Think like an Immigrant

 

Newly arrived immigrants at Pier 21, Halifax, Canada, mid-1950s

                                        

             

The strength or weakness of a society depends more on the level of its spiritual life than on its level of industrialisation. If a nation’s spiritual energies have been exhausted, it will not be saved from collapse by the most perfect government structure or by any industrial development. A tree with a rotten core cannot stand.

                     --Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

There is something unsettling about seeing the happy, laughing, vacuous faces of the wealthy and their happy, vacuous children; privilege doesn't evoke empathy. For some, the parents or grandparents of the wealthy were born here, for others their parents or grandparents were immigrants to Canada. In either case, people had to work for what they had, they put in long hours of  work to make money and to build a legacy for their children, to make a good life for their families, they didn't want their children and grandchildren to go without as they had. And they succeeded; see the expensive cars in the driveway, the big houses, the mansions, the fine clothes, the Patek Philippe watches, Rolex, Louis Vuitton, and other brands indicating status. It's from rags and being poor to riches and wealth and back to rags and poverty in three or four generations. Material stuff doesn't last forever, eventually it ends up in the landfill, the dumpster, or dust.

So now I suggest that we think like immigrants. These are people who arrived here with nothing but a suitcase and five dollars; they were willing to live in small apartments, several generations living together and being frugal, working several jobs. I am not suggesting that we all live exactly this way but at least we could reduce our level of acquiring stuff we don't need, stuff that we just want, we could be frugal and careful with money. We could remember what it was like in the past. We could prepare for the hard times ahead of us.

It is with this in mind that I wrote a memoir of my grandmother, Edith Morrissey; it is a memoir of her Girouard Avenue flat. I wanted to remember her--she whom we all loved--and so I wrote Remembering Girouard Avenue. My grandmother had little money but she lived in a large flat and family members who needed a home were welcome to live there, her door was open; she always had family members living with her: her Aunt Lib, her father, one of her sisters, and then, later, another sister lived with her and also her daughter, my Auntie Mabel, who never left home; and in the early 1950s my parents, my brother and I, lived with my grandmother for several years. The irony of this is that when my grandmother's husband died in 1932 my father told her to move to a smaller place, that family would want to live with her, he knew her generosity and what do you know, almost twenty years later, we were also living with her.

In the past few people were homeless, now there are homeless people everywhere. Now homelessness is a possibility for all of us; indeed, many Canadians are one pay cheque from being homeless, one rent increase from being homeless, one visit to a food bank from being hungry and eventually homeless. Homeless people live on the street, in a tent, in a bus shelter, they have no home to return to, they have no home to return to, no bedroom with a comforter on the bed, a night table and a book to read, food to eat, the heat turned up in our cold northern climate. There were always a few homeless people, they were usually older men who were often alcoholics; and they were taken care of by mission halls or the Salvation Army that fed them and put them up for the night or as long as they needed; it was not an easy life but it was not as widespread as it is now. Now, the homeless are everywhere and they include young people. What family did in the past is being replaced by government services, and while there are well-meaning people in government we can't rely on government to provide for everything people need. 

I remember two elderly women in Vancouver, they lived a few blocks from where the billionaires now live in West Point Grey in their $45M homes, 15K square feet for two people, indoor swimming pools and a helicopter pad on the roof, a view of the water, and these two old women had a large house but it was getting old and looked a bit run down. It would eventually be sold for the land it sat on, that's how it works when a city lot costs $5M and higher, you don't live in the old house on the lot, you tear it down and build something new. These two old women drove identical cars parked in their driveway, cars maybe forty years old. Here's the point: prepare for an uncertain future, be anonymous, don't draw attention to yourself, don't forget where you come from. Think like an immigrant. 

Our politicians don’t care

2022

Justin Trudeau claims that Canada is in great shape and he and his team are doing a great job running the country. Justin doesn't mention the many homeless people living in tents, shacks, or in their cars, they’re everywhere; or that young educated Canadians are the first generation who will never be able to own a house and can barely afford to pay inflated rents common in cities and towns; or that over 20% of Canadians are dependent on food banks because groceries are so expensive; or that many people live in fear of getting sick because they have no family doctor and will never have a family doctor. It wasn't this way just ten years ago, before Justin Trudeau became prime minister; he has made the country unrecognizable to all of us who were once proud of being Canadians. He is a man who has no interest or belief in civil liberties in this country.

We know that Justin Trudeau doesn't care about civil liberties; just remember his use of the Emergency Act regarding the freedom convoy. As well, he and his cohort have allowed, condoned, and promoted the CAQ government in Quebec to get away with the abnegation of civil liberties, all of it legislated in Bill 96, against the English-speaking community in Quebec; the federal Liberals have even included Bill 96 in the federal Official Languages Act (2022). See no evil and hear no evil is their approach to this situation. Justin Trudeau, and the other federal party leaders, should have had the integrity to oppose Bill 96, but none of them said a word, they supported Bill 96.                                   

Premier Legault and his CAQ party have attacked McGill University, one of Canada's greatest universities, and they've attacked Concordia University, and they would like to see both universities closed down; that is their intention even though they might deny it. Their intention and objective is to destroy the English-speaking community.

The latest aggression against the English-speaking community is an assault on health care for English-speaking Quebecers; they have directed health care workers not to speak English with patients who do not have an eligibility certificate to receive health care in English; however, these eligibility certificates don't exist. Just imagine, this is happening in Canada. I would advise anyone thinking of investing in Quebec or relocating here to think twice, your civil liberties will be annulled, you will face a provincial bureaucracy that will invade every aspect of your business, and you will be taxed to death. 

The following is especially egregious and Orwellian: under Bill 96 the government can enter the premises of a business, with no warrant, at any time of day or night, to see if their computers contain any language other than French. This is bad enough but it is also possible that these government agents, the Language Police, will read and copy private documents on these computers and what will they do with this private information? Is this why Walmart bailed from investing in the province, after building but never opening a $100M warehouse? There are other explanations but I tend towards Walmart wanting to avoid the inevitable invasion of their privacy in terms of operating their business.

Justin and his cohort want the French vote in Quebec and he has condoned and promoted the loss of civil liberties in order to get the French vote. Now read this:

Section 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects against all forms of unreasonable search and seizure. But for the notwithstanding clause, if a person believed that the Office had violated this fundamental democratic right against State intrusion, there would be legal protections. Under Bill 96, however, there would be no such right. Worse, the Bill does not create a requirement of reasonable grounds, or even reasonable suspicion. There is no requirement for prior judicial authorization of any kind, such as a warrant. And so, there would be no grounds whatsoever to contest what would otherwise be an unlawful search and seizure if the Bill as tabled in First Reading is passed.

                                                        --Pearl Eliadis, Associate Professor, 

                                                       Faculty of Law, McGill University

                                                       "Pearl Eliadis on the Overreach of Bill 96"

There is a cost to whatever Justin Trudeau does, a significant part of the cost is a denial of our individual and collective freedom. What I have said here is what the majority of English-speaking Quebecers think and feel about being abandoned and betrayed by our provincial and federal political parties. They have all sold us out; none of them care about civil liberties. How did we end up in such a situation? How did civil liberties end up meaning so little in Canada? 

Note: this information was correct at the time of writing; it is possible that some details may have since changed. The main thing here is the abnegation of civil liberties in Canada.

Poundbury, The Village, and the 15 Minute City

On television, a few days before the coronation of King Charles III, there was a programme on Charles's idea of a model village, Poundbury, in the south of England. This community was designed by Charles in the 1980s to highlight his concept of the perfect community; for instance, everything is within walking distance and cars are restricted or banned. These are all fairly commonplace ideas today but, when imposed by someone who has more privileges than any of us, it is a bit galling: it is the limited and privileged vision of someone who has had it all and now thinks he can impose his vision on other people, for their betterment. I was repelled by Poundbury, it seemed to me to be a place of social control made acceptable with the inhabitants' consent; they like living in this place or they'd live somewhere else. It's a community for the managerial class. There are rules and regulations for everything, enforced by a town council, and reinforced with the peer pressure of a homogeneous population. 

       This programme on Poundbury immediately reminded me of The Village, the setting for most of the episodes of The Prisoner television series broadcast in 1967-1968; this was a very popular programme, disturbing, dystopian, and Orwellian, starring Patrick McGoohan. The Village is a place for containing people who know too much regarding British intelligence; they have been warehoused in The Village, put out to a benevolent pasture, kept alive and in a comfortable prison life, but without bars, without cells; if you behave and accept life in The Village you will do well there. Meanwhile, someone like Number Six, played by Patrick McGoohan (none of the inhabitants of The Village have names, they are referred to by a number), is tolerated and even indulged. What the authorities ostensibly want from Number Six is to know why he quit his job at MI5 or MI6. But this is really beside the point, the mission of his captors is to break him down, make him lose his own thoughts, make him into a number, make him believe the concept of reality they want him to believe, as happened to Winston Smith in Orwell's 1984. 

    The other comparison with Poundbury is the 15 Minute City, another form of potential social control that seems, on the surface, to be benign and even a lovely place to live one day. However, this is an example of urban planning gone wrong, it suggests that the best community is one in which all of the necessities of life -- grocery stores, pharmacies, places of work, schools -- are easily reached within a fifteen minute walk or bicycle ride. It almost sounds good except that many of us have always lived in a place where everything is available within a fifteen minute walk; but we didn't talk about it or try to make it something it isn't, it was the organic expression of city life, the way we live, and for many people it still is. 

    Where I live everything is within walking distance, it always has been; that is city life, that is living in a community that is part of a neighbourhood that is part of a borough that is part of a city. No one feels contained by where they live, it is nothing special; when it becomes something "special", needlessly part of a new urban planning idea, then it takes on other qualities; there is a dark, shadow side to all of this happiness and convenience that is imposed on us. Post-Covid many people are working from home, and some people have quit their jobs because they no longer want to work in an office, or live in the city where their workplace is located. Urban planning is trying to re-invent the wheel, and it is coming out square and not round; if you oppose their idea of the future city you are some kind of conspiracy nut, but that is just their way of dealing with anyone who disagrees with them. An extension of the 15 Minute City is the fenced off gated communities already existing in the United States, with a guard at the entrance. You walk everywhere and if you have a mobility problem you will get around on a golf cart, but there are consequences to living in the 15 Minute Gated City, or The Village . . . 

    Do we really want to live in this type of place? There will be no room here for the exceptional, the eccentric, the rebellious, the odd ball who lets his grass grow long and his ramshackle house unpainted. Whether it is Poundbury or The Village or the 15 Minute City these are places for the unimaginative managerial class, the values of this class will control all of us. And, no doubt, fences will be put up around those other unfortunate communities, the homeless (now referred to as the "unhoused") who inhabit parts of many North American cities. No, they are not "unhoused", they are homeless with all of the pathos, suffering, and terrible insecurity this word suggests; to be "unhoused" is an antiseptic word that denies the emotional meaning of living on the street. 

    And what of the arts, spirituality, free thinkers, anarchists or nihilists, odd balls and misfits, the angry, the grieving, or the ecstatic; what if you let your place deteriorate, will you be isolated by peer pressure or a council investigation? This is not a place of barking dogs, crowded streets, the smell of someone's cooking, living cheek to jowl with your neighbours so you can hear them fighting, laughing, talking, humanity as lived by the poor, the artist class, the thinkers, or the way things were in the past that many immigrants to North America experienced; immigrants produced ambitious people who worked hard to make money and move up the social ladder, and they even improved society with jobs and philanthropy; this is not included or suggested, or can even exist in a place like Poundbury or The Village, there is nothing suggesting social mobility, creativity, or freedom of thought in those places; they are retirement living, places of stasis. 

    A recent newspaper article on Glasgow has a subtitle, "Scotland's biggest city is a brawny celebration of industry, ingenuity and individualism", things not found in Poundbury, the Village, or the 15 Minute City. Montreal is a city of neighbourhoods, each distinctive, just as New York City is a city of boroughs, all different and unique -- Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island -- just their names resonate with qualities of distinctiveness, ambition, vibrancy, and life. There is a totalitarian feeling to Poundbury, a place that is a reflection of King Charles's concept of an ideal society; but what does he know about how average people live or what they aspire to? It's a good thing he is only a king and has no real power, and being king he will be limited in what he is allowed to say about the future of society. 

    Be seeing you.

Community Gardens, Garden Sheds, Homeless People

Here is a community garden behind Reno Depot, the garden is on West Broadway, a half block north of St. Jacques. One time I walked by this garden and there was someone sleeping on the grass; one evening I spoke to someone in this area, he was homeless and said that sometimes he sleeps in one of the garden sheds sold by Reno Depot.  Garden sheds, cabanon in French, are just little houses; it is possible for people to live in them until something better is found.