province columns
 
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The Province, Vancouver Dec. 22, 2008 Editorial Page “Presence may be more important than presents this Christmas” By Claude Adams Vancouver---Last year, my wife and I decided to spike Christmas. No trees, no lights, no gifts, no carols. No greeting cards, no stockings on the mantelpiece, and especially, no Santa Claus. We compromised on the turkey, but only because we like stuffing. Otherwise, our motto became “Less stuff, more presence.” It was more than a contrarian whim. We both happen to believe, strongly, that the only way to combat what Christopher Hitchens calls “"the collectivization of gaiety and the compulsory infliction of joy" was simply to stop “doing” Christmas, and to uproot all those tinselly, empty things that come along with it. Don’t get me wrong. We both want gaiety, and joy, and we think gifts are a great idea, anytime, anywhere. We love our children, and we cherish family get-togethers. We just don’t like being dictated to by the calendar, and by the winter-shopping-season merchandisers of tradition. So why not take that “Christmas feeling,” remove the label, detach the sentiment from the calendar and spread it out over the whole year? My wife Magi found a wonderful line from the poet Rumi, urging us to “do things from your soul.” So we went to our family website and said we were officially withdrawing from Christmas. “We love you all, but Christmas is hereafter cancelled in our house as a ritualized event. You are all welcome; we only ask that you come with hands empty but hearts full, etc.” The reaction was, well, interesting. The children were mostly OK with it. It was the adult members of the extended family who reacted negatively: “Deepening sadness (that) Christmas has been so poisoned,” wrote one. “Victory for Mr. and Mrs. Grinch,” wrote another. Some felt our action was the denial of an important Christian tradition, a repudiation of family values. They said they’d continue to send us gifts, and cards, despite our heresies. And others suggested we should at least send a donation to the developing world. And some simply missed the point. “Please allow us to celebrate according to the direction of our hearts,” was one trenchant comment. This was getting too serious. I tried some humor. I said we would allow Christmas stockings, quoting St. Paul: “Verily, let thy hose o’er the hearth be flush with gracious givings.” But nobody got the joke. So we all called a truce, and the holiday passed without incident. A few days ago, my eldest daughter called. She suggested a big family dinner next week-- “To celebrate the Winter Solstice.” I said I’d buy the turkey. We might even play a little Pavarotti Christmas music. It’s exactly what we were hoping for: A minimum of stuff, a lot of presence. The Province, Vancouver Editorial Page May 24, 2005 “I’d have to vote every day for 22 years before I made a difference” By Claude Adams Vancouver—I never met Jarrah Hodge. I didn’t read his campaign literature. He never knocked on my door. But last Tuesday I spent an hour of my time and gas money (value: approximately $50) to vote for him. He got clobbered, by 10,000 votes. I suppose those other “winning” votes mattered. Mine was a waste. Democracy, said H. L. Mencken, is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. In my individual ignorance, I could have stayed home and saved the 50 bucks. But something, some Pavlovian instinct of civic duty, pushed me out the door and caused me to mark an X next to the name of a complete stranger. When I say “waste” I don’t want to demean the democratic impulse of other British Columbians who voted for losing candidates. I’m just saying that however you measure them—politically, economically, spiritually--those votes have no value. Under the first-past-the-post electoral system, they “bought” us nothing as a society. Jarrah Hodge’s 5,000 votes are worth exactly the paper they’re written on. They have no impact on public policy. They don’t make our streets safer, or feed the hungry, At most, they make 5000 voters feel virtuous: “It’s what a citizen does.” Economist David Friedman compares the act of buying a car, with that of voting in an election. In both cases, the person can improve his decision by taking the time and effort to study the alternatives: a Toyota or a Ford, Jarrah Hodge or Carl Hansen. In the case of the car, the outcome of the decision is clear: He gets a Ford. But, Friedman says, the effect of the electoral decision is different: “If the candidate would be elected without his vote, he (the voter) is wasting his time; if the candidate would lose even with his vote, he is also wasting his time.” The only way the individual vote matters are in the event of a tie: a mathematical improbability. In the case of my riding (Vancouver-Quilchena) the chances of my vote making a difference were roughly 8000 to one. In other words, I’d have to cast a ballot in an election every day for 22 years, before my lonely vote actually decided the outcome. Some would argue that mathematics doesn’t matter. It’s the civic ritual that counts—the collective exercise of a choice made in secret, under no duress, reminding politicians that ultimately they are responsible to us, and the X’s that we mark on a ballot. Enough individuals, acting independently, coming up with the “right” choice; It’s what Howard Rheingold calls the ‘smart mob.” Still, more than million eligible British Columbians didn’t bother to vote, convinced their ballots didn’t matter. They may have a point. All math and meaninglessness aside, however, I’m still voting. At the very least, it’s a good habit to get into, for those elections that really matter. Like the next time the STV comes around . . . Claude Adams is a freelance writer and broadcaster living on Vancouver Island. (PS: Jarrah Hodge is a woman.) Vancouver, July 7, 2005—Anybody who’s ever rolled dice on a craps table, or busted a bankroll at blackjack, knows the price of prolonged gambling: It makes you poor, depressed, addicted and unhealthy. But here’s something you probably didn’t know: Compulsive gambling also makes you stupid. That’s one of the findings in a report released last week on the $13 billion a year gambling industry in Canada. When asked by Statistics Canada how much they spend every year on gambling, Canadians said $272. In fact, the true average is four times that much. Gamblers simply don’t know how to count. Maybe that’s because they spend more on bad bets than they do on education ($1007 per year) or on books and magazines. I say “bad” bets because almost any wager--on a horse, roulette wheel, a card, a bingo number, a slot machine, or a lottery—is mathematically unsound. You will lose more often than you win. It’s a gamble for you, but a sure thing for the “house” --whether it’s a casino, a government or a racetrack. The proof is that they take in a lot more than they pay out. In Canada, government gambling profits grew by an astonishing 275 per cent in the last 12 years. That’s a statistic that should make any intelligent person stay as far away from a lottery terminal as possible. Instead, the punters are lining up. It’s an unsavory business. Governments promote their lotteries by exploiting envy: Wouldn’t it be nice, the ads say, to be big-yacht rich? How can you win, if you don’t take a chance? What they don’t tell you is that government lotteries produce far more misery than millionaires. Quebec, where lotteries began at the time of the 1967 Summer Olympics, has more than 100,000 pathological gamblers. An estimated 3 million Canadians are affected by gambling-related problems. The River Rock in nearby Richmond is typical of Canadian casinos. Weekend nights are pandemonium. The music of a thousand slot machines is deafening, you’ll sometimes wait two or three hours for a seat at one of the 25 Texas Hold-Em tables, and the blackjack dealers are lightning-fast: trained to deal 50 or more hands an hour. You can almost hear the sucking sound of money extraction. One gambler in every 20 is hooked. As a “remedy,” the toilet stalls at the River Rock advertise a self-exclusion policy. If you’re getting slaughtered at the tables, you can sign a contract with the casino allowing them to bar you from the premises. But self-exclusion is a pathetic stop-gap. It’s voluntary, and easy to cheat. Unlike in the Netherlands, for example, nobody checks your ID when you enter a B.C. casino. Politicians like Alberta’s Ralph Klein say gambling is a bonanza for charities, who share in the profits. But he ignores the ugly secret of government-sanctioned gambling: Studies have shown more than a third of those profits come from the people who don’t know when to stop. The big losers--the addicts--are the one who fill government treasuries. Says gambling researcher Bill Clark: “To have a government that picks at this weakness and counts on it for revenue, that’s a sad state.” “Why I gave up hockey Saturday nights and now go swing-dancing” Vancouver, July 15, 2005—When the headlines told me that the earth will soon resume its proper orbit, and that hockey will be back next season, I thought, maybe this is the time to get back into Canada’s national game. I tried to remember the Hockey Night in Canada theme. But I couldn’t. It was gone. Gone like my Frank Mahovlich hockey sweater and my Terry Sawchuk hockey card. Gone like my childhood. To be honest, I stopped watching hockey 20 years ago. As with most Canadians over a certain age, the joy started to wear thin when players started to hire agents and the game expanded to cities where it doesn’t snow. Nostalgia wasn’t enough anymore to keep us in our seats on a Saturday night. Maybe it’s a generational thing. So much has disappeared in a half century. I started playing hockey in an iron ore town that no longer exists—Schefferville, Quebec. Inside my hockey socks were catalogs from a department store than no longer exists—Eaton’s. It was a time before Zambonis—we used shovels to clear the ice between periods—and after the game we all sat around the pot-bellied stove in the hockey shack and cried as the blood began to circulate again in our frozen feet. When’s the last time you saw a hockey shack? Hockey was biological, elemental, testosteronal. And simple. It was a game of straight-ahead action, and little science. As uncomplicated as the most famous sporting expression in Canadian history: Foster Hewitt’s “He shoots; he scores!” And the game was as rough then as it is now: my teenage hero was a flying thug named Claude “Ti-Bi” Cardin, a forward with the Sherbrooke Beavers. Cardin had few teeth and no sense of proportion. During an exhibition game against a team of touring Russians in the late 60’s, Cardin terrorized the visitors with his stick and his fists, and then ran up into the stands to attack a critical Russian fan. It gave new meaning to the term Cold War. If you were lucky, your dad would pack you into the car once a year and take you to Canadiens-Maple Leafs game at the Montreal Forum. Back then, you could buy a ticket, a steamed hotdog and a Coke, and still have something left over from your allowance. And if you were lucky you could, from high up in the blue seats, witness the transcendent magic of Gordie Howe’s elbows, or Boom Boom Geoffrion’s frightening slap shot. I’m not averse to change. I don’t mind that a minimum salary for an NHL player should be $450,000, or that 20 teams will be qualifying for the playoffs. I’m not angry with the owners or the players who forced me to watch American movies on Saturday night for the last year. And I’m sure that Sidney Crosby is a wonderful kid. But I’ve moved on. I’ve turned a page. I now go swing dancing on Saturday nights. It’s coming back. “Historical apologies ring hollow unless they come with a price tag” Vancouver, July 25, 2005-- Is Bill Twombly really sorry for the burning down of a First Nations village near Tofino 215 years ago? And if he is, what’s he going to do about it? These are mean-spirited questions, maybe, but they need to be asked if we are to understand what happened last week in an unprecedented ritual near Tofino’s Mackenzie Beach. It was a formal apology for an historical travesty, and it made everybody involved feel better—200 native people, a shipload of white people, and a clutch of reporters. But what is the lasting effect? The white people came in a tall ship, the Lady Washington, which dropped anchor about a kilometer off the beach. Cedar canoes carrying local chiefs of the Tai-o-qui-aht First Nations, pulled up alongside, and escorted the ship into the harbor of Opitsaht. Twombly, an Oregonian, and a descendant of a U.S. fur trader Capt. Robert Gray, was feeling contrite for an act of cultural barbarity. “We are sorry,” he declared, for the fact that two centuries earlier, his forefather, Capt. Gray, had kidnapped a chief, insulted the community and then ordered Opitsaht burned down, likely by cannon fire. The natives graciously accepted Twombly’s apology, and then they all sat down to a Texas feast. Later, Twombly said he felt “relieved.” When I read that, I wondered why. Leaving aside the Roman Catholic doctrine of original sin, and the need to expiate the “sins of the father,” what on earth did he have to feel sorry about? However, if the sorrow was genuine, then it must entail some kind of genetic responsibility, and that would argue for some form of restitution. For starters, Twombly could have left behind the Lady Washington. I’m guessing that the original ship formed the basis for Capt. Gray’s family fortune which, invested and compounded through the ages, allows Bill Twombly to sail the world in splendor today. Wouldn’t it be fair to give this symbolic instrument of a long-ago crime to the natives, as partial reparation for their shame, and loss of their homes 200 years ago? Of course, that was never in the plans, and the Tai-o-qui-aht were much too polite to mention it. But that’s exactly the problem with these ritualistic spasms of historical remorse. They are well meaning but ultimately empty gestures, unless you’re ready to open your wallet. That’s why, on a bigger scale, the Americans are so loath to formally apologize for slavery, and why Canada is unwilling to apologize for the imposition of a head tax on the Chinese 80 years ago. A government or an individual that’s ready to say “sorry” also has to be ready to make good the harm. Charlie Quan of Vancouver is one of the last survivors of the 82,000 Chinese who had to pay a head tax to enter Canada. In Charlie’s case, admission cost $500. Properly invested, and compounded annually, that money might well have made him a millionaire today. But he can’t even get a dime, or a “sorry” from Ottawa. Authentic apologies come with a price tag. “The real human tragedy is poverty in the midst of middle-class plenty.” Vancouver, Feb. 1, 2005—Harlem-born writer James Baldwin once said: “Anybody who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.” And I’m embarrassed to be living in a province that wants to make it even more expensive, by slapping a fine on a kid who’s trying to wipe the dirt off my windshield. What’s next? Clearing away the homeless with high-pressure water hoses? How about earth-moving equipment to free up the alleyways of the downtown Eastside? Does anybody not see the irony here? Only weeks after Canadians dug into their wallets and donated $150 million to rebuild the lives of South Asians affected by the tsunami, Victoria turns its distemper on a few hundred dispossessed citizens who are actually trying to earn a handout! All right, I confess. On those rare occasions when I climb into my Volvo and leave Kerrisdale for a shopping trip downtown, the last thing I want to see is a homeless person with a squeegee draped over my windshield. It’s irritating, especially when the light’s green and I can’t move, and I really need to get to the Sinclair Centre to buy a new insert for my Filofax. So I may snarl, blast the horn and maybe even curse. But governments are in place to protect us from our worst instincts. I don’t want my fitful middle-class impatience to be translated into a new law. Aggressive poverty is human nature, as it should be. You don’t have to be a Marxist-Leninist to believe that the distribution of wealth is unfair. So, within the law and within reason, if you’re poor, you do something about it. In Shenzhen, China, I was once approached at an intersection by two very cute, and very poor, young girls. They wrapped themselves around my legs, tightly, and smiled. For 30 seconds, it was sweet. After three minutes of struggling, I was desperate. I couldn’t shake them off. They call them the “Cling-on Kids,” they target tourists and they’re like barnacles. They only let go when you give them each 10-Yuan, about two dollars. At the airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, you are swarmed with ragged young street kids who want your luggage. They just want to carry it to the taxi for a dollar. The trouble is, there are a hundred of them, and they’re murder on the leather straps of your Samsonite. But you resign yourself, and let your luggage go. In India, I have my shoes shined six times a day. It’s easier than trying to run away from the poverty. Call it conscience money. The problem with North Americans is that we don’t mind giving to the poor, but we want something in return. Like an imaginative spiel. or gushing gratitude, or maybe some entertainment. Or even just plain middle-class civility. Poverty may be soul-destroying, and infuriating, but when we see that anger, we want to call 911. Last year, Liberal MLA Lorne Mayencourt, while lobbying for the Safe Streets Act, said Vancouver has suffered “awful, awful atrocities” from the angry poor. Mayencourt got it wrong. It’s poverty amid plenty that’s the real atrocity.