4 - Wednesday, November 13, 1991 - North Shore News Canada should chuck the book at B.C2s Cook THERE IS a need (I’ve noticed while camping in the Toronto area, spying on the denizens) for eastern Cana- dians to have a clown-figure on the West Coast. That’s right. A need. In Canada’s mythology, the loonie from B.C. is the counter- part to the goofie Newfie. These are the bookend stereotypes that hold the Canadian mass psyche, such as it is, in parentheses. Don’t forget, B.C. is the pro- vince once run by a guy named Amour de Cosmos. I don’t think that’s a name many Canadians east of the Rockies would recognize. But a kind of nut-case expectation seems to have grown up in his wake. The ‘‘average”’ east- ern-Canadian hardly knows the names of any provincial politi- cians in B.C. other than the premier, except intermittently when a scandal breaks out. Mostly it has indeed been the premier who played the Town Fool of Confederation. For decades, it was ‘*Wacky Bennett’’ himself, although he had to share the role with ‘‘Flying Phil’? Gaglardi, the highways minister with the lead foot who kept getting arrested, and was a raging fire-and-brimstone preacher to boot. Wacky and Phil were a staple of the Canadian media mosaic for arecord Iength of time — the Mad Hatters from B.C. When Dave Barrett took over, he fit the stereotype perfectly. He was saying some pretty wild stuff at a time when Conservative and Liberal bastions stood firmly ev- erywhere else. The fact that he would roll up his sleeves and chuck dried cow droppings out on the hustings set- tled the matter. When he was gone, there was Bill Bennett, but Bill was tou low-profile for the Easterners to get much of a fix, so the slack was taken up by Jack Webster do- ing his Oatmeal Savage routine (always a grabber), until, of course, Willy Vander Zalm came along, eclipsing all who had gone before. For a while, the Toronto media tried to pin the tail on Pat Carney, but the lady was much too tough and savvy, and she could lash back from the heights of Ottawa. Rita was shaping up as a real contender, partially of course because of this perverse need I mentioned, the need for somebody from B.C. to be viewed as a com- ical barbarian. She did manage to act a bit that way, you have to admit. But even if she quoted Schopeniiauer and displayed a firm grasp of astrophysics, I suspect the Down East media would have played her as a bumbler anyway, just from the way she did her hair, if nothing else. A Torontonian’s sense of himself as the personification of Canadian urbanity requires a con- trast, something to be measured against, you see. There must be something the Torontonian can feel superior to. The role of the bozo from B.C. generally calls for somebody who is slightly to the right of Genghis Khan, although the opposite ex- treme, like Barrett, could fit the job description because of the rough edges. With the collapse of the Socreds and their disappearance from the Bob Hunter See STRICTLY PERSONAL national stage, the poor Toronto media were left feeling uncom- fortable, having to deal with the sophistication of Mike Harcourt. That didn’t fit the mosaic. What they were casting around for was a new heavy-breather from B.C., a perfect Lotus Land klutz. And then — whamo! — along came Chuck. Yes, I refer to North Van MP Chuck Cook. Overnight, he has become the Amour de Cosmos clone of ihe day. It wasn’t so much his comments about not enough Canadians reading books to justify subsidiz- ing the indigenous book- publishing industry. It was when he said he reads three books a week, including mysteries and bestsellers by Tom Clancy and Frederick Forsyth, but ‘‘not much Canadian stuff ... because it’s just not good enough.”’ The columnists in the Toronto papers have been having a field day with Chuck every since, poin- ting out how well Canadian writers have been doing in the English-language world at large, especially when you consider our numbers, Publishers have been marching up to Chuck’s office with loads of books, Canadian books, urging him to read them. The contradiction between his desire to slash government fund- ing for publishing, already down to the level of 70 cents per Cana- dian per year, while his own gov- ernment’s official policy is to try to fight wide-spread illiteracy, was pointed out to him repeatedly, I’m sure, Three books a week! Where does he get the time? Must be a pretty cushy job being an MP if you can fritter that much time away reading junk. That's a startling figure, when you think about it. Does that add up to 156 books a year? Hell, we should call him Chuck Book, not Chuck Cook. For 50% of Canada’s population, the feat of reading a single book in the last year was about all they could manage. I remember the line uttered by Doug Gibson, publisher of Mc- Clelland & Stewart, when the GST was slapped on books: ‘‘A gov- ernment that taxes reading must find reading taxing.”’ Reading anything besides pot- boilers, that is. Non-Canadian ones at that. Throw the book at him, I say. Or better yet, chuck it. BONELESS CROSS RIB ROAST Canada Grade A Beef Chuck SALE ENDS NOVEMBER 16/21 STORE HOURS DUNBAR & DOLLARTON Mon.-Fe. 9am-3pm Sat. am-7pm, Sun. gam-6pm DUNDARAVE WEST VAN. Mon.Wed. 9am-7pm Thut-Fei. Sam-9pm Sat-Sun, 9am-6pm LYNN VALLEY NORTH VANCOUVER Mon-Sat. 8am-Spr. 9am-6om 50% OFF Men’s Corduroy Dress Pants. Reg. 29.97 Saie 14.99 ao 50% OFF 100% Cotton Towels. 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