington Treaty in which Britain was considering giving Canada to the Americans to avoid paying Civil War reparations. He kept us united by having French and English work together and attempted to grant women the right to vote.

In American terms, Macdonald is our Jefferson, Washington and Madison.

However, Macdonald also ruthlessly exploited Chinese railway workers and later tried to expel them while imposing a prohibitively expensive tax on Chinese immigration. He negotiated with Métis leader Louis Riel to bring Manitoba into Confederation but then crushed Riel’s Saskatchewan rebellion.

Macdonald thought nothing of taking Indigenous land without consultation or ignoring treaties to take more. He withheld promised food and support from Indigenous nations to pressure them to surrender to reservations.

Lee fought for a horrible end. Macdonald worked for a remarkable goal. Macdonald’s image on our money and public monuments and his name on our highways and schools represent our respect for that goal, and not for all he did to pursue it.

And that is the difference.

We are constantly discussing who we are and who we aspire to be. History’s facts don’t change, but our interpretation of those facts does. History is not a shield to protect ideas or a sword to attack the ideas of others or a fence to keep us from unpleasant things we’d rather not see. History is a teacher.

It is there to teach us about ourselves and to intelligently inform our existential, national conversation.

Ironically, that is the point missed by members of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario who asked school boards to rename schools bearing the name of our first prime minister. Since Macdonald’s primary goals were overwhelmingly positive, he should remain celebrated. Because aspects of his means to achieve them were inexcusably appalling, he should be used to teach and learn about crimes that he and we committed.

We should use them to critically examine how we have grown, atonements due and work remaining. What better place for those conversations than public places with monuments bearing plaques briefly explaining aspects of Sir John that swell our chests or well our tears?

What better place for those conversations than schools, especially those bearing his name. So, let us not scrub Sir John from our public spaces, instead, let history to do its job.

This column originally appeared in the Ottawa Citizen and was the subject of my appearances on CTV television’s Your Morning and CBC Radio’s The Current. I would appreciate your comments on this latest conversation about who we are.

Power Where it Belongs

/ John Boyko / 1 Comment

Canada is a conversation. When confronting troubles visited upon us, or of our own making, Canadians reach not for a gun but a gavel. We talk it out. Every leadership race and election, every new bill, public initiative or staggering crisis, and every table pounding in the House of Commons or at the local Tim Hortons is another element of that conversation. And when we’re talking, we’re always talking about power. So, let’s talk.

Political power touches us all. Positively expressed, it offers a vehicle through which we are collectively encouraged and enabled to act for the common good. Power matters, and so it matters who has it.

Our founders understood. In 1864, they met in Charlottetown and Quebec City and talked their way into the creation of a country. From Britain came the concepts of a limited monarchy and parliamentary democracy. From the United States, they took the ideas of a written constitution and a federal state, in Canada’s case one composed of a central government and provinces. This is where the real talking about power began.

Power and Sir John's Echo

Sir John A. Macdonald led the way in arguing that while the American Constitution was brilliant in its conception, the fact that the United States was, at that moment, butchering itself in the Civil War demonstrated its appalling failure in practice. Seeing this, the Canadian Confederation delegates decided to stand the American system on its head. Macdonald explained that Canada would reverse the “primary error” of the United States “by strengthening the general government and conferring on the provincial bodies only such powers as may be required for local purposes.”

The provinces were given only municipal-like areas of responsibility and a limited ability to raise revenue. The federal government, on the other hand, was afforded the major powers relating to sovereignty, including trade, the military, the post office, criminal law, currency and banking. Unlike in the United States, where, until 1913, the states appointed senators, in Canada the prime minister was given the power to populate the country’s Senate. The prime minister would also appoint the lieutenant-governors, who approved provincial bills while sending questionable ones to the federal cabinet, which could disallow them. It was decided that responsibility for anything the Constitution left out or that came up later, such as airports, would go automatically to the federal government.

Throughout Canada’s 150-year conversation, provinces have worked to overturn our founders’ vision and shift power to themselves. An example is the decades-long provincial demand for greater power that sabotaged repeated federal efforts to earn greater independence for the country by gaining control of our Constitution. In standing up for what they believed was best for their province, too many premiers betrayed and undermined the very concept of Canada while dividing Canadians against themselves.

This is not to say that premiers are not patriots and provinces don’t matter. Of course they are and of course they do. But it was successive federal governments that fought to maintain our founders’ vision. Provinces were cajoled and dragged along as the federal government led the building of Canada through projects such as the transcontinental railway, St. Lawrence Seaway and the Trans-Canada Highway. The federal government needled, nudged and negotiated for Canadians in creating national policies such as pensions and health care. Federal governments rallied our response to emergencies such as global wars, the Great Depression and the FLQ crisis. The federal government spoke for Canadian values whether reflected as peacekeepers or climate-change leaders.

Some federal leaders have made boneheaded mistakes and some perpetrated tragic policies. Macdonald himself can never be forgiven for the crimes he committed with respect to indigenous people. Those actions condemn the men not the structure from which they worked.

Let us move to the present. Ignore whether you like or dislike our current Prime Minister or his policies, but grant that his Canadian tour last spring indicated his understanding that this country is indeed a conversation. He is also demonstrating that he is the personification of Sir John’s vision. He gathered the premiers and then led the revamping of pensions, unemployment insurance and health care. He told the provinces that we will combat climate change as a country and that they will step in line. His government organized a national emergency response to the Fort McMurray wildfires.

We have been at our best when the power that our founders afforded the federal government was effectively employed. We have gone off the rails when firewall letters, referendums and power squabbles have attempted to distort that vision. We are better when we consider ourselves not as of a particular province but, more broadly, as Canadians first, stronger in the complexity of our citizenship.

Every time you hear our Prime Minister speak, listen carefully for a hint of a Scottish burr, for you’re hearing Sir John’s echo.

If you liked this column or disagree with it, please send it to others and consider leaving a comment. You see, the Globe and Mail posted it last week as an opinion piece and it sparked debate then. It is a summary of my latest book, Sir John’s Echo, which Dundurn Press asked me to write, urging me to stir debate as part of Canada 150. It has been doing so. The book is available at book stores or online through Chapters, Amazon, and elsewhere. Polite, informed debate is good, it’s our conversaion.

https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/sir-johns-echo-speaking-for/9781459738157-item.html

 

 

Imagine a Man Like John F. Kennedy

/ John Boyko / 2 Comments

Today would be John F. Kennedy’s 100th birthday. Those of a certain age remember him for the hope that he inspired. For many, just the idea that he was in the White House meant that things would get better. His horrible, public murder gashed a generation. JFK’s assassination defined the precise moment between then and now, between what could have been and what was. Kennedy visited Canada four times. Let us consider one that helped change our history and helps define the man.

Imagine a Man Like John F. Kennedy

JFK Addressing Canadian Parliament (CBC photo)

In late 1953, Kennedy was the junior Senator from Massachusetts and forced to consider Canada for the first time. After decades of debate regarding whether the United States and Canada should cooperate in the building the St. Lawrence Seaway, Canada had decided to go it alone. The decision put the thirty-six-year-old Kennedy in a tricky spot. During his Senate campaign, he had listened to Boston longshoremen, businessmen, and lobbyists, and opposed the seaway based on the old worry that it would divert significant traffic from New England ports to the St. Lawrence. To support it would jeopardize his re-election and stymie his presidential aspirations. But he had his staff complete a careful study of the matter and had become convinced that to oppose the seaway would hurt the United States. So, would he vote for himself and his constituency or for his country? Was the book he had written, Profiles in Courage, was just a cute title or a definition of his character?

With pressure building, Kennedy accepted an invitation to speak at the Université de Montréal. It was his first trip to Canada. The senator and his wife of three months, the twenty-four-year-old Jacqueline, arrived on a cold December 4, 1953, at Montreal’s Windsor train station. Only two men met them: an American consulate representative and a Canadian Pacific Railway photographer who quickly snapped two pictures and went home. The glamorous young couple were guests of honour that evening at the annual St. Mary’s Ball, where the city’s who’s who mingled, dined, and raised money for the local hospital.

Before donning his tuxedo, Kennedy addressed the students and faculty of the university’s Literary Society. He said that Canada and the United States were fighting communism together. He explained that 20 percent of American exports went to Canada and that America was Canada’s best customer. Kennedy then explained the difficulty the American Congress was having in coming to a decision regarding the seaway. He detailed the American system of checks and balances and quoted Sir John A. Macdonald, albeit somewhat out of context, who once called the American system a “skilful work.” He quoted eighteenth-century Irish nationalist and conservative political philosopher Edmund Burke. Burke had said in his 1774 “Speech to the Electors of Bristol” that political representatives should be free to vote their conscience. Kennedy’s reference to Burke was a strong hint that he was preparing to do just that.

A few weeks later, on January 14, 1954, Kennedy rose in the Senate chamber and delivered a courageous speech. He began by noting his state’s current and long history of opposition to the seaway. His vote, he said, would rest on the answers to two fundamental questions. The first was whether the seaway would be built regardless of American partnership. “I have studied the Act passed by the Canadian parliament authorizing the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway by Canada . . . and the official statements of the Canadian government make it clear that Canada will build the Seaway alone and cooperate on the power project with New York, although the door is left open for American participation if we should so decide at this session of Congress.” A solely Canadian project, Kennedy continued, would inflict enormous costs on America, as Canada could dictate tolls, traffic, and admission of foreign shipping.

The second determining question, he argued, was whether the seaway would make America safer. Kennedy explained the degree to which American participation in the project would be part of the continued development of an integrated North American defence strategy. He concluded: “Both nations now need the St. Lawrence Seaway for security as well as for economic reasons.

He concluded, “I urge the Congress promptly to approve our participation in its construction.”

Finally, after decades of opposition, the Senate approved the daring measure. A number of Boston and Massachusetts papers attacked the young senator. Two months later he was warned by a member of Boston’s city council not to march in the city’s large and boisterous annual St. Patrick’s Day parade lest he be abused by dockworkers angry that the seaway would kill their jobs. Kennedy ignored the advice and marched without incident.

Imagine a politician with the political courage to put country over party and principle over popularity, risking re-election for what is right. Imagine a politician who bases decisions on facts rather than gut reactions, polls, or a blind adherence to ideology. Imagine a politician with an ability to speak that is clear, almost poetic, and that demands that we rise to meet him rather than pandering to the least articulate and educated among us. Imagine. And then take a moment today to celebrate John Kennedy’s life and grieve his loss.

If you enjoyed this column, please share it with other. For more on the many ways that Canada was effected by JFK and that we affected him, consider reading Cold Fire: Kennedy’s Northern Front. It is available at bookstores and online through Chapters Indigo and Amazon.

The Princess and the Tulips

/ John Boyko / 2 Comments

As the tulips are finding our gardens again I thought it apt to re-post this story from a couple of years ago. I hope you enjoy it.

Princess Juliana was in trouble. The country over which she would someday reign was in crisis and her life was in peril. The Nazi blitzkrieg was pushing its way north and west and her beloved Netherlands was certain to fall to Hitler’s mad ambitions.

Just three years before, with the encouragement of her mother, the powerful and extraordinarily wealthy Queen Wilhelmina, she had married a young German aristocrat named Prince Bernard of Lippe-Biesterfeld. They soon fulfilled the most important part of their royal duties by producing heirs. Princess Beatrix was born in 1938 and then, a year later, Princess Irene.

Despite suspicions of all things German, the Dutch people accepted Prince Bernard. He changed the spelling of his name to be less German and became a Dutch citizen. Now they worried about their future, the future of their country, and that of the Royal bloodline if the Princess and her family were captured by the Nazi horde about which astounding stories of unspeakable horror were being told.

The Royal family was evacuated to London. Queen Wilhelmina oversaw the creation of a Dutch government in exile. A month later, in June 1940, Princess Juliana and her family were sent to an even safer sanctuary in Ottawa, Canada. A spacious house was found in the tony neighbourhood of Rockcliffe Park, home to ambassadors and the city’s elite. The house was called Stornoway. It would later become the residence of the leader of Canada’s Official Opposition.

Juliana followed the tragic news of her country having fallen under the Nazi yoke as she worried about her mother enduring the London blitz. The shy princess led a quiet life and remained aloof from Ottawa society events to which she would have been welcomed. Problems arose in late 1942 when she found herself pregnant. If she gave birth in Canada, the child would have dual citizenship and so be robbed of a spot in the Royal line of succession.

The Canadian government came to the rescue. It declared her rooms in Ottawa’s Civic Hospital to be temporarily extraterritorial. In other words, for the moment, Juliana was in the Netherlands. Princess Margriet was born on January 19, 1943. The child became the first and remains the only, royal personage to be born in North America.

Princess and the Tulips Royal Family

Home from the Ottawa Hospital (Photo: cbc.ca)

Canadians were as pleased as the people of the besieged Netherlands. The news led Canadian radio broadcasts and adorned newspaper front pages. The Dutch flag fluttered atop the Parliament Building’s Peace Tower and its bells chimed out the Dutch national anthem and folk tunes.

Meanwhile, the war raged on. Successful D-Day landings by British, American, and Canadian troops initiated a slow and bloody push toward Berlin. Canadians were assigned the left flank and, in September 1944, they began the liberation of the Netherlands. It was tough. The Nazi army had flooded land, mined ports, and dug itself into intractable defensive positions. The Dutch people did what they could to offer fifth column help. So many were so hungry that they had been surviving by eating tulip bulbs. Many were saved when Royal Canadian Airforce planes dropped food for the starving.

Canadian troops fought gallantly. The Battle of the Scheldt was the most excruciating engagement. Between October and November 1944, the Canadian First Army suffered nearly 13,000 casualties. When it succeeded and Nazi forces retreated, Canadian soldiers were hailed as heroes. As they entered Dutch towns, the tired but smiling young men were showered with flowers and gifts.

On May 2, 1945, after five years in Canada, Princess Juliana and her children were able to return first to London and then, along with Queen Wilhelmina, to a freed and free Netherlands. To demonstrate their gratitude for all that Canada had done for the country and her family, the Princess arranged that 100,000 tulip bulbs were sent to Ottawa. The next year, 20,000 more arrived with the request that they be planted on the hospital grounds.

In 1948, as result of her mother’s long illness, Juliana, became Queen. She ensured that more tulip bulbs were sent to Canada every year. Every spring saw Ottawa resplendent in a riot of colour. In 1952, at the suggestion of noted Canadian photographer Malak Karsh, Ottawa began an annual Tulip Festival. The city hosted a celebration that grew to include concerts, buskers, plays, fireworks, and more. Every year the city’s tulip beds grew even more spectacular.

Princess and the Tulips Photo: magpiejewellery.com

In Canada’s centennial year, 1967, Queen Juliana was enthusiastically cheered as she enjoyed the festival. In 2002, Princess Margriet was the special guest commemorating the festival’s 50th anniversary.

The fragile flowers last only a short while but are annual reminders of a friendship within a tragedy and of our common humanity. They remind us of what can be lost to the insanity of war and blind adherence to a hateful ideology. And, standing boldly in their primary colours, they symbolize the assurance that after every winter, man-made or otherwise, lives a determined hope that there is always spring, and that someday we may be sufficiently mature to live in peace.

If you enjoyed this column, please consider sending it to others and perhaps leaving a comment.

Trudeau, Power, & Sir John’s Echo

/ John Boyko / 4 Comments

Canada is a conversation. When confronting troubles visited upon us, or of our own making, Canadians reach not for a gun but a gavel. We talk it out. Every leadership race and election, every new bill, public initiative, or staggering crisis, and every table pounding in the House of Commons or at the local Tim’s is another element of that conversation. And when we’re talking, we’re always talking about power. So, let’s talk.

Political power touches us all. Positively expressed, it offers a vehicle through which we are collectively encouraged and enabled to act for the common good. Power matters and so, it matters who has it.

Our founders understood. In 1864, they met in Charlottetown and Quebec City and talked their way into a country. From Britain, came the ideas of a limited monarchy and parliamentary democracy. From the United States, they took a written constitution and a federal state, one comprised of a central government and provinces. This is where the real talking about power began.

John A. Macdonald led the way in arguing that while the American Constitution was brilliant in its conception, the fact that the United States was, at that moment, butchering itself in Civil War, demonstrated its appalling failure in practice. The Confederation delegates stood the American system on its head. Macdonald explained that Canada would reverse the “primary error” of the United States, “by strengthening the general government and conferring on the provincial bodies only such powers as may be required for local purposes.”

Power and Sir John's Echo

(Photo: Canadian Colour)

The provinces were given only municipal-like areas of responsibility and limited ability to raise revenue. The federal government, on the other hand, was afforded the major powers relating to sovereignty including trade, the military, post office, criminal law, currency, and banking. Unlike the United States where, until 1913, the states appointed Senators, the prime minister would populate our upper chamber. The prime minister would also appoint Lieutenant Governors who approved provincial bills while sending questionable ones to the federal cabinet, which could disallow them. Anything the constitution left out or that came up later, like airports, would go automatically to the federal government.

Throughout Canada’s 150-year conversation, provinces have worked to overturn our founders’ vision and shift power to themselves. An example is the decades-long provincial demand for greater power that sabotaged repeated federal efforts to earn greater independence by gaining control of our constitution. In standing up for what they believed was best for their province, too many premiers betrayed and undermined the very concept of Canada while dividing Canadians against themselves.

This is not to say that premiers are not patriots and provinces don’t matter. Of course they are and of course they do. But it was successive federal governments that fought to maintain our founders’ vision. Provinces were cajoled and dragged along as the federal government led the building of Canada through projects like the trans-continental railway, St. Lawrence Seaway, and the TransCanada Highway. The federal government needled, nudged, and negotiated for Canadians in creating national policies such as pensions and health care. Federal governments rallied our response to emergencies such as global wars, the Great Depression, and the FLQ Crisis. The federal government spoke for Canadian values whether reflected as peacekeepers or climate change leaders.

Ignore whether you like or dislike our current prime minister, or his policies, but grant that Mr. Trudeau’s  tour a few months ago indicated his understanding that Canada is indeed a conversation. He is also demonstrating that he is the personification of Sir John’s vision. He gathered the premiers and then led the revamping of pensions, unemployment insurance, and health care. He told the provinces that we will combat climate change as a nation and that they will step in line. His government organized a national emergency response to the Fort McMurray wildfires.

Hundred Days and Honeymoons

We have been at our best when the power that our founders afforded the federal government was effectively employed. We have gone off the rails when firewall letters, referendums, and power squabbles have attempted to distort that vision. We are better when we consider ourselves not as of a particular province but more broadly, as Canadians first, stronger in the complexity of our citizenship.

Every time you hear our prime minister speak, listen carefully for a hint of a Scottish burr, for you’re hearing Sir John’s echo.

If you enjoyed this column, please send it to others and perhaps even explore my full argument which is in my latest book, published just two weeks ago, and called, perhaps unsurprisingly, Sir John’s Echo.  It’s available at bookstores, Amazon, and here through Chapters https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/sir-johns-echo-speaking-for/9781459738157-item.html

Thanking the River and More

/ John Boyko / Leave a comment

I don’t know about you, but I always just skim a book’s acknowledgments. They are usually akin to a bad Oscar speech: a list of names of people I don’t know. My latest book, Sir John’s Echo: The Voice for a Stronger Canada, was released last weekend. It’s my seventh book and this time I tried something a little different for my acknowledgments. I thanked some folks, of course, but also tried to consider what really inspired me to write. Let me know what you think.

Acknowledgments: Sir John’s Echo

Dividing and defining our Village is a river that, as Lakefield resident Margaret Laurence once observed, runs both ways. It does, you know. It really does. It is on long, slow runs along the river that I wrote this book. Oh, certainly I typed it in my office but the genuine work, the tumbling and juggling of ideas, the real stuff of writing, came accompanied by the falling of footsteps and washing of water.

And so, odd as it may seem, I would like to acknowledge and thank the river for its uncaring but profound inspiration. It reminded me that somewhere beneath its gently flowing surface, at the heart of its magic, hides the metaphor for our country. The truth and what truly matters lay not in the surface sparkles, gleaming as diamonds in the sun, but with the rocks and roots and weeds below that roil all above, offering resistance and form.

The river urged me to take a broader view, to consider more expansive ideas, deeper concepts, and to think not of passing fads and fancies that capture clicks and headlines but what really matters. Power. The power to shape, inspire, speed up or slow down, to move while lifting or, sometimes, pulling below.

That’s what this book is all about. Power. It’s the power of perpetual motion, of rugged beauty and gentle grace lying comfortably with the awful potential to direct or destroy. That is the river’s power. That is Canada’s power. That is the power we owe ourselves to contemplate; relentless power that moves even when we don’t notice, while we sleep, flexed and expressed and occasionally challenged, and while appearing to be heading in one direction in a natural, linear fashion, sometimes, flows both ways.  I thank the river for encouraging my contemplation so that I might invite yours.

And what of Margaret Laurence? I thank her for being among those who taught me a love of words and a respect for the power of ideas powerfully expressed. There were others: Margaret Atwood, Leonard Cohen, John Lennon, Kurt Vonnegut, John Ralston Saul, John Prine, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Shelby Foote, Gwynne Dyer, Paul Simon, and John W. Boyko, Sr. I thank them all.

This book began with a conversation between Patrick Boyer, Steve Paikin, and me – three men insatiably entranced by books, politics, ideas, and Canada. Patrick invited me to contribute a book to Dundurn’s Point of View series as part of the commemoration of Canada’s 150th birthday. Make it controversial, Patrick urged, stir readers’ passions and propose notions to spark debate. Thank you, Patrick, for inviting and trusting me to write and for your valuable suggestions on an early draft. I hope I have not let you down.

Sir John's Echo

Thank you to the Dundurn team who embraced me so thoughtfully and supported me so professionally. I am grateful for the vision of president and publisher Kirk Howard, and for the editorial skills of Dominic Farrell, Cheryl Hawley, and Michael Carroll. I thank the talented Lawrence Martin for his constructive suggestions and fine forward.

This is my seventh book and I have lost count of the number of editorials, articles, and blog posts I have written. My dear wife Sue has read and edited every word. She brings to all I do an unparalleled editorial precision and skill and sense of when something is going on a little too long or needs to be fleshed out. She knows what it is about my work that works, and doesn’t. Her kindness, care, tenderness, wit, and love, makes all I do better, possible, and worthwhile.

I am grateful to Craig Pyette and Ann Collins of Penguin Random House Knopf who lent me to Dundurn for this project and to my literary agent Daphne Hart who encouraged me.

Being a father is one thing but being a grandfather is something else altogether. Grandchildren teach you to love all over again. Without trying, my two sweet granddaughters remind me of all that truly matters, including the country in which they will be making their lives. Canada was not inevitable and is not immutable. All that is great about it, from its stunning physical beauty to the strength and marvel of its complexity, must be not just celebrated but protected. You won’t protect what you don’t love and can’t protect what you don’t understand. Without understanding, we can sing about standing on guard but not really do the deed. It is the future of my grandchildren, and yours, even if you don’t yet know them, that renders the striving to understand, in order to protect what is worth protecting, worth the effort. I thank my grandchildren for inspiring my contemplation of the home they deserve.

Thank you for reading my thank yous. Please share them with others if you wish. I am now on the road promoting Sir John’s Echo, doing TV, radio, and print interviews, as well as speeches. It is the business part of the book business. I’m also hard at work on my 8th book. Writing is fun.

 

 

Rule One at the Men’s Book Club

/ John Boyko / 1 Comment

I have always loved reading. I recall my Mom telling me to put the book down and go outside and play, and my sneaking it out with me. I was an active, sports-loving kid but she later told me that, despite being a voracious reader herself, she was sincerely worried about me reading so much. My first job was delivering 139 Burlington Post newspapers every Wednesday for which I was paid $1.39. (It was a while ago.) I used to save up, and every two weeks buy a bottle of coke and Hardy Boys book. It is my fascination with reading and books that led to my becoming a writer and, lately, to forming the Men’s Book Club.

I have always liked the idea of book clubs. To get together once a month to discuss a book seems like a grand idea. My dear wife belongs to a book club. I see her reading away, we talk about her current project, and she always arrives home from her book club meeting invigorated by the discussion; whether she particularly liked the book or not. But there were a few problems, in my estimation, with most book clubs. Around here, anyway, they involve only women, hosting meetings at your home with carefully considered drinks and snacks, and the reading of novels. The first left me out and the next two left me cold.

I spoke with a number of men in my Village who felt the same way. Hosting seemed like too much work and we agreed that we are fundamentally lazy. Like me, they read ten non-fiction books for every novel. Don’t get me wrong. I think novels are important and great and there have been many that I have truly enjoyed – springing to mind are The Art of Racing in the Rain, The Lottery, and my John Grisham junk food. But non-fiction is different. Non-fiction books feed my insatiable curiosity. To me, non-fiction books are like speaking with the smartest people around about the most fascinating events, people, and places. Others agreed and so we made a decision.

Rule One at the Men's Book Club

(Photo: www.123rf.com)

Our first Men’s Book Club met in February. Eleven showed up. We met at our local pub, the Canoe and Paddle, on a Sunday evening. No one had to tidy up their house and if you wanted something to eat or drink, the bar was right there. (We agreed that if there is beer involved, men will do just about anything, even read.)

After the pints arrived, we discussed the rules we should play by and it was established that the first rule of book club was that there were no rules. Perfect. Our second decision built on the first. Instead of us all reading the same book each month, we established themes. Our first month would be music, then the environment, and then, for the 100th commemoration of Vimy Ridge, war. Near the end, one gentleman said that he loved the idea of meeting for beer and chatting once a month but wondered if he really had to read a book. He was referred to rule one.

Our first Monday in March meeting was terrific. I had enjoyed Robbie Robertson’s Testimony. Others read books about or by Bruce Springsteen, the Beatles, Bruce Coburn, Sting, and more. It was fascinating to learn how many talented singers and songwriters came from parents either physically or emotionally absent or abusive. It was revealing to see how long and hard they had all worked to become successful. It was also interesting to see that behind the sensitive lyrics, some are not really nice people. We wouldn’t have been able to make the connections if we’d all read the same book.

For our next meeting, I am now reading Wade Davis’ The Wayfinders. It is not really about the environment. It’s more cultural anthropology. But it’s close enough to the theme. If anyone complains, I’ll refer them to rule one.

If you enjoyed this column, please share it with others and consider checking more at http://www.johboyko.com or even some of my non-fiction books, available online through Chapters and Amazon and, as Stuart McLean used to say, at sensible book stores everywhere. (Miss you Stuart.)