4 - Wednesday, May 1, 1991 ~ North Shore News

The mainstream
must deal with
the unthinkable

ONE OF the most
fascinating processes to
watch, I find, is the way the
unthinkable becomes ordi-
nary.

The first article I wrote on the
possibility of Canada breaking up
was back in 1978.

ft was intended as a magazine
think piece. [ fired it off to
Saturday Night, which had
published several of my stories.

This time, forget it. Then-editor
Robert Fulford was incensed by a
Westerner sending him a scrious
piece on how sentiment east of
Toronto was not necessarily utter-
ly unlike some sentiment in
Quebec — willing to at least take
a hard look at the pros and cons
of forging a new country out of
the decaying hulk of the old.

That’s a cruel phrase, of course.
Decaying hulk. But it is a recur-
ring image that has come to mind
over the years as I watch our na-
tional leaders blunder from one
ridiculous extreme to the other.

In any event, Fulford didn’t run
the piece. Nor did he run anything
of mine after that. I had crossed
the line into unpatriotic thought.

Back then I didn’t realize that
Toronto editors considered
themselves the bearers of the
Canuck Man’s Burden, a kind of
noblesse oblige to maintain Cana-
dian unity.

So | sold the story to an Amer-
ican magazine. The subject of
Canada’s schizophrenia was a
worthy topic so far as Yankee edi-
tors were concerned. I sold
various versions of the same story
to magazines in Hong Kong, Mex-
ico, France, the U.K. and Ger-
many.

It was only at home that no-
body wanted to publish thoughts
on the unthinkable.

Today, of course, the unthink-
able has become so completely
thinkable that our national politi-
Cians seem to be devoting most of
their time to fretting about it.

To my mind, the shame is that
they didn’t think about it back
then. A bit of thought might have
suggested moves that could have
headed off the crisis we now face.

Toronto editors who preferred
to bury their heads in the sand,
rather than confront the issue of
regional alienation, did not carry
the Canuck Man’s Burden very
well, after all.

Otherwise there might not be a
Reform Party surging ahead of
the Tories both nationally and in
Ontario, of all places!

‘The whole issue of Western
alienation remains unfashionable
in Central Canada. Try to bring it
up at a dinner party and the eyes
of your host glass over, with the
subject quickly being moved to a
more civilized topic, like Toron-
to's waste disposal woes.

Pundits are predicting an [taly-
style parliament next time around,
with Preston Manning and/or Lu-
cien Bouchard or both holding the
balance of power, with the Lider-
als and NDP gnawing at the
throats of the decimated Tories.

With a majority of Quebecers
expressing the view that they
would prefer separation to the
status quo, the unthinkable has
clearly arrived in the mainstream
of Canadian thought.

The reasons J could see this
crisis coming a dozen years ago

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was simply because I had travelled
back and forth across the country
several times, getting to know
people in pubs and taxis, trains
and airplanes, big cities and
remote northern communities
alike.

Everywhere | went, after a few
beers people would express
basically the same point of view,
namely that they were fed up with
the ruling elite in Ottawa,
regardless of which party was in
power.

This nearly universal loathing .
applied to opposition politicians in he
the federal capital every bit as :
much as it did to the governing
regime.

In the process of going to Ot-
tawa, all politicians became
tainted. [t wasn’t just because
they made dumb decisions. It was
more fundamental than that.

They had joined The Enemy.

Ottawa had become the imperial
Rome of Canada. All who ven-
tured there were corrupted by :
power. a

Now that this simmering disgust a
has manifested itself in a new,
fragmented political reality, it
surely is time to heed what has
remained the problem all along.

It is not Canada that is the ee
problem. It is Ottawa. "

Far too much power has been
concentrated in the hands of far
too many mandarins in a small,
distant imperial bastion.

The decisions reached by the
bureaucrats and their willing cap-
tive political handmaidens are
almost invariably at odds with the
feelings of the people who are af- ro
fected in far-away regions. A

Really. When was the last time :
you can remember the federal
government coming down on what 3
you considered to be the right side nt
of an issue?

This is precisely the feeling
people have everywhere in
Canada, except Ottawa, where
they are convinced by too many

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As we enter the final stages of a4 Rd. Service, 3015
the debate over the future of the J Woodbine Dr.,
decaying hulk of Canada — how NMancouver. .
to rejuvenate it, if possible, or —— ae a et mee sae aoe se mame PETROCARADA
otherwise how to rearrange the
borders — it is vital, I think, to
keep in mind that the problem is
the men and women who run the
country, not the country itself.
And as long as those are the
people seeking the solution, there
is no hope. A problem doesn’t
solve itself. It just compounds.

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Draw Closes: May 31 1991 / Draw Date: June 3, 1991