Living in the fallen state of Canada

Diogenes searching for an honest person in Athens

 

One day in the early 1980s I was watching soccer on television with my old friend Reg Skinner, this was at his home in Blackwater, Camberley, UK; when the occasional goal was scored the crowd roared its approval and the players jumped into each others' arms, they were jubilant. Reg, who was in his early 70s, was critical of the effusive emotion. "They never did any of this emotional celebrating over a goal in the past," he said, "they scored and that was it." But this is the way of today's world; we have moved from an introverted world to one that is extroverted and emotionally demonstrative. Now, it's the optics that counts, how it looks, and how it looks is meant for the media, the media wants bigger than life people because exaggerated acts, or acting, comes across better in the media; so we have people jumping up and down when called to be on The Price is Right, high fives and fist bumps, even rolling on the ground as though about to break dance; is this for real? Are they really this happy?  We also have the political class, they will do anything for a vote, including glad handing, huge smiles, laughing and back slapping, lying, prevaricating, making outlandish promises, doublespeak, and kissing babies; now we see Justin running along the side of the street during a Pride parade taking selfies with whoever is sitting there, what a surprise that must have been for these people, he was even wishing a toddler "Happy Pride Day!" Substance doesn't matter, appearance means everything. 

    Image over reality is what is important in politics; Pierre Poilievre removes his glasses and puts on a black T-shirt and we have a new younger contemporary Pierre Poilievre and the stodgy, cranky, critical, and abrasive Pierre is forgotten. I wonder, when did the extroverted prime minister first appear on the scene? Does the public really love a fat man with blonde hair who will build 1950s suburbia on the greenbelt outside of Toronto in 2023? These politicians are men and women for whom caricature is easy; once we had comics, like Rich Little, who could do impressions of these people and their unctuous personas; but impersonation is a dying art, the public have short memories and no longer know who the comic is satirizing.

    Perhaps the oversize politician as celebrity began in Canada with Pierre Elliot Trudeau; we used to be a fairly introverted country, we used to have respect for each other and most of the time this is still true. Pierre Elliot Trudeau was hated in the west, celebrated in the east, and then after years of a rose in his lapel, jet setting with the the stars, a wayward wife, sex with the stars, we were all happy to see him go. We said about him what divorced men say about their ex-wives, "Thank God they're gone!" We also had Brian Mulroney, easily caricatured because of the Jay Leno jutting chin, baritone voice, and singing Danny Boy onstage with Ronald Reagan, the press lapped it up; and we had Stephen Harper, he had negative charisma which might be a kind of charisma, shaking hands with his children as they left for school, a wooden Charlie McCarthy man with no sense of humour. And now we have the son of the Trudeau dynasty, Justin Trudeau, fallen in the polls but not gone.  It's the age of the prime minister as president, or as dictator, the age of polls determining policy, the age of ego, the age of emotion before substance, the age of inevitable failure, the age of integrity fallen to the age of greed and ambition. I think of Joyce Weiland`s quilt in the National Gallery of Canada, quoting Pierre Elliot Trudeau, "Reason over passion", but that was then and this is now. 

    The media and social media emphasize image over substance, and image always includes promoting one's self. An honest person will be like Diogenes who walked the streets of Athens looking for an honest man. But other people are not our problem, most people are still normal people, they may not be as honest as Diogenes would have liked but they're still our people; it is politicians who have power over us who are the problem, and to find an honest politician is bordering on impossible. Diogenes would weep.

Morrissy Bridge in better days

    And so I turn to former Prime Minister MacKenzie King and his diary that is available online; diarists are by nature introverted and thoughtful people, politicians are by nature ambitious and extroverted. There are even several entries regarding us Morrisseys in MacKenzies' diary, two entries refer to John Veriker Morrissy and his son Charles Morrissy, both Members of Parliament for Northumberland riding in New Brunswick, and there is an entry for Dr. Herb Morrissy. Dr. Morrissey is a family hero, a medical doctor who studied at both McGill University and Cornell University in the 1920s; my grandmother had a postcard in her sideboard showing the Morrissy Bridge in Newcastle, NB, the now rusting and closed down Morrissy Bidge named after John Veriker Morrissy. In the late 1990s I was contacted by Dr. Morrissy's daughter, Jane Morrissy Allan, and I met her when she visited here a few years later. I learned a lot about our family's history from Jane.

    Here is what Prime Minister MacKenzie King writes about the Morrisseys (spelled Morrissy by family in New Brunswick). A final entry in King’s diary regarding the Morrissys occurs on Tuesday, 29 July 1930, just days before the generalelection of 7 August 1930. King is in his office talking with “Bennett”, probably R.B. Bennett, his opponent in the Federal election and the Conservative prime minister from 1930 to 1935. It is impossible to conceive this kind of informal meeting happening today. King begins by making some comments about Bennett’s appearance, “he looked pretty well but is heavier and flabbier I thought.” King continues, “he then said something our having preserved the amenities & not attacked each other… I told [him] I thought I had been most careful, but that I thought he should not have brought in references to myself & the war in which rearoused & perpetuated prejudices that were most unfair…” Then, they discussed specifics of the campaign, King writes: “That New Bruns. he had counted on giving us 2 seats, that in Northumberland he thought his home appeal to sentiment etc. counted very much. I said Morrissey being drunk during prov’l fight & not getting nomination made him disaffected. He said when he was there Morrissey was working for us, & Burchill was the best possible candidate, he put that constituency [?] down to his own appeal…”

    Then, King quotes Bennett as discussing “the hideousness of drink, the curse it was, how it ruined men’s moral sense & judgment, I told him Cahill’s loss of Pontiac was I thought due to this, & we had lost several seats by personal rows, etc.” This explains something of the negative side of Charles Joseph Morrissy who, like his father, seems to have been a heavy drinker. On the positive side, for King, both John Veriker Morrissy and Charles Joseph Morrissy were influential at the provincial level and in their particular ridings; they not only had numerous political contacts but they were intelligent and hard-working men, dedicated to the Liberal Party.

    Other politicians descended from or who had familial ties with the descendants of Patrick Morrissy and Mary Phelan are Edward Matthew Farrell, a half first cousin of John Veriker Morrissy. Senator Farrell served over twenty-one years in the Canadian Senate, from 12 January 1910 to 6 June 1931 when he died. He was born in Liverpool, Nova Scotia, on 31 March 1854 and died on 6 August 1931; he worked as a publisher and printer before his appointment to the Senate on the advice of Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier, later Sir Wifrid Laurier. George Roy McWilliam, a great nephew of John Veriker Morrissy, was born in 1905; he won seven federal elections and served almost nineteen years in the House of Commons for Northumberland-Mirimichi riding. He died on 15 May 1977. 

    Well, that was then and this is now, living in the fallen state of Canada.