The Bruce Report

Somewhere underneath that wall of white, that cement-brick-back-breaking-shovelling-son-of-a-gun-global-warming-denying mass of frozen water, is life. Somewhere underneath it all is a flower.

I know, because I planted one before the last ice age. In fact, I planted precisely 565 bulbs, plus my usual 20 rows of winter garlic, in October when green was more than a gleam in a Mastodon’s eye.

I hired a man to climb onto my roof, 60-feet from what used to be pavement, in 60-kilometer gusts, to clear five feet of snow and ice. He was down with the flu, but he felt obligated as I had paid him in advance. “Man,” he said, “I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s like the sky opened up.”

And God forgot to turn off the faucet.

Where once there were columbine, clematis, roses, cone flowers, rudbeckia, and ten varieties of Asian lilies in my back garden, there is now a monotonous gleam under the blue moonlight of dread.

And yet, no, not this.

Shakespeare was “discontented” with this season. George Bernard Shaw described it as “simply ridiculous”. Oscar Wilde wanted to know where he could go to get his money back, having spent a month in Cornwall when the winds blew his January hat from his oversized head.

Others have had this to say:

“I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape – the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.” (Andrew Wyeth)

“There is a privacy about it which no other season gives you. In spring, summer and fall people sort of have an open season on each other; only in the winter, in the country, can you have longer, quiet stretches when you can savor belonging to yourself.” (Ruth Stout)

“Winter is nature’s way of saying, ‘Up yours.’” (Robert Byrne)

Certainly, but for me, winter is nature’s way of saying, “Remember”.

Remember when you pined for a snow day from school and for toboggans and skates? Remember the forts you built in banks with your pals? Remember the battles you waged over the turrets of your perfect ice castles?

Remember when you were that young to understand that the world was full of hope and promise and hot chocolate by the fires of your imagination?

In the dead of winter, when we were children, my sister and I would come alive, reading aloud tales of impossible adventures to each other, turning our younger brother’s rocking horse into a drum set, transforming a lacrosse stick into a guitar, and making a microphone out of an eight-track player.

Later, my young wife and I would sit by the T-V in the February cold and debate the meaning of Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos” series, and the merits of Dick Cavett’s pretentious, but entertaining, PBS talk show. If we had some money (which we rarely did), we’d put in a call, as the winds howled and the snow drifted, and pledged it to MPBN like long-lost family who just got wise to little Timmy’s imminent demise. We’d go to bed knowing that we had, at least once, saved the world from the malign forces of Mordor, or whatever else we were reading at the time.

Winter was reflection, and reflection was winter in the cold play of our minds and bodies in an unforgiving climate we forgave easily and joyfully as children. Somewhere in those quiet flights of fancy and sudden bursts of generosity, and under all that wall of white, we became human beings.

And now the man is gone from my roof, happy to be home with his wife and children, his job well done, waiting for the next storm, looking for a job.

Somewhere, from his vantage and underneath it all, a flower grows.

I fly, but not because I want to. After all, what thinking human being believes strapping into an aluminum can that scrapes the troposphere at 600 kph actually facilitates either work or relaxation? Frankly, when I fly – because, from time to time, I must – I neither work nor relax. I worry. Constantly.

I worry about everything I’ve left on the ground: the stove (Is it off?), the walk (Is it shoveled?), the water (Is it running?) Then, of course, there are the in-flight trepidations: The portly fellow next to me who obviously ate too many beans at lunch; the little darling right behind me who evidently suffers from restless leg syndrome; and the flight attendant who clearly never met a bottle of mouthwash he couldn’t ignore.

But the thing that bugs me most is money. Specifically, how much of it I’m expending for the privilege of enduring a few hours of extreme discomfort.

On a recent Air Canada flight from Halifax to St. John’s, which set me back more a thousand bucks, I exclaimed to the heavy set guy on the right, “Can you believe this? I can get a round-trip ticket from Toronto to London for the same price.” He regarded me the way a maitre d might a dumpster diver. Observing my bag of peanuts, he inquired, “Are you going to eat that?”

Undeterred, I vowed to get the bottom of this, and once safely and happily on the ground, I commenced. There had to be a simple explanation why short-haul flights in Atlantic Canada are so disproportionately dear, compared with international and overseas service. As it turns out, there are explanations, but none of them are simple.

According to Air Canada (or at least its automated FAQ web page), which maintains a virtual lock on intra-regional business, “Airlines and airline passengers are easy targets for a multitude of taxes and government-imposed fees. For example, on a typical ticket within Canada, you can expect tom pay GST and PST/QST, as well as a Navcan fee (a fee paid to NAV Canada to operate Canada’s air navigation systems), an airport improvement fee (levied by various airports across the country to fund airport improvements, and federal security charge (to fund security personnel and equipment).”

All of which sounds reasonable until you consider that similar tax and pricey regulatory regimes must also apply to international and overseas travelers. There must be more to it.

Indeed, there is, says Ellen Tucker, Saint John-based travel agent. She describes the she the economics of airline pricing this way:

“Basically it is because of the numbers. For example, on a flight from Halifax to Goose Bay there are only 50 seats; a certain number only are allocated at the lowest fare, and so on up the scale. (On one one flight I noticed three different fare levels ranging from $688 to $818 to $1,532). One Tokyo flightI checked had four different fare levels: $848, $7,348, $8,100 and for business class $14,462. Once again, say only 50 seats would be sold at the lowest level. Once those are gone, it moves up to the higher levels. At over $14K for business class you can see why it’s the business class traveller who subsides the low fare traveller. The sale of all 42 business class seats would amount to $588,000 whereas the 50 lowest fare seats would only bring the airline $42,400. Every airline in the world uses this model.”

So there we have it: More, perhaps, than we ever wanted to know about the calculus of airfare. Still, it seems obvious that increased competition is about the only dynamic likely to lower the cost of short-haul Atlantic Canadian flights. Until then, sadly, costs will continue to soar up, up and away – just another one of the many pleasant aspects of this form of travel along with lousy food and corpulent seat mates.

I was never an especially athletic kid. Downtown Toronto in the mid-1960s was an incubator of counter-cultural pretensions, not mutton-chopped devotion to physical exercise. In fact, sport of any kind was to be studiously avoided. (Though I did learn to skate at an outdoor rink in Ramsden Park, the folk movement’s Mecca of the moment).

In those days, at that time, teenagers measured their “fitness” by the number of cigarettes they smoked, the quality of the guitars they strummed, and their familiarity with relevant passages from the prose and poetry of Allan Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, J.D. Salinger and Herman Hesse. The buff, brawny and brush-cut need not apply.

All of which left me utterly unprepared for the team-joining mentality I encountered shortly after arriving in Halifax at the age of 11. What was all that huffing and puffing about? What were “intramurals”? Why should I attend, let alone care about, gym class? Heck, I didn’t even own a pair of sneakers – a fact which mystified my detention room supervisor at regular intervals.

No, give me reading, writing, art, music, and even a little math. You can keep your running and jumping and climbing and ducking; your basketball, volleyball, football, and field hockey. What was the point?

Later, I did develop a great fondness for swimming, sailing and (in adulthood) golf. But, I’ve always felt I missed something crucial in my early childhood when beneficial habits of mind and body forge the faculties of healthy, alert, productive members of society.

Now, it seems, we are making systemic inactivity a lifestyle choice for millions of people, both young and old.

According to a CBC investigation, the results of which were released earlier this week, “So many Canadians are unfit that new national guidelines will lower the recommended levels of daily [exercise] to encourage them to get off the couch. A poll suggests 42 per cent of adults say they get no vigorous exercise and 34 per cent of youth get fewer than two hours per week. Just 12 per cent of Canadian children are getting the recommended 90 minutes of exercise a day. Among adults, it’s worse, with most getting only about two hours of exercise a week, compared with the current recommended 60 minutes a day.”

The survey follows research by Active Healthy Kids Canada, published last April, that concluded 90 per cent of of children begin watching TV before their second birthday. Again, the CBC encapsulated the troubling findings: “The average age that children started watching TV 40 years ago was four. The country’s physical education programs earned a C- because of what the group called discrepancies between the amount of time mandated for phys-ed in schools and the amount actually allotted to it.”

What accounts for these dismal results is a mixed bag of public policy mistakes and market forces, starting with severe cutbacks to all but the most a “fundamental” educational programs in the 1980s and ‘90s. Meanwhile, the juggernaut of information technology and personal computing redefined the constitution of a job-ready workforce and reorganized pedagogical priorities accordingly.

If Canada’s growing pulchritude were only an issue for fitness advocates and exercise nuts, we might chortle between courses of cream pie and rounds of online gaming. But, it’s not. Every pound of lard we accumulate is a another dollar we steal from an already over-taxed health care system; another pound of flesh we demand from future generations which, it seems clear, will be in no shape to grant.

Already, rates of juvenile and late-onset diabetes in this country are at historic highs. The incidence of morbid obesity among children is skyrocketing. Some health care experts now suggest the current generation of young people may be the first to lead shorter, sicker, less rewarding lives than any in a 100 years. Does this sound anything like a “True North, strong and free?”

I might have missed something in my own youth, but as a hale and hardy 50-year-old, I love my bike, my walking shoes and my baseball glove. I love the fact that they are buying me more time, and costing me less money than medical intervention.

There’s never a good time to get off the couch or flee from the computer screen, but to cop a phrase. . .I just do it anyway.

At 50, they say, a man wears the face he deserves. Someday, I’d like to meet “they” who say this and ask them if any man really deserves to look like his father.

Not that my old pater, who is now 76, is a bad-looking squire. It’s just that as I approach the mid-century mark, I begin to understand what evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins means when he refers to the “selfish gene” in all of us. Apparently, Bruce Sr. is not so special that he can’t be copied. And neither am I, as one quick glance at my grandson will confirm.

In fact, the phrase itself is a misnomer. It actually alludes to the natural tendency of successful gene pools to support each other’s perseverance and prosperity, which explains why we marry, have kids and, whenever possible, earn enough money to keep the cycle spinning for the next generation of DNA receptacles.

In other words, the wisdom of age does not breed contentment. The conceit that it does belongs in the same category of social marketing that extols the joys of “healthy-living” retirement communities and seniors discounts on everything from bus fares to movie tickets. It’s just another crooked con trying to sell you something.

If anything, the march of years generates a more palpable sense of urgency. Time’s running out. What was once the distant future is now the present.

Are we fit? Are we responsible? Are we finally smart enough to avoid the big mistakes and disappointments that may not matter much to us anymore, but which seriously undermine the well-being of those who follow?

No man in his 20s imagines that he will ever become an exemplar. He’s too busy trying to hustle a buck, make the grade, pick up chicks. Old age, like death, is something that happens to those who can’t run fast enough. Mortality is an illusion.

Once he hits 30, he’s still fighting the inevitable. One more deal with the devil ought to do it. One more grand play for glory and fortune – for public approbation and private aggrandizement – should quiet the psychic screaming, once and for all.

By 40, he’s become a master negotiator. And it’s no surprise that many at this age suddenly “find” God, or a version of It. Please, he prays, allow me this one victory, this last sweet scent of rapidly fading youth, and I will submit to Your will. That’s the deal.

But, at 50, if he is at all wise, he puts away his deck of cards and stops making book on his chances for happiness. He starts questioning, from scratch, the foundation of his values, and looks around to survey the condition of the community, the province, the country, the world in which he’s had a hand creating.

I’ll soon turn 50 and, as I belong to the last and largest cohort of the baby boom generation, so, too, will many New Brunswickers, if they haven’t already.

What do we survey?

As co-chairs of the Future NB summit next week, businessman David Ganong and former premier Camille Theriault will pose this question to about 200 prominent representatives of every sector in the province. Nothing important is at stake unless our citizenry imagines the health and welfare of their children is a crucial concern.

Indeed, the problems are enormous: a massive public debt, a deep structural deficit, a moribund economy, dependency on transfers from an increasingly reluctant federal government. Still, they are not intractable; they are well within our power to solve if we see beyond the illusion that our individual challenges are somehow unique requiring remedies tailored to each one of us, and not all of us.

“We need to come together,” Ganong says. “We need to learn lessons. If we can’t do that, somebody will start making decisions for us.”

That reflection in the mirror is not just yours. It’s also your ancestor’s and your progeny’s. We, all of us and regardless of our years, are ambassadors of their dreams. And we always get the faces we deserve.

It’s refreshing that cultural pugilists don’t always hail from opposite ends of the ideological spectrum in this country. Sometimes, they belong to the same fight club – or so the recent dust-up over Johanna Skibsrud’s Giller Prize-winning novel, The Sentimentalists entertainingly demonstrates.

In this corner, we witness the lumbering, steroidal “book factories” of the Toronto publishing machine; and in the other, the 98-pound weaklings of the independent, artisanal Gaspereau Press of Kentville, N.S.

The latter describe their craft this way: “Employing a wide range of modern and antiquated production techniques and technologies, [we] create books that marry function and form. From limited-edition letterpress projects to Smyth-sewn trade paperbacks with hand-printed jackets, every project carries some trace of the human mind, eye and hand. The result is a unique publishing list of award-winning books – affordable, beautiful, and designed to endure.”

One of these was Skibsrud’s elegant effort, about which a Montreal Gazette review observed, “The slow fuse of the novel’s first half turns out to be a very effective setup for the explosive second, when the scene moves back in time to Vietnam. And even the most abstract early passages feature human touches that ring true even when we know they’ve been invented, as when residents of Casablanca make a game of speaking in dialogue from the town’s namesake Hollywood movie.”

Such morsels might whet any reader’s appetite. The problem is you can’t actually obtain a copy of the book thanks to Gaspereau’s exquisitely intricate and bespoke approach to publishing (it produced only 800 copies for distribution last year) and its owners’ principled defiance under pressure to accept an offer from a large Hog Town conglomerate to print a much bigger second-edition run. In fact, said Gaspereau co-founder Andrew Steeves last week, “If you are going to buy a copy of that book in Canada, it’s damn well coming out of my shop.”

Naturally, and right on cue, the vultures squawked.

How dare this tiny firm hold itself apart from the publishing community? Consumers have a right to expect selection and choice in the marketplace, and authors have a right to profit from their creative endeavours. If Steeves and his crew can’t, or won’t, meet these demands, they should get out of the way and allow someone who knows a thing or two about business step in.

Except, of course, the folks at Gaspereau know plenty about business. They have survived under enormously challenging circumstances for 13 years producing magnificent volumes that are true works of art. They understand that a book does not only engage the intellect; it also solicits the senses. The feel, the look, the smell, of a tome are essential to the act of reading, itself.

Such considerations also build brand loyalty at a time when most books end their lives in the remaindered bins of big-box stores. Besides, scarcity builds demand.

This may be a tough argument to credit in the age of Kindle and IPad and Kodo, but just try to crack open the spine of a computer and inhale its provenance. Will it remind you of where you were the last time you dipped into “Brave New World”? Will it startle you with memories of the beach, the cottage or the boat house during that summer – and its  episodic epiphanies – when you finally mastered the meaning of “Barney’s Version”?

Of course, Steeves and his crew aren’t stupid. Late last week, they announced a deal with Vancouver publisher Douglas & McIntyre and Friesens Corp. of Altona, Manitoba, to print another 40,000 copies of “The Sentimentalists”, all of which have been spoken for within the book-selling industry.

How is this any different than the original offer from Toronto?

Let’s just say it’s not from Toronto.

As for Johanna Skibsrud’s take on things, she had this to say on Gaspereau’s blog site: “I am really pleased wıth the Gaspereau/Douglas and McIntyre deal – am so glad that a solution has been arrived at that allows the books to be distributed widely without sacrificing any of Gaspereau Press’s practises and ideals, which make them so unique and special to work with.”

All of which may only prove that even a 98-pound weakling can occasionally deliver a wicked sucker punch.

NOTE: This column originally appeared on the Op-Ed page of the Moncton Times & Transcript on Friday, July 30, 2010. Semper fie to all the fathers among us!

I’m coming onto 50, but this Sunday I’ll walk my younger daughter down the aisle, place her hand into the hand of another man, take a deep breath, and try not to fidget like a five-year-old. After all, Sunday will be August 3, and I’ll be wearing a wool skirt.

But what’s a Scot to do? It’s our tradition to be uncomfortable in the presence of ceremony. It reminds us that while life is neither fair nor explicable, forbearance is its own reward. Or, at least, that’s what they told me at the (kilt-required) fatherhood induction centre.

This will be the second time in just over a year I will have the mixed pleasure of marrying off one of my kids. Last summer, in Toronto, my elder daughter took the plunge at a gloriously appointed Anglican service. The presiding priest and deacon were her future in-laws. It’s good, I thought at the time, to finally claim clergy as members of the family.

What shall I claim this time around? Love, loss, triumph, defeat? The inexorable passage of time? Gravity?

Anyone who has watched a boulder roll down a hill (and, really, who hasn’t?) knows what I mean. It tips slowly at first, and then gathers speed, faster and faster, until it comes to rest, unmoving. I’m pretty sure there’s a metaphor in there, somewhere. But, for me, the years seem to be accelerating the older I get.

Has a quarter-century passed since the bride-to-be, our Jessica, entered the world? I was two years younger than she is today. I am exactly the same age my father was when she was born. Still, even now, I notice the differences in our respective claims on each other’s souls.

She, for example, is much kinder than I ever was. She understood, early, that part of being human meant sacrifice, sometimes at great personal cost, to friends and strangers, alike. She was the kind of child who would never toss a rain-soaked bum a dime; she’d buy an umbrella, escort him to a shelter, and slip him her last 20 bucks.

She is also much tougher.

Once, a cat of ours (I believe it was No. 1,227 in the cluster of felines we have collected over the years) ran afoul of a steel-belted radial on the street in front of our house. I took one look at it and almost vomited. Jess, bless her animal heart, shot me a glance of utter contempt and declared without emotion: “We’re going to get it some help.”

Naturally, it died on the way to the hospital, but not before a 15-year-old girl gave it her own brand of benediction.

Later, when – she having earned top marks in an undergraduate biology degree at Dalhousie University – the University of Prince Edward Island’s famed Atlantic Veterinary College rejected her application to the M.D. program, she stepped forward and said, in effect, “Sorry, it’s going to happen.”

She reapplied, re-interviewed and was, against all odds, accepted.

At her age, I would never have had the courage to speak that kind of intimate, personal truth to power. But, in her heart, she has always known what’s right and what’s wrong. And she has always done what’s definably, difficultly right for her and everyone around her.

I don’t know how she comes by these remarkable qualities of mind and character. Maybe the secret is her mother, Vivien; or her sister Melinda and brother-in-law Richard; or her grandmother and grandfather, Harry and Penny; or her aunts, Annabel and Jocelyn; or her uncles, Max and Keith; or her beloved cousins, Gabriel, Scarlett and Malaika.

And maybe, after all, I had something to do with it.

“Dad,” she grinned the other week, as she scooped up her 14-month-old son, Euan, from our kitchen floor, “you really are going to have to get used to the fact that I am taller than you.”

It’s been an old joke between us for many years.

“You may be taller,” I dutifully replied, as her astonishingly smart, handsome and wise future husband, and father of our grandson, Myles laughed, “but I’m much bigger.”

She winked on cue. “Bigger as in fatter, fat-head.”

She cut me right to the quick.

But, then, she always has.

The Web, say some experts, is making mincemeat of our minds. What with chiming emails, beckoning Facebook and chirping Twitter, it’s a marvel any of us can focus for longer than a few minutes at a stretch. And our self-induced attention deficit disorders are getting worse.

In a recent Globe and Mail interview, technology guru Nichols Carr reflects on his latest tome, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. He observes, “When we’re just Googling or just zipping around from Web pages, we draw in information very quickly from many sources but because it’s often a very distracted way of gathering information, it never makes the transition from our short-term memory to our long-term memory.”

Why does this matter?

Says Carr: “The more we come to rely on the databases or the net for access to information, the weaker our memory gets and, as a result of that, we have to depend and rely even more on databases, the Web. . .We can begin to trust our computers to kind of do extraordinarily rapid calculations that the human brain is simply incapable of. . .As we’ve seen in the financial area and other areas, it can be dangerous to put too much trust and too much faith into that kind of rapid processing.”

And here we assumed the economic calamities of the past couple of years were the product of venal, greedy, rapacious minds – not distracted ones. Still, it makes sense. How many times have you found yourself productively absorbed by one task, only to drop everything when the unblinking eye of instant communications commands your response? How much better would you work without the constant background noise of chit-chat?

All is not hopeless, however. The solution, Carr says, is as simple as shutting off the electronic hum every so often and cracking open a good book:  “Through our pace of reading and through the attentiveness, we are able to get much more information much more deeply into our brain, into our long-term memory, and [we] begin making those connections with our own experiences”

When a tech guy says, “start reading”, who am I to argue? So without further ado, and in honour of the official start of summer, I humbly recommend the following three, mighty texts guaranteed to rewire your harried brain and, just maybe, feed your parched soul:

Outliers by award-winning journalist Malcolm Gladwell , which was first published in 2008, takes a fascinating look at the phenomenon of human excellence. As the author says, himself, “Outlier is a scientific term to describe things or phenomena that lie outside normal experience. In this book I’m interested in people who are outliers – in men and women who, for one reason or another, are so accomplished and so extraordinary and so outside of ordinary experience that they are as puzzling to the rest of us as a cold day in August.” (Available for order online, or at your local Chapters).

The World Without Us (2008) by Alan Weisman, a veteran science writer, poses the provocative question: What would the planet be like if, suddenly, human kind disappeared. According to one review, “In this far-reaching narrative, Weisman explains how our massive infrastructure would collapse and finally vanish without human presence; which everyday items may become immortalized as fossils; how copper pipes and wiring would be crushed into mere seams of reddish rock; why some of our earliest buildings might be the last architecture left; and how plastic, bronze sculpture, radio waves, and some man-made molecules may be our most lasting gifts to the universe.” (Available for order online, or at your local Chapters).

A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003) by American humourist Bill Bryson is a fabulous romp through history, science, religion, art – indeed, anything the human mind has ever touched or pondered.  “This is a book about how it happened,” he writes. “In particular, how we went from there being nothing at all to there being something, and then how a little of that something turned into us, and also what happened in between and since.”

Now, if these suggestions don’t tickle you’re fancy, pick up a juicy mystery or a bodice-ripping romance. Just turn off the computer and get reading.

It’s that time of the year again, when the living is easy. Forget your troubles, hit the beach, crank up the sound system, and kick back – oh Lord, kick back! Because, before long, those folks we sent to Fredericton and Ottawa will be begging for a piece of your precious time come election season. You wanted to be engaged? Consider yourself married.

Meanwhile, take the exam before the nuptials. You might be surprised by how much you know, and how little they’ve learned in their various parliaments of punditry. What’s the worst that could happen: a government that actually cares about its citizenry; a citizenry that actually cares about its country on this, its 143^rd birthday?

Enjoy!    

 1. From the list, name at least one New Brunswicker who became Prime Minister of Canada.

a) R.B Bennett

b) Robert Byrd

c) Stephen Harper

d) Maurice Minnifield

2. What is the second-largest country in the world by land mass?

a) Russia

b) United States

c) Canada

d) Pandora

3. What is the seventh-smartest city in the world, according to the New York-based think tank Intelligent Communities Forum?

a) Stockholm

b) Fredericton

c) Toronto

d) None of the above

4. Who said the creation of Kouchibouguac National Park was, “a great step forward as far as New Brunswick is concerned”?

a) Jackie Vautour

b) Jean Chretien

c) Louis J. Robichaud

d) Arnold Schwarzenegger

5. What was Moncton’s first European name as dubbed by early French settlers?

a) Centre-Merde

b) Chocolat

c) Le Coude

d) Riverview

6. In Mi’kmaq, what does “Petitcodiac” mean?

a) Bends like a bow.

b) Smells like mud.

c) People attract mosquitoes.

d) Small bears gather.

7. What is New Brunswick’s official flower?

a) wild rose

b) purple violet

c) skunk weed

d) tropical coral

8. When did the maple leaf become the official emblem of the Canadian flag?

a) 1867

b) 1914

c) 2001

d) 1965

9. When was the dollar coin (“loonie”) introduced to Canadian currency?

a) 1867

b) 1987

c) 1990

d) 2010

10. What is vernacular French for “loonie”?

a) crachat

b) huche

c) navet

d) huard

11. Who initially said he didn’t “necessarily” disagree with the idea of selling NB Power to Hydro-Quebec?

a) Shawn Graham

b) David Alward

c) Danny Williams

d) Alec Baldwin

12. In what period did New Brunswick post its only population decline?

a) 1956-1961

b) 1981-1986

c) 1996-2001

d) 2005-2010

13. Which famous people did not hail from New Brunswick?

a) Louis B. Mayer (studio mogul)

b) Donald Sutherland (actor)

c) Rheal Cormier (baseball player)

d) W.A.C. Bennet (B.C. premier)

14. How many premiers has New Brunswick had since Confederation?

a) 15

b) 19

c) 31

d) 57

15. Where are the highest tides in the world?

a) Saint John, N.B.

b) Digby, N.S.

c) Minas Basin, N.S.

d) Hopewell Cape, N.B.

16. For how many consecutive quarters has New Brunswick posted population increases?

a) 3

b) 6

c) 9

d) 12

17. What is the name of New Brunswick’s newest political party?

a) Aliant New Brunswick

b) Alliance N.B.

c) New Brunswick Alliance Party

d) People’s Alliance of New Brunswick

18. From the list, identify the world-class opera singer who hails from New Brunswick?

a) Maureen Forrester

b) Measha Brueggergosman

c) Robert Savoie

d) Marc Chouinard  

Answers: 1 (a); 2 (c); 3 (d – it’s actually Moncton); 4 (c); 5 (c); 6 (a); 7 (b); 8(d); 9 (b); 10 (d); 11 (b); 12 (c – the province’s population dipped by 1.2 per cent); 13 (Trick question – they all did); 14 (c); 15 (c); 16 (d); 17 (d); 18 (b)

It was an absurd question to ask a nine-year-old, a child of the swinging sixties. But my grade school teacher was a monarchist, determined to stake some small claim on my soul before the decidedly republican-minded culture of the time dashed all hope of my redemption.

What does the Queen mean to me? Big hats? White gloves? Horses? It was the best I could muster on such short notice. Naturally, it wasn’t enough. I had failed to fully appreciate the role of British royalty in Canadian society. Didn’t we all? And don’t we still?

A recent Canadian Press Harris-Decima survey shows that nearly half of us polled consider the monarchy an antiquated institution, utterly unecessary to our current circumstances and the progress of our middling democracy.

Of course, try telling that to the hundreds who thronged Halifax streets the other day, braving downpours and gales to catch a glimpse of the Queen Regnant, Elizabeth II, and her entourage as they began their royal tour of Canada, the first in 16 years.

I’m not wholly sympathetic to either camp. Call me a disinterested bystander to the pomp and ceremony of monarchical institutions and processions. Still, given the raft of egregious and intractable problems facing this country and many others, I can’t get worked up about cutting our historical tethers to the old gal. The debate, itself, seems irrelevant.

Besides, answering the question, “What does the Queen mean to me?” seems less useful or interesting an exercise than pondering the reverse as Canada prepares to mark its 143 birthday: What doesn’t she, of long tradition, mean to me?

Specifically, she doesn’t mean rampant authoritarianism of the kind recently perpetrated against the City of Toronto during the G20 summit of world leaders. She doesn’t mean the suspension of civil liberties, free speech and the legal right to assemble, or the savage curtailment of due process, journalistic freedom and government accountability.

Neither does she mean the end of principled debate in the Canadian House of Commons, where forceful threats to the status quo are met with equally forceful threats of prorogation – where cabinet ministers with crucial portfolios must check with the Prime Minister’s Office before scheduling a news conference, photo op, or bathroom break. She doesn’t mean petty interference in the affairs of state.

In the broader, international context, she doesn’t mean the cowardice of rich states, which can’t acknowledge their economies are houses of cards stacked with money that’s rapidly losing its inherent value thanks to sovereign debt. She doesn’t mean the myopia of political parties, which can’t see how their own capitulations to moneyed and special interests are breeding a whole new generation of populist warriors hell-bent on vanquishing the evil, and whatever is left of the good, in our various societies.

And she certainly doesn’t mean public expense scandals, influence peddling, climate change denial, escalating militarism, bureaucratic incompetence, pork-barrelling, political cynicism, laissez-faire financial regulation, corporate corruption, monetary monopolies, and manmade death, disease and depredation.

Whenever the Queen alights on these shores, she never brings ruin, destitution or disability with her. She never lies, cajoles or coerces. She just smiles and waves her royal hand, bending occasionally to caress a child’s cheek or accept a bouquet of flowers. She doesn’t represent what’s wrong with the world; she suggests, through her comportment, what tradition and experience tells her could be better, kinder, more dignified about it.

That she possesses no power to effect any meaningful changes at the imperial courts of global capitalism poignantly reminds us that all empires eventually crumble.

Is this the true role of British royalty in Canadian society? Are they here to provide us with a living, breathing object lesson on the perils of hubris, on the bitter fruits of conquest?

“As Queen of Canada,” she told the Halifax crowd, “my pride in this country remains undimmed. It’s very good to be home.”

This Canada Day, will we say the same?