Difference

It says something about the world now, when in close to my ninth decade, I am multi-tasking and watching the swearing in of our new federal cabinet.  It’s means “I swear” in the sense of loyalty to the government headed by a King who does not live here and is represented by another person our Governor General – whose ancestry is Inuit. Americans would understand that as Eskimo. It makes me so aware of our differences from our neighbours to the south. In spite of spell-check I spell :neighbours: in the Canadian and British way.

The ceremony on national TV started by showing cabinet members and friends arriving at Government House, the residence of the Governor General, on a pleasant May morning. The top row of chairs on the right of the ballroom were reserved for guests that included three past governor-generals and a former prime minister. A few rows back were a provincial premier (the equivalent of an actual US Governor) and a First Nations chief in ceremonial head dress. The new Prime Minister’s wife and two daughters chatted with animation the other guests.

Then the official party entered, followed by the members of the new cabinet.  They were not there because of being either billionaires of friends of the leader – or probably both. Their selection depended on first being elected as a member of Parliament, chosen by the people in their constituency. They come from several provinces and territories and part of the challenge for a prime minister and his advisors is to choose among them – with a balance of geography, gender and experience.  A number of them are first time members.

The first thing that happened was a greeting and prayer by a member of our First Nations – holding an Eagle feather and a wheel, representing the four directions of the universe. The prayer was in Algonquin with many repetitions of thanks and welcome.

It was not the only words in another language. Those being sworn in made their promises in English and French, both our official languages. Many could have added other languages from their own diverse cultures. While we have much in common with our southern neighbours, we really are different. Threatening and demeaning us hasn’t worked the way the American leader intended. It has given a better reminder to at least one person writing this of who we are.

If I may . . .

If I may. . .

This great phrase to break in to a talker was used by our new Canadian Prime Minister to set the record straight when the US president started his now familiar suggestion that Canada should become the 51st state. “If I may” is a polite way to get a word in edgewise and correct someone who won’t stop talking nonsense.

At least that suggestion is one that can be quickly dismissed. “Never say never” from one got a visible sotto voce “Never!” from the other. But a more recent suggestion was so wacky that it stayed in my mind.  That’s an example of how the constant flow of news blurs anything important and makes all information equally questionable. If everything is suspect, who cares?  It is rightly moving toward what author Timothy Snyder calls the politics of eternity.

The wacky one was a response to the fact that all those new tariffs might produce hardships and the American people would have to lower their expectations.  Girls would have to make do with three dolls, not thirty They would have to settle for five pencils instead of two hundred and fifty.

The president’s household growing up must have been an unusual one at Christmas if these were typical seasonal gifts at either end of the scale. But we adults can settle for the five pencils. If I were back in the USA now, where I lived happily in New York City in the early sixties, this is how I might use them to talk to myself and to others.

Pencil #1. Write to my congressman/woman and ask each to vote against proposed tax cuts for the wealthy. American oligarchs are doing just fine already.

Pencil #2. Write to the law firms that oppose the presidential attempts to suppress their rightful role of defending the law and congratulate them.

Pencil #3, Write down five ways that I am going to lessen the influence of social media; These might include

Insist on knowing the source of the information. Look to the right and avoid Google AI on any screen,

Leave social media with more ads than posts from people I know.

Stop “liking” anything if I am still on social media. Watch how this confuses the algorithms and they start complaining and making suggestions.

Go outside.

Talk to a real person and make eye contact.

Pencil #4.  Fill out a request at the library for some real history books and share the suggestions with others. Look to authors like Margaret MacMillan on world wars or this article from The Atlantic. Here is her snippet of warning in a recent article,

“As a historian, I study those moments in the past when an old order decays beyond the point of return and a new one emerges, but I never expected to live through one. I should have. Today’s world is lurching toward great-power rivalry, suspicion, and fear—an international order where the strong do what they will, as Thucydides wrote, and “the weak suffer what they must.”

You could also try many of the books of Jill LePore or Timothy Snyder.

Pencil #5.  Sit down for 30-60 minutes and write down what five key values matter most for you. If you can’t structure some possibilities, go to Google or Pinterest. Here is an outline somebody made into a quilt.

 It’s rather good today that the book on the top of the non-fiction best seller list here in Canada is written by the new Prime Minister, Mark Carney.  It is called Value(s).  Its argument in a nutshell is that financial value has to include social values and morality. He gives himself a challenge by including the last chapter with the title, Humility. If we are going to live in a free society, we have to take responsibility both individually and collectively. It’s a choice.

Concern

Jennifer Rubin’s writing this morning on Substack, notes how many Republicans in the US are expressing “concern” about what is going on. Some express concern about the actions of people they voted for, even though something like their support of Vladimir Putin was well known. One, a medical doctor, was concerned about the quackery of Robert Kennedy – but voted for him.  Again, the quackery was well known in advance. Others are concerned about DOGE and its cuts that are affecting their constituents. From the perspective on one Canadian, they are participating in agreement with growing executive orders that sound like fascism in spite of their “concern”.

Opposition to government action can be a slow process. In my own country’s national newspaper, the Globe & Mail, I read yesterday that some people with disabilities are denied supplementary benefits because the forms to fill out are confusing, lengthy and difficult for the disabled and also take too much time from their medical practitioners to fill out. What I can do later this morning is to write my newly elected member of parliament to look into this. She comes to the position after losing her first try by a small margin to a member of the Conservative Party. The defeat of the prime minister at the time started with the loss of this riding in downtown Toronto that had been a stable Liberal seat for decades. But everything changed when Justin Trudeau stepped down as Prime Minister and a Conservative party leader who was well ahead in the polls lost the election to a new Prime Minister. As I write this, Prime Minister Mark Carney is heading for a meeting at the White House.

And oh the flurry on Canadian TV and assuredly in social media that I see very little of. I’m amused and annoyed with pundits who ask what the deal at the end of the day will  be. Most of them have never sat in a meeting at high level where a strategy gets enacted over a very long time.  As an exec director of a small non-profit decades ago, I learned that my board members would never accept any new initiative I suggested –and always said no.  It took me considerable time to accept that the initiative did finally come to fruition – often years later – and one of the board members took the credit for thinking of it. I also remember sitting as a consultant in a boardroom of a group that was trying to build a new cultural center. We watched through a long series of meetings where the chair never put a motion on the table until he was totally convinced that it would pass. These were small things compared to negotiations between countries. Deals are about money and land. Agreements are about morality, ethics and law one hopes = and the necessary amount of time it takes to understand and implement them.

So I’ll go and read the morning paper and see what the unrealistic predictions are there. What has been more productive is to start reading Timothy Snyder’s The Road to Unfreedom, Russia, Europe, America. I know far too much about America and very little about the others, based on what I am learning from reading this book.  As a start, anyone might take the challenge of drawing a rough map of Europe and naming the positions of EU countries. I would have failed this totally. Every current country of the EU has a history as important and interesting as those of the United States or Canada. If we paid much more attention to history, every single one of us would have a much better understanding of what is happening now – and start to move toward actions, however small –  beyond “concern”. It’s up to all of us.

Words

“The Conservative Party has republished the English-language version of its platform after what it says was a "publishing oversight" resulted in the omission of a previous commitment to crack down on "woke ideology" in the public service and federal funding for university research”.

CBC News, April 23, 2025

Canadians go to the polls today to elect a federal parliament. The above statement from one of the parties hoping to form a majority government bothers me for several reasons.

Does the Conservative Party know the history of the term, “woke”?  It does not come from our Canadian culture – though it might have done so for a few. It came from the US black community out of their own history. The Oxford English Dictionary does add words from time to time and this definition appears now:

“woke, adjective: Originally: well-informed, up-to-date. Now chiefly: alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice; frequently in stay woke.”

It also notes that the word was slang coming out of the Black Lives Matter movement and borrowed from the sixties era need for black people, especially in the south, to be aware of how their lives could well be in danger in certain situations. That applied elsewhere then too. I can remember being in Washington DC visiting with a classmate of my husband’s. His friend, an Episcopal priest, was stopped by the police, because the assumption was that if he were driving a new late model care, he must have stolen it. We were to go out to dinner together, and he also observed that he could think of a couple of restaurants where a white couple and a black man could be let in together. That wasn’t the land of the free but for some, it had to be the home of the brave.

So what is Anti-Woke ideology? It appears to be anti-DEI.

The opposite of diversity is monopoly perhaps, - or even monotony.

The opposite of equity is inequity – or perhaps unfairness.

The opposite of inclusiveness is exclusiveness – or perhaps superiority based on birth or upbringing or skin colour.

It’s not easy to be Canadian in a country where most of the population lives within 100 miles of the border to the south and strung out across a vast and varied geography. As the writer, Tony Judt, observed, it is easier for a small compact country to be a democracy than a large one like ours.  We are a country of immigrants, where nearly half of the population of our largest city were born outside Canada.  In spite of a recent tragedy we are mostly peaceful and try to get along.

We don’t need any political party to adopt words from another country that are so emotionally charged.  If there are injustices here – and there are in any democracy, let us face them on our own terms. Diversity is one of our strengths. Equity is one of our aspirations. Everyone Matters.

Courage

There are a lot of posts in the Substack world these days and lots of debates. Are we in a crisis? When exactly does this kick in? Are we there yet? Is there anything we can do? Is it too late? Are we all very very afraid?

Watching from the north - and needing to focus less on our own election, we appear to be less afraid, even though we have good reason to be. The unexpected attack on us from the south has created more unity than any local politician has done in a long time. The daffodils are up. Kids are out jumping puddles in their rubber boots. There is a certain childlike joy when trees hint of buds that take us back to our own early days.

My own first encounter with bullies came through hearing stories. I found one in an early book on my shelf that seems made for these days.

Bad Sir Brian Botany

 Sir Brian had a battleaxe with great big knobs on.

He went among the villagers and blipped them on the head.

On Wednesday and on Saturday, but mostly on the latter day,

He called on all the cottages and this is what he said: 

                   "I am Sir Brian!" (ting-ling!)

                    "I am Sir Brian!" (rat-tat!)

                 "I am Sir Brian, As bold as a lion —

                     Take that, and that, and that!"

 Sir Brian had a pair of boots with great big spurs on;.

A fighting pair of which he was particularly fond.

On Tuesday and on Friday, just to make the street look tidy,

He'd collect the passing villagers and kick them in the pond.

                    "I am Sir Brian!" (sper-lash!)

                     "I am Sir Brian!" (sper-losh!)   

                   "I am Sir Brian, as bold as a Lion —

                       Is anyone else for a wash?"

 Sir Brian woke one morning and he couldn't find his battleaxe;

He walked into the village in his second pair of boots.

He had gone a hundred paces when the street was full of faces

And the villagers were round him with ironical salutes.

                 "You are Sir Brian? Indeed!

                    You are Sir Brian? Dear, Dear!

                "You are Sir Brian as bold as a lion?

                    Delighted to meet you here!"

 Sir Brian went a journey and he found a lot of duckweed.

They pulled him out and dried him and they blipped him on the head.

They took him by the breeches and they hurled him into ditches

And they pushed him under waterfalls and this is what they said:

                 "You are Sir Brian -- don't laugh,

                    You are Sir Brian -- don't cry;

                 You are Sir Brian as bold as a lion —

                    Sir Brian the Lion, goodbye!"

In the rest of the poem, Sir Brian went home and chopped up his battleaxe and threw his fighting boots in the fire. He then declares:

I am Sir Brian? Oh no!

I am Sir Brian? Who’s he?

I haven’t got any title. I’m Botany

Plain Mr. Botany (B).

That would be an ideal ending. Still - the streets are full of faces. You can only be a Knight - or a King - if other people let you be one. Maybe it’s time for a few more ironical salutes.

The poem: A.A. Milne, When We were Very Young, 2025.