Bowering iines up
our nation’s leaders

Enoists and Autocrats, by George
Bowcering 1999, Viking. 538 pages. $35.

Lisa Harrison
Contributing Writer

ON one of the strange planets in
Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker's Guide to
the Galaxy, lizards are the political lead-
ers of a population similar to humans.

When the intrepid hitchhiker asks one of thera
why his people clected the lizards he responds,
unfazed, “Because we don’t vote the wrong
lizard will yet in.”

In the strange world of Canadian polities, our
choices often scem equally dismal but at least our
leaders look familiar. The men (and one woman)
who fed our country front its birth in 1867
through wars, depressions and nuclear crisis,
directed public funds and patronage appointments
to their friends, were media posers and indecisive
opportunists. But there were also a few edinmers
of greatness. idealists who used their power to
secure our territory and independence as a nation
and to protece children’s and workers’ rights.

George Bowering’s latest work, Eqaists and
Autocrats, is a well researched chronological guide
to every Canadian leader and the political climate
of their time. This is not the dry history of our
school textbooks. He incorporates personal intor-
mation gleaned from autobiographies and corre:
spondence into the political facts, There are details
such as the story of Colonel McCormick, owner of
the Chicage Tribune, the New York Nen
pulp mill in Baie-Comeau that supplied
newsprint for his tabloids handing young “rad”
Brian Mulroney $50 tor waging Trish ballads. ‘This
would not be the lag time Mulroney sang for the
Americans. Then there are the mostly forgotten
moments of infamy such as the scandals involving
a Father of Confederation, feader of the Quebec
Conservatives, Hector-Louis Langevin. Returning
to federal polities following the Pacific Railway
financial scandal he once again simply coulds't say
no to gifts from people bidding on government
contracts.

A spy within the party revealed that Langevin
also made a habit of overestimating building, costs
to line party pockets and he was forced io resign.
“Canadians and Quebeckers were accustomed to
graft and bribery in their politics,” Bowering
writes, “but even goldfish want the bow! cleaned
once in a while.”

An objective historian he is not but it makes for
interesting reading. What els could you expect
from 2 B.C. boy who was expelled trom high

See Bowering Page 4

Friday. December 10. 1999 - North Shore News ~ 15

Photo Thies
GEORGE Bowering rethinks history with his latest work, Egotists and Aristocrats — a
chronological guirie to every Canadian leader and the political climate of their time.

THE YEAR IN REVIEW

est of
the burch

THE year 1999 was a
show of solidarity for
the visual arts on the
North Shore, a time
when no one artist
stood out but the com-
munity benefitted from
its collective strengths.

Some of the highlights:

In the spring, the Artists
for Kids collection of
Canadian art left its linle-
known home atthe Leo
Marshall Centre tora show at
the Ferry Building, revealing
itself te ait audignee previaus-
lv unaware of the North
Shore treasure.

In the summer, Friends of
the FRG Society was tormed
to support the growth of the
Ferry Buitding, the most vis-
ited gallery in the Lower
Mainland,

The efforts of a few
helped many when the cre-
dentials of Christian Cardell
Corbet and his Canadian
Portrait Academy were called
into question in August.

In September, the West
Vancouver Community Arts
Council was re-energized
with the selection of a new
board and an expanded nin-
date.

The North Shore's arts
institutions supported a mil-
lennium project headed by
Oksana Dexter and Linda
Feil thar received $288,000
in tederal funding in
November.

Throughout the vear,
Carole Badgley and the vol-
unteers at the Sevmour Art
Gallery continued in their
support of local artists by
hosting inany fine shows.

— Layne Christensen

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