The Bruce Report

One of the foundational concepts of western philosophy is the cartesian proposition, in latin, “Cogito ergo sum”, which, when loosely translated into english, means, “I think, therefore I am.” It follows, then, that if I cease to think, I also cease to exist.

But is it possible that excessive thinking can actually hasten my demise? I thought too much, therefore I am not? (The paradox, of course, is that if I’m dead, I shouldn’t be able to formulate the question in the first place, which throws the definition of reality, itself, into the metaphysical meat-grinder. But, I digress).

If thinking may not be sufficient proof of existing, a growing number of academics and commentators are making playful hay with the notion that cogitation ain’t what it’s cracked up to be and that the traditional routes to critical analysis – notably, a higher education – may not be as useful or even beneficial as were once. . .well, thought.

Writing in the Globe and Mail recently, columnist Neil Reynolds suggests, intriguingly, “The U.S. does confirm the thesis that education is not necessarily a measure of intelligence or job performance. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, a daily electronic newspaper for academicians, California has the best-educated state legislators in the United States – and one of the worst economies. The state’s official unemployment rate (12 per cent) is the highest in the country.”

He has a point. Consider the number of Harvard and Stanford-educated post-docs who brain-waved the world into the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. Their expansive frontal lobes kept them sequestered in rooms, where they ran algorithms on the performance of non-existent securities without care for the broader consequences of their actions for the society they repudiated.

Consider, also, some of the truly bone-headed musings issued, in recent years, by some of the planet’s smartest people.

Former first lady and current U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the release of sensitive documents when her husband was in office: “I’m not going to have some reporters pawing through our papers. We are the President.”

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton on his relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky: “I did not have sex with that woman.”

Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on the progress of the war in Iraq: “I believe what I said yesterday. I don’t know what I said, but I know what I think, and, well, I assume it’s what I said.”

Naturally, the alternative – trusting the affairs of state and economy to a gaggle of knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing flat-earthers – is no solution. But the point is we shouldn’t have to if we elect or appoint leaders who do not fall prey to the arrogance of their own knowledge.

Perhaps the real problem is not “thinking”, per se, but the type and duration of mental exercise deployed in given situations. Not long ago, a University of Chicago study found that people who sweat needlessly about their decisions invariably make more mistakes than those who go with their guts. “Whether evaluating abstract objects or actual consumer items, people who deliberated their preferences were less consistent than those who made non-deliberative judgments,” the authors concluded.

Another project, undertaken by the University College London, suggested that some people simply think too much about everything, making them prone to memory loss, depression and, by extension, suicide.

Somewhere, in the minds of men and women, there is a happy medium, where self-awareness is less cartesian than socratic, along the lines of, “I don’t really know anything, but I intend to find out.”

Refreshingly, this appears to be the intellectual territory New Brunswick Finance Minister Blaine Higgs appears to occupy as he struggles to find out what’s going on with  the province’s departmental budgets. “I’m not getting a monthly update on a financial basis,” he told reporters the other day. “I haven’t said I’m giving up on it. I don’t intend to give up on any of this.”

That’s comforting, lest thinking about the wrong things hastens our economic extinction.

“The federal government wants to update its brand image for the modern social-media world, keeping symbols like the ‘Canada’ wordmark but competing better in a more crowded market of images and ideas.” – From a Postmedia News report carried by the Montreal Gazette on August 25, 2011.

It’s brilliant, bloody brilliant, growls the raven-haired Ima Ripoff, Creative Director of LMAO Strategic Communications, as she squirms in her seat, downing shots of bourbon, in the lobby bar of Toronto’s Transcontinental Hotel.

“Finally, somebody in Ottawa is showing a little gumption, a little moxie,” says the advertising doyen of barely perceptible gender. “I’ve been waiting a long time to get my hands on this country’s brand image, shake things up, kick some butt. . .Waiter, get me another and make it a double. . .Now’s my chance. I tell you what boychick. We are gonna have us some fun.”

I’ve known Ripoff for years. A Madison Avenue refugee by way of New York’s Lower East Side, she’s not the perishing type. You might remember her spectacularly controversial tourism campaign for Prince Edward Island a few years back, in which she transformed the iconic Anne of Green Gables with the provocative tagline, “Lusty redhead open for business.” Or her repositioning of Newfoundland and Labrador for target audiences as “Not just for alcoholics, anymore.”

In the end, she lost both campaigns to what she dismisses as “office politics”. But  not before she picked up four “Spinnies”, the Academy Awards of the marketing world. Still, as she likes to say, that was then, this is now, and now is “hot, happening and hip” thanks to the federal government’s determination to spend a (typically) undisclosed sum  to spruce itself up for the younger, web-savvy set.

Gamboling down Bloor Street, sucking back Marlboros and Jim Beam, Ripoff commences to spit ball: “How wedded do you think those PCO characters are to their own ideas? I mean what we should really do, if you ask me, is blow the whole freaking thing wide open. You know?”

Not really.
“Well think about it mouse turd. Branding isn’t about pretty pictures. It’s about connecting with the consumer. Don’t you think the consumer would connect better with Canada if it had a better song? I mean, what’s this ‘Home and native son’ garbage?”

You mean “Home and native land”, don’t you?

“Whatever. . .My point is we could license the rights to Tom Cochrane’s ‘Life is a highway’ or, even better, Carole Pope’s ‘High school confidential’. Imagine how that would go over before every hockey game? Oh. . .oh. . .wait a sec, I’ve just had another brainstorm. What if we hired Randy Bachman to play ‘Takin’ care of business’ during every economic summit? Awesome, right?”

Ripoff’s on a roll now.

“How do you feel about the flag, anyway? Personally, it leaves me colder than a witch’s armpit in Nanoveet.”

I think you you mean Nunavut.

“Whatever. . .I’m picturing some big-time radical chic. Imagine a lumberjack wearing only work boots and Calvin Klein underwear. On his chest is tattooed the words, ‘Canada, eh!’ Or, maybe that doesn’t speak to the youth market well enough. . .Okay, I’ve got it: A kid hunched over his smart phone. Below the image is the tagline: ‘Hoodie nation never sleeps, yo!’”

Ripoff stops and fires up another smoke.

“Something still bugs me though. Can-a-da doesn’t really do much for me. It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t roll off the tongue. I mean ‘United States’ is pretty boring, but at least you get the idea. The brand message is implicit. But what’s ‘Canada’? It sounds like somebody just found a energy drink container and doesn’t know what to do with it. You know. . .‘Can? Ah,duh?’ We need the nation’s name to be both clear and positively evocative.”

What about, I suggest mischievously, “Cando”. One might incorporate such a moniker into a variety of traditional and online marketing campaigns. For example, we could be “Cando country”, or “The great Cando north”, or “Experience Cando”, or “Can’t do? Not in Cando”.

Ripoff’s red-rimmed eyes are shining now.

“Brilliant, bloody brilliant. Mind if I rip that off from you?”

Be my guest.

“Gotta tweet Ottawa right away.”

And so, naturally, begins the start of a beautiful relationship.

Every so often, somebody from my distant past drops me a line, asking me if I’d be willing to return to Toronto and take over some small principality of a metropolitan newsroom. When I laugh derisively and tell him I’d rather hang by my thumbs over a crocodile pit, I can almost hear his jaw hitting the keyboard.

Have more than two decades of rustication in the Canadian outback turned my mind to fish meal? What do I mean by rejecting such a generous offer, the chance to live and work again in the centre of the universe where the grass is ever green, when so many Maritimers are grabbing every opportunity to abandon their unpromising corner of the steppe?

That’s when the wisecracks really start to flow:

“Well, I might consider it once I’ve run out clean air, affordable housing, local food, friendly neighbours, and silent nights. Until then, someone’s got to mend the nets, fix the lobster traps and write the sea shanties you Upper Canadians love so well. Who knows, one of us left behind after the Great Rapture to Hog Town may even discover indoor plumping.”

Invariably, my correspondent is not amused. Indeed, he seems almost offended. It never occurred to him that some denizens of the East Coast actually like where they’re to. They don’t perceive the observable lack of crime, pollution, noise and horse’s arses any hardship.

That’s not to say the region where Confederation was born, where most of the nation’s banks began, is perfect. It has its problems, such as public debt, struggling resource industries, low labour productivity, crumbling municipal infrastructure and a rather unseemly devotion to something called “celtic rock”. But in the big picture of global depredations, these troubles are trifling. We’re lucky, and we know it.

As a 15-year resident of Moncton, N.B., here’s how I count my blessings:

My mayor’s name is George LeBlanc. If I were to return to Toronto, my mayor’s name would be Rob Ford. Enough said.

My house is a 20-minute stroll from downtown (a seven-minute bike ride in a headwind). If I were to find comparable accommodations in the GTA, I would be commuting to work for more than an hour each way, and paying extravagant prices at a parking garage for a car I would have to buy with a line of credit I couldn’t sustain thanks to the upper six-figure mortgage that would be sucking my bank account dry faster than I could replenish it. In the end, I’d most likely have to move down east, claiming economic hardship, which is how I got here in the first place. And I’ve never been a fan of deja vu.

My mechanic is a fine fellow by the name of Jim, who operates a service station on north Mountain Road. The other day, he fixed the transmission in my car. When I went to pay him, he handed me the key and said “no charge”. Dumbfounded, I said “huh?”. Apparently, he thought he should have noticed the leak during a previous inspection and now felt honour bound to give me a free ride, as it were. Where does that happen? Not in the big TO.

My wine guy is a worldly gent named George. And by worldly, I mean he seems to have lived everywhere. Once every couple of months, I head to his shop to bottle some vino, but mostly to get his take on current events, as he is wicked smart. To obtain the same quality of observation and perspicacity in Toronto, I’d have to lay down five-hundred bucks at a Moses Znaimer “Idea City” conference and listen to university professors bleat on about why “work” is inherently evil. Which, of course, it is.

In fact, here on the Atlantic rim, I don’t work; I play. Sometimes, people pay me for it. That’s something else I couldn’t pull in the city of my birth.

Or maybe I could; I just can’t be bothered.

The grass is plenty green right here.

Is this the best time to be a Canadian?

Macleans magazine certainly thinks so. Or it did earlier this summer when it proudly asserted, “Canada ranks third [in the world] for how it grants equal rights, responsibilities and opportunities to immigrants. Canadian food is gaining recognition in international culinary circles for being sustainable, innovative and delicious. Canada is leading the way in medical research with one of the highest concentrations of stem-cell researchers anywhere.”

What’s more, the weekly glossy gushes, “We build the coolest robots in the universe; have the highest golf participation in the world; are a hotbed of entrepreneurship; and produce fantastic baseball players.”

I might add we’re also terrific in bed, should any love-lorn ex-pats decide to return, post haste, to their home and native land.

But, lest we conclude too readily and rashly that the Great White North is incomparable, a little of our infamous cold water would serve to cool our jets. Let’s start by talking about the weather, shall we?

In a word, it stinks. It’s either too hot or too cold, too wet or too dry. In fact, we “boast” the largest temperature swings anywhere in the world – from 50-above to 50-below (sometimes in the same day). Then, there are the bugs.

As we often say, we grow mosquitos and black flies for the expressed purpose of driving American tourists into our gift shops and watering holes, where we ply them with Asian-made Mountie dolls before requiring them to kiss a cod fish and down shots of a mentholated petroleum product we like to call “Screech”.

There are, of course, the potholes, which are, in fact, the secret behind our much-debated national identity. Perfectly fluent in both official languages and multicultural to the core, they remain our singular egalitarian offering to the world: constant, fair, and equitably available regardless of social or economic standing.

We’re also more British than the British, at least outside Quebec. There’s nothing we like better than a royal visit from an English monarch to help us forget that we became an independent country 144 years ago. And when she visits our fair capital, droves us turn out to paint our faces red and white and sing “God save the Queen”.

Our national symbols include a tree-munching rodent, a leaf from a common tree,  and a species of waterfowl that warbles when the sun sets and again when it rises. Our national pastimes include moving a rubber disk up a stretch of ice, moving a granite rock up a stretch of ice, and moving a shovel up a stretch of ice where our driveways used to be.

We honour the environment, yet we’re largely oblivious to the effects of the Alberta tar sands. We cherish our rural communities, yet we think anyone who lives in one ought to have his head examined. We preach the benefits of healthy living, yet we sport among the highest rates of obesity and diabetes in the developed world.

True, we are among the most highly educated people on the planet. Still, seven million members of our adult population remain functionally illiterate. Indeed, says the Conference Board of Canada, “Canada’s economic boom in the last 10 years has so far  protected many of these people. Research shows, however, that people with low literacy skills have weaker attachments to the labour market and generally do not do well in economic downturns.”

How about those who do? Adds the Board: “Canada also underperforms in the highest level of skills attainment, producing relatively few ‘high-end‘ graduates with PhDs, as well as graduates in science, math, computer science, and engineering.”

Indeed, it gets worse. “Currently, Canadian employers are notably low investors in workplace training and skills outside the traditional school system,” the think tank concludes. “As a result, the Canadian training system does not fill the skills gap.”

So is this really the best time to be a Canuck? Certainly, my American cousins think so. But, under the circumstances south of the border, that’s not saying much.

When he counts the number of people in New Brunswick who have submitted ideas for the new provincial slogan (about 750), the Minister of Public Safety gets frisky. In fact, says Robert Trevors, “It really excites me. With the numbers that we’ve got, it really shows that people want to voice their opinions.”

And why not? After all, this is the time of the year when beach bums and backyard chefs might naturally turn to their loved ones and exclaim, “By George, I’ve got it. Henceforth, our fair province should be known as ‘The Mosquito Coast’.”

In truth, I have given the matter of mottos considerable thought in recent weeks. At times, it has occupied my every waking moment. It has invaded my dreams and caused me to miss meals, birthday parties and major surgery. So committed am I to the noble task of securing, for New Brunswick, a tag line appropriate for display on license plates that I laughed derisively in Richard Branson’s face the other day when he invited me to play party games with several supermodels on his private island in the South Pacific. “Where are your priorities, man?” I demanded to know.

So, yes, Mr. Trevors, you’re not the only one who’s excited. I, too, am frisky.

But good intentions are poor substitutes for creative rigor. We must gird our intellects against the pap, the cliched, the simplistic, the wretchedly catchy. We must strive for that elevated plateau, that high mesa of our minds, where we finally break the bindings with which the branding managers have corralled us for too long. We must embrace the relevance of the utterly irrelevant.

Famous lines from popular culture provide a starting point. Consider, for example, a few of the following:

“New Brunswick. . .Not that there’s anything wrong with it.”

“New Brunswick. . .The un-cola.”

“New Brunswick. . .Because life’s complicated enough.”

“New Brunswick. . .Plop plop fizz fizz, oh what a relief it is.”

“New Brunswick. . .Can’t believe we ate the whole thing.”

“New Brunswick. . .Doing what we do best.”

“New Brunswick. . .We’re number two, we try harder.”

Now, here’s where the magic begins. Take a line or two and mix and match. The more random the process the better. Don’t think. Just do. Let your imagination soar:

“New Brunswick. . .Fizz fizz, the un-cola.”

“New Brunswick. . .Doing what we do best, complicating life”

“New Brunswick. . .We try harder, oh what a relief it is.”

“New Brunswick. . .We’re number two, plop plop.”

Mr. Trevors is also interested in our ideas about “motor vehicles” in general, because, as he says, “It’s good for the province to get that expertise from the people that you’re serving. . .They’re the best consultants to consult with.”

I say bully for him, and let’s get down to work suggesting new policies on the subject of the internal combustion engine. Why not? It’s been around for more than a century. Isn’t it about time the people’s “expertise” on this and even other things – like gravity or colours – be heard and cherished by those we pay to serve us?

So, as to cars, I, for one, would like them to fly. I would also like them to make a farting sound when they land. No reason.

Furthermore, all automobiles should be painted either sky blue or cloud grey to meld in with their aerial surroundings. But the paint should be made from Ganong chocolate syrup to provide commuters with an afternoon snack from time to time.

Speed limits should be raised to 1,000 kilometers an hour. Graduated licensing should begin at birth. Roads and highways should be turned into moving sidewalks. Bicycles should be outlawed, as they’re dangerous to ants. And old people should be forced to keep their opinions to themselves.

This last one doesn’t have much to do with cars, but it is my opinion and, like Mr. Trevors, I’m really excited about it.

The dashing young Prince William is a Royal Air Force fly-boy who, when not otherwise occupied with the duties of ceremonial office, spends his time searching for and sometimes rescuing stranded boaters along his native coastline.

The second in line to the British throne will get a chance to prove his piloting chops for rapt Canadians when, in Prince Edward Island next Monday, he will participate in a tricky “waterbird” landing procedure.

It’s all in good fun, of course – part of the whirlwind pageantry that is the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s first official visit to the land that summer forgot. And, as befits the occasion, such a spectacle is supposed to go off without a hitch.

So why, then, are we requiring the newly married monarch-in-waiting to demonstrate his skill and derring-do in a nine-tonne piece of junk that military analysts and servicemen, alike, have variously dubbed “ancient”, “geriatric”, “venerable”, and a “flying coffin”?

According to a recent CBC report, Canada’s Sea King helicopters (the Sikorsky CH-124), which first made the scene nearly half-a-century ago, “are often hit by flameouts, engine stalls, generator failures, and gearbox problems. Pilots have died flying them, falling into oceans, crashing into muskeg.”

Doubtless, defence department factotums are taking every precaution to ensure that nothing actually imperils the Queen’s eldest grandchild as he splutters precariously about the nation’s official sandbar. But the circumstance serves to remind that, when it comes to Royal visits, Canada does tend to lose its tiny little mind.

And not just in matters of prudence. Other developments in advance of Will’s and Kate’s arrival suggest that we Canucks truly are not quite ready for the prime time of our lives as loyal subjects of the Sceptered Isle, one ocean and 144 years of history away.

Take, for example, a marvelous imbroglio involving Britain’s Daily Telegraph and The Monarchist League of Canada, the former having reported, this week, the extent to which the latter is allegedly determined to preserve and cherish the Royal Standard in home and on native land.

Writes Gordon Raynor, the Telegraph’s chief reporter: “Royalists in Canada have come up with a novel solution to [an] age-old problem: install Prince Harry as their king. They want the Prince, who is third in line to the throne, to set up home in the capital, Ottawa, to give the Royal family a permanent presence and to silence those who believe the country should have an elected head of state.”

To corroborate the claim, he quotes Etienne Boisvert, the League’s Quebec representative: “Prince Harry, who has virtually no chance of becoming king, could set himself up here and found a Canadian branch of the Royal family.”

Another Monarchist member, Eugene Berezovsky is attributed with this remark: “In the same way that Prince Charles is Prince of Wales, the goal would be to give senior members of the Royal family titles relating to Canadian regions. It was suggested before, when the new province of Nunavut was created in 1999.”

Ah yes. . .the Baron of Whitney Pier, the Viscount of Kamloops, the Earl of Egmont. Why, it makes all the sense in a world of evolving, republican-style democracies.

Only, the League’s chairman, Robert Finch, says the story is all a big misunderstanding (something about language barriers and faulty translations). A king of Canada, he insists in a Postmedia report published yesterday is “not practical, not doable and not, frankly, desirable. I’ve worked so hard to build up relationships with the palace. They’re going to look at this and think, ‘What the heck is going on over there?’ It makes us look like whackos and that’s not who we are.”

Are you absolutely certain about that, Mr. Finch?

After all, it does seem just a wee bit bi-polar of us to, on the one hand, test a prince’s reflexes in a broadly sub-standard whirly-bird and, on the other, insist (as per Monarchist League’s website) that pictures of Her Majesty be presented “to organizations, post offices, libraries, police stations, fire halls, council chambers and other visible locations. . .framed or foam-core mounted if possible.”

Perhaps the young Royal might spend a little time while he’s aloft next week searching for Canada’s stranded sanity and, if it’s not too much of an imposition on his ceremonial duties, rescue it.

As the nation hurtles toward its 144th birthday, flushing with pride over the symbols of heritage and statehood, an American aircraft manufacturer is vigorously denying appropriating a line from the Canadian anthem to sell choppers.

“I want to stress that this is not, never has been and never will be a promotional line,” a spokesman for Sikorsky told a Postmedia news reporter the other day. Specifically, “this” was the phrase, “We stand on guard for thee”, which appeared in gigantic, gilded lettering on a sign affixed above a CH148 Cyclone helicopter at the recent Paris Air Show.

Apparently, the poor fellow was genuinely rattled by the implication that many Canucks take a dim view of the crass, commercial and unauthorized use of their song to pad the pockets of greedy multinationals.

In fact, he needn’t have worried.

According to the Canadian Heritage web site, both “O Canada” and “God Save The Queen” are in the public domain and “may be used without having to obtain permission from the Government.”

Furthermore, the department confirms, “There is no law or behavior governing the playing of the national anthem; it is left to the good citizenship of individuals.” Still, “as a matter of respect and tradition”, it is customary to stand, doff one’s hat and refrain from belching, smoking, drinking and spitting during the playing of the secular carol.

Pertinently, though, “there is no copyright on the melody and the words of the national anthem. . .It is possible to translate the words of the national anthem in languages other than English and French” as long as one keeps in mind “that this translated version will not have official status.”

All of which raises a couple of points. The first, a minor one, is whether anything that’s free to the great, unregulated unwashed to be manipulated and otherwise mangled with impunity can possibly retain “official status”. And if it can, then what benefits does such a designation bestow?

The other point, a more mercenary one, concerns why the Government of Canada is literally giving away one of the country’s most potentially lucrative assets.

As both Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his financial wizard Jim Flaherty have repeatedly told Canadians, times are tough. The budget deficit is in the billions. The national debt is as deep as a dry well. Cutbacks in defence, social and R&D spending are inevitable. Economic growth is expected to contract from 2.7 to 1.9 per cent next year as the U.S. and most of Europe continue to struggle with their own structural shortfalls. Bottom line: We need money. Badly.

Now’s the time for out-of-the-box thinking and innovative action. If the national anthem is good enough for Sikorsky, then it should fork over big bucks for the privilege of employing it – in whole or in part – in its advertising.

But don’t let’s stop there. Think of the fresh coin a legally trade-marked “O Canada” would bring to a cash-strapped nation. It’s a pay-as-you-go-public-private partnership made in marketing heaven.

Take the anthem’s second line, “Our home and native land.” Why, it’s a perfect value proposition for any number of major real estate developers the world over. It connotes safety, stability and community. Imagine something like, “At Fleecem Estates, we know how important a clean, gated village is to your peace of mind. Here, you’ll never have to worry, because your home is our home and native land.”

Or how about, “With glowing hearts we see thee rise”? The global pharmaceutical industry could have a field day with this one, as in: “Impacto may not be for everyone. Check with your doctor to see if you’re healthy enough for sexual activity. If you are, you can be sure that thanks to Impacto your partners will, with glowing hearts, see thee rise.”

In the end, if we don’t care how our national anthem is used anyway, we shouldn’t be squeamish about charging user fees for its various commercial incarnations and incantations.

Indeed, we should promote the practice to secure a better economic future for our children and grandchildren as they, once a year, ponder the symbols of their heritage and national integrity.

Moncton, it should be obvious to all, aspires to become the best, little city in Canada. And with installed Wi-Fi free throughout the downtown, plans for a multi-use civic centre and even the odd cultural concourse or two, it’s well on its way to urban distinction.

How tragic.

It’s clear our municipal mothers and fathers do not understand the dangerous game they are playing with the long-term well being of Mudville’s unsuspecting citizenry. Have they not read a just-released report by McGill University researchers, which concludes, definitively, that city dwelling quite literally drives people insane.

Where once we joked ruefully about the rat race, now we know with certitude the joke’s on us, or at least the 20 to 40 per cent more of us who suffer from severe anxiety and mood disorders, relative to our country cousins.

Says the study’s co-author Dr. Jens Pruessner: “Stress is, of course, defined in many ways, but one way to capture it is to [identify] the daily hassles you have to cope with. You could imagine that if you live in a city, those [hassles] might be a large proportion as compared with someone who lives in a more rural environment.”

So large a proportion, in fact, that the urban brain actually grows pysically sensitive – its structures, like the amygdala and the perigenual anterior cingulate cortex, being constantly drenched in the organic chemicals responsible for flight, fight and fear responses – to even the most quotidian of pressures.

Get cut off in traffic? Flip the bird. The liquor closed early for inventory taking? Dissolve into a puddle of tears. Late for that dawn flight to Cancun? Punch out the ticket agent. It’s okay. We feel your pain. You are from the city, after all.

But even if you’re not. Even if you haven’t lived in a built-up, smelly, congested concrete jungle for 15 years – but were only born and raised in one – you’re still quite likely to fly off the handle at your small-town neighbours. That’s because, Pruessner says, the mind is a creature of habit and not easily reprogrammed.

Given that the world is becoming increasingly urban – with more than 50 per cent of the planet’s human population residing in expanding metropolises – the implications of these findings are, of course, enormously troubling. Who’s going to tackle the growing problems of poverty, pollution and climate change when so many of us are barking lunatics and wandering whack-jobs?

Just as unsavory is the proposition of a global pharmaceutical industry gone wild, pumping out pills for every occasion. Feeling panicky? Take the pink one with a chaser of bicarbonate on the side. Feeling weepy. Pop three blues and snap on the first season of “Hey. . .I didn’t know I was pregnant” for some cathartic cleansing.

Still, all is not lost. Pruessner advises regular R&R to mitigate the deleterious  effects of our various Gothams on our shredded consciouses.

I, for example, choose gardening.

As a Toronto native with an overactive imagination and a low threshold for just about every kind of pain – mental or otherwise – I’ve found that playing in the dirt is a most effective girder for my constantly teetering grip on reality. When some moron annoys me on the phone, there’s nothing I like better than busting some sod. When a client insists he “absolutely adores” what I’ve written and only has an hour or two of “notes” to impart, I head to the baby barn where my trusty spade and hoe await uncritically. When a driver doors me and my bicycle on my way downtown, I don’t yell and spit. I calmly turn around, hobble home and throw myself into a load of topsoil, there for the crunching and mashing and cultivating of good moods.

Yes, indeed, in another life, unchained from the stresses of urban obligation, I reckon I would have been a farmer.

Well. . .not a western farmer, of course. Those guys are under seven feet of water. If I were them, I might head into the city if only for a little peace of mind.

The men of my family have traditionally celebrated Father’s Day with a surfeit of fine spirits (the drinkable variety) and a healthy aversion to advertised convention.

Mother’s Day makes no demands on the matriarchs among us. Dear, old mom is expected to do exactly nothing in return for the flowers, candies, greetings cards and sundry items designed to demonstrate that she is, simply, the best begetter the world has ever known; just sit around the parlor, perhaps, and smile sweetly.

But when, on Father’s Day, dad scores that drill set he’s had his eye on, or that Little Giant Skyscraper retractable ladder for which he’s been pining, it is assumed that he will make productive use of his largess and hit the woodshed or the roof not tomorrow but today, right away; all the better for being out from underfoot.

So, while Mother’s Day is all about rest, D-Day is all about work, which is hardly surprising when you consider that both “holidays” are the products of the diabolically female imagination.

Back in the early 1900s, one Sonora Dodd of Spokane, Washington – taking a page from Anna Jarvis’s mom’s day playbook – thought it a grand idea to remind husbands of their filial responsibilities, and so, in a pique of temperance-inspired rectitude, established a day of reflection and goods buying for the woozy sires of her community. Naturally, it caught on with women, much to the chagrin of legions of hapless American family men, one of whom anonymously remarked, “A father carries pictures where his money used to be.”

Nowadays, the lightened wallet is accompanied by lists about which the wise and clever wife will comment in only the most discursive fashion. “Of course, this is your day,” she will begin. “So, you mustn’t feel pressured to accomplish any of these things. But, as you’re not that busy, you may enjoy getting a start on some of these projects, which, I don’t have to remind you, we’ve been talking about for months. Hey, it could be fun and, you know, that driveway isn’t going to seal itself. Why don’t you try out the new roller thingy I bought you?”

Still, astute males of uncertain age and certain responsibilities do have recourse if they only spend a little time thinking about their options as the American humourist Brian A. Klems did last year when he issued his manifesto of what fathers want to avoid on the fateful day (Getting yelled at for farting in public; being interrupted from our nap; spending money; any mention of Justin Bieber).

Failing a full-court constitution of D-Day principles, however, dads can always do what I have done for years: Play for time.

Yesterday, for example, I spent a peaceful afternoon wandering aimlessly among the aisles at my local hardware store, taking note of items I’d like to own but had no intention of buying on that or any other day. As these decisions are incredibly rich with complications, neither my wife nor two daughters would ever presume to preempt my careful research and judgement. And, in perfect accordance with my plan, they didn’t.

Last year, I wasn’t so lucky. Sensing the gathering momentum to have me spend Father’s Day re-shingling the baby barn with an assortment of shiny new tools purchased with the sole objective of bringing a rueful grin to pop’s face, I panicked.

“I know what we need,” I announced. “We need a new bar-be-cue. But not just any cooker. We need one that will stand up to Moncton’s winters, one that never needs replacing, one that can handle steaks, ribs, fish, pizza, bread – the whole enchilada. Now that’s a gift that just keeps on giving to everyone, and all year round.”

I got away with it. . .sort of.

I reckon the big beauty set me back three years‘ worth of traditional Father’s Day nuggets. But as long as I continue to prepare all the meals until the end of my days, it’s worth it. After all, it’s not like I’m working, or anything.

When, a few months ago, the Alward government wisely tossed New Brunswick’s official slogan, “Be in this place”, into the rubbish bin of bad branding, it simultaneously, if unintentionally, provoked a province-wide hunt for a suitable replacement; for a shibboleth that all 56,000 civil servants in the province might finally embrace.

But, for reasons both obvious and predictable, nothing conjured fully reflected the popular weal, the Zeitgeist of the community.

“New Brunswick: Hey, it could be worse” came close. Somehow, though, it left too much to chance. What if conditions suddenly improved?

“New Brunswick: Where the future is only a voice-mail message away,” cleverly alluded to the province’s growing sophistication with telephony. Still, it suggested we’re never home to answer the phone when it rings.

“New Brunswick: When opportunity rains, it pours” just seemed flatly wrong unless you were a weatherman, in which case it seemed all too literally right.

No, nothing actually worked and the drive-through province appeared forever doomed to subsist on a diet of hard-scrabble reality and existential angst without so much as a morsel of a motto to colour its cheeks rosy.

Until now.

According to news reports, New Brunswick Finance Minister Blaine Higgs told a group of business leaders on Tuesday that if the province wants its books balanced and its economy healthy, it’s going to have to “demand less”.

Specifically, he said, “We’re not going to save ourselves to prosperity. But at the same time, we can spend taxpayer dollars a whole lot better than we currently are. . .despite the fiscal challenges we face, there are reasons for optimism. It’s not like we can do it all, we just have to do better.”

In short, and in a phrase that perfectly captures the mode of this government and the mood of the times, we have to “demand less”.

Can you see it? Roadside placards from Edmundston to Sackville, from St. Andrews to Shippagan, reminding residents and visitors, alike, of New Brunswick’s newfound, virtuous parsimony – a transformational event of epochal proportions.

“Ask not what your province can do for you. Demand less.”

“Hope for the best, but expect the worst. Demand less.”

“You can’t always get what you want. Demand less.”

“Hey, you think we’re made of money? Demand less.”

“Whaddya mean you want your allowance? Demand less.”

“Gruel was good enough for your grandparents. Demand less.”

Still, demanding less does not automatically produce a “demandless” society. Quite the opposite, in fact. The injunction is an imperative, framed in the active voice. The provincial government is clearly telling us to speak up. So, shouldn’t we?

I, for one, demand less costly, inefficient, redundant bureaucracy, especially on matters of economic development, trade and investment, health care delivery and educational administration. Currently, New Brunswick labours under the weight one of the largest per capita public sectors in the country with very little to show for all the lard it throws around in the execution of its members’ safe jobs and protection of their magnificently pensionable salaries (apart from unsustainable levels of structural debt).

I also demand less dissembling, prevarication and irrelevance in provincial governance. Why should New Brunswickers tolerate cut-backs to essential services in both urban and rural areas when the only vision the Legislative Assembly seems competent to muster concerns its own short-term, electoral interests and the partisan games it plays to secure them?

I demand less foot-dragging on eminently controversial, but potentially lucrative, industrial opportunities, such as wind energy. I demand less nibbling around the edges of the federal government’s contractual responsibilities to the Point Lepreau refurbishment project. I demand less meaningless bafflegab from provincial ministers who yap about “bright spots” in an economic thunderstorm. I demand less pork-barreling, perk-making, pabulum-stirring and kite-flying in public office; less entitlement, smugness, distraction, boredom and laziness among those who owe their living to the private sector schlubs who installed them.

Finally, I demand less complacency, ambivalence and apathy among electors who hold the most important jobs in civil, democratic society: Keeping their representatives accountable to the common, not individual, good.

If these demands are met, then maybe the sign that graces the provincial borders  should properly read: “New Brunswick: Where less is more.”